Title: Teaching Practices and Peer Network Features in Elementary Classrooms Author(s):

Assertions that teachers play a crucial role in classroom peer relationships are not new (Cairns & Cairns, 1994; Lewin, 1943; Gronlund, 1959), but conceptual models that specify the processes involved are more recent (Farmer et al., 2006) and empirical evidence of these processes is uncommon. Part of the difficulty in building an empirical literature linking teaching practices to classroom peer relations is the sheer diversity of teaching processes that could be studied and the equally numerous aspects of peer relationship patterns that could be impacted. Without a conceptual and measurement strategy to focus research efforts, there is a risk that claims of teacher influence on classroom social processes could become an empty truism that lacks the specificity that could guide teacher professional development efforts. In the present paper, we aim to illustrate one strategy for focusing research efforts in this area by integrating recent advances in the measurement of teacher-student interactions (Lo Paro & Pianta, 2003), conceptual models of teacher influence on social network dynamics (Farmer et al., 2006), and classroom-level measures of friendship patterns (Authors, 2007). A central premise of our approach is that teachers influence classroom social dynamics both indirectly, through general teaching practices, and more directly through active attempts to manage the social network; and that these effects can be seen not only in terms of the experiences of individual children, but also in the overall organization of classroom friendship patterns. Lewin (1943) was certain that teachers had the opportunity and responsibility to optimize peer ecologies; and by mid-century, educational psychology texts emphasized that teachers could understand and manage peer social dynamics with the assistance of research-based technologie