The Peer Group As A Social And Cultural Context

The experience where children interact with peer is a unique context for development. Peer social cluster is one of important forms of interpersonal interaction at the peer group level. As an important social and cultural context, it has a significant and particular role on children's social development. The process of social transition in China makes it possible for children of different social and cultural backgrounds to interact with each other in the same class. At the same time, they form different peer groups in terms of social and cultural backgrounds, hence establishing different cultural norms in each group. The social and cultural norms based on peer group composition serve as a basis for interpretation of particular social behaviors. Therefore, in the peculiar Chinese social and cultural environments, it should be reasonable to explore the role of group cultural background on the socialization of peer group.The purpose in the current study was to explore, using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), and base on Homophily Hypothesis, peer group as a context for the socialization of children's academic and social competence and as a moderator of peer group socialization of these competences. In this longitudinal study, 898 children from grade 3 to grade 5 were recruited from a suburb elementary school in Nantong, Jiangsu Province. Among them, there are 36.5% urban children, 48.8% rural children, and 10.4% migrant children. In both first and second year, children were asked to provide peer nominations for social, prosocial, assertive and aggressive behavior, and complete the Social Cognitive Map (SCM), and teachers were asked to rate children's academic achievement.The results indicated: (1) in the individual level, group members had significantly higher scores on sociability, prosociality, assertiveness, peer acceptance, and academic achievement than did nonmembers. Urban children had significantly higher scores on assertiveness than did both rural and migrant children, while rural children had significantly lower scores on aggression than did both urban and migrant children. The analysis also revealed significant interaction in prosociality between gender and backgrounds. (2) Next, hierarchical linear modeling revealed peer groups were highly homogenous on academic and social competences. Most children chose cross-background peers to form peer groups. (3) Multilevel analyses indicated that, except for prosocial behavior, peer groups did socialize academic and social characteristics over one year. (4) Finally, to some extent, group social and cultural backgrounds moderated group socialization. Rural-urban groups had stronger effect on socialization of the development of sociality than did rural-migrant groups. High assertiveness in group magnified group socialization of assertiveness in rural peer groups. High group achievement magnified group socialization of academic achievement in rural-urban peer groups and rural-migrant groups.