Understanding the Links between Children's Peer Relationships and Academic Achievement

Experiences with peers constitute an important developmental context for children within which children acquire a wide range of skills, attitudes, and experiences that influence their adaptation across the life span. Educational research has begun to explore the impact of children's sense of belonging in their classrooms and schools. Feelings of relatedness tapped by measures of school climate and quality of school relationships, have been linked to important academic outcome indices including academic achievement, academic self-efficacy, and school grades. This review paper explores the links between peer relations and school adjustment and subsequent academic achievement, with a special focus on the school adjustment and academic achievement of children as moderated by peer acceptance categorizations, i.e., popular, rejected, neglected, or victimized.