Gardner, Martinique Gardner Mia Eaker March 14, 2012 English 1102-066 What are the determining factors

of how cliques are formed in schools? What ways is society attempting to eliminate them? Will they ever be diminished?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Cillessen, Antonius H., David Schwartz, and Lara Mayeux. "Concurrent Correlations and Predictions of Popularity." Popularity In the Peer System. New York: Guilford, 2011. 104-120. Print. According to the text cliques can begin at a very young age, and the root of the problem mostly lies within popularity. This article describes the types of influences there are to determine whether you are accepted into the popular group or not. Fashion, social skills, sports, and wealth are the most powerful determinants. For boys and girls each of these factors branch off into sub areas. For example, the sports category for boys would mean that they needed to be tough and be the star of the sport in which they participate in order to be one in the popular group. Then again for girls, Edar states that he found that the most common sport for girls to participate in, that was socially accepted, was cheerleading. Another unique fact that was brought up was that once we as humans reach the popular stand point in life our own egos rise with our social acceptance. We begin to create a feeding ground on those that have not been accepted into this lifestyle. Another attribute that comes along with popularity is that of being biased. Stories have been recorded on how a star athlete and a less popular peer engage in a fistfight. The athlete is scolded and sent back to class while the other student is suspended. This bias takes place only because of the social standing of some, and can only create bigger issues. This source is credible because the authors/editors all have a PhD in the Department of Psychology. Antonius H. N. Cillessen PhD, focuses on peer relationships in childhood and adolescence, aggression and popularity in pre-teens, and the development of social acceptance. He has also served as an editor on the Board of Developmental Psychology, and the International Journal of Behavioral Development. David Schwartz is concerned with the peer groups and the social interaction between statuses during adolescence. He has many publications on topics related to bullying, aggression, and violence, in the cross relation to peer groups, popularity, and social statuses. Dr. Laura Mayeux focuses mainly on the development of peer statuses in the middle school area. Also she has done work on the relationship between gender issues and popularity. This book Popularity in the Peer System heavily relates to my topic of how cliques are formed within schools and peers. Every day we try to get to the top of the food chain and in todays society it is common for us to step on anyone that we have to in order to reach that stand point. This article presents how early of an age that this process can start. Starting at

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childhood the popular group is already founded and in the end this will only diminish the true aspects of a persons character as they change who they are in order to be accepted.

Adler, Patricia A., and Peter Adler. "Popularity." Peer Power: Preadolescent Culture and Identity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1998. 38-55. Print. In the book Peer Power the author states that one of the hardest times in life is when struggling with the elements of being popular and being accepted. Constantly children and adolescents are talking about who is popular and who isnt, who is wearing the right clothes, who has a boyfriend, and who played on that sports team. These authors have found that the root of the situation lies with gender roles. Starting back in preschool girls and boys separated themselves because of activity preferences and gender interests. Also this text talks about how there are different attributes for popularity and cliques, based on your gender. For boys your social standpoint is based on toughness, cross-gender relationships, athleticism, coolness, humor, and academics. For girls it was based upon family background, physical appearance, social development, and academic performance. Several interviews from middle school students were conducted by the authors, and some answers were rather shocking. The majority of the results stated something about a more popular child doing something that would cause less popular peers to follow his/her bad example. This source is credible because the information that I took from it came from real life situations. There were several interviews that were conducted that were not biased towards one side or the other, but came straight from children whom experience these struggles every day. Very high credentials can be placed on this source for research because it contains mainly firsthand information and not assumptions given by the authors. These two authors are credible because Patti has a Ph. D in Sociology and is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her husband Peter also has a Ph. D and is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Denver. Together they are the co-authors and co-editors of numerous books that deal with deviant behavior, sociology of children, social theory, and social occupations. For my research this will be very helpful for me because it allows me to have an insiders look and a better perspective at what goes on in school cliques at such a young age. Since this book talks about the ways that young children accept one another, it also relates to the cliques that are formed. When one person is accepted then they can become part of that clique. Then again if they do not meet the terms and conditions for one group then they will go to the next highest group, or make one of their own.

Foot, Hugh C., Antony J. Chapman, and Jean R. Smith. "The Development of Friendship Values and Choice." Friendship and Social Relations in Children. Chichester Eng.: J. Wiley, 1980. 34-35. Print.

