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Abstract
This study examines the nature and implications of peer academic reputations in math and science classes for early adolescents’ achievement beliefs and behaviors. The sample was 840 students (51% girls; 36% African American, 47% European American, 7% Latino, 6% Asian American, and 3% Other). About half the sample (47%) was from 27 fifth-grade classrooms in elementary schools and about half the sample (53%) was from 28 sixth-grade classrooms in middle schools. Peer academic reputations and student adjustment were assessed in the fall and spring of the school year. Peer academic reputation in the fall was associated with students’ self-concept, worry, and engagement (but not intrinsic value) in the spring, controlling for fall levels. Peer academic reputation operated similarly across gender, ethnicity, and grade level. Thus, peers’ opinions and expectations about each other’s math and science achievement matter for the development of students’ achievement beliefs and behaviors in math and science.
Promoting student interest and retention in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is necessary for meeting the needs of the growing job market (National Science Board, 2010). Whether a student persists in upper level math and science courses in high school is influenced by motivational beliefs and behaviors that develop in early adolescence (Simpkins, Davis-Kean, & Eccles, 2006). During early adolescence, peer interactions and opinions are especially salient for students’ self-evaluations and behaviors (Wentzel & Muenks, 2016). One fruitful approach for understanding how peers matter for student adjustment is by examining reputations among peers and how those reputations affect motivation and behavior (Hughes, Im, & Wehrly, 2014). Peer reputations represent the aggregate opinions and expectations of peers in a classroom regarding a particular student’s characteristics or abilities (Rubin, Bukowski, & Bowker, 2015). One specific type of reputation, peer academic reputation (PAR), has been shown to predict changes in students’ academic self-concept, effort, and performance (Gest, Domitrovich, & Welsh, 2005; Gest, Rulison, Davidson, & Welsh, 2008; Hughes, Dyer, Luo, & Kwok, 2009).
Extant research on PAR has been conducted with samples of children in elementary school. Little is known about the implications of PAR in early adolescence or specific to the domains of math and science. In addition, PAR has not been examined in middle school settings, which vary in important ways from elementary school settings (Anderman, 2013; Eccles & Roeser, 2010). Thus, the focus of the current study is on PAR in relation to the development of achievement-related beliefs and behaviors among early adolescent students (fifth graders in elementary school and sixth graders in middle school) in math and science classes. The current study also builds on existing research by examining an expanded set of outcomes, which is helpful for understanding the full range of implications of PAR for student functioning. Prior work has studied PAR in relation to academic self-concept and student engagement. We examine these outcomes in addition to early adolescents’ intrinsic value for math and science and worry about math and science coursework.
Peer Academic Reputation
Peer reputations influence student adjustment through mutual reinforcement between the individual and the peer context (Molloy, Ram, & Gest, 2011). For example, having a reputation for being disliked or aggressive creates social conditions (such as exclusion by peers) that lead to further maladaptive behavior and reinforcement of the reputation (Hoglund & Chisholm, 2014). Research on peer reputations has often focused on social reputations and implications over time for students’ risky behavior, health outcomes, and psychological symptoms (e.g., Prinstein, Rancourt, Guerry, & Browne, 2009). However, peer reputations are also important for students’ academic self-beliefs and motivation (Gest et al., 2005; Gest et al., 2008; Wentzel & Muenks, 2016). The term peer academic reputation refers to peers’ expectations and opinions regarding different students’ academic competence in the classroom (Gest et al., 2005).
Classrooms are inherently social places, and students’ interactions with one another while learning and practicing academic content provide unique information about peers’ academic functioning (Rodkin & Ryan, 2012). In the same way that individuals assess their own abilities and form their self-concepts based on past experiences and performance, students also notice their peers’ academic behaviors and form opinions about them. Students’ daily experiences with peers in the classroom are shaped by peer reputations, and over time reputations may be internalized and subsequently affect students’ own beliefs and behaviors. In the academic domain, the process by which others’ opinions and expectations influence an individual’s own self-concept and behavior is called expectancy socialization (e.g., Altermatt & Kenney-Benson, 2006; Pomerantz, Grolnick, & Price, 2005). In regard to PAR, expectancy socialization is thought to operate through expectancy cues provided by peers that convey to students what others think about their academic competence (Altermatt, 2012).
