What is the role of teachers in helping children and teen’s development? What is the influence of peer groups on children and teens? What is the influ

Belonging to and exclusion from the

peer group in schools: influences on

adolescents’ moral choices

Luba Falk Feigenberg*a, Melissa Steel Kinga, Dennis J. Barra,b

and Robert L. Selmana

a Harvard University, USA; bFacing History and Ourselves, Boston, USA

This paper reports on a mixed methods study of adolescents’ responses to case material about

social exclusion. First, a qualitative coding method is presented that describes the way adolescents

choose and justify strategies to negotiate such situations. The responses were then analysed

quantitatively using chi square tests and multinomial logistic regression. Findings indicate that

adolescents’ interpretation of their social context was a significant factor in their choice of strategy.

Those adolescents who invoked normative rules and conventions as the most salient justifications

were more likely to recommend bystanding rather than joining in the exclusion. However,

adolescents who viewed the protagonist’s own choice as an opportunity for making long-lasting

positive changes in the social environment were more likely to recommend helping the victim.

Gender and school context also were associated with adolescents’ choice of strategy. Implications

for research in moral development as well as practical implications for school-based programming

are discussed.

Introduction: the problem of peer group social exclusion and bullying in the

schools

In her ninth grade class on ethics and history, Eve Shalen wrote an essay about her

involvement with an incident of social exclusion and ostracism that occurred in early

adolescence. About her experience with social relations in middle school, she says:

My eighth grade consisted of 28 students most of whom knew each other from the age

of five or six. Although we grew up together, we still had class outcasts. From second

grade on, a small élite group spent a large portion of their time harassing two or three of

the others. I was one of those two or three, though I don’t know why…The harassment

was subtle. It came in the form of muffled giggles when I talked and rolled eyes when I

turned around. If I was out in the playground and approached a group of people, they

*Corresponding author. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Larsen Hall 610, Appian Way,

Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Email: [email protected]

Journal of Moral Education

Vol. 37, No. 2, June 2008, pp. 165–184

ISSN 0305-7240 (print)/ISSN 1465-3877 (online)/08/020165-20

# 2008 Journal of Moral Education Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/03057240802009306

often fell silent. Sometimes someone would not see me coming and I would catch the

tail end of a joke at my expense.

There was another girl in our class who was perhaps even more rejected than I. One

day during lunch…one of the popular girls in the class came up to me to show me

something she said I wouldn’t want to miss. We walked to a corner of the playground

where a group of three or four sat. One of them read aloud from a small book, which I

was told was the girl’s diary. I sat down and, laughing till my sides hurt, heard my voice

finally blend with the others. Looking back, I wonder how I could have participated in

mocking this girl when I knew perfectly well what it felt like to be mocked myself. I

would like to say that if I were in that situation today I would react differently, but I

can’t honestly be sure. (Facing History and Ourselves, 1994, pp. 29–30).

Experiences of social exclusion such as this are quite common to early adolescents

who struggle to navigate social relationships every day. Much of the discourse on

social exclusion focuses on why adolescents who may ‘know better’ still join in when

they see their peers mocking or harassing another student (Bosworth et al., 1999;

Nansel et al., 2001). However, there is little research that examines what might help

adolescents ‘think beyond’ not joining in and, instead, influence them to get

involved to help the victim. In other words, what factors might influence adolescents

to choose to stand up for themselves or others?

In this paper, we explore the way early adolescents think about the choice to

bystand, join the perpetrators or defend the victim in a situation of social exclusion,

such as the one Eve Shalen describes in her school. First, we review the research

literature on how various factors—social cognitive, cultural and contextual—influence

adolescents’ choices about difficult social actions and decisions. We then describe the

construction and validation of a framework to classify both the range of strategies

adolescents recommend in response to the In Group Assessment, a qualitative

measure based on the Eve Shalen case material, as well as the justifications they give

for their choice (Barr, 2005). Next, we present findings about the influence of school

contextual factors on the variation in social choices. We conclude with a discussion of

the implications of our findings for research and practice in moral development and

educational programming to reduce social exclusion.

Social exclusion: definitions of the problem

Often defined as a physical, verbal or psychological action intended to cause fear,

distress or harm to the victim, social exclusion during childhood and adolescence

occurs within the context of an asymmetric power relationship, where a more

powerful child, or group of children, oppresses the less powerful one(s) (Olweus,

1993). Social exclusion in adolescence often includes ostracism, teasing, harassment

and bullying (Swain, 1998). Research in the US suggests between 5 and 27% of

adolescents admit to having excluded a peer (Nansel et al., 2001; Dake et al., 2003).

