The Relationships Among Student Social Acceptance, Learning Characteristics, and Perception of Classroom Environment in a Canadian Middle School
Randy Stetson
B.A., Wesleyan University, 1976 B,Ed., University
of
Victoria, 1996M.A. Yale University, 1978
A Thesis submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in the Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies
8
Randy Stetson, 2005 University of VictoriaAll rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author.
Supervisor: Dr. Lily Dyson
ABSTRACT
Middle-school students' (n=102) perceptions of classroom environment were examined using Fraser7s What is Happening in this Class (WMIC) instrument and compared for different groups: students who are socially unaccepted (n=13), students with learning difficulties (n=13), and students with high
(n=37)
or low achievement (n=l 1). Social acceptance was evaluated using a roster-and-ratings sociometric instrument. Each group showed differences in their perceptions of some factors of classroom environment.While there is substantial overlap among the populations of unaccepted students and those with learning difficulties or low achievement, unaccepted students reported a more positive environment than other students, and students with learning diEculties reporting a more negative environment. Rejected students, students with learning
difficulties, and students with low achievement all reported lower equity in the classroom than their peers did. Possible interpretations of these findings are discussed and
implications for research and for practice are suggested.
Supervisor: Dr. Lily Dyson, (Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies)
iii Table of Contents Title page Abstract Tabge of Contents List of Tables Chapter 1 Introduction Purpose of the study Design of the study Definitions
Limitations Assumptions Chapter summary
Chapter 2 Review of the literature Theories of social development Early adolescent social development Sociometrics
The relationship between social status and learning difficulties Social skills interventions
Classroom environment
Classroom environment research
Research on specific classroom environment factors Hypotheses
Chapter 3 Method Recruitment procedure Participants Instruments Data collection Data analysis Chapter 4 Results Preliminary analysis
Classroom environment and social acceptance
The relationship of learning difficulties and achievement to social status
Classroom environment and learning difficulties Classroom environment and achievement
Summary of results Chapter 5 Discussion
Consideration of results
Comparison of classroom environment and sociometric ratings across groups
Limitations of the study summary
Chapter 6 Conclusion
Implications for classroom practice Directions for future research
References
Appendices A. What Is Happening In this Class B. Sample Class List Rating Sheets C. Teacher Information Survey
List of Tables Table 1. Participants by Gender and Grade
Table 2. Distribution of Special Characteristics among Participants Table 3. Sociometric Status of Participating Students
Table 4. Means (M) and Standard Deviations
(SD)
of Classroom Environment Factors for GradeTable 5. Means (M) and Standard Deviations
(SD)
of Classroom Environment Factors for Sociometric GroupsTable 6. Means (M) and Standard Deviations
(SD)
of Classroom Environment Factors for Studentswith
Learning DiEculties Table 7. Means (M) and Standard Deviations(SD)
of ClassroomEnvironment Factors for Students with Different Achievement Levels
Chapter One Introduction
The early adolescent years are a period of particular concern in the study of social acceptance and social development. At this critical period of self-identification and self- evaluation, peer social relations are a key factor in the establishment of long-term personahty characteristics and attitudes towards others (Maehr & Anderman, 1993).
For some children, however, negative social interactions consistently outweigh the positive, resulting in patterns of social rejection, withdrawal fiom social relationships, or hostile behaviors. Children who are not accepted by their peers are known to be at risk for lifelong problems with mental and physical health, education and employment, and delinquency and criminal convictions (Bagwell, Newcomb, & Bukowski, 1998; Kupersmidt, Coie, & Dodge, 1990).
Students with learning difficulties are particularly vulnerable to social problems (Kavale & Forness, 1996). Social problems have been documented for students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Landau, Milich, & Diener, 1998; Sheridan, Dee, Morgan, McCormick & Walker, 1996), mild mental retardation (Korinek & Polloway, 1993), learning disabilities (Kravetz, Faust, Lipsfutz & Shalhav, 1999; Margalit & Efrati, 1996), low achievement (Bryan, Sullivan-Burstein & Mathor, 1998; Haagar & Vaughn, 1995), emotional and behavior disorders (EBD) (Kamps, Kravits, Stolze & Swaggart, 1999; Margalit, 1995) and conduct disorder (McArdle, 07Brien, Macmillan & Kolvin, 2000). These facts are particularly disturbing when one considers that "advocates of inclusion (particularly parents) . . . argue that peer acceptance and
social integration are among the fundamental reasons for their support of [inclusion]" (Stanovich, Jordan & Perot, 1998, p. 120). The classroom today typically includes many children at high risk for social rejection or neglect.
Peer rejection and neglect have proved to be an intransigent problem for
developmental and educational researchers and practitioners. Initial research into social problems focused on the unaccepted individuals themselves and proposed interventions with these children to try to improve their social standing (Cartledge & Milburn, 1995). Overall, this individual intervention model has proven to be resource intensive (Maag,
1994) and of only marginal long-term effectiveness (Brown & Odom, 1994; Wiener & Harris, 1997).
By contrast, for most children the classroom is the single most salient
environment for peer interaction and the development of peer-related social skills. As early as 198 1, Asher and Hymel conjectured that classroom structures would affect the opportunities for and quality of interactions among students and might, therefore, change their relationships and the sociometric status of individuals within the classroom. Other researchers have also called for more attention to the environments in which social development occurs (Bryan et al., 1998; Kuperrninc, Leadbeater, Ernrnons & Blatt, 1997; Lewis, Sugai, & Colvin, 1998; Maag, 1994).
Consistent with the calls for increased attention to school and classroom
environments, instrumentation has been developed over the past three decades to measure classroom environments in consistent and quantifiable manners (Fraser, 199 1). Such instruments have been used for a variety of purposes, ranging from correlating classroom environment with student achievement, affect, and self-image to assessing "person-
environment fit" (Fraser & Fisher, 1983). To date no studies have been located that examine how students with different social status perceive their classroom environment.
It is reasonable, however, to expect a relationship to exist between social status and perception of classroom environment. The substantial body of research on social status cited above links unaccepted social status with both learning dificulties and low achievement. Existing research on classroom environment (Bennacer, 2000; Fraser,
1989, 199 1) has also demonstrated relationships between classroom environment factors and student achievement.