Expectancy cues are communicated through social interactions, differential treatment, and feedback between peers in the classroom. Three key mechanisms have received attention in the literature: cooperation/avoidance, help exchanges, and praise/criticism (Altermatt, 2012; Gest et al., 2008). First, having a reputation as a good student is likely to afford more positive and cooperative interactions with peers. Students may be more inclined to approach and work together on schoolwork with peers who they perceive as academically competent. In contrast, students may avoid working with their classmates who have reputations for struggling in school (Schwartz, 1981; Wentzel, Filisetti, & Looney, 2007). Second, PARs affect help exchanges between students. Students perceived as capable are more likely to be approached for help by peers (Newman, 2000). Furthermore, when students with positive academic reputations ask peers for help, they tend to get longer and more elaborate explanations than students with less positive academic reputations (Juvonen & Nishina, 1997). Finally, differential praise and criticism provide a mechanism for the creation, maintenance, and consequences of PAR in the classroom. In a study of children’s discourse in the classroom, Altermatt, Pomerantz, Ruble, Frey, and Greulich (2002) found that when students’ positive statements about their work (e.g., “My picture is the best!”) were met with affirmation by a peer (e.g., “Yeah. Yours is good. I can’t draw.”), their self-perceptions of competence increased over time. Collectively, having a reputation for being a good student in class leads to increased opportunities for cooperation, fruitful help exchanges, and positive reinforcement, which convey positive expectancy cues from peers and promote motivation, engagement, and achievement. In line with this conceptualization, PAR has been shown to be important in predicting changes in elementary school students’ academic self-concept, engagement, and achievement (Chen, Hughes, Liew, & Kwok, 2010; Gest et al., 2005; Gest et al., 2008; Hughes et al., 2009).
In addition to academic self-concept and engagement, we examine PAR in relation to changes in academic worry and intrinsic value. The different social interactions that are associated with PAR are expected to diminish worry and bolster students’ value over time. Students with high PAR are less likely to worry about successfully completing academic tasks because they have the help and support of peers in class if they experience difficulty (A. M. Ryan, Patrick, & Shim, 2005). Furthermore, cooperation, help exchanges, and positive feedback among classmates should also promote students’ feelings of relatedness in the classroom. As articulated in self-determination theory, intrinsic motivation is fostered when students’ need for relatedness is met (R. M. Ryan & Deci, 2000; Skinner, Kindermann, & Furrer, 2008). We examine these associations in math and science, the issue we turn to next.
Peer Academic Reputation in Math and Science
There has been much attention in recent years about how to promote student retention in STEM fields (Maltese & Tai, 2010; Martin, Way, Bobis, & Anderson, 2015). Understanding the development of achievement-related beliefs and behaviors in math and science is important for addressing this issue (Wigfield et al., 2015). It is likely that students form opinions about each other’s academic functioning that are specific to particular subjects. For example, students who receive the best grades on math and science tests are not necessarily the same students who read and write well. Thus, it is important to investigate subject-specific academic reputations. Early adolescents’ self-beliefs in math and science in sixth grade predict their later choices to pursue math and science courses in high school (Simpkins et al., 2006). Both teachers’ and parents’ expectations have been shown to play a role in this process (Eccles, Jacobs, & Harold, 1990). Peer expectations captured within an academic reputation are also likely to be important for the development of students’ math and science beliefs and behaviors.
The nature of math and science classes provides a context where academic reputations are likely to be made salient for students, perhaps even more so than in other school subjects. In math and science, information about other students’ performance and ability might be available in a format that makes comparison easier than in other subjects (Martin et al., 2015). In contrast to language arts or social studies classes, which often emphasize writing and evaluating information, math and science coursework more often involves formulas and clear-cut “right” or “wrong” answers (Franke, Kazemi, & Battey, 2007). Students are better able to garner information about their peers’ performance in math and science classes because they can more readily compare results on assignments and tests (Kilpatrick, Swafford, & Findell, 2001; Stodolsky & Grossman, 1995).
