Aggressive Behavior in Students With Disabilities: Investigating the Role of Classroom Peer Norms

• In Event: 2-090 - Classroom Peer Environment Effects on the Social Situation of Students With Special Educational Needs

Integrative Statement

Compared to students without disabilities, those with disabilities tend to exhibit elevated aggression which likely disrupt the classroom environments and affect other peers’ learning (Estell et al., 2009; Farmer et al., 2015). It is important to understand how teachers can manage the classroom ecology that promote students’ positive school experiences while reducing their involvement in aggression and victimization (Gest & Rodkin, 2011). Prior research has recognized the normative influence of peers in the development and maintenance of students’ challenging behavior. Yet, it is still necessary to conduct further investigations that focus on clarifying malleable social dynamic factors that can serve as intervention focal points to meet the behavioral needs of students with disabilities (Cairns & Cairns, 1994; Farmer et al., 2012; Xie, Cairns, & Cairns, 1999). To fill this gap, this study aimed to examine whether descriptive and injunctive bullying norms as well as norm salience of bullying within the classroom are related to the levels of aggression for students with disabilities. It is hypothesized that their aggressive behavior would vary by the occurrence of bullying among peers (descriptive norms), peers’ perceptions of the bullying ecology (injunctive norms) and the degree to which peers’ aggression is associated with popularity status (norm salience).
Participants consisted of approximately 1,700 5thgraders (47% boys; 46% minority; Mean age = 12), including 171 students with disabilities, from 106 schools in predominantly rural areas. Self-reports of aggression were collected using the Interpersonal Competence-Student scale factors (3 items – argues, gets in trouble, flights; Cairns, Leung, Gest, & Cairns, 1995). Peer nominations of bullying and popularity were collected following standard protocol with a free recall of up to three peers. Perceptions of the bullying ecology, including peer protector (willingness to protect peers), peer protection (peer would protect them from being bullied) and peer encouragement (peer would encourage bullies) were collected to determine the injunctive norms (Song, 2005). We calculated three classroom-level bullying norms, including descriptive norm (within classroom average of “bully” nominations), injunctive norms (average perceptions of the bullying ecology), norm salience (correlation between “popular” and “bully” nominations). Multilevel mixed linear regression was conducted to examine whether the bullying norms, individually or jointly, are associated with self-reported aggression among students with disabilities.
The findings indicated that classroom-level norms for bullying behavior were associated with aggressive behavior of students with disabilities (see Table 1). In the investigation of the individual effect, descriptive norms (the average occurrence of bullying in classroom) were negatively associated with students’ aggressive acts (-0.008, p<0.05). Similarly, one of the injunctive norms, students’ perceptions of peers’ protection them from being bullied, was marginally associated with students’ lower level of aggressive behavior (-0.695, p<0.1). When considering these bullying norms jointly, only injunctive norms for peer protection were significantly associated with student’s decreased level of aggression (-0.895, p<0.05). Future analyses will examine bully nominations as a dependent variable as certain classroom norms are more likely to be related to students’ bullying involvement. Implications for understanding social dynamics and classroom interventions for aggression are discussed.

Authors

• Chin-Chih Chen, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Presenting Author

• Molly Dawes, University of South Carolina
  Non-Presenting Author

• Thomas Farmer, College of William & Mary
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jill Hamm, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author