By Laura Cummings
For many children, starting school can be an unsettling experience. For shy kids, commencing the school year can be a terrifying event.
Dr. Robert Coplan, a Professor in the Psychology Department and Director of the Pickering Centre for Research in Human Development at Carleton University, has spent most of his career exploring the development of shyness in childhood, and how shyness can impact upon children’s school experiences.
In 2012, Coplan was awarded a grant of almost $400,000 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to study the social experiences of young shy children inside and outside of school, and how these experiences are linked to school adjustment well-being.
“My research area is how shy kids adjust to going to school because shy kids tend to have more problems,” he said in a previous interview. “We are trying to figure out what factors influence which shy kids; we are basically looking at risk and protective factors.”
Coplan and his co-investigator Linda Rose-Krasnor (Brock University) are following a sizable sample group of preschool and early elementary school students for five years. The researchers will pay special attention to how children interact with peers at school as well as in other formal/informal peer contexts (e.g., play dates, extracurricular activities, in their neighborhood).
They will also explore why some shy children experience adjustment difficulties at school whereas other appear to do just fine. These differences may be due to the relationships that shy children form with important others, including parents, teachers, coaches, and friends.
Coplan is also currently involved in a number of additional research projects looking at the meaning and implications of shyness across different cultures. These ongoing include collaborations with researchers in Australia, China, Norway, and Turkey.