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Teenagers and young adolescents may often find themselves contemplating on whom will be there best friend. This status may change quite often during the process of growing up. The book Friendships and Social Relations in Children goes into discussing the development of friendship values and choice. Although it is not obvious to the everyday eye, each person goes through a certain process; this process almost turns into an audition. If one has what it takes and what is recommended then they may pass the test but if not then that person is cast out. It has been a proven study that girls are more susceptible than boys to choosing a best friend that is loyal and trustworthy. This is because it is said that more girls have trust issues than boys (73 percent vs. 52 percent). Also there are issues that lay within this time in a childs life that result in the termination of friendships. This is because of superiority issues, disloyalty, and commitment problems. This is when a clique is created. When a person is cast out of a group of people they turn to making other friends that will accept them. Friendship and Social Relations in Children is a credible source because the doctors that are used to gather the information have a PhD in the Department of Psychology and Sociology. For the section that I am using the author is Brian J. Bigelow. Bigelow is a Registered Psychologist in the Province of Ontario. He concentrates on child and adolescent issues as well as clinical, developmental, and school psychology. He has owned and ran his own Psychology firm for the past 30 years and is still being diplomated by many high end organizations. Although this book gives me a lot of insight on how friends are chosen I feel as if this source will help me the least. It does relate to the formation of cliques but only touches on this subject a little. However I will still use this to understand why people chose these qualities to focus on when selecting friends and acquaintances.

Batiuk, Mary Ellen, James A. Boland, and Norma Wilcox. "Project Trust: Breaking Down Barriers Between Middles School Children." Adolescence 39.155 (2004): 531-538. Health Source - Consumer Edition. Web. 16 Mar. 2012. This article talks about the success of a retreat for middle school students and the schools teachers and other school officials. This middle school had so many problems with cliques that higher levels of security were called in. Findings show that the likeability that a student in high school would be harmed with a weapon was 1 in 13; the likeability that a student in high school would get into a fist fight was 1 in 7. The camp conducted by the school was called Project Trust. Its purpose was to break down the barriers between the top cliques in the school and the less popular peers. Project Trust focused on team building exercises and bringing together students from other cliques and having them become a group for that weekend. These strategies allowed them to get to know one another and not just think about what their peers would think about the other students outside of the clique. After the camp an experiment was conducted that discovered that there were lower social distance scores and higher self-concept scores for those that attended the camp as opposed to those that didnt.

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This is a credible source because it shows the statistics of how this workshop helped to break down these cliques. There were a few psychologists there that also helped with the information and experiments that were done. Overall it was up to the teachers and school officials to help negotiate this problem. The main reason that this could be trusted is simply based on the fact that it was a personal experiment. This means that there was a real life issue, a real life trial, and then a real life outcome. These tests that were done were not rigged but purely try and fail. Also the conductor of these trials was Norma Wilcox who is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. I find this very helpful for my research topic because it makes a point as to how school officials are trying to correct this issue. In every school there will be cliques but the point is to get to the bottom of the situation and attempt to solve it. There needs to be many of these workshops in hope to eliminate this problem all together, because over time out society get worse and the cliques in schools are just like a mini society. As society worsens so do the attempts to hurt one another. The problem will continue to worsen unless something is done to change it.
Hallinan, Maureen T., and Stevens S. Smith. "Classroom Characteristics And Student Friendship Cliques." Social Forces 67.4 (1990): 898. Education Research Complete. Web. 16 Mar. 2012. Maureen T. Hallinan and Steven S. Smith researched cliques. They researched the differences between classroom and friendships throughout the school. The center of their research was the ages between fourth and seventh grade. What they came to find is that the way a classroom is set up relates strongly to how students react with one another. They discovered that if a classroom has a strict feeling rather than a relaxing feeling then the researchers say that students act differently. Smith and Hallinan determined that the number of cliques that are formed and how stable these cliques will become is affected by the determinants of the classroom. Professor Hallinan is a professor at the University Of Notre Dame. Her primary interest is the effects of the formal and informal organization of schools on students' social development. She served as president of the American Sociological Association in 1995 through 1996 and the president of the Sociological Research Association in 2000. In 2003 Hallinan received the Research Achievement Award from Notre Dame. Steven S. Smith completed his Ph. D in psychology in 1990 at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. After completing research in Baltimore he returned to Madison to pursue postdoctoral training in Clinical Psychology. Dr. Smith maintains an outpatient clinical practice as a Licensed Psychologist today and still participates in clinical research. Their research had strong facts and was supported by the amount of research that they obtained. I plan on using this in my research so I can further my facts with more examples of how cliques are affected in schools. I can talk about how cliques are formed and how a classroom plays a major role in this. A student should be able to feel safe and wanted at school as well as at home; therefore if we can improve this problem at schools, then we are less likely to have to worry about students and their time at school.