“Teacher as Equalize?” Exploring Teacher’s Role in Classroom Friendship Network Formation

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 27. Students, Teachers, and Organizations in Conversation

Abstract

This proposal investigates the intersection of structural friendship networks and classroom cultural contexts, examining how educators moderate the reproduction of educational inequality. While network homophily is a well-documented driver of categorical inequality among youth, it is frequently treated as a static structural phenomenon, ignoring how local classroom cultures might amplify or disrupt these endogenous ties. Using the nationally representative China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this study estimates Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) across 425 middle school classrooms, subsequently pooling the coefficients via meta-analysis and meta-regression.

Baseline models confirm robust endogenous sorting mechanisms: students naturally default to strict academic, socioeconomic, and gender segregation. For instance, high-performing students act as selective actors who receive significantly more friendship nominations while sending fewer. However, the meta-regression reveals that these structural boundaries are highly permeable to the cultural and institutional meaning-making of educators. When teachers foster a pedagogical culture that attributes student success to effort rather than social background, socioeconomic homophily is drastically reduced. Furthermore, structural resources like school funding mitigate academic segregation, whereas the high-stakes testing environment of Grade 9 hardens the boundaries between high and low achievers.

By bridging network science and the sociology of education, this study challenges the cultural reproduction framework that views schools purely as inescapable sorting machines. Ultimately, the findings demonstrate that inclusive, effort-based teaching cultures actively disrupt the social reproduction of inequality within adolescent micro-networks

Authors

• Jiatong Li, Renmin University of China

• Shiyuan Li

• Weidong Wang, University of Hong Kong