The Role of Socio-Moral Development, Cross-Group Friendship, and Teacher Behavior for Peer Group Inclusivity

Abstract

In recent years, schools have become widely diverse and include children of various academic and ethnic backgrounds. This growing diversity may pose a risk for children from minority groups of being socially excluded. Social exclusion is a complex phenomenon that is influenced by different developmental processes: First, children’s development of intergroup knowledge and identification; and second, children’s socio-moral development. To account for this complexity, this dissertation combines theories and current findings from social and developmental psychology to investigate how the interplay between these developmental processes leads to children’s decisions to exclude their peers. Moreover, from a multi-level perspective, this dissertation investigated social exclusion at three different levels: The individual level (i.e., students’ socio-moral development), the dyadic and peer-group level (i.e., student’s relationships), and the classroom level (i.e., how teachers’ behavior influences children’s socio-moral competencies). Based on the findings from six different research papers, this dissertation advances recent theories on the study of children’s peer relationships and social exclusion and informs practical applications of how to enhance social inclusion.