Peer effects in the individual and group

URPY#1571545, VOL 0, ISS PEER EFFECTS IN THE INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP LITERACY ACHIEVEMENT OF HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS IN A BI-DIALECTAL CONTEXT S.Joel Warrican, Melissa L Alleyne, Patriann Smith, Jehanzeb Cheema, and James R King QUERY SHEET This page lists questions we have about your paper The numbers displayed at left can be found in the text of the paper for reference In addition, please review your paper as a whole for correctness Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 The reference “Ferreira (2013); Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (2010); United Nations Population Division (2013); Kachru (1986); Nero (2006); Pratt-Johnson (2006); Williams & Carter (2005); Burke and Sass (2013); Moll and Greenberg (1990); Street (1995)” is cited in the text but is not listed in the references list Please either delete the in-text citation or provide full reference details following journal style Please provide complete details for Author (2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2018) The ORCID details of the authors have been validated against ORCID registry please check the ORCID ID details of the authors please advise the running head of this article TABLE OF CONTENTS LISTING The table of contents for the journal will list your paper exactly as it appears below: PEER EFFECTS IN THE INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP LITERACY ACHIEVEMENT OF HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS IN A BI-DIALECTAL CONTEXT S.Joel Warrican, Melissa L Alleyne, Patriann Smith, Jehanzeb Cheema, and James R King 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Reading Psychology, 0:1–31, Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0270-2711 print / 1521-0685 online DOI: 10.1080/02702711.2019.1571545 PEER EFFECTS IN THE INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP LITERACY ACHIEVEMENT OF HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS IN A BI-DIALECTAL CONTEXT S.JOEL WARRICAN Professor and Director of Academic Programming and Delivery Division, Office of the Principal, University of the West Indies, Barbados MELISSA L ALLEYNE Planning and Institutional Research Officer, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados Q3 PATRIANN SMITH Assistant Professor Department of Curriculum and Instruction Language, Diversity and Literacy Studies Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA JEHANZEB CHEEMA Term Assistant Professor Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, School of Business, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA JAMES R KING University of South Florida Childhood Education and Literacy Studies, Tampa, FL, USA The theory of peer effect posits that students who find themselves in the company of high or low performing peers tend to exhibit better academic performance than what is solely attributable to their own individual characteristics In this study, we investigate peer effects within literacy achievement among Trinidadian and Tobagonian youth, using a nationally representative sample of 15-year-old students Findings indicate the presence of a strong literacybased peer effect in mathematics, reading, and science even after controlling for individual demographic differences Peer effect alone explained between 30% and 67% of the total variation in literacy Implications are discussed Address correspondence to Patriann Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Curriculum and Instruction Language, Diversity and Literacy Studies Texas Tech University, 3008 18th Street Box 41071, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA E-mail: patriann.smith@ttu.edu 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 S J WARRICAN et al Introduction Over the years, people with a vested interest in education have been seeking means of optimizing the returns on monies invested in education One of the areas that have been investigated along these lines is the concept of peer effects (Hoxby, 2000) The theory of peer effects suggests that ‘good’ peers have a positive spillover on others while ‘bad’ peers have the reverse effect In the classroom context, high-achieving peers are expected to influence their fellow students to the point where there are learning gains, while exposure to low-achieving peers is likely to produce lower performances among students (Gorman, 2018) While there is some ongoing debate on the influence of peer effects on academic achievement, there is apparent agreement, regardless of philosophy, that school and class composition matter It therefore seems worthwhile to investigate issues related to school and class composition such as peer effects In highlighting the importance of peer effects studies, Hoxby (2000) states that the expectation is that they provide policy makers with information that can assist them in making decisions regarding an efficient distribution of students in schools and classrooms which will in turn inform the human capital investments with a view towards macroeconomic growth Hoxby (2000) cautions, however, about thinking that the theory of peer effects is simply about academic spillovers from peers teaching each other This is indeed part of it, but it includes, for example, the influence of innate ability on peers to the point where students in a class simply want to operate at a standard (be it high or low) similar to that of their colleagues Peer effect is also linked to environmentally determined behavior where, for example, the level of discipline of some students will have an effect on their peers to the point where it can produce either a disruptive or productive classroom Hoxby also