Children facing peer victimization may not have peer affirmation from classmates about the way they are doing in school. This is what is hypothesized for why there is a negative correlation between peer victimization and perceived academic competence for high-chronic and moderate-emerging victims.

Stanford University

Peer victimization affects student engagement in the following aspects:
- school liking
- school avoidance
- independent participation
- perceived academic competence

Peer Victimization and Student Engagement

A subordinate facet of the general self-concept; a mental representation of the self constructed from one’s beliefs regarding their academic abilities in general and in different academic domains. The general academic self-concept might not tied to any specific domain or subject, but students may form multiple domain-specific self-concepts that vary according to their perceived level of ability in different subjects.


Academic Self-Concept

Ladd, G. W., Ettekal, I., & Kochenderfer-Ladd, B. (2017). Peer victimization trajectories from kindergarten through high school: Differential pathways for children’s school engagement and achievement? Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(6), 826–841. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000177

Peer Victimization Trajectories From Kindergarten Through High School: Differential Pathways for Children’s School Engagement and Achievement?

- There is a difference in school liking at different points in time. Children like school most in kindergarten. This liking decreases by a lot during elementary school. Once in middle school, school liking stays steady.
- Early victims have the lowest school liking at the start of school but recover by the end of school. On the other hand, high chronic victims have the lowest school liking at the end of school.
- Boys' school liking dwindles at a higher rate than girls' school liking throughout all of school.

Peer Victimization and School Liking

Early victims avoid school the most at first and then get to a normal level of school avoidance by the end of schooling. However, high victims have higher school avoidance by the end of 12th grade.

Peer Victimization and School Avoidance

- Children that are victimized tend to participate less which is a problem since participation has been thought to help with academic success.
- Moderate-emerging and high-chronic victims participate less in kindergarten and maintain low participation all the way to 12th grade. This indicates that low participation might be a cause and not an effect of peer victimization for some students seeing as how early victims did not have low participation at all.
- Boys also participated less.

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