Describes the Peers on Contemporary Art (POCA) program at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), for which 9th-12th grade students act as tour guides. Focuses on issues such as the students' role in curriculum planning, the application and training process, description of the tours, and reasons for POCA's success.…

Describes the experiences of student teachers placed in peer groups at one school as part of a technology training partnership. Data from journals, interviews, and field notes indicated that the opportunity for peer collaboration during student teaching was very beneficial for preservice teachers. The supportive environment helped them share the…

Conceptually distinct dimensions of classroom social position (number of mutual friendships, social network centrality, sociometric status) were examined in relation to each other and to peer-nominated behavioral reputation. Findings showed that number of friendships associated with prosocial skills; network centrality associated with prosocial…

Examines the attitudes of Year 2 boys and girls, drawn randomly from British primary schools within a local educational authority, towards school and school activities. Reports that between Years 2 and 6 the children became more negative towards the curriculum, interaction with the teacher and discipline, and happier about interacting with peers.…

Examines the mechanism of helping behavior, specifically, the exchange of explanations about the content being learned, describing conditions that must be satisfied for help to be effective and discussing the responsibilities of the help-seeker, help-giver, and teacher. Examples come from a study of a semester- long program of peer learning in…

A group of adolescent girls portray in art and in words their journey from trauma and hurt to trust and hope. Students, who are members of a positive peer culture group, designed and painted a mural in three sections. As a whole, the mural represents the three stages of the adolescent process. (Author)

Presents a conceptual framework to guide understanding of the peer network. Uses this network approach to study changes in younger adolescents' popularity over a six-month period. Reports that changes in popularity are related to the child's initial level of aggression, observable prominence, and the popularity of the child's best friend.…

Examined preschoolers' peer conflicts in the naturalistic classroom setting during free-play time. Found conflicts about play and ideas significantly increased with age while those stemming from physical harm were low overall. Findings support the proposal that conflicts are natural contexts in which children develop socially, morally, and…

Investigated the relationship between both interpersonal and intrapersonal factors and teacher-reports of children's behavioral regulation strategies when confronted with hypothetical emotionally arousing situations with peers. Found individual differences in socioemotional competence are associated with some ways children typically regulate their…

Oral language skills and habits may serve as important resources for success or failure in school-related tasks such as learning to read. This article tests this hypothesis utilizing a unique data set, the original Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised norming sample. This article assesses the importance of oral language by focusing…

Because moral transgressions are considered more serious than non-moral (i.e. conventional or personal) transgressions, it is less threatening to self-esteem to interpret one's own delinquent act as a non-moral transgression rather than a moral transgression. This 'domain shift' could be a way of reducing cognitive dissonance. It was expected that…

In the present study, the authors investigated age differences in children's understanding (a) that a person's behavior may contribute to the formation of a shared opinion within the peer group and (b) that origins of a reputation can be direct or indirect. The authors read stories in which a target character engaged in either prosocial or…

Utilizing an integration of social-cognitivist and socio-cultural approaches, this study--comparing the interactive processes among peers and their mentor in two contrasting groups--was designed to explore the reasons why two learning groups, engaged in an inquiry-based learning project with comparatively sustained discussion, produced vastly…

Longitudinal data from a study of kindergarten through 5th graders were used to estimate a structural model in which chronic peer exclusion and chronic peer abuse were hypothesized to mediate the link between children's early peer rejection, later classroom engagement, and achievement. Peer exclusion and abuse were expected to predict changes in 2…

This paper explores recent Ontario policy directives aimed at improving literacy levels among boys in addition to the perspectives underlying these policies. By drawing on the school experiences of four high school young men, the authors examine how boys read and misread masculinities through socially literate practices. This paper argues that…