Chapter 6The Peer Context In Middle Childhood

Interactions

Child-child interaction differs from adult-child interaction in many ways. Barker and Wright (1955) observed that children's actions toward adults are weighted mainly with appeals and submissive acts; actions of adults toward children consist mainly of dominance and nurturance. These interactions are thus concentrated in two complementary issues: the child's dependency on the adult and the adult's need to control the child. In contrast, the most common actions of children toward child associates are sociability and assertiveness/aggression.

Cross-cultural observations (Whiting and Whiting, 1975) are consistent with these results, as are recent interviews with American schoolchildren (Youniss, 1980). Children see themselves as recipients of adult actions rather than vice versa. In contrast, child-child interactions are seen as revolving around equal exchanges between the actors. Concordantly, "kindnesses" in adult-child interactions are conceived as actions confirming complementary expectations, whereas kindnesses in child-child interactions consist of actions confirming more egalitarian expectations. Close relationships (e.g., friendships or parent-child relationships) usually involve mixtures of complementary and equal interactions, but this does not negate the thesis that children differentiate between adult-child and child-child relationships mainly in terms of this dichotomy.

The time that children spend together and the nature of their interactions when they are on their own are not well documented. Patterns of interaction have been most extensively examined in ad hoc settings, mainly schools, and it is largely on an anecdotal basis that we have concluded that more and more time is devoted to child-child interactions in middle childhood. Observations of 8 children, each covering an entire day (Barker and Wright, 1955), revealed that approximately 85 percent of the children's activities were social and that the proportion spent with child associates rose from 10 percent at age 2, to 20 percent at age 4, to slightly over 40 percent between ages 7 and 11. The school-age children engaged in an average of 299 behavior episodes (i.e., interactive segments marked by constant direction and intent) with other child associates in a typical school day, 45 of these with siblings and the remainder with friends. Detailed records based on observations of one of these children (Barker and Wright, 1951) indicate that most of these episodes consisted of play or "fooling around" and that the interactions consisted mainly of sociability and dominance exchanges. Although these measures are difficult to translate into time units, it can nevertheless be concluded that time spent with child associates consumed hours rather than minutes.

More recent time-use studies clarify, to some extent, what children do with one another on their own. Even so, the frequencies of their activities and the structures of the social interactions remain unstudied. Using interviews with 764 sixth graders in Oakland, California, Medrich et al. (1982) asked the children to enumerate "what you like to do when you are with your friends." Responses covered a range indicating that, in contrast to time spent alone, children spend their time with their friends engaged in physically active or "robust" interactions. Team sports accounted for 45 percent and 26 percent of the enumerations of boys and girls, respectively, although other types of robust interactions such as "general play," "going places,'' and "socializing" were more commonly mentioned by girls than by boys. These interactions occurred most often outside the home, although close to home and more often in private than in public places (e.g., parks and playgrounds), and were segregated by sex.

Overall, it appears that a substantial portion of the schoolchild's daily existence is spent in peer interaction and that the content of this interaction consists mainly of play and socializing. Children in many cultures also share work experiences in which they take turns and substitute for one another to a greater extent than when they work with adults (Weisner, 1982). The proportion of child-child interactions spent in work and in play thus varies from culture to culture, but the nature of this interaction seems universally to be more egalitarian than the interaction that occurs between children and adults.

The two classes of child-child interaction most extensively studied in developmental terms are aggression and prosocial activity. Overall, aggression decreases in middle childhood, although both mode and content change (Parke and Slaby, 1983). Physical aggression (more common among boys than among girls) and quarreling decrease, although abusive verbal exchanges increase. Schoolchildren typically engage in instrumental aggression (directed toward retrieving objects and the like) less frequently than younger children, although person-directed hostile aggression is more common among older ones. Increasingly salient in middle childhood are insults, derogation, and other threats to self-esteem (Hartup, 1974). Between ages 6 and 12, aggressive boys are more ready to attribute hostile intent to others than are nonaggressive boys. In addition, their associates more often attribute hostile intentions to aggressive than nonaggressive boys, and the former are more often targets of aggression (Dodge, 1980; Dodge and Frame, 1982). Individual differences in aggression among school-age males thus come to be associated with social cognitive biases (a willingness to perceive hostility in others), negative experiences with others, and "bad" social reputations.