Purpose of the Study
The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between student social acceptance and perceived classroom environments. Students who are not socially accepted in their classrooms are known to face life-long difficulties in many aspects of their lives. The possibility for individual interventions with such students is limited, due to financial and personnel limitations within schools (Maag, 1994). Furthermore, such interventions have not been shown to be effective in long-term improvement of students' social status (Brown & Odom, 1994; Wiener & Harris, 1997). If a relationship can be established between classroom environment and social
acceptance, it may become possible to increase student acceptance by managing aspects of classroom environment. This study, therefore, poses the following primary question:
Research question 1: Do unaccepted students perceive their classroom environment differently from their classmates?
The evidence for a possible relationship between social status and perceived classroom environment arises fiom research linking both variables with student
achievement. Various researchers (Ferguson and Dorrnan, 2003; Greenwood et al., 1993; Margianti and Fraser, 2000) have reported positive relationships between perception of classroom environment and achievement. Bryan et al. (1998) and Haagar and Vaughn (1 995) have documented a similar correlation between achievement and social status.
Further complicating the issue is the strong relationship between learning
difficulties and unaccepted social status (Kamps et al., 1999; Korinek & Polloway, 1993; Kravetz et al., 1999; Landau et al., 1998; Margalic, 1995; Sheriden et al., 1996).
Students with learning difficulties are a population highly correlated with but not
identical to students who are socially unaccepted. Low achievement is one of the criteria used to identi@ students with learning difficulties (Henrich, Blatt, Kuperminc, Zohar & Leadbeater, 2001) but not all students with learning difficulties are low achievers.
Because acceptance is so closely related to learning difficulties and to
achievement, it will be important to ascertain what the relationships are between them and to investigate if these two related variables have the same or different relationships to the classroom environment factors. Therefore the following secondary research
questions are posed:
Research question 2: How do learning difficulties and achievement relate to social status?
Research question 3: Are there differences in the perceptions of classroom environment among unaccepted students, students with low achievement, and students with learning difficulties?
Answers to these secondary research questions will help establish the parameters and relevance of the principal question. The answers to all three research questions will have implications for teachmg practice and for the directions of future research in h s area. Design of the Study
This study uses a quantitative method to examine differences in mean scores on the ranking of the classroom environment by different groups of middle school students. Relevant groups include students with different social status, students who have learning d=culties, and students with different school achievement levels. The students
completed Fraser, McRobbie, and Fisher's (1996) m a t is Happening In this Class inventory to rank seven factors of their classroom environment, and a roster-and-ratings sociometric instrument to designate student social status. Their teachers completed an information sheet providing information about class demographics and the gender, ethnicity, and academic characteristics of participating students. From the combined data, students are grouped in three ways: (1) as accepted or unaccepted, (2) as having or not having learning difficulties, and (3) as having high, average, or low achievement. These groups are not mutually exclusive. Correlations between low social status and both learning dficulties and low achievement are examined. Ratings of classroom environment are compared within groups and between groups.
De$nitions
Defmitions for special terms used in report are provided in the following list: Accepted: A broad classification of positive or neutral sociometric status, including
Average: Sociometric category for children near the center of each of two dimensions of social status. Average children receive a moderate number of nominations or a balanced mix of positive and negative ratings (Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982). Average children are considered sociometrically accepted.
Classroom Environment: Also referred to as classroom "climate, ambience, tone, atmosphere, or ethos" (Fraser, 1989, p. 307), classroom environment is
a
construct that characterizes the many experiences students and teachers encounter and create within the classroom. Although the term may include the physical environment of classrooms, in this study the focus is on the psychosocial environment. For purposes of this study, classroom environment is approached through the perceptions of the participants (beta press), rather than through external observations (alpha press) (Marjoribanks, 199 1).
Controversial: Sociometric category for children who receive many positive and
negative nominations or ratings. Controversial children have high social impact, but moderate to low social preference (Coie et al., 1982). Controversial children are considered to be sociometrically accepted.
Learning Difficulties: In this paper the term learning difficulties is defined using Henrich et al.'s (2001) criteria for learning disorders. It applies to (1) students who have been identified through school classification procedures as having learning disabilities, mild to moderate mental handicaps, or behavioral problems (in this study, students who have Individualized Education Plans), or (2) students identified by their classroom teacher as achieving significantly below class
standards in language-related activities. Another similar term in the literature is learning differences.
Neglected: Sociometric category for children who receive few nominations either positive or negative (Coie et al., 1982). On a ratings scale, these students receive neutral evaluations. Neglected students have low social impact. Neglected children are considered to be sociometrically unaccepted.
Popular: Sociometric category for children who receive mostly positive nominations or ratings and few or no negative ones. Popular children are high in social
preference and have high social impact (Coie et al., 1982). Popular children are considered to be sociometrically accepted.
Rejected: Sociometric category for children who receive mostly negative nominations or ratings and few or no positive ones. Rejected students have low social preference. Rejected children are considered to be sociometrically unaccepted.
Social Impact: One of two dimensions of sociometrics, describing the extent to which students are noticed by their peers (Coie et al., 1982).
Social Preference: One of two dimensions of sociometrics, describing the extent to which children are liked or disliked by their peers (Coie et al., 1982). Sociometric peer status: A description of a child's position within a peer group,
determined by one-way perceptions (what others think about the child) in a forced group environment such as the classroom (Asher et al., 1996). Peer status is usually interpreted as being two dimensional along axes of social impact and social preference (Newcome, Bukowski & Pattee, 1993). Within these
dimensions, five groups are identified: popular, controversial, average, neglected and rejected (Coie et al., 1982).
Unaccepted: A broad classification of negative social status, including neglected and rejected groups (Asher & Coie, 1990).
Limitations
This study uses a quantitative approach to examine correlations and group memberships. The results, therefore, are valid in a statistical sense and should not be presumed to apply to individual cases. Because the questions are correlational, neither causality nor directionality can be presumed from the results.
All
participants are volunteers, which increases the likelihood that they will show a greater sociability and desire for social approval than is actually the norm (Rosenthal8z Rosnow, 1975). Such volunteers may be more likely to give what they expect is the "correct77 answer than the answer that is actually true for them. This may attenuate the effects that are being investigated, if students are reluctant to admit to social dislike or to express negative opinions about their classes.Furthermore, participants must indicate understandmg of the legal consent document and have the organizational skills to carry parental consent letters home, get them signed, and bring them back to their teachers. This wdl tend to bias the sample towards average to high achievers and students who function well with the paperwork and message structures of schools. This suggests that the range of responses may be limited, affecting correlational outcomes.
For practical reasons, this study uses a sample of convenience rather than a true random sample. Participants are middle-school aged children in one semi-rural public
school. The majority of students in the school are Caucasian Anglophones, but the school does have a population of students from minority ethnic groups and races. Only one of these minority groups (Asian) is represented in the sample. This very limited sample suggests that the results may not generahe urban or minority populations.
