Elementary School Teachers' Perspectives on Managing Social Relationships in the Classroom

There are few measures designed to capture teachers’ efforts to manage classroom peer relationships outside of the context of specific intervention programs (e.g., PBIS, SEL curricula). Our objective is to anchor such measures in everyday educational practice by using teachers’ descriptions of their own strategies to identify a set of common practices that can be studied in relation to classroom and student outcomes and that could represent potentially modifiable targets of intervention efforts.

Methods: As part of a year-long study of social relationships in 1^st, 3^rd, and 5^thgrade classrooms, 109 teachers completed 20-25min audiotaped interviews regarding their role in managing patterns of peer affiliation, social status and aggression in the classroom. Teachers completed Likert-type rating scales on these same topics after the interview, including one 6-item scale describing efforts to Mitigate Status Extremes. Based on a review of the responses of 21 teachers to questions about how they would handle issues related to low peer status or social isolation, we identified 3 general approaches (i.e., talking with student directly; pairing student with peer; addressing whole class) with several specific strategies under each approach. All instances of each strategy use were coded for each interview. Coders also rated each teacher’s Social Management Self-Efficacy -- a belief that s/he could improve social problems.

Results: Preliminary results based on an analysis of 35 interview transcripts indicated variability in the overall quantity of strategy use (range 1–10, M=3.85), with more instances reflecting more varied strategy use (e.g., the teacher with 10 instances used 7 different strategies). Teachers who described more instances of strategy use rated themselves as making greater efforts to Mitigate Status Extremes (r=.56, p<.05) and were rated by coders as higher in Efficacy (r=.80, p<.01). High-efficacy teachers reported satisfaction with success: “We modeled [approaching other children to ask them to be friends], which seemed to help him…it’s really neat to see that happen.” In contrast, low-efficacy teachers expressed feeling overwhelmed (“it’s hard to see everything”) or ineffectual: “[isolated child] would just swing on the swings by themselves. You’d approach and [try to engage them], but that’s pretty much how they were at that time.” Final analyses will include all 109 teachers.

Discussion: Teachers’ descriptions of their own strategies provide insights into practitioner-relevant strategies for managing social relationships as well as perceived obstacles to effective practice. Linking strategy use patterns to data on student outcomes in these classrooms will provide a basis for evidence-based professional development programs.