Certain studies indicate that sharing and other forms of altruism increase in middle childhood; others suggest that these growth functions are more complex (Radke-Yarrow et al., 1983). In one investigation, for example, no relationship was found between age and the amount of sharing among kindergarten and second and fourth grade students, but among the older children more individuals shared, more individuals shared in "complex" situations, and more advanced reasoning was used to rationalize the altruism (Bar-Tal et al., 1980). Still other evidence suggests that age differences in altruism vary according to context. Kindergarten children were found to intervene directly in assisting another child with a difficult task, but third graders differentiated their assistance according to the situation—the older children would usually offer suggestions or assistance before actually giving it, and sometimes intervention would be withheld altogether (Milburg, McCabe, and Kobasigawa, unpublished data). Thus, there is evidence that complex attributions become increasingly involved in prosocial interactions as well as aggressive interactions in middle childhood.

Competition, in contrast to cooperation, increases with age when rewards are allocated in proportion to the number of points accumulated in a game (Avellar and Kagan, 1976) or when points are tallied (McClintock, 1974). These age gradients occur more clearly in some cultures (the United States, Japan) than in others (Mexico, Kenya). With outcome controlled, competitive preferences are not as clearly evident, and in some tasks cooperation increases with age (Kagan et al., 1977; Skarin and Moely, 1976). Chronological age and goal structure thus seem to interact in children's cooperative and competitive choices.

Studies of American children reveal that increases in competition under winner-takes-all conditions occur mainly in the preschool years; cooperation under shared reward conditions increases mainly between ages 6 and 8; and age differences in individualistic (proportional reward) conditions vary according to the manner in which a child's gains are linked to the gains of others (McClintock and Moskowitz, 1976; McClintock et al., 1977). With time, children differentially use strategies that coincide with the goal structures associated with obtaining valued outcomes. Children do not simply become more competitive or cooperative as they grow older. They become sensitive to the contingencies controlling the incentives that are important to them. Again, cognitive and social factors seem to determine the nature of child-child interactions in middle childhood.

More detailed studies, including direct assessment of the attributions made by children in distress or conflict situations, are relatively rare. We know that (a) the social cues used in interactions (e.g., facial expression, vocal intonation) are encoded with increasing accuracy between ages 6 and 10 (Girgus and Wolf, 1975); (b) visual attention is increasingly utilized in conversation (Levine and Sutton-Smith, 1973); (c) increases occur in speakers' abilities to transmit information about simple problems to listeners and to respond appropriately to queries from their listeners, and listeners' utilization of feedback improves (see, e.g., Karabenick and Miller, 1977); (d) abilities to infer motivation and intent in simulated social situations increase in middle childhood, although these trends are most evident in cognitively complex situations (see Shantz, 1983); and (e) increases occur in children's abilities to integrate two sources of information as opposed to one (Brady et al., 1983). These results suggest that a variety of cognitive constraints on social interaction become less evident in middle childhood. These constraints appear to involve the coding, storage, and retrieval of information as well as the integration and application of information in social situations.

Existing studies thus provide a general characterization of child-child interactions between ages 6 and 12. First, time spent with child associates increases. Second, children become more adept at sending and receiving messages, in utilizing information from a variety of sources to determine their actions toward other children, in making causal attributions, and in coordinating their actions with those of others. We are only beginning, however, to understand the manner in which changes in the content and structure of child-child interactions reflect changes in cognitive functioning (Hartup et al., 1983).

Relationships

Groups

Groups exist when social interaction occurs over time among three or more children, values are shared, the members have a sense of belonging, and a structure exists to support the activities of the collective. Empirical studies have concentrated on three issues: group formation, norms, and structures.

Setting Conditions

The conditions of settings constrain child-child interactions (Barker and Wright, 1951). Nevertheless, we have no clear idea about where children spend time when they are on their own, let alone what social experience is like in these places. Enough has been accomplished to demonstrate that child-child interactions vary according to conditions of the setting, but no "ecology of the peer context" emerges from this material.

Playthings constrain the amount and maturity of child-child interactions, as examination of the protocols from One Boy's Day (Barker and Wright, 1951) shows. Other than the documentation that physical activities promote "robust" interactions and that nonphysical activities are especially associated with helping behaviors (Gump et al., 1957), little is known about playthings and play situations as constraints on social interactions in middle childhood.

