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. 2026 Aug 13;36(3):e70239. doi: 10.1111/jora.70239

Bullying victimization, language proficiency, and school belonging among Syrian refugee early adolescents in Canada: A cross‐lagged and random‐intercept cross‐lagged panel study

Irene Vitoroulis 1,✉, Songtao Wang 2, Redab Al‐Janaideh 3, Adriana Soto Corominas 4, Johanne Paradis 5, Katholiki Georgiades 6, Alexandra Gottardo 7, Xi Chen 2, Jennifer Jenkins 2
PMCID: PMC13470840  PMID: 42592804

Abstract

Refugee children's school adjustment is often associated with host country language proficiency, peer victimization, and school belonging, but longitudinal associations among these constructs may reflect both stable child differences and time‐varying school‐experience processes. This three‐wave longitudinal study examined English language proficiency, bullying victimization, and school belonging in 68 Syrian refugee children in Canada. We estimated a cross‐lagged panel model (CLPM) and a random intercept cross‐lagged panel model (RI‐CLPM), both with family‐clustered robust inference and controlling for child's age and gender, to distinguish stable child effects from time‐varying school‐experience processes. The former addresses correlation (e.g., children show trait stability in the three constructs and their associations over time) while the latter addresses whether time‐varying school experiences precede later change (e.g., bullying is followed by lower host country language proficiency). In the CLPM, significant cross‐lag paths showed that higher Wave 1 bullying victimization predicted lower Wave 2 English language proficiency, higher Wave 1 English language proficiency predicted higher Wave 2 school belonging, higher Wave 1 school belonging predicted higher Wave 2 bullying victimization and higher Wave 2 school belonging predicted higher Wave 3 English language proficiency. In the RI‐CLPM with the stable child effect removed, only two significant cross‐lags were seen: higher Wave 1 bullying victimization predicted lower Wave 2 English language proficiency (expected), and higher Wave 1 school belonging predicted higher Wave 2 bullying victimization (unexpected). The difference in the findings from the two models suggests that observed longitudinal associations between English language proficiency, bullying victimization, and school belonging are primarily stable between‐child differences, whereas early bullying was associated with lower later English language proficiency.

Keywords: bullying victimization, English language proficiency, longitudinal, refugee children, sense of school belonging

INTRODUCTION

Since 2011, Canada has resettled over 60,000 Syrian refugees, many of them families with children (Statistics Canada, 2022). Ongoing conflicts and demographic shifts highlight the need to understand how refugee children, particularly in early adolescence, adapt to school in a new cultural context. Bullying, characterized by repeated intentional aggression within relationships marked by power imbalance (Olweus, 1994), is associated with poor mental health, social, and academic outcomes in children (Moore et al., 2017). For refugee children, bullying or peer victimization can also target accent, host language difficulty, ethnicity, religion, and refugee status, and may contribute to acculturative stress during resettlement (Abdi et al., 2023; Kılıçaslan et al., 2024). At the same time, supportive school environments can foster belonging, a key process linked to better emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes across diverse student populations, including refugees (Allen et al., 2018; Marcos et al., 2021; Marley & Mauki, 2019; Pieloch et al., 2016). However, most research on links among bullying victimization, host country language proficiency, and school belonging in refugee children remains qualitative or cross‐sectional (Chen & Schweitzer, 2019; Correa‐Velez et al., 2010; Guo et al., 2019; Pieloch et al., 2016). As a result, it remains unclear whether these constructs are linked because some children are more chronically vulnerable than others, across domains of psychosocial functioning, or because there are time‐varying school experience processes: for example, is it the case that being bullied at an earlier point in time reduces children's sense of school belonging at a later point in time? Understanding and distinguishing correlation from causation between these constructs will help schools and communities to provide more effective support during resettlement. In this study, we used a cross‐lagged panel model (CLPM) and a random intercept CLPM (RI‐CLPM) to examine how English language proficiency, bullying victimization, and school belonging were associated across three years among Syrian refugee children in English‐speaking Canada.

