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Article Excerpt
Tested on a sample of 1,365 Hong Kong primary school students from five grades, teacher preference or the extent to which the classroom teacher likes a child in the class was found to both mediate and, to a lesser extent, moderate the relations between children's social behaviors and peer acceptance across age groups. The mediating effect suggests that peer acceptance responds not only to the behavior of a student but also to how much the classroom teacher likes or dislikes the student. The moderating effect suggests that the associations between student social behaviors and peer acceptance differ as functions of teacher preference. The mediating teacher preference was stronger with younger children, whereas a stronger moderating teacher preference was found for the older children. These findings confirm the supposition that three social processes involving the teacher, children, and peers contribute to children's social status and relations in the classroom.
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Children's social interaction and relative status in their school classrooms derive from their relationships with fellow students as well as from relationships with their classroom teachers (Hartup, 1989; Hymel, 1986). In the peer relations literature, this first relationship is operationalized as peer preference or peer acceptance and has been commonly studied with regard to children's social behavior (Rubin, Coplan, Nelson, Cheah, & Lagace-Seguin, 1999). The relationships that children form with their teachers are in part determined by teacher preference of students or the extent to which the classroom teacher likes a student. Although theoretically the teacher may like or dislike all the students in her class equally, in reality teacher preference is a relative construct the valence of which depends on the teacher's like and dislike of other students. While the influence of teachers' preference of students has been studied in educational contexts (e.g., Babad, 1995), it has rarely been included in peer relations research (Chang, Liu, Wen, Fung, Wang, & Xu, 2004).
To integrate these two bodies of literature, we focused on the influence of teacher preference on the relation between children's social behavior and peer acceptance. Based on early studies of children's moral development, where adult efforts to socialize norms and values took varied forms and were manifested differently among children (Kohlberg, 1981; Grolnic, Deci, & Ryan, 1997; Piaget, 1965; Valsiner, 1988), we propose that there are two ways by which teacher preference can influence children's social behaviors. Operationalized within the statistical model to be discussed in the next section, these are mediating and moderating teacher preference. The mediating teacher preference refers to a process by which children adopt their classroom teacher's liking and disliking of students, or of certain kinds of students, relatively independent of prior experiences with those students or perceptions of their behavior (Chang et al., 2004). The moderating teacher preference describes another process whereby students identify with, adapt to, or internalize their classroom teacher's preferences, which results in a differentiation of responses to the same social behaviors initiated from different children. Unlike previous work on adult influence, which remains primarily theoretical (e.g., Valsiner, 1988), we used two existing mediating and moderating statistical models to delineate and examine these two modes of teacher influence on the relation between peer acceptance and children's social behaviors. Specifically, we hypothesized that there would be a mediating and a moderating effect of teacher preference on the relation between children's aggression, social withdrawal, and prosocial leadership, respectively, and their peer acceptance. Tested on a sample of 1,365 Hong Kong children from five primary school grades, the mediating and moderating teacher preference was also examined for grade-related developmental differences and possible gender interactions.
The Mediating Teacher Preference
Peer preference or acceptance has been widely studied in relation to children's social behavior in the social developmental literature (Rubin et al., 1999). This large and growing literature suggests a strong trend for children to reject peers who behave aggressively, to ignore or reject children who are socially withdrawn, and to admire children who behave prosocially (for reviews, see Rubin et al., 1999; see also Chang, 2003, 2004). As shown in these reviews, there are also variations in the relations between various children's social behaviors and peer acceptance. For example, some studies suggest that aggressive children are not rejected (Phillipsen, Bridges, McLemore, & Saponaro, 1999) or are even well accepted by peers (e.g., Hawley, 2003; Rodkin, Farmer, Pearl, & Van-Acker, 2000). These variations indicate potential contextualizing influences including the role of teacher preference.