The availability of resources and the space with which to use them bear on social interactions. Crowding effects have been studied mainly with younger children, and methodological flaws mar many of the studies with school-age children. Space variations apparently do not affect either positive social interaction or aggression in a linear mode. Only when space per child is severely limited is positive interaction reduced and negative interaction increased. With severe crowding, children experience emotional arousal and increased competitiveness (Aiello et al., 1979). But there is also evidence that access to resources may be more important in determining the nature of child-child interactions than the amount of space available (Smith and Connolly, 1977).

The number of children congregated together is also salient even though, in the primary grades, children tend to interact in dyads rather than in larger sets. Three-child (and larger) enclaves become more common during middle childhood on playgrounds and in parks (Eifermann, 1971), but dyadic interaction, with its concentration of social attention, remains evident. Interaction is more intense and cohesive in smaller enclaves than in larger ones. Consensus in group discussions is easier to reach and leaders exert more extensive influence, even though the members of small enclaves have a sense of self-importance and coalitions are less common (Hare, 1953). Given that children remain committed to dyadic interactions throughout middle childhood, it is to be regretted that we do nor know whether the nature of these exchanges varies according to the size of the groups in which they are embedded.

Problems

Every social situation contains some element of challenge, something to be done, something to activate or energize the actors. Multiple challenges exist in most social situations, and these may form a hierarchy according to their relative importance. Different challenges may be important at different times. In some instances the main tasks are externally imposed and evident to everyone; in others the tasks are not well defined, and the participants must construct the task as they go along. Only recently has there been much interest in tasks and their role in child-child relationships. Illustrations can be selected, however, that demonstrate (a) the effects of a task on social interaction, (b) changes that occur with age in the tasks children consider important, and (c) individual differences in the tactics children use in certain situations.

The strategic demands of a social situation vary according to context. Children usually understand, for example, that when a child is being teased by a number of children the most appropriate way to assist the victim is through ordering and commanding the teasers (Ladd and Oden, 1979). When encountering a solitary child who has been teased, however, appropriate assistance is understood to include consolation, instruction, and suggestions of alternative actions. Children who do not endorse these strategic norms but instead endorse idiosyncratic social strategies turn out to be relatively low in the sociometric hierarchy. Thus, a child's endorsement of normative strategies in certain task situations seems to be central in social effectiveness.

When social situations are not well structured, children construct their own goals, and to some extent these change between ages 6 and 12. Renshaw and Asher (1983) showed third- and sixth-grade children four hypothetical social situations (social contact with strange children, group entry, a friendship issue, and an instance of conflict) and conducted interviews about the goals and strategies the children considered important. Both the third and the sixth graders recognized "friendly" goals as most appropriate in each of these social situations, but, when asked to mention their own goals, the older children mentioned friendly ones more often and the younger children were more often concerned with defending their rights. Endorsed social strategies also differed according to age. The older children, in contrast to the younger ones, more often were outgoing and accommodative, indicating more sophisticated adjustment to the social task.

One task that has received considerable recent attention is group entry. Results indicate that children vary in the extent to which they view entry as important as well as in the tactics they use to enter a group (Dodge et al., 1983; Putallaz and Gottman, 1981). As it turns out, successful entry usually involves sequences of tactics that progress from the use of low-risk ones (e.g., waiting and hovering on the edges of a group) to high-risk ones (e.g., statements and requests). Moreover, the child must then use high-risk tactics that maintain the group's frame of reference (e.g., calling attention to what the group is doing) rather than disrupting it (e.g., calling attention to oneself). The effectiveness of these strategies has been demonstrated among children interacting with familiar associates as well as unfamiliar ones and in naturalistic as well as laboratory settings. Some evidence suggests that the high-risk tactics that work are more consistently used by children toward the end of middle childhood than at the beginning (Lubin and Forbes, 1981). Furthermore, their use differentiates popular, neglected, and rejected children (Dodge et al., 1983; Putallaz and Gottman, 1981).

