Classroom Characteristics and Student Friendship Cliques

This paper examines the effects of classroom characteristics on the friendship cliques of preadolescent students. We argue that structural and organizational features of a classroom constrain the interaction patterns of students in such a way as to affect features of the social network that evolves within a classroom. Hypotheses about the determinants of clique size, number of cliques, clique stability and the ability, sex and racial composition of cliques are tested on a large, longitudinal data set containing information on fourth through seventh grade students. The results show that the formation of student friendship cliques is more closely linked to classroom characteristics and to pedagogical practices than has previously been recognized. Moreover, the analyses indicate that the processes governing the establishment of cliques change over the school year as different features of the classroom experience become more salient to students.