Context of reception for Syrian refugee students in Canadian schools

The arrival of Syrian refugee families and children in Canada prompted a rapid, institutional‐level response and mobilization across the country. Schools were a primary context of reception, with support that included federally funded language services and settlement programming to facilitate integration early on (Immigration, Refugees, & Citizenship Canada [IRCC], 2019). At the school level, the Settlement Workers in Schools (SWIS) initiative, which was federally supported as well, contributed to the integration and inclusion of refugee students in schools and helped connect their families to the broader Canadian society (IRCC, 2022). Despite these efforts and their documented success, the outcomes of reception varied across schools. Syrian children's adaptation was shaped by language supports, culturally appropriate practices, teacher training, and family‐school involvement (IRCC, 2019, 2022; Papazian‐Zohrabian et al., 2018). Many Syrian children and families reported that making friends, volunteering and developing social connections contributed to a sense of belonging; however, discrimination, bullying, social exclusion, and language barriers remained significant barriers to integration (e.g., IRCC, 2019).

Conceptual framework

The interplay between host language proficiency, bullying victimization, and sense of school belonging is aligned with the integrative model of risk and resilience (Motti‐Stefanidi, 2018) and the multi‐system resilience model (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010; Masten, 2024), which conceptualize children's school adaptation as the product of interactions between risks and assets across individual, family, school, and peer contexts. For refugee children, normative developmental tasks, such as building peer relationships, may intersect with pre‐migration and acculturative challenges, including war exposure, forced migration, family separation, and interrupted schooling, which can have implications for school belonging and mental health (e.g., Ayoub & Zhou, 2023; Clark, 2017; Motti‐Stefanidi & Masten, 2020; Papazian‐Zohrabian et al., 2018). Within this framework, bullying victimization is a salient school‐based risk factor that can disrupt social integration and increase social isolation, whereas host language competence and school belonging can function as protective factors that support resilience and integration (Bešić et al., 2020; Nakeyar et al., 2018; OECD, 2018; Samara et al., 2020). These processes may also be inter‐related: English proficiency may be associated with higher belonging and lower bullying victimization, while school belonging may support host language learning. Conversely, bullying victimization may undermine social and academic participation and school engagement and be linked to lower subsequent language proficiency and belonging.

Interrelations among host language competence, bullying victimization, and school belonging

Host language acquisition is commonly used as an indicator of acculturation and integration in migrants (e.g., Motti‐Stefanidi, 2017; Motti‐Stefanidi & Masten, 2017; Segalowitz et al., 2017; Vedder, 2005). For refugee children, language competence and cultural knowledge can facilitate psychosocial integration (Ager & Strang, 2004). Prior research, although largely cross‐sectional and qualitative, suggests that language difficulties can contribute to poorer peer relationships, communication with teachers and school staff, and participation in school, which can contribute to social isolation and loneliness (e.g., Guo et al., 2021; Madziva & Thondhlana, 2017; Mulvey et al., 2018; Salami et al., 2022). Limited English vocabulary has been linked to academic and peer difficulties whereas host language competence is linked to better school outcomes, greater confidence in forming friendships, and school integration (Beißert et al., 2020; Buchanan et al., 2018; Horgan et al., 2022; Li & Grineva, 2016; Tip et al., 2019). Qualitative studies with Syrian refugee children in Canada similarly suggest that host language competence functions as an academic and social factor that can help shape peer relationships, school participation and sense of belonging (Ayoub & Zhou, 2023; Godin et al., 2017; Rabiah‐Mohammed et al., 2025).

Bullying is defined as intentional and repeated aggression within relationships characterized by a power imbalance (Arseneault et al., 2010; Griffin & Gross, 2004; Olweus, 1994). For refugee children, bullying victimization may be linked to identity markers such as accent, host language difficulty, racial/ethnic background, religion, and refugee status (Galán et al., 2021; Maynard et al., 2016; Sapouna et al., 2023; Stevens et al., 2020). Evidence from countries neighboring Syria and from European and Canadian contexts, suggests that bullying victimization, racism, and exclusion can undermine refugee children's mental health, peer integration, and academic outcomes, although findings vary across national and school contexts (e.g., Bešić et al., 2020; Buchanan et al., 2018; Chen & Schweitzer, 2019; Guo et al., 2019; Guo et al., 2021; Priest et al., 2019; Rosenthal et al., 2015; Vitoroulis & Georgiades, 2017). In Canada, Syrian refugee children have reported difficulties making friends with mainstream Canadian peers and experiences of bullying, racism, exclusion, and language barriers that weaken their sense of belonging in school and Canadian society (Çeri et al., 2021; Godin et al., 2017; Guo et al., 2019; Papazian‐Zohrabian et al., 2018; Rabiah‐Mohammed et al., 2025).