There is every reason to believe, then, that tasks interact with developmental and clinical status in determining the social strategies that children use with their associates. Even a child's understanding of what the social task is may index relevant individual differences in social functioning. Clearly, additional work in this important new area should be encouraged.

Actors

Familial Correlates Of Peer Competence

In early childhood, secure attachments between a child and his or her caretakers promote exploration of the environment, including the other children who inhabit it. Mothers arrange contacts between their young children and other youngsters, believing this to be desirable. In addition, social interactions within the family promote individuation and the growth of self-esteem—conditions that maximize the chances of success once peer interaction begins. Consistent with these notions are empirical studies showing secure attachments in the first 2 years to be antecedents of sociability, empathy, and effectiveness in child-child relationships at ages 3 and 4 (Waters et al., 1979).

The connections between family and peer relationships extending into middle childhood are not well documented. One would expect parent-child relationships marked by emotional support and appropriate demands for compliance to continue to be associated with positive outcomes in child-child relationships. And, indeed, cross-sectional studies reveal that mothers and fathers of well-liked children are emotionally supportive, infrequently frustrating and punitive, and discouraging of antisocial behavior in their children (Winder and Rau, 1962).

Other investigators (Hoffman, 1961) have observed the antecedents of self-confidence, assertiveness, and effectiveness with other children to include (a) among boys, affection from both mothers and fathers accompanied by dominance from fathers but not mothers, and (b) among girls, affection from both parents accompanied by dominance from mothers but not fathers. In addition, sociometric status is known to be positively correlated with parental affection and the absence of family tension (Cox, 1966) as well as with parents' satisfaction with their children (Elkins, 1958). No evidence suggests that the child-rearing correlates of social competence in middle childhood differ in any substantive way from their correlates in early childhood, even though specific exchanges between parents and their children that can be called supportive or dominant undoubtedly change.

Assuming that family and peer relationships are interactive in individual development, one would expect disturbance in one context (e.g., the family) to disturb the child in the other (e.g., child-child relationships). For example, unemployment, terminal illness within the family, and family conflict would be expected to affect the child's functioning with other children. Scattered evidence is consistent with this notion. Girls ages 10-13 whose fathers were unemployed for a substantial time during the depression reported more strain in their relationships with age-mates, less self-confidence, and more concern about having friends than did girls from less deprived families (Elder, 1974). Time spent with peers and popularity, however, did not differ between girls in these two types of families. Perturbations traced to the father's unemployment were not evident among boys. The data suggest that the earlier maturing of the girls and their greater concern with grooming and attractiveness may underlie these findings. In addition, boys may have been buffered from the impact of their father's unemployment by their own increased work activities.

Divorce and its impact on socialization in the peer context have not been examined extensively with children ages 6-12. Studies of younger children (e.g., Hetherington, 1979) indicate that age-mate relationships suffer initially with the occurrence of divorce and that "recovery" coincides with stabilization of interpersonal relationships within the family. Young boys are more at risk for peer difficulties in the aftermath of divorce than young girls are—the latter apparently receiving more frequent emotional support from their teachers and mothers.

One interesting notion is that in middle childhood friends and other associates assist in the amelioration of the anxiety associated with divorce, in the resolution of loyalty conflicts, and in coping with the economic and practical exigencies deriving from the divorce. One investigation suggests these dynamics among boys but not girls (Wallerstein and Kelly, 1981). In this instance, school-age boys were able to turn to friends, seemingly to put distance between themselves and the troubled household. Girls, however, entered into friendships only when their relationships with their mothers were supportive. Otherwise, girls felt it necessary to abstain from interacting extensively with other children and were constrained from entering friendships. This sex difference was not evident among preschool children nor among adolescents in this investigation. Thus, the peer concomitants of divorce in middle childhood need further examination. The extent to which children use their friends instead of or in addition to their families for emotional and social support in middle childhood is an interesting question, especially since those adaptations may be sex linked.