PAR is also important to examine in math and science because stereotypes that exist in these subject areas might affect reputations among peers. Girls and minorities are underrepresented in college degree attainment and careers in STEM fields (Beede et al., 2011; Hrabowski, 2011). Stereotypes persist of African Americans having less innate academic ability than European Americans and males as superior to females in math and science (Leaper, 2015; Steele, 2010). There is limited research on group differences in the nature or effects of PAR. One study found African American boys had lower general PAR than African American girls but did not examine the effects on student beliefs and behaviors (Graham, Taylor, & Hudley, 1998). Another study found no gender differences in the nature of effects of general PAR (Gest et al., 2008). We add to the literature by exploring if group differences exist in PAR in math and science along stereotypical lines (i.e., African Americans and females would have lower PAR) as well as the implications for academic adjustment across the school year.
Peer Academic Reputation in Middle School
In the United States, early adolescence is often accompanied by a change in school setting. Many students transition from smaller elementary schools in the fifth grade to larger middle schools in the sixth grade. In elementary school, students tend to stay with the same teacher and group of peers throughout the whole school day, whereas in middle school, students tend to move to different classrooms with different teachers and peers throughout the day (Juvonen, Le, Kaganoff, Augustine, & Constant, 2004). Given structural differences between the elementary and middle school environment, it is important to examine if PAR matters for student development in middle school as has been documented in the elementary school classes. We expect that PAR will be important for middle school students’ academic adjustment because the peer processes through which academic reputations develop (e.g., peer interactions, feedback, help exchanges, and differential treatment from peers) also operate in this context. Day in and day out, middle school classes come together for an hour to learn math and science and a distinct classroom context emerges. Teachers and peers contribute to the nature of the classroom context (Pianta & Hamre, 2009). Just as math and science middle school teachers affect students’ beliefs and behaviors in math and science (e.g., Midgley, Feldlaufer, & Eccles, 1989; A. M. Ryan & Patrick, 2001), so does the peer context of those classrooms. However, there are important developmental changes during early adolescence and the transition to middle school that may affect the magnitude and meaning of PAR for students’ motivation and engagement.
Early adolescence is a stage characterized by increased self-consciousness and sensitivity to feedback, especially from peers (Harter, 2006; Steinberg, 2014). Cognitive development affords early adolescents increased capabilities to use social comparative information to evaluate their competence (Butler, 1999; Ruble, Boggianno, Feldman, & Loebl, 1980). Thus, it may be that the effects of PAR on motivation and engagement will be amplified for students in middle school compared with students in elementary school. However, simultaneously, peer culture is changing in ways that support deviance and discourage compliant behavior (Cillessen & van den Berg, 2012; Kiefer & Ryan, 2011). In middle school, high effort and achievement in the academic domain are less likely to be seen as “cool” compared with in elementary school (Galván, Spatzier, & Juvonen, 2011). Compared with children, early adolescents are more likely to hide or downplay their effort toward schoolwork (Juvonen & Murdock, 1995). Thus, the effects of PAR on students’ beliefs and behaviors may be diminished in middle school, especially as related to engagement and value. If students are the recipients of cues that they are smart, but in a context where smartness is not highly valued, such cues may promote internal perceptions of competence and diminish worry about failure, but not enhance value or engagement in the classroom. We explore such grade-level moderation effects in the current study.
Overview and Summary of Hypotheses
In summary, with a sample of fifth-grade (elementary school) and sixth-grade (middle school) students, we examine the implications of PAR for students’ academic outcomes in math and science (self-concept, intrinsic value, academic worry, and engagement). In line with prior research, we anticipate that PAR will be positively associated with changes in academic self-concept and engagement (e.g., Gest et al., 2008). Furthermore, based on our conceptualization that PAR leads to differential social interactions (increased cooperation, fruitful help exchanges, and praise) among students in the classroom, we hypothesize that PAR will be associated with enhanced value and diminished worry across the school year. Given our study is the first to examine PAR in the middle school setting, we explore possible grade-level differences of PAR in association with academic outcomes (e.g., if associations of PAR with academic outcomes are magnified in sixth-grade students compared with fifth-grade students due to the increased importance of peer opinions during this stage, or if the positive association of PAR with engagement and value is attenuated in sixth-grade compared with fifth-grade due to achievement being seen as less “cool”). Finally, we explore group differences by gender and ethnicity in regard to the association of PAR with academic outcomes across the school year.
