A role is a set of connected behaviors, rights, obligations, beliefs, and norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behavior and may have a given individual social status or social position. It is vital to both functionalist and interactionist understandings of society. Social role theory posits the following about social behavior:
- The division of labour in society takes the form of the interaction among heterogeneous specialized positions, we call roles.
- Social roles included appropriate and permitted forms of behavior and actions that recur in a group, guided by social norms, which are commonly known and hence determine the expectations for appropriate behavior in these roles, which further explains the position of a person in the society.
- Roles are occupied by individuals, who are called actors.
- When individuals approve of a social role, they will incur costs to conform to role norms, and will also incur costs to punish those who violate role norms.
- Changed conditions can render a social role outdated or illegitimate, in which case social pressures are likely to lead to role change.
- The anticipation of rewards and punishments, as well as the satisfaction of behaving pro-socially, account for why agents conform to role requirements.
Shyness is the feeling of apprehension, lack of comfort, or awkwardness especially when a person is around other people. This commonly occurs in new situations or with unfamiliar people; a shy person may simply opt to avoid these situations. Although shyness can be a characteristic of people who have low self-esteem, the primary defining characteristic of shyness is a fear of what other people will think of a person's behavior. This fear of negative reactions such as being mocked, humiliated or patronized, criticized or rejected can cause a shy person to retreat. Stronger forms of shyness can be referred to as social anxiety or social phobia.
In sociology, a peer group is both a social group and a primary group of people who have similar interests (homophily), age, background, or social status. The members of this group are likely to influence the person's beliefs and behaviour.
Social promotion is an educational practice in which a student is promoted to the next grade at the end of the school year, regardless of whether they have mastered the necessary material or attended school consistently. This practice typically applies to general education students, rather than those in special education. The main objective is to keep students with their peers by age, maintaining their intended social grouping. Social promotion is sometimes referred to as promotion based on seat time—the time the student spends in school. It is based on enrollment criteria for kindergarten, which often requires students to be 4 or 5 years old at the start of the school year, with the goal of allowing them to graduate from high school before turning 19.
Imaginary friends are a psychological and a social phenomenon where a friendship or other interpersonal relationship takes place in the imagination rather than physical reality.
Adaptive behavior is behavior that enables a person to cope in their environment with greatest success and least conflict with others. This is a term used in the areas of psychology and special education. Adaptive behavior relates to everyday skills or tasks that the "average" person is able to complete, similar to the term life skills.
School violence includes violence between school students as well as attacks by students on school staff and attacks by school staff on students. It encompasses physical violence, including student-on-student fighting, corporal punishment; psychological violence such as verbal abuse, and sexual violence, including rape and sexual harassment. It includes many forms of bullying and carrying weapons to school. The one or more perpetrators typically have more physical, social, and/or psychological power than the victim. It is a widely accepted serious societal problem in recent decades in many countries, especially where weapons such as guns or knives are involved.
Relational aggression, alternative aggression, or relational bullying is a type of aggression in which harm is caused by damaging someone's relationships or social status.
Emotional and behavioral disorders refer to a disability classification used in educational settings that allows educational institutions to provide special education and related services to students who have displayed poor social and/or academic progress.
Toy safety is the practice of ensuring that toys, especially those made for children, are safe, usually through the application of set safety standards. In many countries, commercial toys must be able to pass safety tests in order to be sold. In the U.S., some toys must meet national standards, while other toys may not have to meet a defined safety standard. In countries where standards exist, they exist in order to prevent accidents, but there have still been some high-profile product recalls after such problems have occurred. The danger is often not due to faulty design; usage and chance both play a role in injury and death incidents as well.
The professional practice of behavior analysis is a domain of behavior analysis, the others being radical behaviorism, experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis. The practice of behavior analysis is the delivery of interventions to consumers that are guided by the principles of radical behaviorism and the research of both experimental and applied behavior analysis. Professional practice seeks to change specific behavior through the implementation of these principles. In many states, practicing behavior analysts hold a license, certificate, or registration. In other states, there are no laws governing their practice and, as such, the practice may be prohibited as falling under the practice definition of other mental health professionals. This is rapidly changing as behavior analysts are becoming more and more common.
Sociometric status is a measurement that reflects the degree to which someone is liked or disliked by their peers as a group. While there are some studies that have looked at sociometric status among adults, the measure is primarily used with children and adolescents to make inferences about peer relations and social competence.
Video modeling (VM) is a mode of teaching that uses video recording and display equipment to provide a visual model of the targeted behaviors or skill. In video self-modeling (VSM), individuals observe themselves performing a behavior successfully on video, and then imitate the targeted behavior. Video modeling has been used to teach many skills, including social skills, communication, and athletic performance; it has shown promise as an intervention for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Important practical and theoretical questions remain largely unanswered about video modeling and other forms of video-based intervention. Video modeling has theoretical roots in the social learning theory work of Bandura (1969), which called attention to the ability to learn through observation.
Redshirting is the practice of postponing entrance into kindergarten of age-eligible children in order to allow extra time for socioemotional, intellectual, or physical growth. In the United States, this also refers to creating laws that set cutoff dates slightly before the new year in order to "redshirt" children born in the later part of the calendar year for the same purposes. This occurs most frequently where children's birthdays are so close to the cut-off dates that they are very likely to be among the youngest in their kindergarten class. In the US, more boys than girls are redshirted due to sex-based differences in neurological development.
Social competence consists of social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral skills needed for successful social adaptation. Social competence also reflects having the ability to take another's perspective concerning a situation, learn from past experiences, and apply that learning to the changes in social interactions.
Peer victimization is harassment or bullying that occurs among members of the same peer group. It is often used to describe the experience among children or young people of being a target of the aggressive and abusive behavior of other children, who are not siblings and not necessarily age-mates.
Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) is a variation of peer-mediated instruction that has been used in elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms. In CWPT students form pairs and take turns in the roles of tutor and student. Students earn points for their teams by participating in the tutoring and the winning team is recognized. Researchers have investigated CWPT's effectiveness in several different academic areas.
Gender roles are culturally influenced stereotypes which create expectations for appropriate behavior for males and females. An understanding of these roles is evident in children as young as age four. Children between 3 and 6 months can form distinctions between male and female faces. By ten months, infants can associate certain objects with females and males, like a hammer with males or scarf with females. Gender roles are influenced by the media, family, the environment, and society. In addition to biological maturation, children develop within a set of gender-specific social and behavioral norms embedded in family structure, natural play patterns, close friendships, and the teeming social jungle of school life. The gender roles encountered in childhood play a large part in shaping an individual's self-concept and influence the way an individual forms relationships later on in life.
Kindergarten readiness refers to the developmental domains that contribute to children's ability to adapt to the kindergarten classroom, which is often a new and unfamiliar environment. There is no single agreed upon definition of Kindergarten readiness. The domains often included in the definition comprise: academic skills, social-emotional development, and physical development. In addition to these competencies, the child's environment and opportunities for learning should also be considered. This includes the child's home environment and their interactions with teachers and peers.
Social emotional development represents a specific domain of child development. It is a gradual, integrative process through which children acquire the capacity to understand, experience, express, and manage emotions and to develop meaningful relationships with others. As such, social emotional development encompasses a large range of skills and constructs, including, but not limited to: self-awareness, joint attention, play, theory of mind, self-esteem, emotion regulation, friendships, and identity development.
