Some highlights from research on the impacts of Peer Leadership

In 2007, UBC’s Kim Schonert-Riechl’s UBC-based research team found in their extensive studies that without being taught social and emotional skills, children do not naturally gain the ability to have supportive, encouraging relationships as they transition through elementary school.

On average, by grade 7, 40% of girls and over 70% of boys do not feel that they have a friend to help them through a hard time.

In the past, these social-emotional abilities have been considered “soft skills” and deemed less important, but recently, that perception has changed.

Current research shows that academic achievement in Grade 8 can be better predicted from knowing children’s Grade 3 social emotional competence than from knowing children’s Grade 3 academic achievement.

As any parent will tell you and adults will remember – memories of friendships are the happiest and can be the most troubling parts of childhood and they have a significant impact on a child’s emotional well-being.  

“Friendship quality (Fox and Boulton, 2006) and a child’s sociometric status (Hodges and Perry, 1999) have been found to moderate the relationship between personal risk factors (such as internalising, externalising and social skills problems) and victimisation.”  (Houlston C, Smith P, Jessel J 2011)

Helping children make and keep friends protects them from bullying. 

“Peer- victimized children are less likely to have friends compared to non-victimized children. Moreover, once children have gained reputations as people who are teased and victimized, other children may be less likely to associate with them, thus decreasing the likelihood that they will develop new friendships.” Reavis, R. D., Keane, S. P., & Calkins, S. D. (2010)

Helping children so they have more social skills and less social anxiety is important for their well-being.

Social anxiety and peer rejection synergistically predicted victimization at the student level according to a study of 6,000 children from grade 3-5. (Saarento & Hodges, 2013)

Peer Leadership training materials are very limited.

Although cross-age peer mentoring is growing, there are few widely effective available training modules that both provide experiential initial and ongoing training. “There are thousands of standalone how to programs that utilize peer mentoring, but these programs often lack materials for guiding their teen mentors' day-to-day efforts.” Karcher, M. J. (2008)

Early teen years are an important developmental period for friendships.

“Middle-school marks a time of transition in the lives of American adolescents. During this transitional time, students are not only struggling with changes in their academic environment, but also with transformations in their bodies, minds, emotions, and relationships. The support that students receive from adults and peers during these years can affect not only how they cope with these changes, but can also influence their psychological well-being Buchanan, R., & Bowen, G. (2008). Studies they site include (Flook et al. 2005; Gonzales et al. 1996; Pretty et al. 1994; Vedder et al. 2005; Way and Robinson 2003; Wentzel and Watkins 2002). 

Research shows that social skills can be effectively taught.

“A meta-analysis of more than one hundred studies compared students who had Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs with those who did not. The data shows impressive improvements among the students who were in SEL programs with their behaviour in and out of the classroom; and their scores were eleven percentile points higher than similar students who were not given Social and Emotional Learning programs.” (from R. P.Weissberg, J.A. Durlak, R.D. Taylor, A.B. Dymnick and M.U. Obrien, 2008).

Perceived social acceptance (social support, acceptance and peer validation) is strongly associated with lower social anxiety for children (Festa C., Ginsburg, G, 2011)

The Middle Years Index illustrates that approximately one in four children in British Columbia experience a diminished and below average sense of well-being at school  (from Middle Year Development Instrument Gr 4-7 http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/mdi/)

Healthy, secure social relationships and friendships play a key role in adolescent development while experiences of peer rejection and social anxiety are known predictors of victimization and isolation (from Saarento & Hodges, Student Classroom and School Level Risk Factors for Victimization, 2013)

Despite the importance of healthy relationship skills, many schools lack the resources needed to be able to provide social and emotional learning programs that are not part of the school curriculum, but are so essential to a child’s development and emotional well-being. Schools also lack the capacity to offer ongoing leadership training and mentoring for students (from Karcher, The Cross-Age Mentoring Program, 2008)