posits that peer effect may follow lines of disability, race, gender and family income For example, a disabled child can potentially demand more of the teacher’s time in the classroom, which in turn can affect overall learning Additionally, racial or gender tension in a classroom can have an impact on learning, or parents with greater financial resources can, for example, Q4 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 PEER EFFECTS IN THE INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP LITERACY purchase learning materials that eventually spread over a classroom, resulting in greater academic benefits Recognizing that there has been a plethora of studies in peer effects in the broad field of education, we decided to study the phenomenon in a specific education context where there is an apparent absence of such research For this study, we investigate how peer effects impact students’ literacy performance on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in the Caribbean setting of Trinidad and Tobago We recognize that peer effect could present itself in varying forms, but here, we concentrate on the ultimate effect of literacy performance in a context where the linguistic diversity is not given recognition in the collection of PISA data The twin-island of Trinidad and Tobago, once a colony of Britain, has as its official language Trinidad and Tobago’s Standard English (TSE), but also two unofficial varieties that are widely used by most of its citizens: Trinidadian English-lexicon Creole (TEC) and Tobagonian English-lexicon Creole (TOB) (Ferreira, 2013; Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, 2010) Reports indicate that the youth of Trinidad and Tobago (age 10–24) constituted 22% (0.3 million) of the nation’s population as of 2013 (United Nations Population Division, 2013) According to Craig (2006) and Roberts (2007), the majority of these youth predominantly speak TEC or TOB and therefore use language daily in ways that differ significantly, both syntactically and semantically, from Standard English Regardless, Trinidadian and Tobagonian youth perceive of themselves as Standard English speakers As a result, they tend to identify as first language (L1) speakers of [Standard] English, that is, the standard and accepted form of English in formal settings (Ferreira, 2013) Scholars have observed that the bi-dialectal youth of Trinidad and Tobago become aware of their categorization as non-L1 English speakers only in situations where they are faced with negative reactions of others to their use of English, which often happens when they migrate to a new country (Canagarajah, 1999; Kachru, 1986; Nero, 2006) In the absence of this recognition, the youth remain relatively unaware that TEC and TOB are considered lower on the creole continuum, despite their acknowledgement of the prestige 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 S J WARRICAN et al received by Trinidadian Standard English (Pratt-Johnson, 2006) In doing so, the bi-dialectal adolescents of Trinidad and Tobago reflect a “rather subtle internalization of [English] ‘monolingualism’” (Williams & Carter, 2005, p 238) We posit that peer effect brings with it further complications beyond that of or concomitant with a bi-dialectal language situation that is not formally addressed by the PISA test administration We recognize as a limitation that we cannot investigate the effects of the bi-dialectal factor with peer effects since the students were not given the option of identifying TEC and TOB as their home languages Even with this recognition that we cannot account for the bi-dialectal factor, we think it important enough to highlight in this study as it signals the need for inclusion in future research-related activities such as PISA cycles Peer Effects in Educational Contexts Examining peer effects in educational contexts poses serious challenges to researchers who work within this area of inquiry Staging experimental studies within this context, especially at the classroom level, is usually not feasible and is in fact quite scarce Researchers generally use large, extant data sets in post hoc analyses The majority of these studies rely on statistically generated proxy variables, and as Hoxby (2000) points out, researchers have broad empirical obstacles to work through in their efforts to determine the presence of peer effects For example, they have to ensure that what is presented as evidence of peer effects is not biased by group selection; that is, saying the effect is caused by the group when it could instead be a natural characteristic of the group Perhaps one of the most cited studies in area of peer effects is Hoxby (2000) In studying the phenomenon of peer effects in Texas, Hoxby sought to eliminate the empirical obstacles that she cites as plaguing studies of this nature To address this issue, the researcher implemented two empirical strategies that she reported as being reasonably free of selection bias based on the idea that, although parents may deliberately choose a school for their children based on certain perceived characteristics, and schools may assign students based on ability, 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 Q4 PEER EFFECTS IN THE INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP LITERACY there are still idiosyncratic variations within grade cohorts that are beyond the control of the parents and schools Through these empirical strategies, Hoxby (2000) sought to: (a) identify idiosyncratic variation by comparing adjacent cohorts along the lines of gender and race and (b) identify the idiosyncratic component of each group’s achievement and determine whether the components are correlated (p 36) Hoxby’s results revealed the