Method
Participants
Participants attended 55 classrooms with different teachers (28 sixth-grade math or science classrooms from middle schools serving students in Grades 6-8, and 27 fifth-grade classrooms from elementary schools serving students in Grades kindergarten-5). These public schools were from three Midwestern school districts located in small to moderate size urban areas. The demographics and academic achievement of the school districts are comparable. The percentage of students meeting state standardized testing standards was between 62 and 74. The school districts serve a sizable proportion of low-income (50%-71%) and middle-income families. The total sample (N = 840) comprised students who had data at both waves and was about half female (51.1%) and ethnically diverse (36% African American, 47% European American, 7% Hispanic, 6% Asian American, and 3% Other ethnic groups).
Procedure
Letters describing the project were sent home with permission slips for all students 2 weeks prior to data collection. Eighty-four percent of the students were granted parental permission to participate in the project. Surveys were administered in October (Time 1) and May (Time 2). Trained administrators gave paper surveys to students during their math or science classes (about 60% of students were in math class and responded about math, and about 40% of students were in science class and responded about science). Preliminary analyses indicated the pattern of results for math and science were the same, so analyses combined students from math and science classes. Teachers completed surveys about each student during this time.
For the student surveys, the instructions and items were read aloud by the administrator while students read along and responded. Students were told that the purpose of the survey was to find out about students’ beliefs and behaviors and that the survey was not a test and there were no right or wrong answers. Students were assured that the information in the survey would be kept confidential. In addition, students were told that filling out the survey was voluntary. Students were provided a blank sheet of paper to cover their answers as they went along so as to keep their responses private. We visited the schools one additional day to administer make-ups for students who were absent on the first day of survey administration.
Measures
Peer academic reputation
We used peer nominations to assess PAR in math or science class. Students were asked to nominate peers in math/science class for “who gets good grades” and “who does NOT get good grades.” Students checked names off class lists that were embedded in the survey under each of these items. We tallied the number of nominations that each student received for each of these items. Scores on each item could range from 0 (no nominations received) to the total number of nominators in a given classroom (typically around 20). For “gets good grades,” the mean ranged from 2.09 to 5.55, the median was 2, and the maximum ranged from 8 to 21. For “does NOT get good grades,” the mean ranged from 1.50 to 4.08, the median was 1, and the maximum ranged from 6 to 19. These raw scores were standardized within classrooms to account for varying class size. The two items were moderately negatively correlated (r = −.51). The negative item (i.e., “who does NOT get good grades”) was reverse scored and the mean of the two items was used as the measure of each student’s PAR. We explored the positive and negative reputation items separately and each showed similar associations with the academic outcomes at about the same magnitude but opposite valence. This provided justification for combining the two dimensions into a single PAR index.
Self-concept
We used Eccles’s measure for self-concept (Eccles et al., 1989). Students responded to four items pertaining to their ability in math/science. Sample items include, “How good at (math/science) work are you?” and “In general, how good are you at learning something new in (math/science)?” Students responded on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being not at all good and 5 being very good. The measure was reliable in our sample (Cronbach’s α = .85).1
Intrinsic value
We used a measure of intrinsic value established by Eccles (Eccles et al., 1983; see also Fredricks & Eccles, 2002). Students responded to three items about how much they value math/science. A sample item is, “In general, I find working on (math/science) class work to be enjoyable.” Students responded on a 1 to 5 scale with 1 being not at all true and 5 being very true. Another sample item is, “In general, I find working on math/science assignments . . .” with 1 being very boring, 3 being OK, and 5 being very interesting. The measure was reliable in our sample (Cronbach’s α = .89)
Worry
We assessed students’ worry about math/science schoolwork with a measure taken from A. M. Ryan and Shim (2006). Sample items include, “When I do my math/science work, I worry about how poorly I am doing” and “I worry about whether or not I will do well in my (math/science) class.” Students responded to four items on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being not at all true and 5 being very true. The four item measure was reliable in our sample (Cronbach’s α = .86).
