A Study of Peer Group Social Accept-Ability at the Fifth Grade Level in a Public School

DURING THE MIDDLE elementary school years, as the child moves toward adolescence, he should be making marked progress in the ac complishment of that important developmental task, emancipation from the family. Simultaneously with progress along that line there develops a growing importance of the peer group. This study is concerned with the child's normal growth in accep tability with this group. It makes no pretense of being a controlled educational experiment. It is rather a comparative study in which all seven of the fifth grade teachers in a small city in southern Ill inois worked cooperatively with the writer as consultant in an attempt to understand and improve social relationships within the groups and to see how their relationships were affected by the type of group i n which the child worked. Since the time devoted to supervision had to be limited to three half-days per week it was thought best to put the emphasis on read ing. Nevertheless there was a tendency where possible for teachers to make use of techniques developed in reading through the remainder of the day's program.