Assumptions
As with all studies based on survey data, the primary assumption of this study is that respondents will make the effort to answer the surveys correctly and appropriately. It is also assumed that sociometric measurement is an appropriate means of determining peer social status in a classroom and that such status is relevant and meaningful to students' social and personal identities. A final assumption is that social outcomes are or can be related to classroom environment.
Chapter Summary
In this chapter, I introduce the study that I conducted. The study investigates the relationships among specific classroom environment factors and the learning
characteristics and social status of early-adolescent students in the middle school classroom. It pays particular attention to students with learning difficulties since such students are known to be at risk for rejection or social neglect. The demonstration of relationships between social acceptance and perceived classroom environment factors would offer future researchers a rich field of research to pursue in the effort to improve social outcomes for students at risk. If social acceptance can be increased at the crucial middle school age, the prospect for life-long success is also improved for students.
Chapter Two Review of the Literature
Chapter Two presents a discussion of the existing literature on social
development, the concept of sociometric status, and the study of classroom environments. An overview of the theory of social development shows why the topic is important to the welfare of children and how problems with social acceptance are theorized to affect children's developmental outcomes. The importance of the middle-school years in social development and the relationship between the needs of children of this age and their educational context are highhghted.
The concept of sociometric status is introduced and developed, and the
relationship between social status and learning diff"1culties is explored. Reasons are given for preferring general approaches to social integration over individual interventions.
Next, an overview of classroom environment research shows why this area is promising as an avenue to such a general approach. The seven factors of classroom environment identified by Fraser et al. (1996) are introduced and the research that supports their relevance to social acceptance is presented. The relationships of the supporting demographic and structural variables of classes to classroom environment are investigated as well. The chapter closes by summariziug the research presented in relationship to the questions posed by this study. Hypotheses are proposed that the research will test.
licleories ofSocial Development
Peer interactions have long been identified as being at the core of a chdd's social development and of the school experience. Mead (1934) identified peer relationships as fundamental for the construction of self. His theory of symbolic interactionism
developed from an understanding that personal identity was the product of an individual's interactions with others (Russell, 1984). Piaget (1973) believed that the egalitarian nature of peer interactions made them essential for the development of personal skills for
negotiation, compromise, cooperation and reciprocity (Rubin & Daniels-Beirness, 1983). Bandwa7s (1977) social learning theory also emphasized peer interactions as an
important path for behavioral development. Through observational learning, peers serve as teachers, role models and norm-setters for each other (Rubin & Daniels-Beirness,
1983).
Thus, childhood peer relationships have been theorized to be crucial to social development in many ways. Through their peers, children learn important skills for life- long social interactions, engage in social comparisons that establish norms for behaviors, values, and goals in academic as well as personal spheres, and develop social
expectancies for both the effect and the s e c t of working and playing with others. When social development is problematic, students' peer interactions are fraught with distress, anxiety, or hostility, and ultimately with lack of success (Rubin, Coplan, Nelson, Cheah, & Legace-Seguin, 1999). Socially unaccepted students remain trapped in consistently negative social patterns of fiiendlessness, loneliness, rejection or isolation by their peers. The long-term outcomes correlated with peer rejection constitute a
throughout their school careers, as well as increased likelihood of delinquency and adult criminal convictions, physical and mental illness, and lifelong emotional and relationship problems (Gottman, Gonso, & Rasmussen, 1975; Kupersmidt, Coie, & Dodge, 1990; Perlman, 1989; Wentzel, 1999).
Early Adolescent Social Development
Early adolescence is a crucial period in human social development, in that "a number of cognitive, pubertal, and sociocultural changes
. . .
take place during early adolescence and . ..
give rise to heightened concerns about social validation, self- clarification, and obtaining coping assistance" (Buhrmester 1996, p. 166). According to Maehr and Anderman (1993), this age is one "when enduring and sometimes irrevocable patterns of motivation, achievement, and social relations emerge" (p. 593).As students enter adolescence, they begin to question family and school authority structures in their search for identity, autonomy and self-determination. Early
adolescents look to their peers for validation of their sense of self and to develop extra- familial intimacies (Kuperminc et al., 1997). For most, peer relationships become increasingly salient at the same time that they become more complex, involving larger numbers of peers, and more problematic, requiring greater sophistication to develop and interpret.
Students of middle school age are undergoing both internal (developmental) and external (structural) changes in their lives. For most students, the transition from elementary to middle school or junior high presents profound changes in the way that instructional material is presented, in the way students are expected to relate to their instructors and to each other, and to the expected level of academic performance by the
students. Eccles, Wigfield, Midgley, Reuman, MacIver and Feldlaufer (1 993) have summarized the substantial body of literature on the effects of middle school environment on the learning of early adolescents. Based on the concept of "stage-environment fit," they argue that school and classroom environment are key factors in the declining academic motivation commonly found among early adolescents, and that classroom environment is a critical factor in student self-image. Although their study does address the affective question of motivation, it does not explore questions of social dynamics and social interactions within this environment.
Inderbitzen-Nolan and Walters (2000), in a large-scale study of social anxiety in adolescents, found that adolescents in junior high school reported more social anxiety than high school students. Harter, Whitesell, and Kowalski (1992) documented changes to "school-related affect and anxiety" (p. 777) associated with transition to middle school. Anxiety appears to play an important role in many classroom decisions, fiom help-
seeking or help-avoiding (Ryan, Pintrich, and Midgley, 2001) to internalizing and externalizing behavior (Kuperminc et al., 1997), to overall adjustment to middle school (McDougall & Hymel, 1998).
Despite the many links that have been documented between achievement, affect, social dynamics, and classroom climate, direct relationships between social development or social status of students and classroom climate have not yet been demonstrated.
A substantial body of research exists on the origins and correlates of social development problems, as well as numerous potential interventions and their effects (see Craig, 2000 and Rubin et al., 1999 for an extensive overview of peer social development research). One of the most common research strands focuses on the peer group as a
whole and identifies the status of the child withm the peer group. This type of identification is referred to as sociometrics (Asher, Parker, & Walker, 1996). Unlike hendship, which is defined as a voluntary and generally reciprocal relationship, peer status is determined by one-way perceptions in a forced group environment such as a classroom (Asher et al., 1996). That is to say that children's social status is defined by what their peers believe about them - a condition over which they have no direct control.
