Students' Social Positioning in the Classroom and Their Perceptions of Teachers' Academic and Social Goals

• In Event: From Classmates to Friends: Understanding Peers’ Role in Student Motivation

Abstract

Objectives and Background
Students' perceptions of classroom goal structures—specifically, teachers' orientations towards mastery (focus on learning and improvement) or performance (focus on outcomes and comparison) matter for students’ motivation, engagement, and academic outcomes (Ames, 1992; Meece et al., 2006). Achievement goal theory posits that these goal messages are embedded in daily instructional practices and create distinct motivational climates within classrooms (Ames, 1992; Urdan, 2010). Theoretically, students' social network positions should matter for how they perceive teacher goals because network centrality is related to how individuals perceive, interpret, and respond to others’ messages within their social environment (Pettit & Sivanathan, 2012). In classrooms, in-degree (incoming social connections indicating popularity and status) and out-degree (outgoing connections indicating social activity and initiative) are commonly used centrality indicators (Freeman, 1979). For different peer communities within a classroom, distinct microclimates of perception are plausible, where students in different network positions interpret the same teacher’s behaviours differently (Robinson, 2023).
Research Questions
1. How do individual network centrality positions (in-degree and out-degree) relate to students' perceptions of their teachers' mastery and performance goals (both academic and social)?
2. Do overall classroom network characteristics (density, reciprocity, transitivity) relate to perceived teacher goals at the classroom level?
Methods
Israeli high school students (N= 1,284; 50.5% female; Mage= 16.26, SD= 0.88) from 56 classrooms completed measures of perceptions of teacher: academic mastery goals (α= .85), academic performance goals (α= .87), social mastery goals (α= .61), and social performance goals (α= .82) using items adapted from the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS; Midgley et al., 2000), and nominated up to 10 classmates they spent time with (interaction partners). Based on these nominations, we calculated network indices.
Results
A multilevel structural equation model demonstrated good fit to the data (CFI= .964, TLI= .950, RMSEA= .040, SRMRwithin= .027, SRMRbetween= .245). At the individual level, students' network centrality (out-degree and in-degree) significantly predicted perceived teachers' academic and social goals. Interestingly, perceived mastery goals (both academic and social) were significantly related to out-degree while perceptions of performance goals (both academic and social) were significantly related to in-degree. Classroom-level network properties (density, reciprocity, transitivity) showed no significant relationships with students' perceptions of teacher goals (Table 1).
Significance
The pattern of results aligns with theoretical expectations, as out-degree centrality might reflect cooperation tendencies that correspond with mastery-oriented approaches to learning and relationships, while in-degree centrality might reflect status and popularity that align with performance-oriented concerns about social standing and recognition (Hemi et al., 2025; Poortvliet et al., 2007; Poortvliet & Giebels, 2012). The findings highlight how individual students' social positions within classroom networks—rather than overall classroom network characteristics—are related to their interpretations of teacher motivational messages. Results suggest that students' social positioning in the classroom matters for microclimate perceptions of their teachers' goals, with motivational messages differentially received across students within the same classroom. As perceived teacher goals are important for students’ individual motivation (Urdan, 2010), it is important to continue investigating how peer network positioning matters for perceptions of teacher goals.

Authors

• Alla Hemi, University of Haifa

• Adar Ben-Eliyahu, University of Haifa

• Martin Daumiller, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich