School peer relationships of 'minority' children in Scotland

This paper examines selected issues arising from two studies in mainstream education of two minority groupings of children in Scotland-those with serious medical conditions and refugee children-completed in 1997 and 1999, respectively. It draws on first-person accounts of children, parents and teachers and focuses on school-based peer relationships, including friendships. Many of the described peer experiences were unhappy or mixed, only a minority were positive. The paper relates the research and its findings to current social and educational policy contexts and to theories on peer relationships, friendship and rejection. It challenges the problematizing of groups or individuals with minority experiences and school staff's acceptance of inevitable difficulty in these children's peer relationships. It hypothesizes that ways of developing all children's peer relationships need to be addressed in schools if the well-being of children who may be socially vulnerable is to be improved.