Sense of belonging, including school belonging, refers to children's feelings of acceptance, inclusion, respect, and support within the school context (Allen et al., 2016; Leary & Baumeister, 1995). Among refugee and migrant youth, belonging is shaped by both acculturative and interpersonal processes, including peer support, host language competence, familiarity with the school system and access to social supports (e.g., Kia‐Keating & Ellis, 2007; Marcos et al., 2022; Salam et al., 2022). Lower school belonging has been associated with limited host language skills, unfamiliarity with the school system, and lack of peer support (e.g., Khan et al., 2018; Oleimat et al., 2022; Pieloch et al., 2016; Salami et al., 2022; Walker & Zuberi, 2020). However, findings are mixed: in some studies, refugee adolescents report higher belonging in supportive school environments, whereas in others, lower belonging among refugee students compared with mainstream peers is often attributed to language barriers and social exclusion (Fazel & Betancourt, 2018; Pagel & Edele, 2022). These mixed findings underscore the need for longitudinal research examining how English language proficiency, bullying victimization, and belonging influence one another over time.

Stable child effects and time‐varying school‐experience processes

Until recently, CLPMs were used to investigate potential time‐varying school‐experience processes in behavioral longitudinal data. Cross‐lagged panel models have been complemented, and in some cases, replaced by the random intercept cross‐lagged panel model (RI‐CLPM), when the goal is to distinguish school experience processes from stable between‐child differences (e.g., Plamondon et al., 2018). For both models, the cross‐lag from an earlier school experience construct to an outcome at a later timepoint (i.e., time varying, with the potential process preceding a change in the outcome) has been used to assess temporal associations in behavioral data (Hamaker, 2025). Here, school experience processes refer to child‐level, time‐varying changes in children's perceptions and experiences in the school context, such as bullying victimization and school belonging. The term “process” is used to refer to a theoretically driven, hypothesized longitudinal association in which an earlier measured school experience construct predicts change in another construct over time. These processes may reflect changes in the school environment to which a child is exposed or sensitive, but they are not direct measures of objective school characteristics such as teacher attitudes, classroom climate, or school policies. To illustrate this idea with an example pertaining to refugee children, we might expect bullying victimization when children first enter their host country to make children less likely to learn English rapidly. This may be due to the effects of stress on neural development (Sheridan & McLaughlin, 2014). The core difference between the CLPM and RI‐CLPM models on the estimation of the cross‐lags is the way in which stable aspects of individuals are separated from the theoretically driven time‐varying school‐experience processes of change. In the CLPM the time‐varying school‐experience processes are confounded by stable child effects, while in the RI‐CLPM they are separated (related to the estimation of the “unmeasured” stable aspects of individuals). The presentation of both types of model allows us to improve our inferences about the sources of refugee children's challenges. Are children being impacted by time‐varying school experiences or stable aspects of children's own functioning? Should supports be targeted to school experiences or should they be targeted to children themselves, outside the school environment? What might the explanation be for a stable child effect? Such a stable child effect may arise from individual differences in brain and cognitive function that have been shaped by genetics and significant adversities. For refugee children, adversities might include exposure to refugee camps, poor parental mental health, low parental education, discrimination, leaving peers, etc. Reporter bias issues may also play a role in children's reports of their experiences.

To investigate time‐varying school‐experience processes (within‐child temporal change), we investigated temporal changes across the three domains. A scoping review of young refugees' acculturation in the educational domain found that most studies used cross‐sectional or qualitative designs and that longitudinal studies were rare, even though such designs are needed to distinguish causes and effects over time (Maehler et al., 2021). Emerson et al. (2022) likewise noted that relatively few studies have examined how school‐related social experiences (e.g., peer belonging) contribute to refugee children's adjustment. At the same time, broader longitudinal youth research shows that peer victimization can precede lower school connectedness, more negative school climate perceptions, lower school engagement, and poorer later academic achievement (Espinoza et al., 2019; Frick et al., 2024; Loukas et al., 2009). We used the RI‐CLPM to separate the observed scores of each domain into a stable child‐specific component and wave‐specific deviations from that child's expected level, and then to estimate lagged paths among those deviations (Hamaker et al., 2015; Lucas, 2023; Mulder & Hamaker, 2021; Selig & Little, 2012). In this framework, the random intercept variances and covariances summarize stabilities of children across the study period, whereas the lagged within‐child paths test whether departures from a child's expected level in one domain are followed by later departures in another. Using both models therefore allows the study to distinguish stabilities of children, observed‐score longitudinal ordering, and within‐child temporal dynamics.