Teacher preference has been studied in a separate teacher-student relationship literature (e.g., Babad, 1995; Birch & Ladd, 1997), and the findings have shown that teachers dislike children who are aggressive and disruptive (Birch & Ladd, 1998; Ladd & Burgess, 1999; Wentzel & Asher, 1995; Taylor & Trickett, 1989), although teachers also recognize that certain aggressive students and especially adolescent boys may have leadership abilities (Farmer, Estell, Bishop, O'Neal, & Cairns, 2003). However, teachers mainly endorse and try to foster and encourage prosocial leadership among children in their classrooms (Birch & Ladd, 1998; Gorman, Kim, & Schimmelbusch, 2002; Wentzel and Asher, 1995). Teachers also favor high academic achievers, students who are agreeable (Babad, 1995), and students who are somewhat sympathetic toward socially withdrawn children (Chang, 2003). Other studies also show a moderate positive correlation between social withdrawal and teacher preference (Gorman et al., 2002).
The teacher-preference literature also reports an association between teacher preference and peer preference. Gorman, Kim, and Schimmelbusch (2002) found that children's perceived peer popularity was positively correlated with their perceived teacher preference. Studies also suggest that teachers and peers may be drawn to similar student attributes (e.g., Howes, Hamilton, & Matheson, 1994; Taylor, 1989; Peterson, 1968). For example, both teachers and peers tend to appreciate students who are hardworking (Peterson, 1968) and behave prosocially (Birch & Ladd, 1998). Howes et al. (1994) contend that children who can form successful and positive relationships with adults (e.g., teachers) usually have good relationships with their peers.
Taken together, these findings suggest a potential mediating influence of teacher preference on the relation between children's social behavior and their peer acceptance (Chang et al., 2004). As the focal point of students' attention, the classroom teacher's interaction with their classmates plays a salient role in how they perceive their classmates' behavior and in turn respond to it in a manner that is consistent with the teacher's liking (or disliking) of the child (Chang et al., 2004) or of certain kinds of children (Chang, 2003). Several studies of kindergarten and primary school children have documented how children have adopted their classroom teacher's liking and disliking of certain students and certain behaviors in forming friendships with their peers (Birch & Ladd, 1997; Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999; Howes et al., 1994; Hughes, Cavell, & Willson, 2001).
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The literature reviewed above can be summarized in a statistical model (Figure 1), where paths a, b, and c represent the direct links among children's social behavior, peer acceptance, and teacher preference, whereas a mediating teacher preference involves multiplying path b with path c. Statistically, b x c represents an indirect association between children's social behavior and acceptance by their peers through the mediating effect of teacher preference. Whereas the direct relation between children's social behavior and peer acceptance represents peers' primary experience with a behavior, the indirect association through the mediating effect of teacher preference represents the secondary experience whereby students have adopted the teacher's preference in evaluating their peers' social behavior. Thus, due to the mediating teacher influence, a child's peer acceptance is no longer just a reflection of or a response to a particular attribute or behavior of the child but is also a manifestation of the teacher's liking (or disliking) of that child. This three-way association is inherent in typical classroom contexts where a child's social interaction involves three players: the child, the classroom teacher, and the peer group (Chang et al., 2004).
Statistical evidence for the mediating teacher preference can be derived by comparing path a with path a', the latter representing the direct effect of children's behavior on their peer acceptance without including the mediating teacher preference (see Figure 1). That is, when not considering teacher preference, children's peer acceptance seemingly responds only or primarily to the behavior (path a'). However, once teacher preference is considered, the valence of the attribute-induced response (path a') would presumably reduce in path a. The reduction from a' to a represents the mechanism by which school children emulate or adopt their teacher's liking of particular students.
The Moderating Teacher Preference
In addition to the mediating influence of teacher preference, we also predicted a significant moderating effect of teacher preference on the relation between children's social behavior and peer acceptance. Students may adapt to or internalize the classroom teacher's preference of their classmates when assessing each other's behavior. The adapted liking and disliking of a child by the classroom teacher may bias peers' evaluation of the focal child's behavior and their acceptance of that child (Hughes, Cavell, & Willson, 2001). Peers may respond to the child's behavior differently. They may react more or less positively or negatively than they otherwise would to the same behavior, depending on who the child is. For example, research has shown that primary school children who were previously rejected by their peers but subsequently received positive regard from their classroom teacher were...
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