Sociometrics
The basic concepts of peer acceptance and rejection were developed and operationalized through research in the 1970s and 80s that focused heavily on sociometric status (see Asher & Coie, 1990 for a review). Sociometric status is operationally defmed either by scores on nomination measures, which ask children to name the students in their peer group with whom they like or dislike to play or work, or by peer rating scales, which ask children to rate all of their classmates or participating peers on Likert-type scales to describe how much they like to work or play with them (Frederickson & Furnham, 1998).
Coie et al. (1982) established the sociometric categories most widely recognized throughout the literature, distinguishing children on two dimensions: social preference and social impact. Social preference describes the extent to which children are liked or disliked by their peers. Social impact describes the extent to which children are noticed or not noticed. Crossing these two dimensions on perpendicular axes yields five
categories of sociometric status: popular children receive mostly positive nominations or ratings scores and few negative; rejected children receive mostly negative nominations or scores and few positive; controversial children receive many nominations both positive
and negative; neglected children receive few nominations at all; and average children form the bulk of the population with scores clustering around the center of the
intersection of the two axes.
Both neglected and rejected children are deemed to be of low sociometric status and therefore at risk for adverse consequences (Kupersmidt et aL, 1990). The
fundamental difference between the two is that neglected children have little social interaction of any kind, while rejected children face active discouragement fiom
participating in social interactions. In this study, both groups of children are considered to be "unaccepted."
While research supports the negative social status of both rejected and neglected children, there is a clear distinction between the two that has been documented,
particularly during the middle school years. Cillessen, Bukowski and Haselager (2000) report that neglected status is far less stable than rejected status, and therefore less of a predictor than rejection. Hatzichristou and Hopf (1 996) and found that neglected students differed less from average students than did rejected students and were more often misclassified. Coie, Dodge, and Kupersmidt (1990) reported differences in on-task behaviour between neglected and rejected students. Neglected students were on task in the classroom more than all others, while rejected students were off task more than others. Most tellingly, Wentzel and Asher (1995) discovered that neglected students in grades six and seven actually had higher academic profiles than average children. They self-reported higher levels of motivation, and were described by their teachers as more self-regulated, more prosocial, and more compliant than other students. They were also generally better liked by their teachers. Wentzel and Asher hypothesize that middle
school students may be neglected because their respect for learning and authority is not valued by their peers, or else because they are simply more interested in learning or solitary interests than in the social life of the classroom.
The Relationship between Social Status and Learning Diflculties
One group of children has consistently been documented to be disproportionately represented among unaccepted children: students with learning dificulties. Kavale and Forness' 1996 meta-analysis of social skills research found that 75% of students with learning disabilities (defined broadly) showed poorer social skills than their peers. Social problems have been documented for students with ADHD (Landau, Milich, & Diener,
1998; Sheridan, Dee, Morgan, McCormick, & Walker, 1996), mild mental retardation (Korinek & Polloway, 1993), learning disabilities (Kravetz, Faust, Lipshitz, & Shalhav, 1999; Margalit & Efrati, 1996), low achievement (Bryan et al., 1998; Haagar & Vaughn, 1995) and behavior disorders (Margalit, 1995).
Due to the substantial overlap among these categories and the imprecision of diagnosing many of these conditions, recent researchers have found it expedient to group all such students together as "learning disordered" (Henrich et al., 2001). In keeping with this trend, throughout this paper, students are referred to as having learning difficulties if they (1) have been identified through standard classification procedures in their schools as having learning disabilities, mild to moderate mental handicaps, or behavioral
problems, or (2) have been identified by their classroom teacher as achieving significantly below class standards in language-related activities.
Social Skills Interventions
The vast majority of research on social status has focused directly on unaccepted children. Crick and Dodge (1 994) document that most unaccepted children have clearly discernable deficits in social information processing, and that they are more likely to engage in behaviors which their peers find unacceptable than are socially accepted
children. Several researchers have documented deficits in social cognition or behavior of children with learning difficulties (Elksnin & Elksnin, 1998; Kavale & Forness, 1996).
Given the clear presence of social deficits in many students with learning difficulties and most unaccepted students, researchers have assumed that rectifying the deficits would increase social acceptance. Accordingly, many have focused on
interventions to teach these children how to engage in social problem solving and to provide them with appropriate strategies for social behavior in different circumstances. These interventions, usually called social skills training, have demonstrated short-term effects on the behaviors of rejected children (Kamps, Kravits, Stolze, & Swaggart, 1999; Landau, Milich, & Diener, 1998; Ralph, Hogan, Hill, Perkins, Ryan, & Strong, 1998). However, long-term changes to children's social competence and social status as a result of social skills training programs have not been convincingly demonstrated (Brown & Odom, 1994; Gresham, Sugai & Homer, 2001 ; Wiener & Harris, 1997).
Several explanations have been suggested to explain why unaccepted students have not been able to generalize social skills from training interventions in ways that improve their social status. Both Cartledge and Milburn (1 995) and Caldarella and Merrell(1997) point to the complexity of social skills. Social skills and social tasks differ with developmental age, with gender, and with context (Buhrrnester, 1996;
Newcomb & Bagwell, 1996; Rubin et al., 1999). It may be that social skills are simply too complex to teach to students who lack the cognitive understandings to develop them naturally and intuitively from social interactions. Indeed, attempts to teach specific skills for social interaction have largely given way to broader attempts to teach students to take cues from their environment and problem-solve to arrive at appropriate reactions (Wiener
& Harris, 1997).
Wentzel and McNarnara
(1
999) offer a supporting explanation fiom their study of middle-school interpersonal relationships. They found that the best predictor of prosocial behavior was peer acceptance, suggesting a positive feedback: ongoing practice in social encounters and multiple experiences provided through positive peer relations enables further development of socia1 skills. Social skill development thus seems to benefit fiom the "Matthew effect" (Stanovich, 1986). Stanovich originally proposed this "rich get richer" effect in reading development as the result of a process of reciprocal causation. It seems to apply to social interactions because good social relations are self-rewarding, and thus lead to increased social interactions and practice, which lead to improved social relations, etc. Conversely, people whose social relationships are unsatisfactory or disappointing will, through withdrawal or exclusion, experience successive decreases in effective social interactions and get less practice, leaving them progressively further and further behind their peers in social skills. Furthermore, to the extent that such children do manage to interact socially, it is usually only with children of similarly low status, with similarly low social skills, so that they seldom encounter models of positive, prosocial behavior (Hepler, 1997).A second explanation is offered by Rubin et al. (1999) who point to the deeply embedded origins of social development problems. Such problems are rooted in infant attachment problems or deficits in early environment or parenting as well as inherent temperament. Therefore, they may simply not be amenable to quick fixes or perhaps even to intensive psychological interventions. To the extent that this is the case, adjusting environmental factors to lessen the need for students with social deficits to excel in social interactions may minimize the damage caused by inevitable failures.
