Peers’ Perceptions of Adolescents’ Achievement: The Formation of Peer Academic Reputations After a School Transition

• In Event: Peers and Academic Settings

Abstract

Every year, millions of adolescents transition to a new school. Over the first weeks, reputations (i.e., peer group perceptions) of adolescents’ academic performance are formed. Like teacher and parental expectations, peer academic reputations can shape adolescents’ self-beliefs and behaviors: academic reputation predicts student engagement, school performance, skill development, and academic self-concept over time (Gest et al., 2008; North & Ryan, 2018).
Surprisingly, it is unknown how peer academic reputations are formed. This is important, because once reputations have developed, they are prone to be relatively stable and resistant to change (Hymel et al., 1990). This study is the first to examine which adolescents’ characteristics in elementary school shape adolescents’ peer academic reputations in a new peer group. Both characteristics previously related to academic reputations (student engagement, academic self-concept) and broader characteristics (personality traits) were included. Drawing from attribution research (Gilbert & Malone, 1995), we expected that characteristics that provide observable cues of academic functioning (e.g., behaviors) would be more strongly predictive of reputations than less observable features (e.g., self-perceptions).
Furthermore, the study aimed to explore if there is bias in the formation of peer academic reputations. Perceivers are prone to biases while observing and interpreting others’ behaviors. For example, teacher expectations are partly biased (Wang et al., 2016) and this may also apply to peer reputations. We investigated whether peers form academic reputations based on the right characteristics, those that actually predict performance.
A sample of 319 participants was followed across the transition from 34 elementary school classes into 24 secondary school classes located in a medium-sized town in the Netherlands. Participants (53% female, Mage=12.2, SD=0.4) reported on their engagement, academic self-concept, Big Five personality traits, narcissism, and gender at the end of elementary school using validated questionnaires. Within three weeks after the school transition peer academic reputations were assessed using a peer rating procedure. Four months later, report cards grades were retrieved from school records.
Cross-classified multilevel analyses were conducted accounting for the nestedness of students in both elementary and secondary school classes. Correlations between adolescent characteristics and peer academic reputation were computed. Hierarchical regression models assessed the unique predictive power of the adolescent characteristics. To assess bias, the correlation between each characteristic and reputation was compared with the correlation between this characteristic and actual academic performance.
Results showed that adolescents’ observable characteristics indicative of high performance (i.e., engagement, conscientiousness, and agreeableness) were those more strongly related to their peer academic reputations (Table 1). When assessed together, no unique predictor of reputation emerged (Table 2). Further, results mainly supported that peers are accurate observers, as they base reputations on almost all the right characteristics, those that also predict actual academic performance. The study also provides initial evidence that reputations are biased by academic self-concept and gender: self-concept and being a girl positively predicted performance, but were not taken into account by peers. Overall, our findings suggest that the peer group rapidly perceives their classmates’ characteristics and forms academic reputations that quite accurately predict performance a few months later.

Authors

• Astrid M.G. Poorthuis, Universiteit Utrecht
  Presenting Author

• María Belén Casalá