Parents Versus Peers: The Issue Of Cross-Pressures

The conventional wisdom stresses that the carryover from peer relationships to family relationships in middle childhood is mainly in the form of increased opposition between children and their parents. According to this argument, exposure to age-mates erodes the child's orientation to the family and establishes nonnative opposition. The evidence, however, does not suggest that these oppositions are especially intense before puberty; the opposition revolves mainly around antisocial norms. From one investigation (Berndt, 1979) with children in grades 3, 6, 9, and 11, the most striking results were (a) small decreases in conformity on prosocial issues with both parents and friends, (b) a gradual decline in conformity with parents in neutral situations but little change in conformity to peers, and (c) an increase in peer conformity to antisocial norms between grades 3 and 9 but not beyond. Children thus continue to use their parents as well as their friends as anchors for prosocial activity, disengaging from their parent's mainly as normative anchors in antisocial activity. Other investigators have observed that peer-endorsed standards of misconduct become increasingly salient from grade 3 to 6 and from grade 6 to 8 but not beyond (Bixenstine et al., 1976). The major age changes occurring in response to cross-pressures thus involve antisocial norms; normarive opposition increases as puberty approaches.

Changes in the general attitudes of children toward parents and peers are similar: (a) attitudes toward both parents and peers are more favorable than unfavorable at all ages, (b) the number of children reporting positive attitudes toward parents declines somewhat during middle childhood and an increase occurs again in middle adolescence, and (c) there is no general increase in the favorability of attitudes toward peers (Harris and Tseng, 1957). Other than a slight dip in the popularity of parents in preadolescence, there is thus no indication that parents are increasingly rejected nor peers increasingly accepted during middle childhood, although individual differences may be wide. By early adolescence, most individuals are able to synthesize their understandings and expectations of their parents and their peers.

Taken together, the literature connecting family and peer relationships is narrowly focused. We know the dimensions in child-rearing that predict sociometric status in middle childhood but little about changes in the family as these may bring about changes in child-child relationships. We know that nonnative concordance and discordance change with age, but we know little about the conditions that bring about these changes. We know little about the strategies that parents use for knowing where their children are, arranging contacts with other children, and coaching them in social skills. What attention is given by parents to children's thinking about their companions? Do parents contribute to the child's increasingly differentiated and "psychological" perceptions of their associates? Are there similarities between the theories of personality and attributional conventions used by parents with their children and those used by children with their associates? In what ways does intimacy within family relationships carry forward into the close relationships emerging between children and their friends? These issues cannot be addressed without concurrent studies in both the family and the peer contexts.

Classroom Conditions And Peer Interactions

Numerous classroom conditions influence child-child interactions. The number of students, the physical arrangements, open versus traditional classroom structures, curriculum content, and teaching style are known to be correlated with variations in children's interactions with one another. Studies of these setting conditions are not easy to design, however, owing to the common confounding of these conditions with one another. For example, friendships and cliques are more numerous in large classes than in smaller ones (Hallinan, 1976) and group activity is more frequent. And these effects depend on the extent to which teachers organize small classes differently from larger ones (Smith and Glass, 1979).

Social interactions in open and traditional classrooms are not the same. Child-child contacts are more numerous in open classrooms, involving both work-oriented and social matters (Minuchin, 1976), and cross-sex and cross-age contacts are more frequent. Cooperative interactions are more common in open classrooms, since cooperative work opportunities are scheduled more often than in traditional settings. Cooperation in out-of-class situations, however, is also more common among children enrolled in open than in traditional classrooms. The induction of generalized cooperative expectations may thus be one outcome of experience in these situations. Nevertheless, the extent to which children create a cooperative ethic on their own in open classrooms is not known. Open classrooms provide a basis for friendship selection that differs from conditions in traditional classrooms. Hallinan (1976) found relatively rigid sociometric hierarchies in traditional classrooms along with clear-cut consensus concerning the identities of popular and isolated children. More diffuse social organizations were observed in open classrooms, with unreciprocated choices occurring less commonly and persisting over a shorter time than in traditional settings. Other investigators (Epstein, 1983) report that more students are selected and fewer are neglected as best friends in open than in traditional situations, with sociometric choices that are more commonly reciprocal. Open settings thus seem to encourage the continuing reorganization of close relationships to a greater extent than traditional settings do.

