SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT
This project project will add to more traditional work on student's academic achievement in several ways. First, the project would be among the first to document a direct influence of \student's naturally-existing peer groups on their motivation and performance in school. Although parents and educators insist that peer groups exert a decisive influence on motivation, very little direct evidence of these effects exists. Conclusions that peers play an important role are usually based on student's self-reports of peer characteristics, on experimental manipulations with artificially created groups, or indices of intra-group similarity. Each of these sources of evidence has methodological shortcomings (e.g., biases in self-reports on affiliations, lack of attention to selection processes) serious enough to suggest that the direct effects of peer groups on motivation have not yet been empirically demonstrated.

There is also the need to develop models for examining peer group selection processes in the classroom. A portion of our analyses will target peer group selection (and elimination) processes in the classroom (e.g., proximity, individual motivation, gender, race, upward mobility). These findings can be used in simulation type programs (e.g., "flocking simulations") to model selection processes. Educators can use these finding to promote a classroom environment so that student's interact and affiliate with student's who can have positive influences on their classroom behavior and therefore their overall academic achievement.

Most importantly, there is much need for further examination of the joint effects from multiple influences on student's academic development. Especially interesting would be the developmental issue of whether influences from different social partners predominate at different ages and whether influences from these different partners work in synergistic or antagonistic ways for different student's (e.g., those identified "at risk" versus those who are not)