Engagement
We used a measure developed by Skinner and colleagues (2008) to assess students’ behavioral engagement. Teachers rated each student on three different items about their behavioral engagement in math/science class. Sample items include, “The student pays attention in class” and “The student tries hard in class.” Responses were on a scale of 1 to 5 scale with 1 being never and 5 being always. The measure was reliable in our sample (Cronbach’s α = .93).
Results
Analytic Plan
Analyses examined the associations of fall PAR with spring academic outcomes, controlling for fall levels. Preliminary analyses (descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, and correlations) were conducted followed by hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). HLM is a regression-based technique that has advantages over ordinary least squares regression in that it partitions the variance into student-level and class-level components (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). Our research questions concern the association of student-level characteristics, but students in our sample were nested in classrooms. By using HLM, we were able to generate estimates of our student-level coefficients while accounting for any variation that exists at the class level. The intraclass correlations indicated minimal variation at the class level for academic worry (3%), more variation for academic self-concept and intrinsic value (7% and 9%, respectively), and the most variation for engagement (14%). Despite the minimal class-level variation for academic worry, HLM was used for consistency and because it best represented the nested structure of the data.
Descriptive Statistics
Correlations
We examined correlations separately by grade, gender, and ethnicity, but the patterns were highly similar across groups. We present the correlations for the whole sample in Table 1. At both time points, PAR was positively correlated with self-concept, intrinsic value, and engagement and negatively correlated with worry about math/science coursework. Also of note is the high stability of PAR in math/science across the school year (r = .85) indicating that students’ views and opinions of their peers’ abilities do not change much across the school year.
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Table 1. Correlation Coefficients, Means, and Standard Deviations for PAR and Achievement Beliefs and Behaviors.
Group differences in mean levels
Table 1 also shows the means and standard deviations of all variables in the fall and spring. We examined ethnic, gender, and grade level differences with ANOVA. There were no significant interactions (e.g., Grade × Gender) but there were several main effects. For ethnicity, we compared African American and European American students due to small numbers of students in other ethnic groups. There was only one construct that showed a difference by ethnicity: African American students were rated as lower in engagement by their teachers in the fall ( = 3.50 for African American students and = 4.02 for European American students, F = 66.65, p < .001) and in the spring ( = 3.48 for African American students and = 3.98 for European American students, F = 56.51, p < .001).
There were several constructs that showed gender differences. In the fall, girls had more positive PAR than boys ( = .20 for girls and = −.20 boys, F = 52.97, p < .001). Teacher reports of engagement were also higher for girls than for boys ( = 4.02 for girls and = 3.63 for boys, F = 39.22, p < .001). In the spring, girls again had more positive PAR than boys ( = 0.19 for girls and = −0.17 boys, F = 32.94, p < .001) and teacher reports of engagement were higher for girls than for boys ( = 3.97 for girls and = 3.61 for boys, F = 30.41, p < .01). However, by spring, girls reported greater levels of worry about their math/science schoolwork than boys ( = 2.61 for girls and = 2.34 boys, F = 8.99, p < .01).
In the fall, there were no differences between fifth graders and sixth graders in PAR, academic self-concept, value, worry, or engagement. By spring, fifth graders reported higher intrinsic value for math/science than sixth graders ( = 3.48 for fifth graders and = 3.22 for sixth graders, F = 10.54, p < .01). In addition, teachers rated fifth graders higher on engagement than sixth graders in the spring ( = 3.88 for fifth graders and = 3.71 for sixth graders, F = 6.53, p < .05).
Hierarchical Linear Models
Separate models were run for each of the four dependent variables: academic self-concept, intrinsic value, worry, and engagement at the end of the school year (Time 2; see Table 2). All four models controlled for fall levels of the dependent variable to assess the extent to which PAR was important to change over time. Preliminary models controlled for grade, gender, and ethnicity. Grade and gender were significant predictors in some models whereas ethnicity was not. Thus, grade and gender were retained in the final models but ethnicity was not. Furthermore, we were interested in possible variations in the association of PAR and the outcome variables by grade, gender, and ethnicity (i.e., African American compared with European American students). We examined interaction terms to see if the effects of PAR varied for any of these groups. None of the interaction terms were significant, so were not included in the final models. Thus, the results of PAR we report in this section were similar for fifth and sixth graders, boys and girls, as well as African American and European American students.