A third reason often suggested for the failure of social skills interventions is the problem of expectancy effects, or reputational bias. Both experimental studies (Hymel, Wagner & Butler, 1990; Milich, McAninch & Harris, 1992) and ethnographic
observations (Evans & Eder, 1993; Merton, 1996) show that social status tends to be maintained by the peer group despite changes in the behaviors of unaccepted students. That is, the peer group tends to perceive and interpret behaviors according to the pre- existing reputation of the individual student, and the social system tends towards the status quo.
A fourth reason could also explain the failure of behavioral change to produce a corresponding change of status for unaccepted students. The tendency of popular children to reject others may, in fact, relate more strongly to the dynamic of maintaining their dominant roles in interaction than to the behaviors of the unaccepted students. Popular students define the "in group" through exclusionary and discriminatory practices that marginalize other students (Berndt, 1983; Blythe, 1983). While students with evident social or academic problems are natural targets for social discrimination, the
dynamic of such a situation requires that some people be rejected, regardless of the supposed cause for rejection.
Given the practical and theoretical problems with approaching remediation of peer social difficulties on an individual basis, it is appropriate to investigate alternative methods that may assist students with acceptance problems.
Classroom Environment
An alternative to the individualized approach to remediating social problems is an environmental approach. There are several reasons for increasing attention to the
environment when considering individuals' social difficulties. Most of the proposed explanations for the ineffectiveness of individual interventions discussed above suggest that an environmental approach may be more effective.
First and foremost is the fact that social difficulties are never solely individual. By definition social interactions involve more people than the one who is characterized as having deficits. Fundamentally, it is the actions of others that determine a student's status as unaccepted, although their actions may be understood as being based on the unaccepted student's non-normative behaviors. If unaccepted students are known to have deficits in social cognition, behavioral control and personal self-efficacy beliefs (Hepler, 1994; Smith & Nagle, 1995), the rejecting peers, comparatively, have higher social cognition, more behavioral control, a history of greater social effectiveness and more positive beliefs of social self-efficacy (LaFontana & Cillessen, 1999). The rejecters are better able to respond to an impetus to change than the unaccepted students. Therefore, environmental changes, which affect all students and not merely the ones with
Secondly, it is well established that environment affects people's behaviours and attitudes. School environment in particular has been shown to affect both academic and affective outcomes for students (Fraser, 1989; Kuperminc et al., 1997). A theoretical basis for such effects is posited by Bronfenbrenner (1979) and Bandura (1 977) who both point to interactions among people and between people and their environment as
determinative factors in persod development and in behaviour.
Third, classroom environment is generally held to be largely, though certainly not wholly, a h c t i o n of teacher-controlled variables. Anecdotal evidence abounds that certain students do better in certain classes, and education libraries hold hundreds of volumes on classroom management, classroom organization, ways to present curriculum, etc. Because of the many intangibles involved in classroom environment, though, all too often success or failure in including children with problems is seen as "magic" or
"chemistry." There is a need for research-based evidence to suggest ways in which teachers may organize their classes or deliver instruction that will enhance the social experience of students.
For all of these reasons, it is important that classroom environment be studied systematically as a factor in all types of school outcomes, including social acceptance. The identification of specific factors of classroom environment that are related to peer social acceptance in the classroom will help to move students' social success from bbmagic7' to "good teaching practice."
Classroom Environment Research
Because classroom environment is a "somewhat subtle and nebulous" (Fraser, 1989, p. 307) term, efforts to study it have been varied and, in many ways, inconsistent.
Some researchers use external, presumably impartial, observers to attempt to characterize what happens in a classroom (Brophy & Good, 1986). Some researchers have applied ethnographic or other qualitative techniques to the analysis of student and teacher behaviors (Erickson, 1998). Both of these methods offer valuable insights to classroom environment but both suffer from similar drawbacks. Observation techniques are expensive in terms of researcher time and training. They are limited to external
interpretation of events and usually to a relatively short period of time, which may or may not be typical of what occurs in the classroom on an ongoing basis. Finally, such
measures are intended to evaluate what is known as alphapress, an objective view of the actual forces of the environment on the individual (Murray, 1938, cited in Marjoribanks, 1991).
A more economical approach to classroom environment research relies on
reported perception of classroom environment by classroom participants. Such paper and pencil surveys are more easily collected and, more importantly, focus directly on the participants' understandings of their own environments, beta press (Marjoribanks, 1991). For many research purposes, including research into social interactions, how students perceive their classroom environment may be more relevant than an external assessment of the objective reality of a classroom environment (Fraser, 1989; Kuperminc et al., 1997; Macauley, 1990).
The first instrument developed and widely used for this purpose was Walberg's Learning Environment Inventory (LEI) (Anderson & Walberg, 1968). Walberg's LEI measures fifteen features of classrooms, including satisfaction, challenge, cohesiveness, physical environment, democracy, goal direction, competition, formality, speed,
diversity, apathy, favoritism, cliquishness, disorganization, and friction (Walberg & Greenberg, 1997).
At approximately the same time, Moos and Trickett began to develop the Classroom Environment Scale (CES) (Moos & Trickett, 1987), which has also been widely used in classroom environment research. The CES measures nine dimensions: involvement, affiliation, support, task orientation, competition, order and organization, rule clarity, teacher control, and innovation (Trickett, Leone, Fink & Braaten, 1993). Both of these instruments were designed to focus on students' preferred learning environment.
Fraser published the Individualized Classroom Environment Questionnaire (ICEQ) in 1989 to distinguish between students' perceptions of their actual classroom environment and their preferred classroom environment, with forms for measuring both. More recently, Fraser et al. (1996) developed the m a t Is Happening In this Class (WIHIC) classroom environment survey to "bring parsimony to the field of learning environments by combining the most salient scales fi-om existing questionnaires with new dimensions of contemporary relevance" (Aldridge, Fraser, & Huang, 1999, p. 50). It assesses classroom environment on seven dimensions: student cohesiveness, teacher support, involvement, investigation, task orientation, cooperation, and equity.
