The Role of Classroom Seating Arrangements in Friendship Formation and Persistence

This research study aims to analyze the differences existing between teacher-assigned seating and free seating in classrooms in terms of their impact on students’ friendship formation across a semester. The goal is to bridge the literature on seating arrangements, spatial propinquity, and friendship networks for teenagers. Through a social network analysis of friendships in a classroom at the beginning and end of a semester in addition to the seating maps at play, it is possible to test how different seating influences adolescent social structure. This innovative way of tackling spatial propinquity in schools not only has the potential to improve our understanding of high school friendship structures and how they relate to classrooms but also to increase our knowledge of the effects of seating assignments in high schools, a practice that is widespread in the United States. This study analyzes 410 student respondents in 24 American high school classrooms longitudinally across a semester. The results were unexpected: when students choose their seats, the formation of friendships tends to be more influenced by seating proximity, and these friendships tend to be less racially homophilous than when teachers choose seats.