Gender integration and school-age children’s affective school outcomes: A longitudinal study.

• In Event: Gender today: Advances in the gendered nature of children’s and adolescents’ peer relationships

Abstract

Students’ affective feelings about school are central to their success in school. Understanding the predictors of positive feelings about school has been limited by the lack of attention to relationships with other-gender students. We contend that classrooms vary in the degree to which boys and girls work effectively together (Gender Integration; GI). Because most students have had extensive prior experiences with same-gender students (Maccoby, 1998), being comfortable and working well with same-gender peers is likely the case for many students. Little is known, however, about how students’ expectancies about other-gender peers are related to their positive affective feelings about school. Building on previous research (e.g., Field et al., 2017), students’ expectancies of inclusion, of social costs (teasing), and their efficacy with other-gender peers may provide important predictors of students’ affective experiences in schools. Our first goal was to test the idea that variability in expectancies about other-gender peers (e.g., GI indicators) has significant consequences for children’s affective school outcomes across the span of one academic year. Our second goal was to explore whether the relations between GI indicators and affective school outcomes were moderated by child age and ethnicity (Latinx versus non-Latinx).

Participants were 515 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade children (51.1% boys, 42.9% Latinx, Mage = 9.08 years, SD = 1.00) recruited from 26 classrooms in three elementary schools in a Southwestern metropolitan area in the U.S. Using a short-term longitudinal design, data were collected in the fall (T1) and spring (T2) semester of one academic year. Students reported their other-gender expectancies about inclusion, social costs, and relationship efficacy about other-gender classmates, and school liking and classroom supportiveness.

Analyses at both T1 and T2 indicated that expectancies were correlated in the expected directions with school liking and classroom community. To explore whether GI indicators at T1 predicted later school-related affective measures, we conducted longitudinal path analyses controlling for class-level variance and same-gender expectancies and efficacy. We found that children’s T1 other-gender inclusion expectancies uniquely and positively predicted their T2 school liking (β = .12, p < .01) and T2 classroom community (β = .08, p <= .05). However, T1expectancies of costs and efficacy about the other-gender were not related to their affective school outcomes. Multiple group analyses revealed that the relations among GI indicators and children’s affective school outcomes did not differ by grade or ethnicity.

These results suggest that gender relationships in the classroom matter in ways that have been largely ignored. Students who expected to feel included by other-gender peers reported liking school more and feeling a stronger sense of classroom community one semester later compared to other students, highlighting the importance of students developing a sense of belongingness in their classrooms (Master & Walton, 2013). Furthermore, given that teachers can modify children’s peer relationships (e.g., reinforcement, seating, etc.), these results suggest that their ability to improve the classroom community is promising for developing professional development and peer interventions.

Authors

• Carol Lynn Martin, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Sonya Xinyue Xiao, Northern Arizona Univeristy
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura D Hanish, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dawn DeLay, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Richard A Fabes, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author