The WIHIC instrument has two versions, the personal form and the class form, which distinguish between '?he idiosyncratic view that each person has of the
environment (private beta press) and the shared view that members of a group hold about the environment (consensual beta press)" (Stern, Stein & Bloom, cited in Fraser, 1989). Such a distinction is important for conducting research at both individual and classroom
levels, such as fiding distinctions between groups of students within a classroom (Fraser, 1998).
In ths context it is important to note that not all students experience classroom environment in the same way. McIntosh, Vaughn, Schumm, Haager and Lee (1993) have documented that students with learning difficulties have fewer interactions of any kind in the classroom than other students, while Keogh (1998) goes even fiuther:
In general, teachers initiate fewer interactions with poorly achieving students than with adequately achieving students, especially in middle and
high
schools. There are also real differences in the content and the affective tone of teacher-child interactions, so that higher achieving students have many social, affectively positive interchanges, whereas the interactions with lower achieving students are often limited tomanagement and instruction, Classroom Me may not be much
fun
for lower achieving students (p. 3 14).Thus, an important aspect of any research into classroom environments and its outcomes must be the consideration of "micro-environments" within the classroom or of students whose perceptions of the classroom environment differ sigmficantly from the class perception in general. Clearly, if students
with
learning difficulties experience fewer interactions, and those have a different content and different tone than other students, there is ample reason to believe that they may report a different environment than their peers. Given the strong relationship between learning difficulties and social acceptance, a similar result may be expected fkom unaccepted students.Since its introduction, the WIHIC survey has been validated and used in a wide variety of research contexts, including comparing classroom environments across cultures (Aldridge, Fraser & Huang 1999; Aldridge & Fraser, 2000), relating classroom
environment to academic outcomes (Margianti & Fraser, 2000), and relating classroom environment to affective and self-esteem outcomes (Fraser & Chionh, 2000).
Research on Specific Classroom Environment Factors
Fraser et al.'s (1996) seven classroom environment factors are grounded in both educational theory and research as meaningful constructs, and each has been investigated in a number of contexts that relate to social acceptance. The key to predicting the
existence and direction of correlations between the factors of classroom environment and social status, learning difficulties, and achievement lies in the common links in existing research.
Bennacer (2000) includes achievement as one of the characteristics of students that are "inextricably intertwined" (p. 174) with classroom environment. Maehr and Anderman (1 993) and Margianti and Fraser (2000) have also documented the importance of positive classroom environment to student achievement, while Kaplan and Maehr (1 999) and Wentzel(1999) both demonstrate a relationship between achievement and social acceptance. Finally, Reynolds (1991) has used structural modeling to relate both classroom environment and peer social interactions to middle school achievement. Therefore, achievement appears to provide a link between social acceptance and classroom environment factors. Affect and attitude toward learning are related to
environment by Fraser and Chionh (2000) and Cheng (1994) and to social acceptance by Bryan et al. (1998). Student self-concept has also been shown to be related both to
environment (Baer, 1999; Fraser & Chionh, 2000) and to social acceptance (Graham & Juvonen, 1998; Stanovich, Jordan & Perot, 1998). These affective qualities have a known link with learning difficulties (Harter, Whitesell & Junlun, 1998; Harter, Whitesell & Kowalski, 1992) as well as with social status, whch are both thus further linked with environment.
All
of these studies suggest a complex interrelationship among achevement, learning difficulties, social acceptance and classroom environment. However, none of them has addressed the question of social acceptance and environment directly, or examined perceptions of environment d~erentially between students with these related, but Merent, characteristics.Bennacer (2000) also includes gender as another si@cant factor in perception of classroom environment. Increasingly, boys are seen as disadvantaged in their learning by hostile classroom structures and learning environments (Riordan, 1999). It thus will be important to include gender in this study of classroom environment to determine if it is related to students7 perceptions of classroom environments.
The first of the seven WMlC classroom environment factors, student
cohesiveness, reflects students' perceptions of forming friendships, worlung together, and helping each other in class. Presumably, student cohesiveness thus reflects social
acceptance, and can be expected to show a strong, positive correlation with student social status. And as students with learning difficulties have been shown to be less accepted than other students, they can also be expected to report lower social cohesiveness.
The teacher support factor documents teacher attitudes and behaviors towards students. "When teachers .
.
. provide students with warmth and support, clearexpectations for behavior, and developmentally appropriate autonomy, their students develop a stronger sense of community [and] increase displays of socially competent behavior" (Wentzel, 1999). Teacher behaviors towards students are also hghly correlated with their peers' attitudes towards them. Teachers who display a negative attitude toward a student transmit that negative attitude to other students in the class (Schonert-Reichl & Hymel, 1994). Teacher support has the potential to be a powerfbl social influence in the classroom. Midgley
,
Eccles and Feldlaufer (1991) and Baer (1999) report that less teacher support relates to a decline in student self-concept and motivation to learn, leadmg to lower achievement. Given that teacher support has been linked both to social acceptance and to achievement, unaccepted students and students with learning difficulties are expected to report lower levels of teacher support.The involvement factor measures the extent to which students are actively involved in and committed to classroom activities. Montague and Rinaldi (200 1) iden* a related concept, academic engaged time, as a significant predictor of student self- esteem and achievement, while noting that it lkely has effects on peer relationships that still need to be explored. Vaughn, Elbaum and Boardman (2001) comment that lack of involvement in classroom activities affects how a student is perceived by his or her classmates and is one likely route to rejected status. Therefore, unaccepted students and students with learning difficulties are expected to report less involvement in classroom activities.
Investigation examines the extent to which students are involved in skill and process development for problem solving. The use of investigation in classroom activities requires students to seek meaning and understanding of the material by
constructing knowledge. Recent research has shown a link between learner self-concept and learning environments that use investigative skills in learning activities (Dart,
Burnett, Boulton-Lewis, Campbell, Smith & McCrindle, 1999). Low learner self-concept has been M e d with low social acceptance, especially in student with learning
difficulties (Vaughn, Elbaum& Schumm, 1996). Thus again, unaccepted students and students with learning difficulties are expected to report lower use of investigation in their classes.
