Delimiting the Role of Peers in Pre and Early Adolescents Goal Pursuit: Differences Among SelfReport

1
Delimiting the Role of Peers in Pre- and Early
Adolescents Goal Pursuit Differences Among
Self-Reports of Peer Acceptance, Social
Responsibility Goals, and Mastery Goal
OrientationLynda R. Hutchinson Kimberly A.
Schonert-ReichlNancy E. PerryBruno D. ZumboAME
2004, Dana Point CA
2
Study Purpose

• The purpose of the present study was to examine
  the relations of peer acceptance to social
  responsibility and mastery goals among pre- and
  early adolescents.

3
Overview

• Introduction
• Research Questions
• Methods
• Participants
• Measures
• Procedure
• Results
• Limitations and Directions for Future Research

4
Importance of Peer Relations

• More and more researchers are attending to the
  role of peers during development (Parkhurst
  Asher, 1992).
• For example,
• Peer acceptance, the degree to which students
  like and include each other in classroom
  activities, is associated with childrens
  short-term and long term adjustment (Parker
  Asher, 1987).
• Peer groups have opportunities to influence
  students motivation, including the social and
  academic goals they pursue (Pintrich Schunk,
  2002 Kindermann, 1993).

5
Pre- and Early Adolescence

• Pre-adolescents assume numerous social, emotional
  and educational responsibilities that guide the
  transition to early adolescence (Birch Ladd,
  1992).
• Early adolescents relationships with peers are
  regarded as more intense, personal, reflective
  and self-disclosing than pre-adolescents (Berndt,
  1982 Patrick, Anderman, Ryan, 2002).

6
Social Responsibility Goals

• Behaviors that adhere to the social rules and
  role expectations that govern the educational
  environment (Wentzel, 1993).
• These goals reflect
• Prosocial behaviors (e.g., sharing, helping,
  cooperating)
• Responsibility behaviors (e.g., being quiet when
  others are trying to study, doing what the
  teacher asks you to do).

7
Mastery Goal Orientation

• Conceptualized as learning outcomes geared
  toward personal intellectual development
  (Pintrich, 2000 Roeser et al., 1996).
• A high mastery goal seeker might say I like to
  learn no matter how many mistakes I make.
• Positively associated with high self-efficacy and
  social responsibility goals (L.H. Anderman E.M.
  Anderman, 1999 Wentzel, 1994).

8
Rationale

• The present study extends previous research in
  two ways
• Looking at differences between pre- and early
  adolescents on peer acceptance, social
  responsibility and mastery goals.
• Additionally, the present study examines mastery
  goals in pre- and early adolescent students by
  focusing on the elementary school context.

9
Research Questions

• The present study examined relations among peer
  acceptance, social responsibility, and mastery
  goals in pre- (grade 4-5) and early adolescence
  (grade 6-7).
• 1) What are the relationships among peer
  acceptance, social responsibility and mastery
  goals in pre- and early adolescence?
• 2) Do gender and developmental stage differences
  exist on the peer acceptance, social
  responsibility goals and personal/mastery goals
  variables?
• 3) How do social responsibility and
  personal/mastery goals predict peer acceptance
  in pre- and early adolescence?

10
Method

• Participants
• 356 elementary school students (grades 4-7).
• girls
• 60.1 reported an Asian language as a first
  language, 31.5 reported English, 7.9 other.
• 88 of students recruited participated.

11
Method (contd)

• Measures
• Demographics
• Students indicated name, gender, age, birth
  date, grade, and first language learned at home.
• Unlimited peer nomination (Parkhurst, Asher,
  1992 Schonert-Reichl, 1999 Wentzel Erdley,
  1993).
• One peer acceptance item (Circle the names of
  students who you would like to be in school
  activities with).

12
Measures (contd)

• Revised Social Responsibility Goals Measure
  (Wentzel, 1993)
• Peer Prosocial (4 items)
• Cheer someone up when something has gone wrong
• Academic Prosocial (3 items)
• Share what youve learned with your classmates
• Peer Responsibility (2 items)
• Keep promises youve made to other kids
• Academic Responsibility (1 item)
• Do what your teacher asks you to do
• Personal Achievement Goals Scale (5 items Roeser
  et al., 1996)
• I like school work best when it really makes me
  think

13
Method (contd)

• Procedures
• Data gathered in two 45-minute sessions.
• Questionnaires were administered by two research
  assistants.
• All questionnaires were read aloud to students to
  control for differences in reading levels.

14
Results

• Question 1
• What are the relations among peer acceptance,
  social responsibility and personal/mastery goals
  in pre and early adolescence?
• Peer Acceptance
• Significantly positively associated with academic
  prosocial goals and mastery goals in early
  adolescence.
• Significantly positively associated with peer
  responsibility and academic responsibility goals
  in pre- and early adolescence.

