Edhd460
Prof. Dinsmore
Article Critique
Title: Peer Exclusion and Victimization: Processes That Mediate the Relation Between Peer Group Rejection and Children’s Classroom Engagement and Achievement?
Authors:
Eric S. Buhs
Gary W. Ladd and Sarah L. Herald
The thought that peer exclusion is correlated with children’s classroom achievements and adjustment has been hypothesized since the 1930’s. Much research and empirical evidence for such hypotheses have since been collected, and seem to agree with the premise of the correlation. Peer acceptance is the main measurement of this study. In contrast with other types of peer relationships, peer group acceptance, or rejection, is strongly connected with academic readiness and achievement. This article focuses on peer sentiments and its effect on children’s adjustment. It differs from past studies in that its approach is to measure non-observable feelings about classmates, rather than only the observable interactions.
The article begins by outlining past research, and developing a premise for the study from those previous studies. The main study that this research builds upon is that of a 2001 study by Eric S. Buhs and Gary W. Ladd, who also conduct this study along with Sarah L. Herald. The premise of the study, based on the 2001 study, is that once classmates express negative feelings and actions upon a peer, those feelings and actions act as a visible marker for further rejection by the larger peer group, and the rejected child as well; as a result, the rejected peers are flagged by their peers, and are left out of classroom interactions, and as a consequence, the rejected child’s learning is impacted ultimately leading to lower levels of achievement (Buhs, Ladd, and Herald, 2006, p.2). The prior 2001 study found that “early peer rejection was negatively related to later achievement and that this association was partially mediated through peer maltreatment and declining classroom