The Classroom Study

Children can be cruel to peers who don’t fit in. I once observed 4^th graders passing around a paper during class with the question “Who do you hate?” at the top. Most students wrote down one girl’s name. When the paper reached this child, she wrote, “I hate everyone.”

Teachers struggle to attend to these moments of peer rejection, perhaps because they are preoccupied with pressure to improve children’s academic skills. However, this research seeks to demonstrate that elementary school children's marginalization by their classroom peers may in fact hamper their reading skills, mathematics skills, and academic engagement. Further, this research aims to identify teacher practices that are effective in reducing peer rejection in the classroom to in turn maximize student learning. If research can pinpoint specific ways in which teachers aid children's peer relationships -- and that reduced peer rejection can be demonstrated to enhance achievement-- then teachers will have more intervention strategies to facilitate students' learning.

For the pilot cohort taking place in the 2006-2007 academic year, I conducted this study with ten 2^nd and 3^rd grade teachers and their classrooms in a local elementary school. I examined teacher practices and factors in the classroom climate that promote the academic and social adjustment of children with ADHD symptoms. I will observe children in these classrooms over one school year, with assessment points in Fall, Winter, and Spring. Parent and teacher ratings of ADHD symptoms, peer nominations of peer rejection, and classroom observations and teacher report of teaching practices were be collected at each time point. More classrooms and teachers will participate in the 2007-2009 academic years.

Analyses seek to determine the academic and behavioral trajectory of children who are high on ADHD symptoms and peer rejection at the beginning of the year. However and most crucially, I also seek to determine which types of classroom climate and which teaching practices best promote the adjustment of these at-risk children. I plan for results to inform a future intervention study training teachers on behaviors that will help these at-risk children adjust to school.

This study is funded by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Fellowship to Amori Mikami.