15
Question 1 What are the relations among peer
acceptance, social responsibility and
personal/mastery goals in pre and early
adolescence?

• Social Responsibility Goals
• All dimensions were significantly positively
  associated with mastery goals in pre- and early
  adolescence.
• Significant differences in correlations between
  pre- and early adolescents
• peer prosocial goals and peer responsibility
  goals (pre, r .48, early, r .23)
• academic prosocial goals and peer
  responsibility goals ( pre, r .43, early, r
  .17)

16
Results (contd)

• The Pearson correlations corroborate and extend
  previous research.
• Social responsibility goals are related to peer
  acceptance in both pre- and early adolescence.
• The relationships among mastery goals and the
  dimensions of social responsibility goals
  reinforces the link between social development
  and achievement (Wentzel, 2003).

17
Results (contd)

• The relationship between peer acceptance and
  personal/mastery goal orientation in early
  adolescence might reflect the idea that peers
  influence is increasingly felt throughout
  adolescence (Birch Ladd, 1992).
• Particularly this finding may reflect the
  learning goals of the peer group (Kindermann,
  1993 Pintrich Schunk, 2002).

18
Results (contd)

• Significant differences between correlations for
  pre- and early adolescents seems to reflect the
  priority pre- and early adolescents give to
  various social responsibility goals.
• More research is needed to consider the findings
  reported here.

19
Results (contd)

• Question 2 Do gender and age differences exist
  on the peer acceptance, social responsibility
  goals, and mastery goals variables?
• Significant main effect of gender on the peer
  prosocial goals variable, with girls scoring
  higher than boys.
• Significant age differences emerged on the
  mastery goals variable, with pre-adolescents
  scoring higher than early adolescents.
• A significant interaction of gender and age on
  the peer acceptance variable, with pre-adolescent
  boys and early adolescent girls scoring highest.

20
Results (contd)

• The finding indicating that girls score higher
  than boys on peer prosocial goals perhaps
  reflects the ways girls nurture their social
  relationships, and is in accord with previous
  research (Wentzel, 1994).
• The difference observed between pre- and early
  adolescents on the mastery goal orientation
  variable also corroborates previous research
  (e.g., Midgley, 2002).
• Particularly, this study found that even when
  early adolescent students remained in elementary
  schools their mastery goals still declined.

21
Results (contd)

• The interaction between gender and age on peer
  acceptance provides evidence for the
  metamorphosis peer relationships undergo during
  development (Berndt, 1982 Gavin Furman, 1989).
• Boys and girls peer relationships develop
  differently and differences are observed in the
  kinds of activities in which students engage
  (Buhrmester Furman, 1987).
• Girls tend to report and endorse more intimacy
  goals and adolescent girls tend to value social
  relationships more than boys (L.H. Anderman
  E.M. Anderman, 1999).

22
Results (contd)

• Question 3 How do social responsibility and
  mastery goals predict peer acceptance in pre-
  and early adolescence?
• The simultaneous multiple regression models were
  statistically significant
• Preadolescents
• F(6,140) 4.55, p lt.001, representing a medium
  effect size, R squared .163.
• Accounted for 16.3 of the variation in peer
  acceptance.
• Important predictors gender (58), peer
  responsibility goals (19), academic
  responsibility goals (18) (Thomas-Hughes-Zumbo,
  1998).

23
Results (contd)

• Early Adolescents
• F (6, 202) 3.45, p .003, representing a
  small-to-medium effect size, R squared .093.
• Accounted for 9.3 of the variation in peer
  acceptance.
• Important predictors peer responsibility (37),
  academic prosocial (31), academic responsibility
  (22) and personal/mastery goals (18)
  (Thomas-Hughes-Zumbo, 1998).

24
Results (contd)

• Peer acceptance is predicted by students pursuit
  of social responsibility goals (e.g., helping
  peers, listening to teachers, keeping secrets) in
  pre-and early adolescence.
• Thus, learning to behave in socially responsible
  manners is important for being accepted by peers.
  
• More generally, students pursuit of social
  responsibility goals has important implications
  for students social relationships and their
  pursuit of academic goals.

25
Limitations and Directions for Future Research

• Limitations of the present study include the
  reliance on only self-report measures to assess
  social responsibility goals (shared method
  variance).
• Thus, future research might look inside
  classrooms to examine social responsibility goals
  in real contexts and real time.
• This study corroborated and extended previous
  research (e.g., Wentzel, 1993, 1994) to
  understand relations among social acceptance as
  well as social and academic goals in pre- and
  early adolescence.
• Important relations exists among these constructs
  in pre- and early adolescence and peers are an
  important context for examining students social
  and academic goal pursuit (Kindermann, 1993
  Pintrich Schunk, 2000).