Curriculum Content

Curricular interventions centered on socialization consist of four main types: moral education, affective education, cooperative learning, and social skills training. Moral education has been studied in numerous variations ranging from the use of lessons that emphasize appropriate moral attitudes and behavior to the creation of ''moral schools." Sometimes moral education consists of discussions about moral principles among the children themselves; other times it consists of the incorporation of moral issues into the curriculum in social studies or literature courses. Lockwood (1978) considered many of these studies to be poorly executed, although well-designed investigations demonstrate that (a) the direct discussion of moral dilemmas results in small advances in the maturity of moral reasoning among children; (b) these advances are more common among younger children than older ones, although individual differences are considerable; and (c) questions remain about the persistence of these advances and their manifestations in behavior. There has been little systematic evaluation of "moral schools" and virtually no effort to document the effects of moral education on child-child interactions. Many unresolved issues remain in evaluating moral education, including the effects of these interventions on children's interactions with one another. Moreover, these issues have been recognized for some time. It is nevertheless curious why we know so little about the effects of moral education on children's relationships with one another.

Model programs of affective education have been used with elementary school children, including the Human Development Program (Bessell and Palomares, 1970), the Affective Education Program (Newberg, 1980), and-the Empathy Training Project (Feshbach, 1979). These and other models emphasize group dynamics, social values, and personal adjustment. Affective education has spread widely through U.S. schools, although definitive evaluation of the impact of these programs on child-child relationships is scarce. Again, Lockwood (1978) evaluated the evidence as showing positive effects on classroom behavior but inconsistent effects on self-esteem, self-concept, personal adjustment, and social values. The Empathy Training Project demonstrated decreases in rated aggression among children in the program and cognitive gains among those children showing the greatest gains in prosocial behavior and the greatest decreases in aggression. Further work with this program is needed, since its effects in nonexperimental settings have not been documented.

Cooperative learning environments promote friendly conversation, sharing, and helping among children, with the reverse being the case in competitive settings (Stendler et al., 1951). Peer tutoring occurs more frequently under cooperative than competitive conditions (DeVries and Edwards, 1972), and altruism occurs more frequently following cooperative than competitive experience (Johnson et al., 1976). In addition, attitudes toward oneself and one's coworkers are more positive as a consequence of cooperative rather than competitive experience. Cooperative classrooms are also more cohesive social units than competitive ones. Cohesiveness in racially integrated classrooms is evident when cooperative experiences prevail, although it is necessary for the contributions of minority children to be recognized as essential to class success in cooperative tasks in order for this to occur (Aronson, 1978).

Social skills training has been used with schoolchildren mainly in an effort to improve the status of isolated and withdrawn children. Numerous interventions have been tried, most based on the hypothesis that such children have difficulties in peer relationships because of their inadequate social skills, e.g., communication skills. Some of these interventions have been based on modeling; others have involved "unprogrammed" opportunities for withdrawn children to interact with better skilled companions. Coaching, which is an intervention that combines direct instruction, opportunities for rehearsal, and corrective feedback, has been used extensively.

The efficacy of modeling and unprogrammed socialization strategies has been demonstrated most thoroughly with preschool children. One investigation revealed that modeling techniques are effective in improving the social status of third- and fourth-grade children (Gresham and Nagle, 1980). Coaching studies have been variable in their outcomes (Combs and Slaby, 1977; Conger and Keane, 1981), but these techniques do seem to be effective in improving the sociometric status of isolated children and in some cases increase the frequency of the child's social contacts. Long-term maintenance of these outcomes has been assessed (Oden and Asher, 1977), although effects outside the school are unknown and effects on measures other than sociometric tests and classroom observations are not well documented. More serious, however, is the scarcity of developmental studies in this area. We know that training in social skills can be effective, but the extent to which outcomes are generalized outside the classroom and the extent to which developmental modifications need to be made in the interventions themselves remain to be evaluated.

Children As Teachers

Believed to benefit both tutor and tutee, peer tutoring has been viewed as a cost-effective instructional supplement in classrooms and as a basic element of socialization in certain cultures—e.g., the USSR. Empirical studies have mostly concerned the outcomes of the tutoring experiences—either for the child doing the teaching or for the child being taught. Benefits to the tutor are believed to include increases in motivation and task involvement that lead to gains in school achievement. Enhancement of self-esteem, prosocial behavior, and attitudes toward school are also cited as tutor benefits. The evidence is not entirely consistent in relation to these outcomes, and there is no obvious reason for the inconsistencies (Hartup, 1983). Tutee benefits are more clear-cut. The training of tutors must be carefully accomplished to maximize tutee outcomes, and maintenance regimes must be closely monitored (see Allen, 1976). Nevertheless, children clearly can teach one another a variety of subjects.

