Elsevier

Journal of School Psychology

Volume 42, Issue 2, March–April 2004, Pages 115-133
Journal of School Psychology

Classroom environment influences on aggression, peer relations, and academic focus

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2003.11.004Get rights and content

Abstract

Peers serve as reinforcers and models of behavior, and consequently classrooms containing high numbers of students with poor academic skills or behavior problems are likely to promote these behaviors in individual students. This study examined how variations in social and academic classroom composition as well as the larger school context affected behavior in a normative sample of children over a 2-year period. Teachers provided ratings of individual students, which were then aggregated to form teacher-based measures of classroom environment. Concurrent and longitudinal effects of classroom and school environments on individual behaviors were examined for students in 65 classrooms in 17 schools. Poorer classroom environments were associated with poorer levels of student aggression, peer relations, and academic focus. Changes in student behavior over time could be explained by the current classroom environment.

Section snippets

Summary and overview

This study addressed three main questions as follows. (a) What are the concurrent relations among individual children's behavior (teacher ratings of aggression, peer relations, and academic focus), classroom environment (aggregates of the teacher ratings of individual behavior) and school environment (poverty, measured by free/reduced lunch rates and academic achievement, measured by standardized statewide tests)? (b) What are the longitudinal relations between individual children's behavior

Participants

Data were collected as part of a research project that evaluated the effectiveness of the Coping Power intervention program for aggressive children Lochman & Wells, 2002, Lochman & Wells, 2003. Prior to the start of the intervention, fourth grade teachers in 65 different classrooms in 17 different schools completed a screening questionnaire for 1382 (50% female) children. Teachers indicated race for 93% of the students: 53% were African American, 40% Caucasian, 3% Hispanic, and 4% were Native

Preliminary analyses on race and gender

Preliminary analyses examined the influence of race and gender on the dependent and independent measures to evaluate if they should be included as predictors in the analyses. T-tests indicated that at each time point boys were rated more poorly than girls on each of the individual teacher scales (Aggression, Poor Peer Relations, and Poor Academic Focus), p<.001, but boys and girls did not differ in the classroom or school environment measures. T-tests also revealed that Caucasians were rated

Discussion

This study helps elucidate the nature of the relations between individual behavior and classroom and school environment characteristics. Findings suggest that each of these environmental factors plays a role in accounting for children's aggression, peer relations, and academic focus, but classroom environment (assessed by teacher ratings of individual behavior) might play a more important role than school environment. As expected, poorer classroom environments were associated with poorer

Acknowledgements

The completion of this article has been supported by grants to the fourth author from the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (UR6 5907956; KD1 SP08633), National Institute for Drug Abuse (DA 08453; DA 16135), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (R49/CCR 418569), and the U.S. Department of Justice (2000CKWX0091). We would like to thank Michael Windle and Jamie DeCoster for their help with HLM analyses.

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      For the conceptual domain, classroom peer effects have been found for academic competences, such as math and language achievement, but also for executive functioning (e.g., Carman & Zhang, 2012; De Fraine et al., 2003; Duru-Bellat & Minga, 1998; Finch, Garcia, Sulik, & Obradović, 2019; Hanushek, Kain, Markman, & Rivkin, 2003; Kang, 2007; Kiss, 2013; Mashburn, Justice, Downer, & Pianta, 2009; Opdenakker, Van Damme, De Fraine, Van Landeghem, & Onghena, 2002). In the social domain, classroom peer context has been shown to influence individual development of prosocial, aggressive, disruptive, and delinquent behaviors (e.g., Araos, Cea, Fernandez, & Valenzuela, 2014; Barth, Dunlap, Dane, Lochman, & Wells, 2004; Hofmann & Müller, 2018; Kellam, Ling, Merisca, Brown, & Ialongo, 1998; Kuppens, Grietens, Onghena, Michiels, & Subramanian, 2008; Mercer, McMillen, & DeRosier, 2009; Müller, Hofmann, Begert, & Cillessen, 2018; Müller, Hofmann, Fleischli, & Studer, 2016; Thomas, Bierman, Powers, & Conduct Problems Research Group, 2011). In the practical domain, which involves basic personal care and domestic skills, the influence of the classroom peer context has not been much investigated among typically developing students, likely due to decreased focus by mainstream school systems on these competences compared to special needs education.

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