Influencia de las relaciones entre iguales en el rendimiento académico en niños/as de 5º y 6º de Educación Primaria

Abstract

Empirical study whose objective was to test whether peer relationships in children of primary education affect their academic achievement and whether there were sex differences . Participants were 313 students distributed in 14 classes of 5th and 6th grades in four primary education schools in the Valencian Community . We investigated the sociometric status of each student in their classroom . Academic achievement was measured by the marks of obtained by the students in mathematics and social sciences . The results showed that there were no significant differences between preferred and average students in academic achievement , but there were between rejected children and their average and preferred peers , as already found in prior research . As for sex differences , we found that girls generally had berer academic results than boys . Analyzing by sociometric status, there were no significant differences in the preferred and rejected groups according to sex, but there were significant differences in the average group , where the average girls obtained berer academic results than average boys . We discussed the results in the light of previous studies and concluded that peer rejection is associated with the worst academic achievement and that the fact of being girl does not have a positive impact when a child is rejected , although it has when the child is sociometrically average .