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Table 2. Hierarchical Linear Student-Level Model for PAR and Achievement Beliefs and Behaviors.
Academic self-concept
Controlling for gender, grade, and fall academic self-concept, PAR in the fall was positively associated with academic self-concept in the spring (β = .11, p < .05). Thus, having a positive PAR was associated with enhanced self-concept across the school year. Neither gender nor grade were associated with students’ academic self-concept, controlling for fall levels. Results for all models are shown in Table 2.
Intrinsic value
PAR in the fall was not associated with intrinsic value in the spring, controlling for gender, grade, and fall levels of intrinsic value (β = .05, p > .05). Gender (β = .17, p < .01) and grade (β = −.18, p < .05) were associated with intrinsic value in math and science in the spring, controlling for fall levels. Thus, girls reported higher levels of intrinsic value compared with boys, and sixth graders reported lower levels of intrinsic value compared with fifth graders.
Worry
Controlling for gender, grade, and fall levels of academic worry, PAR in the fall was associated with students’ self-reported academic worry in math and science in the spring (β = −.15, p < .05). Thus, having a positive PAR in the fall was associated with lower levels of reported academic worry across the school year. Gender was also associated with academic worry (β = −.23, p < .01), with females reporting higher levels of academic worry than boys.
Engagement
Controlling for gender, grade, and fall levels of engagement, PAR in the fall was associated with higher levels of teacher-reported engagement in the spring (β = .14, p < .05). Thus, having a positive PAR in the fall is associated with increased levels of engagement across the school year. Furthermore, grade was associated with engagement (β = −.20 p < .01) indicating fifth-grade teachers reported higher levels of student engagement than sixth-grade teachers.
Discussion
Young adolescents’ motivation and engagement in math and science are important to their learning and achievement in the short-run and to their choices and achievement in STEM courses and careers in the long-run (Maltese & Tai, 2010; Simpkins et al., 2006). Motivation and engagement are dynamic and sensitive to the social context (Wigfield et al., 2015). Peers are a salient part of the social context in classrooms. Our results indicate that peer dynamics in math and science classrooms matter in important ways for young adolescents’ motivation and engagement in math and science. Specifically, students’ PAR in math and science classrooms was associated with changes in students’ academic beliefs and behaviors across the school year.
We conceptualized that students’ PAR in math and science affects their beliefs and behavior through expectancy cues provided by peers that convey to students what others think about their competence in math and science. Expectancy cues are communicated through social interactions, differential treatment, and feedback among peers in a classroom, and over time, these experiences shape students’ beliefs and behaviors about math and science (Altermatt, 2012). When students have a reputation for competence, peers are more likely to want to work with them on tasks, ask for and receive help from them, and respond to them with praise rather than criticism. Taken together, these interactions and experiences serve to bolster students’ motivation and engagement (Altermatt, 2012; Newman, 2000; Wentzel et al., 2007). As hypothesized, we found PAR in the fall of the school year was associated with changes across the school year in students’ self-perceptions of ability and worry as well as teacher reports of behavioral engagement in math and science classrooms. Our findings contribute to a growing body of work that peers matter in important ways for students’ academic adjustment in general (e.g., A. M. Ryan & Ladd, 2012) and math and science in particular (e.g., Robnett & Leaper, 2012).
Contrary to our hypothesis, PAR was not associated with changes in students’ value for math or science. It does not seem that the positive social interactions and messages about competence that stem from PAR relate to increased value over time. Value and perceived competence are distinct aspects of motivation; a student might believe she is good at math but not value it or vice versa. Eccles’s Expectancy × Value theory of motivation has shown that these constructs factor separately with unique antecedents and consequences (Eccles et al., 1983; Wigfield et al., 2015). Our results suggest these facets of motivation may be sensitive to different processes in the peer ecology. Shin and Ryan (2014) found that the characteristics of one’s friends predicted changes in value but not perceived competence. Robnett and Leaper (2012) found that perceived friend support for STEM subjects was associated with adolescents’ interest in STEM careers. Thus, it may be that processes within close friendships are associated with students’ value, whereas expectancy socialization processes among peers in the classroom matter for perceived competence. Perceived competence predicts achievement whereas value predicts selection of courses in STEM (Wigfield et al., 2015). As such, understanding how different peer experiences are linked to different facets of motivation is important and could have different implications for supporting adolescents’ commitment to STEM.