Current study

In the current study, we examined longitudinal associations among school belonging, bullying victimization, and English language proficiency in Syrian refugee children over three years. Qualitative work suggests that limited host‐language proficiency can be targeted in bullying and is closely tied to school belonging during resettlement, yet longitudinal quantitative evidence remains scarce (Chen & Schweitzer, 2019; Pieloch et al., 2016). We therefore posed two exploratory research questions that correspond to the two levels of association described above. Research question 1 (RQ1) asked whether observed scores on English language proficiency, bullying victimization, and school belonging predicted one another across adjacent waves after prior scores, child age, and gender were controlled. Research question 2 (RQ2) asked whether these associations remained once stable between‐child differences were separated from time‐specific within‐child deviations.

To answer RQ1, we estimated an age‐ and gender‐adjusted CLPM. To answer RQ2, we estimated an age‐ and gender‐adjusted RI‐CLPM using the same covariates, so differences between the two models reflect the decomposition of stable child‐specific variance rather than different adjustment sets. Based on prior literature, we expected stronger English language proficiency to be associated with lower later bullying victimization and higher later school belonging, whereas bullying victimization was expected to be associated with lower later English language proficiency and lower later school belonging. Because quantitative longitudinal evidence in refugee children remains limited, we treated the cross‐domain lagged associations as exploratory.

METHOD

Data were drawn from a three‐wave longitudinal, multi‐informant study of Syrian refugee children and their families who resettled in Canada between 2015 and 2016. The broader study examined children's linguistic, literacy, and mental health outcomes over their early migration years in Canada. Data were collected once per year for three consecutive years. Participants were recruited through community organizations serving Syrian refugees in Edmonton (Alberta), Toronto, and Waterloo (Ontario). Structured interviews were conducted in participants' homes in English or Arabic according to participant preference.

Participants

The full sample from which the current analytic sample was drawn included 133 children (66 female; mean age at Wave 1 = 112.38 months, SD = 23.44) nested within 73 families. Approximately 32% of children in the broader study sample had interrupted education before arriving in Canada. Inclusion criteria for the current study involved child self‐report (sense of belonging, bullying victimization) and direct testing (language proficiency) beginning at Wave 1. As some studies have found low reliability in children under 9 years of age (108 months) on some outcomes, self‐report on belonging and victimization was only collected from children who were 9 years and older at Wave 1 (De Los Reyes et al., 2010; Edelbrock et al., 1985; Riley, 2004). This resulted in 68 participants nested in 53 families (36 female; mean age at Wave 1 = 130.90 months, SD = 14.01). The participating parent or primary caregiver provided sociodemographic information through a demographic questionnaire (ALEQ‐4; Paradis et al., 2020) at Wave 1, including parental age, parental education, and income. The average years of education for mothers and fathers at each site were as follows: Edmonton (mothers M = 11.25, SD = 4.47; fathers M = 11.06, SD = 3.87); Toronto (mothers M = 9.43, SD = 3.88; fathers M = 9.98, SD = 4.00); and Waterloo (mothers M = 8.28, SD = 2.48; fathers M = 7.94, SD = 2.37).

Measures

Sense of school belonging was measured using six items from the Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale (PSSM; Goodenow, 1993). Items were scored on a Likert‐type scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). Items were reverse‐scored so that higher scores indicated greater sense of school belonging. Sample items were “I feel close to people at my school” and “I am happy to be at my school.” One item (“I feel very different from most other students at my school”) was dropped from the analyses because it was reverse worded and reduced scale reliability. Final internal reliability was alpha = .83 at Wave 1, alpha = .76 at Wave 2, and alpha = .70 at Wave 3.

Bullying victimization was measured using five items adapted from the Health Behavior in School‐aged Children Study (HBSC; Currie et al., 2001). Participants were presented with a standard definition of bullying (“We say a student is being bullied when another student, or group of students, say or do nasty and unpleasant things to him or her. It is also bullying when a student is teased repeatedly in a way he or she does not like, or when he or she is left out of things on purpose. It is not bullying when two students about the same strength or power argue or fight. It is also not bullying when the teasing is done in a friendly and playful way”), followed by items assessing physical, social, and verbal bullying victimization and two items assessing identity‐based victimization. Items ranged from 0 (never) to 5 (several times a week). Internal reliability was α = .76 at Wave 1, α = .74 at Wave 2, and α = .72 at Wave 3.