Task orientation focuses on the commitment to learning evident in the class. Anderman and Anderman (1999) distinguish task orientation - a focus on learning and effort
-
fiom ability orientation - a focus on ability and success. They found that a sense of social responsibility and belongingness in middle school corresponded with a focus on task goals, while an emphasis on relationships and status corresponded with ability goals. Kaplan and Maehr (1999) also demonstrate a positive link between task orientation and positive psychological well-being. Therefore, it seems probable that our target students would report lower task orientation than their peers.The cooperation factor assesses how extensively cooperative methods are used in the classroom. Engagement in cooperative group activities has been shown to have a variety of positive social outcomes for students (Johnson & Johnson, 1999; Slavin, 1995). Putnam, Markovchick, Johnson and Johnson (1996) have demonstrated that positive changes in peer social status ratings occur more fiequently in cooperative education settings than in competitive education settings, thereby establishing a direct link between sociometric acceptance and cooperative education. However, this link is established at the class level, rather than at the student level. It is unclear that individual students
within a class would report different levels of cooperative activities than their classmates when such activities tend to be teacher initiated.
The final factor of the WMtC scale, equity, is the perception of equality and fairness in the classroom. Especially in today's inclusive classrooms, equity can loom as a large issue. When some students are perceived as getting special treatment, for
whatever reason, those students may face social disapproval and the other students may deem the class not to be equitable. On the other hand, students with learning difficulties are likely to suffer adverse achievement outcomes if lessons, materials, or conditions are not adapted to meet their special needs. They may feel the classroom is unfair if they are treated the same as other students. Thus the directionality of Merences in reported equity between unaccepted students or students with learning difficulties and their peers is difficult to predict.
Hypotheses
From the research surveyed, the evidence suggests the following hypotheses in response to the research questions of this study:
Hypothesis 1 : Unaccepted students will have different perceptions of the classroom environment from their normative peers.
Hypothesis 2: Both students with learning difficulties and students with low achievement will be less accepted socially than their classmates.
Hypothesis 3: Students with learning difficulties will have more negative perceptions of the classroom environment than their normative peers.
Hypothesis 4: Students with low achievement will have more negative perceptions of the classroom environment than students with average or high achievement.
Conclusion
Despite substantial research on the correlates of classroom environment, very little of the research relates directly to the important issue of peer social acceptance in the classroom. The existing research identifies links between the perceived factors of
classroom environment and achievement, student affect, and student self-concept. Each of these, in
turn,
has connections to social acceptance that offer tantalizing suggestions of the fruitfulness of further research into the relationship between classroom environment and social acceptance levels.Each of the classroom environment factors discussed above is potentially linked with peer social acceptance, and the review of the literature provides reason to believe that the general direction of correlation of environmental factors with social acceptance will be positive. That is, students with higher social status will report higher levels of social cohesiveness, teacher support, task orientation, investigation, and involvement. It is less clear if such a correlation will appear between social status and the dimensions of cooperation and equity. Overall, the literature provides support for the expectation that students with learning difficulties and unaccepted students will perceive a less positive classroom environment than their normative classmates.
Chapter Three Method
This chapter explains the research protocol used in this study. It outlines the procedure used to recruit participants and describes the participants and their school. It identifies the survey instruments used to collect data and describes the process of data collection. Finally, it details the transformation of the raw data and identifies the statistical analyses that were performed.
Recruitment Procedure
Upon completion of the required ethical review of the study by the university, three local school districts were invited to participate. Of the three, permission to recruit students was received from two. Within the two participating districts, principals of all schools with grade 6,7, or 8 students were invited to participate, through phone or e-mail contact. The proposed use of a sociometric rating scale proved to be highly controversial, and was the stated reason that many principals and teachers declined to participate. Only three principals in the participating districts consented, and teachers in each of the three schools were approached to request the participation of their students in the study.
Teachers from only two of the schools indicated an interest. In one school, the researcher was able to present the project to the students herself; in the other, two teachers explained the project and handed out the forms. In this latter school, insuflicient consent forms were returned to the teachers to carry out the research.
All students in a class whose teacher agreed to the study received two consent forms, one for them to sign and one to take home for their parents' signatures. Students
were asked to return both signed forms to their classroom teacher, who collected the forms over the following week and notified the researcher when they stopped coming in. Some teachers chose to encourage students to return forms (signed or unsigned) while others left it completely up to the students to remember to bring them back.
As one of the intended studies from the research required the use of the classroom as the unit of measurement, recruitment focused on obtaining the consent to participate of at least 75% of students in participating classes. Th~s proved to be impossible, and that portion of the study was finally abandoned, but in the process some potential participants were ruled out due to insufficient class participation.
Data were finally collected from students in one middle school. Of 2 1 enrolling teachers in the school, eight declined to participate, I was unable to schedule a time for data collection with one class, and students in one class did not return any consent forms. In the other eleven classes, consent rates ranged from less than 4% to 70%. In one class, only one student who agreed to participate actually completed the survey, and that student was therefore excluded from the study.
Participants
Participants in this study were 102 early adolescent students in grade 6,7, or 8 middle school classrooms in one middle school. Table 1 summarizes the participants by gender and grade. Eight students who participated by agreeing to include their names on the sociometric ratings roster and the teacher information sheet chose not to complete the classroom environment survey.
The participating school has been configured as a middle school, grades 6 to 8, for over ten years. It is a suburban school in an area that contains families with a mix of
Table 1
Participants by Gender and Grade
Grade Total
Male Female Total
socioeconomic status, from very affluent to very poor. The majority of students are white and English-speaking, with less than 10 % of the student body representing visible
minorities, mostly Asian, Southeast Asian, and First Nations. The school enrolls approximately five hundred fifty students per year who arrive from four feeder elementary schools. Students with special needs are included in the classroom to the extent possible, with pullout programs for students who require extra assistance.
Students with severe handicaps normally have assistants with them for the portions of the day they spend in regular classes, and also spend part of each day in a self-contained resource centre. All students in the school follow a common curriculum; there are no special programs (such as French Immersion) or tracks (specialized academic, vocational, etc.).
Four of the participating students were members of visible minorities, all Asian. One was receiving English as a Second Language services. Fifteen participating students
were identified by their teachers as being low achievers (typically receiving marks of C- or below) in language-oriented subjects. Only two students were identified by their teachers as having Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) based on identified learning problems, but a subsequent records search revealed that two participating students were ministry-designated as having severe learning disabilities, and another four had IEPs for learning assistance, although they lacked ministry designation. Thirty-six were identified by their teachers as being high achievers in language-oriented subjects (typically
receiving A's), with two of those formally identified as "Students with Outstanding Capabilities" (gifted). Again, a records search revealed teacher error on IEPs for students with outstanding capabilities. One of the students named by a teacher did not have such a designation, while two students not named by their teachers did. The skew of high
achievers is probably an effect of the selection process, which required students
to understand the project, agree to participate, and be organized enough to take consent forms home to their parents, get them signed, and return them to the class. Table 2 summarizes the distribution of special student characteristics across the sample.