Very little effort has been made to determine the techniques that children use to teach one another. We know that children prefer to teach younger children and, conversely, to be taught by older children. Same-sex tutors and nonevaluative instructional conditions are also preferred (Lohman, 1969). Little is known about the strategies that children use in teaching one another or how strategies vary according to setting. The weight of the evidence suggests that peer teaching resembles adult pedagogics. Cooper et al. (1982) observed that issuing directives, describing the task, and making evaluative comments were the techniques most commonly used in classrooms; demonstration, labeling, pointing, questioning, praise, and criticism were common, too. Kindergarten children were more directive and intrusive than were second graders (especially when the children were asked to assumed a tutor role), but, since these observations were conducted in same-age situations, it is not clear whether the age differences were a function of the developmental status of the tutors, the tutees, or a combination of the two.

As it turns out, school-age children make a variety of instructional accommodations to the age of their tutees. Children instructing younger children use repetitions, strategic advice, progress checkups, direct assistance, and praise more frequently than children who instruct same-age tutees (Ludeke and Hartup, 1983). Children seem to possess ''implicit theories" of teaching that assume younger children to require more cognitive structuring and more supportive and corrective feedback than same-age children. These theories have been studied only in relation to the actions of older children with younger associates, not vice versa; nothing is known about "upward" accommodations. Again, information is not available concerning these accommodations in relation to the magnitude of the age difference between children. Tutoring strategies are more elaborate when the difference between tutor and tutee is 4 years rather than 2 years, but nothing else is known.

Peer And Teacher Norms

Some investigators (Coleman, 1961) have regarded cross-pressures between peer and teacher norms as major sources of tension and dysfunction in schools. Certain evidence is consistent with this notion. Peer standards of misconduct are more readily endorsed by children when these endorsements will be secret than when they will be revealed to parents and teachers (Devereux, 1970). It is also clear that friends are sources of significant variance in the use of leisure time and decisions about whether to smoke or use drugs. But the issue is more complex. Surveys and questionnaires do not reveal that either middle childhood or adolescence is a stormy period of normative dissonance. The notion that adult-child relationships are understood by children to require self-control while peer relationships are based on self-indulgence and unbridled instinctual activity is not substantiated (Emmerich et al., 1971).

A small number of studies tell us about the tacit rules that children use to govern their behavior in the classroom and their notions about the manner in which classrooms work. These studies are largely normative and not addressed to the manner in which children acquire these rules. Nucci and Turiel (1978) observed social transgressions in nursery schools, interviewing the children about these incidents. Their distinctions between conventional transgressions (e.g., playing in the wrong place) and moral transgressions (e.g., taking something that belongs to someone else) agreed most of the time with the distinctions made by adults. Second, fifth, and seventh graders also make these distinctions (Nucci and Nucci, 1979), reacting to conventional transgressions with comments about the rules and to moral transgressions with arguments about the intrinsic implications of these events. Moreover, school rules are seen by children according to these same distinctions; for example, rules about harming others are distinguished from conventions about dress. Most children believed that rules about doing harm are necessary.

Teachers do not always react consistently to conventional and moral transgressions; conventional transgressions are sometimes treated as moral issues and vice versa (Nucci, 1979). The extent of these incongruities and their effects on children (especially their effects on the teacher's credibility) are unknown. And, more broadly, we know little about the effects of different patterns of school authority and organization on children's understanding of social rules and the internalization of responsibility norms.

Missing, too, is information about the child's distinctions between parent-endorsed norms and teacher-endorsed norms. Most of our attention has been given to the differentiation occurring in middle childhood between adult-endorsed (i.e., parents and teachers combined) and peer-endorsed norms. Nevertheless, parents are not teachers. Compliance demands, conduct expectations, and the contingencies involved in the expression of affection and support differ in families and classrooms. Consequently, a differentiated examination of children's reactions to adult authorities needs to be undertaken in order to understand the connections between the family and the peer system, on one hand, and between the peer system and the school, on the other. Investigations focused explicitly on concordance and discordance between teacher-child and parent-child interactions are essential.