Journal article

Classroom peer effects on adaptive behavior development of students with intellectual disabilities

IPC

  • 2021
Published in:
  • Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. - 2021, vol. 76, p. 101327
English Children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities (ID) exhibit low levels of adaptive behaviors (i.e., conceptual, social, and practical skills). In typical development such competences are learned in part from peers at school. Less is known about such influence from classmates in students with ID. We investigated classroom-level peer effects in 1125 students with ID (69% boys), mean age 11.30 years (SD = 3.75), who attended special needs schools. School staff members reported on students’ adaptive behaviors at the beginning and end of one school year. Multilevel analyses showed a classroom peer context effect for conceptual skills, controlling for students’ earlier skills, age, and gender. This indicated that students’ individual conceptual skills increased more, when their classmates in special needs classrooms had greater conceptual skills. No such classroom peer effect was found for social and practical competences. Implications for supporting children and adolescents with ID are discussed.
Faculty
Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines
Department
Département de Pédagogie spécialisée
Language
  • English
Classification
Special education
Other electronic version

Published version

License
CC BY-NC-ND
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/320010
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