Abstracts - Earli

perceived cooperativeness within ethnically heterogeneous teams. This last result shows thatenduring interethnic contact facilitates not only interethnic friendships, but also interethnicpopularity and perceived cooperativeness.Multisource assessment of children’s social competence; What makes the teacher ratingsdivergent from others?Niina Junttila, University of Turku, FinlandMarja Vauras, University of Turku, FinlandA Multisource Assessment of Social Competence Scale was developed and examined to test theconsistency of the self, peers’, teachers’, and parents´ ratings of Finnish school-aged children’s(n = 985) social competence. The correlations between the four social agents were statisticallysignificant, albeit quite low, indicating that the different sources tend to provide divergent picturesof a child’s social competence. To study the possible concomitants for these divergences, wecompared linguistically and mathematically high-, average- and low-achieving students in regardto self, peer, teacher, and parent ratings. The differences between high- and low-achieving childrenwere all statistically significant indicating, that the low-achievers had less co-operating skills andempathy behaviour and more impulsive and disruptive behaviour than high-achievers.Outstandingly, the effect sizes concerning the differences for teachers´ ratings were especiallyhigh. So what makes the differences in teacher ratings so high? School culture and the dominantnorms and values defining the correct behaviours are important in the understanding of the socialcompetence in the classrooms. Earlier studies suggest that both rater culture and rated culturespecific differences may play a role (see Mpofu, Thomas, & Chan, 2004). The teacher ratings oflow-achieving students were particularly low. Could it be that teacher use prejudicial expectationswhile rating students’ social competence? This and other possible cultural and rater-basedexplanations for the divergences and their effects on students’ socio-emotional well-being,learning opportunities and intervention designs are discussed in the presentation.The influence of teacher- and class characteristics on the development of social behavior of 4-8year-olds with different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.Simone Doolaard, University of Groningen, NetherlandsRoel Bosker, University of Groningen, NetherlandsNext to the relationship between classroom characteristics and achievement, there always has beenan interest in classroom characteristics and behavior, as the outcome of schooling and as anintermediate variable. Class size is one of these characteristics. Finn e.a. (2003) conclude thatstudents in small classes display less disruptive and more prosocial behavior than do students inlarge classes. The research also suggests that teachers get to know each student more intimately insmall classes and their tolerance for a broader range of student behaviors is increased. Theydiscuss two theoretical perspectives to support why small classes work: ‘visibility of theindividual’ and ‘sense of belonging’. Several questions remain on differential effects andmechanisms to explain why small classes affect students’ academic and social behavior. Toadresses these issues a large scale study has been started in primary education in the Netherlands.In this study three cohorts of students are followed for a period of 3 years (age 4-8, 200 schools).Their behavior was measured once a year, their teachers were questioned and students and teacherswere observed during the lessons. Preliminary analyses show that extraversion is negativelycorrelated to agreeableness and emotional stability. In smaller classes children are rated moreextravert and less agreeable and emotional stable. This is in line with other research that indicatethat children in smaller groups are more on the ‘firing line’, they have to be attentive, children are– 773 –