Classroom Learning Environments and the Mental Health of First Grade Children

Abstract

Sociological research focuses on how poverty, family, and neighborhood dynamics shape children’s problems, but knowledge about how school is related to children’s mental health is underdeveloped, despite its central presence in children’s lives. Using a social structure and personality-stress contagion perspective, the authors use a nationally representative sample of first graders (N = 10,700) to assess how the classroom learning environment affects children’s emotional and behavior problems. Children in more negative environments—such as classrooms with fewer material resources and whose teachers receive less respect from colleagues—have more learning, externalizing, interpersonal, and internalizing problems. Moreover, children in classrooms with low academic standards, excessive administrative paperwork, rowdy behavior, and low skill level of peers have more problems across one or more outcomes. Some school effects vary across race and ethnicity.