English language proficiency was assessed using a measure of English receptive vocabulary, which included the fourth edition of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT; Dunn & Dunn, 2007). For each item, the examiner orally presented a word and the child was asked to point to one of four pictures that best represented the given word. Cronbach's alpha for internal consistency for our sample was α = .97 at each wave.

Analytic strategy

All primary analyses were conducted in R using the lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012). We examined longitudinal associations among school belonging, bullying victimization, and English language proficiency across three waves using structural equation modeling. To keep the comparison analytically aligned, age and gender were included as time‐invariant control covariates in both baseline models, and family clustering was handled in all frequentist models with family‐clustered robust standard errors and scaled test statistics. Intraclass correlation estimates on the analytic sample indicated nontrivial family‐level clustering (victimization ICC = 0.16, belonging ICC = 0.27, English language proficiency ICC = 0.26).

We first estimated an age‐ and gender‐adjusted CLPM as the baseline model of observed‐score longitudinal association. The adjusted CLPM included autoregressive paths for each domain, all adjacent‐wave cross‐lagged paths among the three domains, within‐wave residual covariances at Waves 2 and 3, and the same age and gender covariates predicting observed outcomes at each wave. We then estimated an age‐ and gender‐adjusted RI‐CLPM as the primary within‐child model. In the adjusted RI‐CLPM, age and gender predicted the random intercept factors and the Wave 1 within‐person latent deviations, so model comparisons did not rely on different covariate structures. The RI‐CLPM decomposes each observed score into (a) a random intercept capturing the child's stable common component across all three waves and (b) a wave‐specific deviation around that child's expected score. Consequently, RI‐CLPM autoregressive paths represent persistence of within‐child deviations from one adjacent wave to the next, and RI‐CLPM cross‐lagged paths represent whether being above or below one's own expected level on one domain predicts later deviation on another. Notably, retained RI‐CLPM cross‐lagged paths are interpreted as evidence consistent with time‐varying school‐experience processes after stable child effects have been separated, not as direct evidence that objective school environments were measured. Missing data were handled with full information maximum likelihood and robust maximum likelihood estimation. Standardized estimates from both models are reported side by side. Sensitivity analysis (see Supporting Information) was also conducted to test whether lagged paths differed between children who reported any identity‐based bullying victimization and children who did not report identity‐based victimization.

Transparency and openness

We report how we obtained our final sample, all data exclusions, and all measures in the study, and we follow Journal Article Reporting Standards (Kazak, 2018). Research materials can be made available upon reasonable request for scholarly purposes by contacting the corresponding author. This study's design and its analysis were not pre‐registered.

RESULTS

Descriptive statistics and correlations for school belonging, bullying victimization, and English language proficiency are presented in Tables A1 and A2. Across the analytic sample, bullying victimization declined from Wave 1 to Wave 3, t(56) = 2.16, p = .035; school belonging also declined across the same interval, t(56) = 3.33, p = .002; whereas English language proficiency increased, t(55) = 4.01, p < .001. The adjusted analytic sample included 68 children nested in 53 families; 10 families contributed more than one child.

CLPM

The CLPM fit the data well, χ2(9) = 10.496, p = .312, CFI = 0.990, TLI = 0.952, RMSEA = 0.049, and SRMR = 0.040 (Table 1). Among the autoregressive paths (see Figure 1), bullying victimization was stable from Wave 1 to Wave 2 (β = .324, p < .001) and from Wave 2 to Wave 3 (β = .358, p = .002), school belonging was stable from Wave 1 to Wave 2 (β = .272, p = .025), and English language proficiency was stable from Wave 1 to Wave 2 (β = .807, p < .001) and from Wave 2 to Wave 3 (β = .543, p < .001).

TABLE 1.

Standardized lagged path estimates of the CLPM and the RI‐CLPM.

