Boys' Education: School Connectedness

“School bullying has a detrimental impact on students, including sense of isolation and diminished school connectedness. The current study adopted social capital theory to examine the role of school connectedness as a moderator on the association between peer victimization and loneliness…. Results supported existing literature revealing there was a significant mean difference in school connectedness by gender. School connectedness buffered the relationship between peer victimization and loneliness for girls as a moderator, whereas this moderating effect did not appear for boys. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.”

“Prior work has shown that low peer preference during primary school is linked to the development of rejection sensitivity in late childhood and that during this period links between social preference and internalizing problems become more profound (Ladd, 2006; London et al., 2007; McLachlan et al., 2012). Our results suggest that prolonged experiences of low peer preference become embodied in children’s neurobiology during primary school. This embodiment of negative peer experiences may possibly explain their negative impact in development. Our findings emphasize that teachers, school psychologists and clinicians must be aware of the impact of low peer preference and exclusion on primary school children, and that schools should monitor and intervene in classroom peer rejection as early as possible”