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Feeling socially well embedded in the classroom’s peer network is a predictor of many positive developmental outcomes, such as engagement at school. But what does feeling embedded depend on? We investigated the impact of both peers and the teacher. Peer status, measured by sociometric sympathy-based peer nominations, and peer victimization, measured by students’ self-report, were examined as potential predictors of students’ self-reported feelings of embeddedness. We further measured student-perceived teacher support and the accuracy with which the teacher can describe individual student’s peer relations in class (teacher awareness) as potential predictors of subjective embeddedness. We expected that victimized students in particular profit in their feelings of embeddedness from a teacher with a highly accurate awareness of their peer relations. In two independent samples (Study 1: 318 students and their 20 teachers; Study 2: 821 students and their 39 teachers), we found that the mean accuracy of teachers’ awareness of individual students’ peer relations was not very high. Students’ feelings of embeddedness decreased with peer victimization experiences and increased with subjective teacher support, whereas, unexpectedly, sociometric peer status did not matter. Victimized students felt stronger embeddedness the more accurately their teacher could describe their peer relations in class. Peer victimization, teacher support, and, for victimized students, teacher awareness predicted school engagement, mediated via subjective embeddedness. Implications for teaching and teacher education are discussed: how can teachers strengthen feelings of embeddedness, thus fostering students’ engagement at school and protecting them from feeling socially excluded.
