This article presents the findings of a longitudinal study on the influence of contextual factors on the social-emotional development of fifth and sixth grade students. The aim was to assess the connection between behavioral development (i.e., prosocial behavior, externalizing and internalizing behavior problems) and school context factors. In this paper we tried to answer following research questions:

(1) Does the type of school students attend (middle school vs. academic track) influence the development of students’ prosocial behavior, and/ or externalized/ internalized behavior problems over the course of the year?

(2) Does inclusivity in the classroom influence the development of students’ prosocial behavior, and/ or externalized/ internalized behavior problems over the course of the year?

Based on the results stated by Kalambouka et al. (2007), we hypothesized that attending an inclusive classroom was likely to have a positive effect on students’ social emotional development. No strong association was expected, however, since Kalambouka et al. (2007) themselves concluded that the “impact of inclusion […] on outcomes for other children remains at best uncertain” (p. 375).

Moreover, several studies (e.g., Müller et al., 2013, 2015) have reported on classroom composition effects. We specifically wanted to find out whether the number of students in a classroom with externalized behavior problems influences individual student development. We also aimed to offset the lack of research concerning the influence of internalized behavior problems, by exploring how this might affect student individual development. This led to the following research question:

(3) Is there a link between the initial share of students with externalized or internalized behavior problems and the individual development of prosocial behavior, and/ or externalized/ internalized behavior problems over the year?

We assumed that there would be a positive association between the initial number of students with externalized behavior problems and subsequent developments in the number of students with behavioral problems, i.e. that there would be some form of contagion.

Our interest in assessing the impact of class size (another contextual variable) led to the following question:

(4) Does the number of students in a classroom influence individual prosocial behavior, and/ or externalized/ internalized behavior problems over the year?

In addition to the school and classroom factors, we also wanted to analyze several individual factors. First, we wanted to know whether the type of classroom students attended in primary school (inclusive vs. non-inclusive) is linked to the students’ development in these areas. Thus:

(5) Do students exhibit differences in prosocial behavior, and/ or externalized/ internalized behavior problems depending on the type of primary classroom (inclusive vs. non-inclusive) attended before secondary school?

We assumed that it might affect their development positively, although this is a relatively speculative assumption (Kalambouka et al., 2007).

Due to their importance for individual social-emotional development, we controlled for the following individual factors: (a) student gender, (b) SES, (c) migration background, (d) the number of books owned by the family (as an indicator of cultural capital), (e) whether they had a room of their own (as an indicator of being at risk of poverty), and (f) student IQ.

We used a quantitive longitudinal study design to answer the above mentioned research questions. A total of 1,535 students in the fifth grade were sampled by using probability proportional to size sampling method. These 1535 students were tested and examined at three points of measurement from October 2018 until December 2019. We mainly used standardized instruments like the SDQ (Strengths and Difficulties) questionnaire for the behavioral screening (Goodmann et al. 2010). For estimating th cognitive abilities of the children the language free IQ test CFT-20R, was used (Weiß, 2006). Moreover, we also collected some socio-economic background informations like SES-status, kind of grammar school of the children, migration background, etc. For data evaluation we used multi-level regression modeling (lme4-Package in R), with the students level as first level and the class level as second level.

It is shown that while behavioral development remains relatively stable over time, there is also a slight decrease in externalizing and internalizing behavioral problems over the period (one year) observed. In addition, however, the findings also reveal that students from middle school or from integrative classes exhibit more behavioral problems and less pro-social behavior. In this regard, school tracking seems to have the same deleterious effect on social-emotional development as it does on equity and achievement. It disadvantages those students of low SES, and those with relatively low levels of cultural capital. Our findings appear to conform to the work of Van de Werfhorst (2019) and support the argument that school tracking clearly functions as a social selection mechanism, one which is designed to further the unfair distribution of privilege, irrespective of individual achievement, social-emotional development, or considerations of social equity. These findings are helpful in understanding the impact of school-specific attributes on young people's social-emotional development from pre- to mid-adolescence.

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