Students With Emotional or Behavioral Problems: Their Emotional Experience in the Classroom During Peer Interactions

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

Integrative Statement

Emotional and behavioral problems vary across situations. Therefore, studying students’ emotional and behavioral reactions in situ and with respect to the social context may offer promising new insights. Prior research suggests that group activities in the classroom influence students’ affective responses (e.g., Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2011; Zurbriggen & Venetz, 2018). Furthermore, several studies highlight the role of social interactions for subjective well-being (e.g., Lyubomirsky et al., 2005; Parker et al., 2015). To date, however, little research has explored how peer interactions affect emotional experiences during school instruction in general and their impact on students with emotional or behavioral problems in particular. This study sought to investigate the emotional responses of students with emotional or behavioral problems during their interactions with peers in the classroom. A second aim was to examine whether classroom descriptive norms influence the relationship between students’ peer interactions and their affective states.
Participants were 719 adolescents (Mage = 12.2 years; SDage = 0.8; 49% girls) from 40 sixth-grade classrooms. Emotional and behavioral problems were defined as scores beyond the cut-offs used in the teacher version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 2001). Classroom descriptive norms were operationalized as mean problem/prosocial behavior in class. By means of the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), students reported their current activity in class (peer interaction (pair/group work) vs. non-peer activity) and their emotional experience on M = 12.3 randomly selected occasions during one school week, with a total of 8,870 protocols. Emotional experience was assessed with four items each on two scales, Positive Activation (PA) and Negative Activation (NA), developed by Schallberger (2005).
Tests of measurement invariance and population heterogeneity within a multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) framework were performed to examine the structure of affective states of students with (a) emotional or (b) behavioral problems versus typically developing students. Next, MSEM with latent interactions were conducted to investigate the effects of peer interactions and classroom descriptive norms regarding behavior on students’ emotional experience as a function of group membership.
Results indicate that the structure of affective states is similar for all student groups. However, students with emotional or behavioral problems experienced less PA and more NA than typically developing students (Table 1). Moreover, students with behavioral problems showed higher intra-individual variability than their classmates. In general, activities with peers in the classroom had a positive effect on students’ affective states. The positive effect was more pronounced (p < .05) for students with emotional (DiffPA = .32; DiffNA = –.30) and behavioral problems (DiffPA = .34; DiffNA = –.21) than for typically developing classmates. No effect of classmates’ prosocial behavior on PA during pair or group work was found. Furthermore, prosocial classroom norms moderated the effect of working with peers on PA to a small extent, except for students with behavioral problems.
This study provides evidence of positive influences on students’ emotional experience while working with their peers. The significance of peer interactions for students with emotional or behavioral problems will be discussed and future research directions will be suggested.

Authors

• Carmen Zurbriggen, University of Bielefeld
  Presenting Author

• Margarita Knickenberg, University of Bielefeld
  Non-Presenting Author

• Martin Venetz, Interkantonale Hochschule für Heilpädagogik
  Non-Presenting Author