existence of significant peer effects For example, she found that having a group where the majority of the students are females results in both males and females reflecting higher scores in reading and mathematics In terms of race, she found that in Texas, Black and Hispanic students tend to enter school with low initial achievement As a general finding she discovered that when students are exposed to unusually low performing peers their performance is affected negatively This she found to be particularly evident among Black students when they are placed in groups of weak peers in their own racial group On the other hand, she found that Hispanic students fare better when placed with a majority Hispanic cohort, even if many in the group are weak Her explanation as it relates to the Hispanic phenomenon is that it could be that for the students learning English they are more likely to get support from their peers Although she found little evidence of a general asymmetry such as low achievers having greater gains by being grouped with high achievers and that high achievers lose when grouped with low achievers, Hoxby noted that a student’s test score is estimated to rise by 0.10–0.55 points when he or she is grouped with peers who score one point higher Hoxby’s (2000) finding about Hispanic peers in classrooms, with her explanation regarding the peer effects, also raises questions more broadly relating to peer effects in language learning classrooms There have been some studies that sought to establish peer influence on, for example, English language learners (ELL) For example, Cho (2012) reports on a study that utilized a nationally representative data set of students in early elementary grades to study the effects of ELL students on their nonELL peers in the U.S She found that the presence of an ELL classmate during kindergarten and first grade increased the 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 S J WARRICAN et al likelihood of lower test scores in reading, but not necessarily in math for non-ELL students whose L1 was English These negative effects for reading test score gains were largest for lowincome and for female students Similar findings were observed by Lavy, Passerman, and Schlosser (2008), who conducted a study in Israel to examine the effects of low-ability (enrolled at least year behind their age) students on their classmates The study found that low-ability students affected the academic performance of regular students negatively and that the negative impact was more concentrated among students of low socioeconomic status Lavy et al (2008) highlighted that disruption of classes was one of the effects of the presence of low-ability students in their study They also noted that a major drawback of low-ability students in the study is that they diverted teacher attention from regular students to struggling ones Another study that can have implications for peer effects in a possible language learning context was conducted by Entorf and Lauk (2008) In their study, the researchers specifically investigated the impact of social integration of migrants on peer effects for both natives and migrants using data from 11 countries that participated in the 2000 OECD PISA test They examined the impact on peer effects within and between groups of migrants and found the presence of peer effects However, they found peer effects to be greater among native-tonative and migrant-to-migrant groups when they are in systems where schools are comprehensive (mixed-ability groups) versus those that are non-comprehensive (tracked groups) In systems that were predominantly non-comprehensive, the researchers also found enrollment of students of low socioeconomic standing to be higher in the lower tracks than in those that were predominantly comprehensive They also found that in the noncomprehensive system, it was more likely than in the comprehensive system that the students’ home language would differ from that of the school, and by extension, on formal testing such as that of PISA From their findings, Entorf and Lauk (2008) surmised that non-comprehensive school systems appear to magnify existing educational inequalities between students with lower socioeconomic status and those from more privileged backgrounds 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 Q4 PEER EFFECTS IN THE INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP LITERACY In another study conducted over a 6-year period, Burke and Sass (2013) measured peer effects on classroom achievement using a comprehensive data set comprising data from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), a test designed to ensure that students in elementary through high school are learning the state’s standards After controlling for the fixed inputs of student ability and teacher effectiveness across school level (elementary school, middle school and high school) as they measured for peer effects on academic achievement at classroom level in the areas of mathematics and reading, Burke and Sass found a small but significant effect in the linear model However, they also report that this seemingly significant effect runs the risk of obscuring subtleties in the interactions For example, through the analyses from a non-linear model, the researchers found that the students who were ranked as low ability seemed to benefit less from their high-ability colleagues but more from their average ability peers In addition, the students at the middle of the distribution (average ability) had greater academic spillovers from being in groups with their high-ability peers Interestingly, Burke and Sass (2013) observed that high achievers preferred to be in a group with similar academic performers to themselves, but given the