Both, national and international studies show that in inclusive schooling settings children with special educational needs (SEN) are more likely to be rejected than their peers without SEN (Kavale & Forness, 1996). A large body of studies already established the relationship between social acceptance and several individual characteristics of rejected children and their classmates (e.g. school performance, social skills, personality traits; Garrote, 2020; Nakamoto & Schwartz, 2010; Newcomb et al., 1993). However, the overall contributions of those individual characteristics are rather small and cannot fully explain social exclusion (Nakamoto & Schwartz). Therefore, in recent years a growing body of studies, relying on social referencing theory (Feinman, 1992), focused on how teachers shape the social hierarchies in their classrooms (e.g. Huber et al, 2018; White & Jones, 2000).

Social referencing describes the phenomenon that faced with new or uncertain situations (younger) children use adult role models as a reference when evaluating these situations. While in everyday life parents are the obvious reference models children rely on, teachers are the most important social reference for children in school settings (Webster & Foschi, 1992) who children also rely on when evaluating their peers (McAuliffe, Hubbard & Romano, 2009). Several studies already found evidence that (perceived) attitudes by teachers’ towards a specific child as well as the relationship quality between the teacher and a child are predictive for being accepted by peers (Hendrickx et al., 2017; Farmer et al., 2011).

One way teachers provide information about their relationship with a specific child is through public feedback (Webster & Foschi, 1992). In this context, it is assumed that children observe and use feedback towards another schoolchild as a social reference for the relationship of the teacher and a particular child. Generally speaking, children who receive positive feedback from teachers thus would be more likely to be socially accepted by their classmates than those who receive negative feedback. However, previous studies suggest this relationship but don’t consider existing feedback research (Huber et al., 2018; White & Jones, 2000; White & Kistner, 1992) and thus don’t go beyond distinguishing positive and negative feedback.

Our paper tries to clarify these findings by following Hattie and Timperly’s (2007) conceptualization of feedback based on the factors feedback valence (positive/negative) and feedback focus (personal/task). (1) The feedback valence describes the overall quality of a feedback and is either positive or negative. (2) The feedback focus describes the level at which a feedback is directed: While feedback focussing on the task is concerned with the quality of the solving of a task (e.g. “You need to pay more attention to punctuation in your writing, Peter), feedback with a personal focus puts the person at the receiving end of the feedback into the center (e.g. “You are a great student, Jane”).

In this context and in line with previous research, we first assume a more general main effect of feedback valence on social acceptance (hypothesis 1). Second, as feedback with a personal focus compared to feedback with a focus on the task might include more relational information or information that might be interpreted as such, we expect this effect to be moderated by the feedback focus (hypothesis 2). 

N = 737 third and fourth graders from 32 primary school classes (Mage = 9.33, SDage = 0.80) participated in an experiment using an animated video in a pre-post-design. The experiment first introduced a fictional schoolchild and asked for participants’ initial social acceptance using three sociometric items (α = .87). Next, participants watched a video about one school day of the fictional schoolchild. The video was comprised of several scenes with each representing a different aspect of school performance and school subject, e.g. one scene showed the child reading a text aloud to the class. Each scene ended with the teacher giving (public) feedback to the fictional schoolchild. Participants were randomly assigned to one level of school performance (high/average/low) and one of four feedback conditions with each being a combination of the two factors feedback valence (positive/negative) and feedback focus (personal/task). The experiment concluded with participants again being asked for the social acceptance of the fictional schoolchild using three sociometric items.

Due to the nested structure of the data (multiple measures over time nested in children) hypotheses were tested with multilevel regression models using R and the package lme4 (Bates et al., 2015). We found a significant interaction effect for time and feedback valence on social acceptance (hypothesis 1). Children who watched the fictional school child getting negative feedback from the teacher subsequently showed a significantly lower social acceptance towards the child than those who saw the child getting positive feedback. We also found a significant interaction effect for time, feedback valence, and feedback focus (hypothesis 2) indicating that feedback with a personal focus has a higher impact on social acceptance than feedback with a focus on the task. These results are on the one hand (hypothesis 1) in line with previous research (e.g. Huber et al. 2018) but on the other hand (hypothesis 2) also shed light on factors that make social referencing more likely. Considering children with SEN are at higher risk of receiving negative feedback, it seems crucial for teachers to know under what circumstances (public) feedback might affect social acceptance to either avoid negative consequences of feedback or to make use of feedback to promote social acceptance. In the paper presentation, these practical implications, as well as methodological limitations of the experimental design of our study, will be discussed.

Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. Farmer, T. W., McAuliffe Lines, M., & Hamm, J. V. (2011). Revealing the invisible hand: the role of teachers in children's peer experiences. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 32(5), 247–256. Feinman, S. (1992). Social Referencing and Conformity. In S. Feinman (Ed.), Social referencing and the social construction of reality in infancy (pp. 229–268). New York: Plenum Press. Garrote, A. (2020). Academic achievement and social interactions: a longitudinal analysis of peer selection processes in inclusive elementary classrooms. Frontiers in Education, 5, 197. Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112. Hendrickx, M. M. H. G., Mainhard, T., Boor-Klip, H. J., & Brekelmans, M. (2017). Our teacher likes you, so I like you: a social network approach to social referencing. Journal of School Psychology, 63, 35–48. Huber, C., Gerullis, A., Gebhardt, M. & Schwab, S. (2018). The impact of social referencing on social acceptance of children with disabilities and migrant background: an experimental study in primary school settings. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 33(2), 269-285. Kavale, K. A., & Forness, S. R. (1996). Social skill deficits and learning disabilities: A meta-analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 29(3), 226–237. McAuliffe, M. D., Hubbard, J. A., & Romano, L. J. (2009). The role of teacher cognition and behavior in children's peer relations. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 37(5), 665–677. Nakamoto, J., & Schwartz, D. (2010). Is peer victimization associated with academic achievement? A meta-analytic review. Social Development, 19(2), 221–242. Newcomb, A. F., Bukowski, W. M., & Pattee, L. (1993). Children's peer relations: A meta-analytic review of popular, rejected, neglected, controversial, and average sociometric status. Psychological Bulletin, 113(1), 99–128. Webster, M., & Foschi, M. (1992). Social Referencing and Theories of Status and Social Interaction. In S. Feinman (Ed.), Social referencing and the social construction of reality in infancy (pp. 269–296). New York: Plenum Press. White, K. J., & Jones, K. (2000). Effects of Teacher Feedback on the Reputations and Peer Perceptions of Children with Behavior Problems. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 76(4), 302–326. White, K. J., & Kistner, J. (1992). The influence of teacher feedback on young children's peer preferences and perceptions. Developmental Psychology, 28(5), 933–940.