Administrators and teachers must be more understanding of the linguistic and cultural problems that Chinese students in Canada face. They are potentially very good English language learners. Their families emphasize academic achievement. If special attention is given to their problems, they will be successful students. (CFM)

This study examined the meaning of "belonging" through participant observations and interviews in two middle school and two high school classes which included students with severe or moderate disabilities. Findings indicated that student membership depended on affiliation with a peer subgroup. Only two of the six students with disabilities…

Assessed the classroom and playground behavior of children nominated as either popular or rejected by their peers. Subjects were 631 black South African children between 8 and 12 years old. Found that rejected and popular children did not differ in their initiations of contact with other children, but popular children were the recipients of more…

This article describes a high school club for students with and without disabilities that was established to promote constructive social relationships through an after-school club format and to develop students' self-confidence, social acceptance, and peer interaction opportunities. The membership, meetings, officers, and activities of the club…

Asserts that effective children and adolescents can engage in socially undesirable behavior to attain personal goals at relatively little personal or interpersonal cost, implying that relations between adjustment and aggression may not be optimally described by standard linear models. Suggests that if researchers recognize that some aggression…

Used vignettes to investigate children's integration of information on behavior, body weight, and sex when forming peer impressions. Found that positively behaving peers were liked more and attributed more positive traits than negatively behaving peers. Also found that boys, but not girls, believed that peers would evaluate average weight,…

A study collected sociometric data in 39 second- through sixth-grade classrooms, 22 of which were engaged in Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS), a form of peer tutoring. Students with learning disabilities in PALS classes were more socially accepted than those in no-PALS classes and enjoyed the same social standing as controls. (Contains…

Social perceptual skill deficit theory was used to explain low peer acceptance of 30 children with learning disabilities (LD) as well as measure the quality of tests measuring social perception. Results showed LD children getting both lower peer acceptance and social perception scores with some variations a function of task. (Author/PB)

Low socially accepted learning-disabled intermediate-grade students (N=86) were paired with 86 high socially accepted, nonhandicapped classmates for 8 weeks in 4 groups: mutual interest group, cooperative academic task group, Hawthorne effect/control group, and classroom control group. Evaluated were changes in classmates' ratings of…

Academic, intellectual, and behavioral correlates of sociometric status among elementary-age children with learning disabilities (LD) were investigated. Peer rejection was unrelated to IQ or achievement scores but was related to LD children's social status, acting out, and withdrawn behaviors. Teachers rated rejected LD children as more…

The study found that 74 seventh- and eighth-grade students with either high or moderate contact with hearing impaired students expressed more positive attitudes toward deafness than students who had no contact with the hearing impaired. A similar pattern was found when attitudes toward disabilities in general were evaluated. (DB)

Evaluation of peer relations of 53 intermediate grade students participating in a pull-out enrichment program found that these children, relative to classmates, were evaluated positively by peers, demonstrated greater awareness of reciprocity in friendship relationships, and were perceived less often as either an aggressor or victim of aggression.…

This study of fifth graders identified 22 behavioral cues to develop and test a peer-report measure of social transactions used to infer liking by peers. Sixteen of the 22 cues described positive behaviors, indicating that positive behaviors may play a more important role in relational communication among children than negative transactions. (TJQ)

Effects of extracurricular activities on students' popularity and peer status in middle school and the process by which these effects occur were studied for 382 students. Findings support different gender dynamics regarding status and differential influences of activities on popularity and peer status. (SLD)

This meta-analysis of peer rating sociometric research on students with learning disabilities (LD) examined 17 studies. Results demonstrated that LD students have considerably lower sociometric status compared to nondisabled peers. The influence of ratee gender, rater gender, grade level, research design, and sociometric scale type is examined.…