choice, they preferred low-ability peers to middle ones Unlike most studies on the benefits of peer effects, Duflo, Dupas, and Kremer (2011) were able to study the impact of peer effects on achievement in a quasi-experimental setting The researchers compared students’ abilities in a tracked and mixed elementary Kenyan classroom They found that students in tracking schools, regardless of distribution by ability, did significantly better than those in non-tracking ones, a result that they found still present year later when they revisited the schools Duflo et al (2011) also found that students in non-tracking schools scored better when, through random assignment, they were placed with peers with higher initial scores Additionally, while peer effects appeared very strong for the high performing students they seemed to be nonexistent for the middle students and positive but not as strong for low performing students In light of the backdrop of the international literature presented here, we thought it necessary to conduct a study on peer 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 S J WARRICAN et al effects in the Caribbean setting of Trinidad and Tobago We noted that no research of this nature is recorded for the Caribbean region In conceptualizing the study, we recognized the importance of having a reliable data source such as that provided through the OECD PISA database We noted that Trinidad and Tobago is the only Caribbean country to date that has participated in the PISA offering, and as such, that influenced our decision to select it for this study Specifically, we hypothesized that peer effects, that is, the impact of peers on each other’s performance, may cause a shift in results for students of Trinidad and Tobago As was mentioned before, most of the youth of Trinidad and Tobago are bi-dialectal, but with the limitation mentioned earlier of this data not being captured through the PISA exercise, we believe that their true performance on this literacy measure may indeed be unknown We are also concerned that we cannot measure the contribution of the bi-dialectal factor on peer effects in this study, but despite this we thought it necessary to highlight it so as to draw attention to it for future considerations The Program for International Student Assessment PISA is an international literacy measure engineered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to assess the performance of 15-year old youth in the areas of mathematics, science, and reading literacy across member and nonmember OECD nations (OECD, 2014) The exam aims to determine ‘how well students can apply the knowledge and skills they have learned at school to real-life challenges’ (OECD, 2014, para 3) In relation to PISA, the OECD defines literacy as a ‘student’s ability to apply knowledge and skills in key subject areas and to analyze, reason and communicate effectively as they examine, interpret and solve problems’ (OECD, 2014, para 1) This definition aligns, to some degree, with descriptions of literacy as socially and culturally situated (Moll & Greenberg, 1990; Street, 1995) Successful performance on PISA requires that adolescent youth are highly functional in foundational literacy skills, but that they also possess the prerequisite skills critical for responding 409.55 432.42 468.75 521.47 548.03 100 420 1210 2679 369 56.95 64.63 71.21 76.40 76.35 81.64 81.75 504.74 495.17 2412 2366 n 380.13 71.28 402.86 74.13 455.22 81.05 529.36 90.06 576.78 90.14 b Group scores Mathematics M SD 100 420 1210 2679 369 100.31 99.54 SD 504.06 495.87 M 2412 2366 n 402.80 432.15 472.20 520.63 545.00 74.40 69.38 67.18 70.73 66.22 80.89 72.40 SD Reading M 510.71 489.09 75.73 86.49 85.28 82.92 77.35 92.47 100.71 SD 358.51 392.13 452.52 533.35 574.72 525.49 474.03 M Reading 416.22 434.95 470.57 520.43 544.96 504.39 495.53 Science M 377.86 401.35 454.32 529.94 577.85 507.98 491.87 M Science 55.46 63.30 68.34 73.52 71.65 78.13 78.51 SD 70.16 77.17 81.28 88.63 90.62 95.75 103.54 SD 1.01 0.99 0.89 0.95 0.95 0.98 1.05 À0.45 À0.38 À0.20 0.10 0.47 SD À0.03 0.03 M ESCS Note n ¼ 4778 Individual and group literacy performance is standardized to have M ¼ 500 and SD ¼ 100 Socioeconomic status is standardized to have M ¼ 0, SD ¼ Factor Gender Female Male Grade 10 11 Gender Female Male Grade 10 11 Factor Mathematics a Individual scores TABLE Descriptive statistics for individual and group literacy performance measures, and control variables 640 641 642 643 644 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 657 658 659 660 661 662 663 664 665 666 667 668 669 670 671 672 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 Q4 PEER EFFECTS IN THE INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP LITERACY 17 680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697 698 699 700 701 702 703 704 705 706 707 708 709 710 711 712 713 714 715 716 717 718 719 18 S J WARRICAN et al TABLE Correlations among individual and group literacy performance measures, and control variables Correlation, r Variable Individual literacy Mathematics Reading Science Group literacy Mathematics Reading Science Control variables Grade Gender Socioeconomic status – 82ÃÃÃ – 86ÃÃÃ 86ÃÃÃ – 82ÃÃÃ 74ÃÃÃ 76ÃÃÃ – 78ÃÃÃ 78ÃÃÃ 75ÃÃÃ 96ÃÃ – 79ÃÃÃ 74ÃÃÃ 78ÃÃÃ 96ÃÃÃ 96ÃÃÃ – 49ÃÃÃ 53ÃÃÃ 51ÃÃÃ 41ÃÃÃ 41ÃÃÃ 41ÃÃÃ – 04ÃÃÃ 26ÃÃÃ 08ÃÃÃ 06ÃÃÃ 14ÃÃÃ 06ÃÃÃ 12ÃÃÃ – 34ÃÃÃ 31ÃÃÃ 33ÃÃÃ 41ÃÃÃ 40ÃÃÃ 41ÃÃÃ 21ÃÃÃ À.03Ã – Note n ¼ 4778 Reported correlation is point Spearman's rank for correlations involving Grade; Pearson correlation between continuous variables; and point biserial correlation between Gender and continuous variables Cohen's (1992) cutoffs for r: small effect, 1; medium effect, 3; large effect, Reference category is male for Gender, and 11 for Grade Ãp