Instruments
The following instruments were administered to the participants by the researcher.
1) What is Happening In This Class (WIHIC) personal form
The WIHIC Personal form is a survey developed by Fraser et al. (1 996). It assesses classroom environment on seven dimensions: 1) Student cohesiveness is the social dimension of classroom environment; 2) Teacher support documents teacher attitudes and behaviors towards students; 3 ) Involvement measures the extent to which
Table 2
Distribution of Special Characteristics Among Participants
Students'
E P
statusa Ethnic statusb ~chievement~Learning Assistance 4 Asian 4 High 37
English 2nd Language 1 Caucasian 93 Average 46
Learning Disabilities 2 Low 13
Outstanding Capabilities 3
No IEP 87
Missing 5 Missing 5 Missing 5
aby records search bby teacher report
students are actively involved in classroom activities; 4) Investigation examines the extent to which students are involved in skill and process development for problem solving; 5) Task orientation focuses on the commitment to learning evident in the class; 6) Cooperation assesses how extensively cooperative methods are used in the classroom; and 7) Equity is the perception of equality and fairness in the classroom. Each question is answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale fiom 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always). In this study, the shortened form used by Aldridge and Fraser (2000), comprising 54 items in the seven dimensions, was used. For the complete text of the instrument, see
Fraser et al. (1 996) found that using the personal form of the instrument as opposed to the class form enhances assessment of the learning environment at different levels and is superior for evaluating differences between class groups or indwiduals. Such an approach seems particularly valuable in determining the classroom environment perceptions of special groups such as rejected students or those with learning disorders.
Fraser et al. (1 996) report fairly high internal consistency (Cronbach's a) for the scales, ranging from .77 for Cooperation to 3 9 for Task Onentation. Cronbach's alpha is a coefficient of reliability used to estimate the consistency of scales derived from several questions on a questionnaire. It is designed to "measure how well a set of items (or variables) measures a single unidimensional latent construct" (UCLA, n.d.). The discriminant validity of the scales, the correlation (r) of mean scores on each scale, is moderate to low, ranging from .48 for Involvement to .09 for Equity. The low correlation of scores between scales indicates that each scale is measuring a distinct aspect of
classroom environment. These figures indicate a satisfactory level of reliability and validity for the instrument. The seven factors combined were found to extract 53% of the variance (Fraser et al., 1996).
2) Class List Peer Ratings
Peer ratings are currently deemed to be the preferred method of data collection for sociometric research, especially for that dealing with acceptance and rejection rather than friendship (Maassen, van der Linden, Goossens & Bokhorst, 2000). Asher (1990) and his colleagues (Asher and Hyrnel, 1981; Oden & Asher, 1977) pioneered the use of roster and ratings systems for sociometric analysis. In this system, each child in a class receives a list of all class members (or all members who have permission to participate in the
study) with two LIkert-type scales. The first asks students to rate their classmates according to how much they like to work with the student on a scale that indicates positive and negative preferences ('3' equals 'llke to very much' and '-3' equals 'prefer to work with others'). The second asks students to rate their classmates on the same scale according to how much they like to play with the student. Sample class list ratings sheets are included as Appendix B.
Use of the roster and rating method has several advantages over the alternative nomination practice:
1) It collects more information, enabling broader pictures of social groups and overall acceptance and rejection levels to emerge.
2) It removes the constraints of limited nominations (typically 3 positive andlor 3 negative only).
3) It is more acceptable to schools than negative nomination practices.
4) It removes the possibility of classmates simply being overlooked as choices for nominations (Frederickson & Furnham, 1998)
Researchers in the past 20 years of sociometric research have reported no negative effects to children's acceptance, reputation, or self-image from roster and ratings surveys (Haywen & Hymel, 1984; Newcomb, Bukowski, & Pattee, 1993) although few h e c t studies on such effects have been undertaken.
3) Teacher Information Survey
Teachers in each participating class were asked to complete
an
information survey designed by the researcher about the class and the participating students. The survey asked general questions about the demographics of the class as a whole (class size,number of boyslgirls in the class, number of students with particularly high or low achievement, etc.) and specific questions about the survey participants. A copy of the teacher information survey is included as Appendur C.
Data Collection
Students in each class completed two scales: The What is Happening In This Class (WMIC) Personal Form (Fraser et al., 1996) and a class-list peer rating sheet. These surveys were completed in May and June, at the end of the school year, to ensure maximum f d i a r i t y of the students with each other and with the classroom
environment.
In classes where a large percentage of students consented to participate, the researcher went into the classroom and provided non-participating students with paper and pencil games to complete whle participating students were completing their surveys. Regular classroom teachers had the option to remain in the classroom during the survey or to take advantage of the time for personal use. Every teacher chose to leave the classroom.
Students had cardboard screens to place on their desks, protecting their response sheets fiom viewing by classmates. The researcher read the questions on the survey aloud, but students were permitted to work ahead of the reading if they wished to. Students with questions had the choice of asking them openly or having the researcher come to their desk for quiet consultation. In classes with smaller participation rates, the researcher took participants from the classroom to a private workroom, where the same protocols applied.
Because the researcher worked at the school and knew many of the participants, anonymity was preserved by having students place their completed forms in an envelope where they would not be seen by the researcher. The envelopes of completed surveys were given to an outside coder not familiar with the school or students, who gave respondents numbers and tabulated the responses. In a few cases, the coder identified surveys that were missing responses and placed those in separate envelopes, which the researcher returned to the students for completion. The coder also connected the teacher- supplied information about students and classes to the response tabulation. Coding was verified by the researcher reading the coded tables back to the coder, who checked them against the original survey documents.
Data Analysis
The first step in analyzing the data was to verify the classification of the WIHIC dimensions. Factor analysis with varimax rotation yielded nine factorial clusters, of which the first six corresponded closely to Fraser et al.'s (1996) dimensions of Task Orientation, Teacher Support, Involvement, Investigation, Social Cohesiveness, and Equity. The questions in the Cooperation dimension loaded across the Task Orientation and Equity clusters. The seventh cluster in the original analysis loaded three disparate questions from Involvement and Task Orientation dimensions, while the eighth cluster loaded just one question from the Social Cohesiveness dimension, and the ninth did not contain any primary loads.
The four questions that did not load in any clear dimensions (SC05, IN26, IN27, TOSS) were removed, and the factor analysis was rerun. In this iteration, however, the vqimw rotation failed to resolve. The factor analysis was run again, this time removing
