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Exclusion Can Be Just as Damaging to Children as Bullying
> 3/6/2006 12:14:50 PM

New research to be published in the Journal of Educational Psychology shows that the effects of peer exclusion may be as damaging as outright bullying on a child's performance in school. The study, which followed 380 students over a five year period, found that peer group rejection was one of the strongest predictors of success or failure in the school environment.

Exclusion is a much less visible form of marginalization and can lead to a child's withdrawal from and lack of engagement in the school setting. Rejection by peers left the children in the study in a position where they weren't interested in continued interaction and that places them behind the learning curve, especially in younger grades when the positive results of peer interaction are so important. While peer abuse, in the form of bullying, has long been understood to effect school performance, this study is among the first to link exclusion, another form or peer maltreatment, to poor performance later on down the line.

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