Novel to this study was the investigation of PAR in middle school classrooms. With half of our sample in elementary school classrooms and half in middle school classrooms, we were able to examine if PAR had similar implications at both grade levels. There was no significant interaction for grade level and PAR effects. Our results indicate that PAR operates in middle school math and science classrooms in similar ways as has been documented in elementary school classrooms. Although early adolescence is a stage when peer opinions matter more to individuals (Steinberg, 2014), PAR did not have a stronger relation to achievement beliefs and behaviors for middle school students compared with elementary school students. Despite a changing social landscape in middle school where effort and achievement are less admired (e.g., Galván et al., 2011), PAR had a similar positive association with engagement (and a null association with value) at both grade levels. Perhaps this is due to the fact that our elementary and middle school students were only one grade level apart (i.e., fifth vs. sixth). It is possible that we could have found grade differences for PAR if we examined fifth graders compared with seventh graders. Another possible explanation is that we examined peer dynamics within math and science classrooms, whereas most prior work has examined peer dynamics within the entire grade at school (e.g., Galván et al., 2011). Perhaps in the smaller setting of the classroom, where students are in closer proximity to the teacher, peer dynamics concerning social status and achievement play out in less extreme fashion than in the larger social scene at school.
Given negative societal stereotypes regarding minority students’ academic ability and female students’ math and science abilities, we explored gender and ethnic differences in PAR. We found few differences for African American and European American students in our sample. There was an interesting pattern of results in regard to gender. Girls’ PAR was higher than boys’ in both the fall and spring. Thus, students recognize that girls earn higher grades than boys. Similarly, teachers reported that girls were more engaged than boys in both the fall and spring. Nonetheless, despite such recognition by teachers of their engagement, and peers of their achievement, girls did not have more positive motivational beliefs. There were no gender differences in self-concept or intrinsic value in the fall or spring of the school year. Our findings are in line with prior research that has shown that while early adolescent girls earn higher grades in math and science class than their male peers (Robinson & Lubienski, 2011), they do not tend to have higher perceptions of ability or value for these subjects (Leaper, 2015). Interestingly, in our sample, girls reported higher levels of worry in math and science compared with boys by the end of the year.
This pattern may be due to differences in how girls and boys approach achievement situations (Leaper, 2015). Pomerantz, Altermatt, and Saxon (2002) noted two ways in which girls and boys engage in school differently. First, girls tend to be more concerned with pleasing others which can heighten their effort in school but leave them vulnerable to anxiety over whether they are disappointing others. Second, girls are more sensitive to feedback than boys. Girls tend to view feedback as diagnostic of their ability whereas boys tend to adopt a confident approach and deny the informational value of feedback. Both girls’ wanting to please others and their attunement to feedback may increase effort and achievement, but at the same time leave them vulnerable to anxiety (Pomerantz et al., 2002). Our findings support this conceptualization. Furthermore, we show that such dynamics play out against a backdrop of peers’ widely acknowledging girls as the high achievers in math and science. However, it is important to note that recognizing girls as the high achievers does not mean that young adolescents do not hold stereotypical views about girls’ math and science ability (Leaper, 2015; Steele, 2010). In fact, having a positive PAR may itself play into girls’ motivation and worry. Natural ability is different than getting good grades, and if girls believe they must work extra hard to overcome a lack of natural ability in math and science, this may undermine their confidence and increase their worry.