It is now recognised that social exclusion is seldom the action of only one

individual. The group dynamics required for and created by such behaviour

contributes to the overall culture and climate of schools and social groups. Not

surprisingly, schools with higher rates of exclusion are perceived as less safe (Astor

et al., 2002; Dupper & Meyer-Adams, 2002). Faced with such statistics, schools

166 L. F. Feigenberg et al.

struggle to find effective responses to social exclusion and to prevent its negative

consequences in their hallways, cafeterias, gyms and classes.

Further, rigid rules and inflexible consequences in schools typically address the

behaviour of those identified as the ‘perpetrators’ but not that of the ‘bystanders’—

those students who either passively watch or actively incite the exclusion (Staub, 2002).

In fact, even though most adolescents believe social exclusion is wrong, they often do

not try to intervene and usually stand by passively (Tisak et al., 1997; O’Connell et al.,

1999). In order to address this problem, it is important to understand what may cause

adolescents to make choices about their own behaviour in these contexts.

Theoretical orientations and empirical evidence: a brief review

Psychological theories that focus on child and adolescent social cognitive

development primarily describe the quality of individuals’ thought processes that

relate to or influence their social behaviour. Social information processing models,

for example, portray the cognitive steps necessary for individuals to make decisions

about social action (Dodge, 1986; Dodge & Price, 1994; Crick & Dodge, 1996).

Adolescents engage in a series of thought processes and ultimately choose an action

from a range of perceived possibilities. Antisocial behaviour, or social exclusion, may

result from misperceptions of the actions and intentions of others, a deficiency that

may occur at any point in the social information process (Fontaine et al., 2002).

According to these models, adolescents’ choices are due to internal cognitive

structures and abilities where the selection of exclusionary behaviour may be an

indicator of inaccurate or distorted social perceptions (Camodeca et al., 2003).

Other cognitive developmental approaches examine adolescents’ thought processes

as related to social interactions or the understanding, negotiation and meaning of

social relationships over time (Selman, 2003). This approach focuses specifically on

the conditions under which children develop and use the ability to coordinate different

social perspectives (Collins, 2002), rather than conceptualising social competence as a

sequence of social cognitive information processing steps (Selman, 1980; Keller &

Edelstein, 1991). For example, adolescents who have more difficulty coordinating

their own and others’ points of view are at greater risk for peer conflict and may be

more likely to participate in social exclusion (Selman et al., 1992, 1997). Like social

informational processing models, however, many earlier social cognitive-develop-

mental theories (Kohlberg, 1971) located the impetus for adolescents’ choice of social

action primarily in the minds of individuals or at the individual level of analysis. By

focusing mainly on individuals’ social cognitions, these models often do not consider

how other factors may influence adolescents’ social choices, especially under

challenging, complex or ambiguous conditions (Steinberg, 2003).

Differences between adolescents’ social viewpoints and actions can also be attributed

to population level or cultural factors. Research on individuals’ membership of broad

social systems suggests that group affiliation, such as gender, race or socioeconomic

status, may shape the way they think about their choices about behaviour. For example,

gender has been shown to be an important influence on social exclusion. When faced

Moral choices 167

with such situations, early adolescent boys tend to prefer to join in with the

perpetrators, while girls tend to side with the victim (Nansel et al., 2001; Seals &

Young, 2003). In contrast, research that focuses specifically on social aggression—

defined as the manipulation of a relationship in order to damage ‘another’s self-esteem,

social status or both’ (Underwood, 2003, p. 23)—suggests girls are much more likely

than boys to be the perpetrators of socially aggressive acts (Crick et al., 1996; Galen &

Underwood, 1997). Further, girls are expected, by both boys and girls, to be the

perpetrators of socially aggressive acts (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). Lastly, there appear

to be gender differences in preferred coping strategies and desire for adult intervention

in situations of social exclusion (Naylor et al., 2001; Gamliel et al., 2003).

While gender plays an important role in adolescents’ behaviour in social exclusion,

such behaviour does not appear to vary by race or ethnicity, at least in the US (Leff et

al., 1999; Seals & Young, 2003). Yet, when cultural characteristics are considered as

part of the larger context within which exclusion occurs, adolescents view race, as well

as gender, as important factors in thinking about when such behaviour may be

appropriate. For example, adolescents consider others%

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