Relationship of Social Skills and Interaction Quality in a Class

Abstract

Social skills determine the success of an individual’s functioning in different social contexts. People with developed social skills in a simple way establish interaction with others and assimilate themselves in a group. Such people also contribute to positive social-emotional atmosphere in the group that is good for achievement of cooperation. Cooperative relationships in school boost motivation in students and lead towards a group productivity and quality interpersonal relationships. This work presents the research results whose aim was to examine relationship between development of students’ social skills and quality of interaction that is achieved in a class. The research was conducted in six primary schools, in Tuzla. There were 506, fifth to eighth grade students in total, out of which 281 were boys and 225 were girls. To measure social skills, Social Skills Inventory (Riggio and Throckmorton 1986). The quality of interaction in classes was recorded with Bales interaction scheme for observing small groups which implied the method of observation. The interaction was observed in at least two lessons in each of 24 classes included in the research. The approach of Canonical Analysis of Covariance was used in the statistical data processing, and the indicators point out that there is connection between students’ nonverbal social skills and the quality of interaction in class, whereas there is no connection between students’ verbal social skills and the quality of interaction that they achieve in their class.