The distinction between effort and ability is important to consider in relation to our measure of PAR. We asked students to nominate peers for “who gets good grades” and “who does not get good grades” in their math or science class. It is likely that students view both ability and effort as contributing to good grades. Asking students about which peers are “smart in math/science” or “work hard in math/science” could be illuminating in regard to potential gender differences. Previous work has asked students “who is good/not very good at reading” and “almost always/almost never knows the right answer when the teacher asks a question” (e.g., Gest et al., 2008). It is likely that these different items are tapping into a similar construct of PAR, but future work examining how different PAR items relate to each other and to student motivation, engagement, and achievement could address potential multidimensionality of the PAR construct. Along these lines, investigating which peers have a reputation for “who enjoys the work we do in math/science” might tap into a different facet of PAR which matters for student development of value or interest. Just as motivation and engagement are multidimensional (Wigfield et al., 2015), it is possible that PAR is multidimensional. Conversely, students may not be attuned to their peers’ academic profiles with as much nuance as their own beliefs and behaviors. Future work addressing this issue could be informative about the nature and consequences of PAR.
Our study had both strengths and limitations. Strengths of our study include the fairly large and somewhat diverse sample, a longitudinal design, and the use of student, teacher, and peer reports to capture different facets of students within both elementary and middle school classrooms. Furthermore, we used HLM to control for classroom variations when examining associations of PAR and student outcomes. Despite the strengths, our study was limited in that we did not control for students’ actual grades in examining PAR which leaves open the possibility that PAR is a reflection of grades rather than peer processes emanating from PAR. While this alternative explanation is attenuated somewhat by prior research that has shown PAR predicts changes in achievement beliefs and behaviors above and beyond grade point average (GPA; Hughes et al., 2009) and teacher-rated academic skills (Gest et al., 2008), it is a limitation of our study. In addition, we explored ethnic differences in regard to two groups (i.e., African American and European American students). Future work with larger and more diverse samples would allow additional exploration of ethnic differences in PAR. Furthermore, we only examined change across two time points within a school year. Future work could examine students’ PAR in math and science over a longer time frame, through middle school and even into high school. This would be informative about the development of PAR, motivation, and engagement in adolescence.
Another direction for future research is to begin to integrate teacher and peer influences on student motivation and engagement in the classroom. There has been growing recognition in recent years about the important role that teachers play in peer dynamics and relations in the classroom setting (Cappella & Neal, 2012; Farmer, Lines, & Hamm, 2011; Gest & Rodkin, 2011; A. M. Ryan, Kuusinen, & Bedoya-Skoog, 2015). Relevant to PAR, Cohen (1986) has described how teachers can promote inclusion and equitable participation among students of differing abilities through group work and collaborative tasks. Although teacher and peer factors are intertwined, they are often examined separately rather than in conjunction. Consideration of how these different processes work together would advance current theory and knowledge on the development of achievement-related beliefs and behaviors. This may be particularly important for students who have low or negative PAR. While having a positive PAR is related to enhanced perceptions of ability and engagement and diminished worry over time, the opposite is true for students who have a negative PAR. Students with a negative PAR are vulnerable to declines in motivation and engagement over time. Are there actions a teacher can take to prevent such declines? Can a teacher manage students’ reputations in class? For example, if a teacher gives a student an opportunity to demonstrate competence or praises them for doing something well, would it promote a positive PAR in a classroom? Perhaps if a teacher emphasizes task mastery and personal improvement rather than relative performance, it may mitigate the negative effects of PAR.
In conclusion, by examining PAR in math and science classrooms, the present research contributes a better understanding of the factors that matter for young adolescents’ motivation and engagement in math and science. Given the central role that motivation and engagement play in learning, achievement, and ultimately course and career selection in STEM, this is noteworthy. Attention to peer dynamics in math and science classrooms by educators is warranted and likely to be important in promoting success for early adolescents.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation (201200036) and National Science Foundation (1256260).
Notes
1.
Measures were found to be reliable when run separately for European American and African American students (Cronbach’s alpha exceeded .82 for all scales for both groups).
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Author Biographies
Elizabeth A. North is a graduate student in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research interests include motivation, peer relationships, and gender, especially in the context of math and science.
Allison M. Ryan is a professor in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research interests include achievement beliefs and behaviors, peer relationships, classroom climate, and development during early adolescence, especially around the transition to middle school.