Teacher Practices that Promote Children’s Academic Success Through Reducing Peer Rejection

Amori Yee Mikami

Children who are disliked by their peers are highly likely to experience future school failure, high school dropout, and reduced job attainment – even after statistical control of early academic skills. Yet little is known about how and why these peer-rejected children embark on a path towards poor academic achievement, nor possible ways in which teachers can intervene in this destructive cycle using regular, day-to-day instructional practices. I propose to assess classrooms of elementary school-age children three times over the course of a school year. I hypothesize that peer rejection, in interaction with children’s behavior problems, will predict a negative trajectory towards withdrawal from class participation and disengagement from school, which in turn contribute to declining academic achievement. However and most crucially, teachers who (a) set overt classroom norms of tolerance and respect, (b) believe that peer rejection is malleable and influenced by the classroom environment, and (c) intervene proactively when children are being teased or excluded, will mitigate these concerning outcomes. This project will inform my future work on educational interventions for the at-risk population of peer-rejected children.

About Amori Yee Mikami

Amori Yee Mikami received her B.A. and M.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 1998, her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. Despite having lived in California her entire life, she moved to University of Virginia in 2005 where she is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology. Mikami’s research focuses on the social problems of children, particularly those with externalizing problems, and ways in which parents and teachers can aid this population. She has received funding from the National Institutes of Mental Health and the advocacy group Children and Adults with ADHD for her work on parental socialization of children with ADHD; the current project she will undertake as a NAE/Spencer Fellow investigates teacher practices that promote children’s peer acceptance.