Seeing the teacher through my peers’ eyes? A social network study on adolescents’ teaching quality perceptions

Summary

Classrooms are social arenas, and during adolescence, the importance of peer relations peaks. Prior research has documented the pervasive influence that peers can exert on many aspects of adolescents’ lives, including their academic outcomes. However, knowledge on whether adolescents’ perceptions of their teacher and the quality of the teacher’s instruction are also prone to peer influences is lacking so far. The present longitudinal study with four measurement points (N = 248 German adolescents) addressed this gap. We focused on teaching quality in terms of the perceived level of teacher support in mathematics classes. Longitudinal social network analysis (a Bayesian random-coefficient multilevel version of Stochastic Actor-Oriented models, SAOMs) were employed to investigate whether (a) friends become more similar in their teaching quality perceptions (influence effects) and/or whether (b) students with initially more similar perceptions of teaching quality were more likely to become friends (selection effects). In addition, we explored whether (c) students with more positive teaching quality perceptions had a better (or worse) social standing in that they were more (or less) likely to be nominated as friends by their classmates and/or were more (or less) likely to nominate other classmates as friends. The results did not yield support for influence effects or for selection effects. However, students who rated their teacher’s instruction more positively were better integrated socially. This study adds to research on the role of peers in adolescence and enhances our understanding of peer influences on students’ perceptions of instruction.