'I like my class and my class likes me!': Links between children's perceptions of their classroom environment and socio-emotional adjustment.

摘要

There is a long tradition of research indicating that children who exhibit shy and aggressive behaviors at school are at risk for social, emotional, and academic difficulties. However, closer inspection of the adjustment of these "high risk" children reveals substantial heterogeneity in their adjustment. Missing from most attempts to explain children's multi-dimensional social adjustment is consideration of the school environment. Yet, modern models of development emphasize that development is a product of dynamic interactions between multiple levels within the child and their environment. Thus, a first step in raising empirical research efforts to match the sophistication of developmental theory is examining the extent to which the relation between individual child behavioral vulnerabilities and adjustment outcomes may be moderated by the quality of classroom environments children encounter as they progress through school. Guided by a child-by-environment model, the current dissertation research focused on the role of classrooms factors (i.e., self-reported classroom perceptions) as moderators of the multi-dimensional social adjustment of behaviourally "at risk" (e.g., shy & aggressive) children. The current research expanded upon the previous classroom perception literature to explore the nature of the associations between classroom perceptions and socio-emotional functioning. In two separate studies, the association between classroom perceptions and socio-emotional functioning was explored. In studies 1 and 2, participants were N=328 and N=297 children in Grades 3 to 5, who completed self-report measures of classroom perception and indices of socio-emotional functioning (i.e., loneliness, peer victimization). Examination of the factor structure and psychometric properties indicated a 3-factor structure of classroom perceptions including teacher characteristics, student characteristics, and personal characteristics. Results from both studies suggest that classroom perceptions were significantly related to socio-emotional functioning overall. Further, results provided some preliminary evidence for the moderating role of classroom perceptions among shy and aggressive children. Findings in the current dissertation research are particularly meaningful as they provide preliminary evidence for the significant role of classroom perceptions in the prediction of socio-emotional functioning for elementary school children.