Child Development, July/August 2008, Volume 79, Number 4, Pages 1001– 1015 Does Chronic Classroom Peer Rejection Predict the Development of Children’s Classroom Participation During the Grade School Years? Gary W. Ladd, Sarah L. Herald-Brown, and Mark Reiser Arizona State University A sample of 398 children was followed up from ages 5 to 12 to investigate the relation between peer group rejection and classroom participation. The participation trajectories of individuals and groups of children who were rejected for differing periods of time were examined both during and after rejection using piecewise growth curve analyses. The results showed that whereas during periods of rejection, children exhibited negative or negligible growth in participation, when nonrejected, they manifested positive growth. These findings corroborated the hypothesis that (a) peer rejection creates constraints that inhibit children’s classroom participation and (b) the cessation of rejection enables children to become more active and cooperative participants in classroom activities. Support for the premise that classroom peer relations shape children’s adjustment to school has grown. Nearly 20 years ago, Parker and Asher (1987) ana- lyzed extant evidence and concluded that low peer acceptance predicted school maladjustment, particu- larly during adolescence. Subsequent evidence has corroborated this conclusion and shown that poor peer relations antecede school adjustment problems at earlier stages of children’s school careers (Ladd, 2005; MacDougall, Hymel, Vaillancourt, & Mercer, 2001; Perry & Weinstein, 1998). To elucidate this linkage, investigators have examined multiple features of children’s classroom peer relations (e.g., friendship, friendship quality, peer group acceptance/rejection, and peer victimi- zation; Ladd, 2003, 2005; MacDougall et al., 2001; Parker, Rubin, Price, & DeRosier, 1995) as predictors of their school adjustment. Results indicate that classroom peer rejection—which has typically been defined as how consensually disliked (relative to how consensually liked) a child is by members of his or her peer group (see Bukowski & Hoza, 1989)—is one of the strongest predictors of children’s school adjustment. For example, Vandell and Hembree (1994) found that even after controlling for friend- ships and family characteristics, children who were rejected by peers were prone to develop scholastic difficulties. After adjusting for the predictive contri- butions of friendship and peer victimization, Ladd, Kochenderfer, and Coleman (1997) found that peer group acceptance/rejection was the best relational predictor of changes in kindergartners’ classroom involvement and academic progress. Furthermore, Ladd and colleagues found that classroom peer rejection predicted some indicators of school malad- justment not only as children negotiated the chal- lenges of kindergarten (e.g., school avoidance, negative school attitudes, and poor achievement; Buhs & Ladd, 2001; Ladd, 1990; Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999) but also as they progressed through the early elementary school years (Buhs, Ladd, & Herald, 2006; Ladd & Burgess, 2001). These longitudinal findings illustrate that even during the early grade school years, classroom peer rejection antecedes multiple forms of school adjust- ment, including children’s school attitudes, school engagement, and scholastic achievement (Ladd, 2003). Although all these linkages warrant further investigation, the predictive significance of peer rejec- tion for children’s classroom participation may be among the most important to explicate. As Finn (1993) has argued, it is possible to conceptualize classroom engagement in behavioral terms and index facets of this construct by measuring the extent and quality of children’s participation in classroom activities. It has This investigation was conducted as part of the Pathways Project, a larger longitudinal investigation of children’s social/ psychological/scholastic adjustment in school contexts that is supported by the National Institutes of Health (1 RO1MH-49223, 2-RO1MH-49223, and R01HD-045906 to Gary W. Ladd). Special appreciation is expressed to all the children and parents who made this study possible and to members of the Pathways Project for assistance with data collection. Portions of this study were reported in a master’s thesis that was completed by Sarah L. Herald-Brown at Arizona State University, and the authors gratefully acknowledge committee members Becky Kochenderfer-Ladd and William Fabricius for their cogent contributions. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gary W. Ladd or Sarah L. Herald-Brown, P.O. Box 853701, School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-3701. Electronic mail may be sent to gary.ladd@asu.edu or to sarah.herald@asu.edu. # 2008, Copyright the Author(s) Journal Compilation # 2008, Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2008/7904-0013