School adjustment is an important factor in children's, and research attributes an important role to the quality of the teacher-student relationship in predicting more favourable school adjustment. The purpose of this study is to expand our knowledge of the relationship between teacher-student relationship quality and school adjustment (academic…

Family engagement in children's learning is an evidence-based approach supporting student learning. This study examines four primary school teachers' family engagement practice, within a non-dominant community. Utilising the framework of Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR), the teachers examined their partnerships with families,…

The goal of this study was to examine the unique associations of aggression with peer status in a non-Western context. The moderating effects of peer community and teacher closeness at the classroom level and gender and grade at the individual level were considered. Participants were 1954 third to sixth grade students (M[subscript age] = 9.60…

Nancy Fraser describes parity-of-participation in social interaction as an important component of social justice. In this paper, we explore the participatory experiences of primary-school-children who have been labelled 'lower-attainers' in mathematics and/or writing. The paper explores justice drawing on the perspective of these pupils, in…

Many behavioural and emotional characteristics are associated with children's peer relationships. The purpose of this study is to examine behavioural and emotional strengths of sociometrically popular, rejected, controversial, neglected, and average children. 773 third-grade children (51% girls) are assessed with a sociometric questionnaire and…

The contributions of academic achievement motivation and social status to peer-reported academic influence were explored in a sample of 322 children in grades three through five. Latent moderated structural equation modeling indicated that children who value academics are more likely to be rated by peers as academically influential. Social status…

Previous studies have shown that immersion students tend to speak the majority language during peer interactions, regardless of the language of instruction or their dominant language. Researchers have argued that the societal status of the majority language presents an obstacle to providing equitable support for both languages of instruction. To…

Children's peer relationships are frequently assessed with peer nominations. An important methodological issue is whether to collect unlimited or limited nominations. Some researchers have argued that the psychometric differences between both methods are negligible, while others have claimed that one is superior over the other. The current study…

Popularity has been linked to heightened aggression and fewer depressive symptoms. The current study extends this literature by examining the unique contributions of same-sex and cross-sex popularity to children's development, as well as potential mediating processes. Third- and 4th-graders (212 boys, 250 girls) provided data at 3 time points over…

This research examined two pathways through which depressive symptoms contribute to low social status (i.e., neglect and rejection) within the peer group over time: (a) depressive symptoms promote socially helpless behavior and consequent neglect by peers; and (b) depressive symptoms promote aggressive behavior and consequent rejection by peers.…

The purpose of this study was to examine how shyness-sensitivity and unsociability were associated with social, school, and psychological adjustment in rural Chinese children. Participants were third- to fifth-grade students (N = 820; M age = 10 years) in rural schools in P. R. China. Data on shyness-sensitivity, unsociability, and adjustment were…

This study focused on the dyadic defending relationships of victimized children in grades 3, 4, and 5 (N = 7481 children from 356 school classes, mean ages 10-12 years). Most of the victims (72.3%) had at least one defender. Being defended was positively related to victims' adjustment and social status. Analyses on victim-defender dyads showed…

This study investigated the independent and interacting effects of classroom-level embeddedness (i.e., hierarchical vs. egalitarian) and classroom density on the perceived popularity and social preference of aggressive and victimized 3rd-4th grade students (N = 881). A cohesive blocking procedure was used to compute embeddedness. Multilevel…

If it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, middle-class children are more likely than their lower-income peers to grow up learning how to make the gears of the education system turn smoothly. Working-class parents, meanwhile, tend to raise their children to avoid conflict and be self-sufficient in problem-solving, an Indiana University…

This study investigates how students in third-, fourth- and fifth-grade classes at a rural school are socially constituted as "struggling readers," and how this social status impacts reading achievement. It examines the ways that some students are positioned as inferior readers in relation to their classmates during peer-to-peer literacy events.…