Parameter Adjusted CLPM Adjusted RI‐CLPM
Estimate SE p Estimate SE p
Autoregressive paths
vic2 ← vic1 .324 .078 <.001 .257 .192 =.181
blg2 ← blg1 .272 .122 =.025 .123 .196 =.530
ppvt2 ← ppvt1 .807 .045 <.001 .583 .246 =.018
vic3 ← vic2 .358 .116 =.002 .201 .339 =.554
blg3 ← blg2 .137 .159 =.389 −.173 .232 =.458
ppvt3 ← ppvt2 .543 .129 <.001 .224 .310 =.469
Cross‐lagged paths
vic2 ← blg1 .304 .092 <.001 .336 .140 =.016
vic2 ← ppvt1 −.213 .123 =.083 −.287 .317 =.365
blg2 ← vic1 .062 .132 =.637 .114 .176 =.518
blg2 ← ppvt1 .256 .131 =.050 .255 .318 =.422
ppvt2 ← vic1 −.169 .052 =.001 −.273 .130 =.036
ppvt2 ← blg1 −.026 .075 =.724 −.030 .193 =.876
vic3 ← blg2 .002 .104 =.984 .032 .137 =.815
vic3 ← ppvt2 −.162 .132 =.218 −.151 .335 =.652
blg3 ← vic2 −.079 .163 =.626 −.052 .246 =.832
blg3 ← ppvt2 .116 .155 =.453 −.178 .336 =.596
ppvt3 ← vic2 −.058 .122 =.637 −.160 .202 =.427
ppvt3 ← blg2 .210 .107 =.050 .281 .178 =.115
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Note: Estimates are standardized coefficients (β). The symmetric CLPM estimates observed‐score longitudinal associations conditional on age, gender, and family clustering. The adjusted RI‐CLPM estimates within‐person lagged associations after separating stable between‐child differences.

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1

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The CLPM diagram.

Regarding cross‐lagged effects (see Figure 1), higher belonging at Wave 1 predicted higher bullying victimization at Wave 2 (β = .304, SE = .092, 95% CI [0.124, .484], p < .001), and higher bullying victimization at Wave 1 predicted lower English language proficiency at Wave 2 (β = −.169, SE = .052, 95% CI [−0.270, −0.068], p = .001). The path from higher English language proficiency at Wave 1 to higher belonging at Wave 2 was small and at the threshold of statistical significance (β = .256, SE = .131, 95% CI [−0.000, 0.512], p = .050), and the path from higher belonging at Wave 2 to higher English language proficiency at Wave 3 remained small but statistically significant on the standardized solution (β = .210, SE = .107, 95% CI [0.000, 0.420], p = .050). The hypothesized indirect effects were not statistically significant. Older age predicted lower baseline belonging (β = −.248, p = .011) and lower baseline English language proficiency (β = −.321, p = .001), and girls reported slightly higher baseline belonging (β = .234, p = .046) and lower Wave 2 bullying victimization (β = −.295, p = .016). No other direct age or gender effects were statistically reliable.

RI‐CLPM

The RI‐CLPM also fit the data well (χ2(9) = 10.875, p = .284, CFI = 0.989, TLI = 0.937, RMSEA = 0.055, and SRMR = 0.037). At the between‐person level, after accounting for child age and gender, significant standardized random‐intercept variance remained for school belonging (σ2 = .986, SE = .386, 95% CI [0.229, 1.743], p = .011) and English language proficiency (σ2 = .626, SE = .287, 95% CI [0.064, 1.188], p = .029), whereas the standardized bullying victimization random‐intercept variance was not significant (σ2 = .590, SE = .971, 95% CI [−1.313, 2.493], p = .543). Age significantly predicted the bullying victimization random intercept (β = .630, SE = .277, 95% CI [0.086, 1.173], p = .023) and the English language proficiency random intercept (β = −.512, SE = .237, 95% CI [−0.977, −0.047], p = .031), suggesting that older children showed higher overall levels of bullying victimization and lower English language proficiency. None of the standardized random‐intercept covariances were significant (bullying victimization with school belonging: Φ = −.433, SE = .580, 95% CI [−1.570, 0.704], p = .455; bullying victimization with English language proficiency: Φ = −.191, SE = .499, 95% CI [−1.169, 0.788], p = .702; and school belonging with English language proficiency: Φ = .373, SE = .340, 95% CI [−0.294, 1.039], p = .273). Taken together, these findings suggest that, after controlling for child age and gender, stable between‐person differences remained for school belonging and English language proficiency, but there was little evidence that the three constructs systematically covaried across waves.

Age also predicted lower Wave 1 bullying victimization deviations (β = −.326, SE = .160, 95% CI [−0.640, −0.012], p = .042), indicating that older children showed lower than expected bullying victimization relative to their own trait‐like level at Wave 1. No gender effects were significant.

The key finding of the RI‐CLPM was that most CLPM cross‐lags did not remain once stable child effects were separated (as shown in Figure 2). Of the four significant CLPM cross‐lags, two remained statistically significant in the RI‐CLPM. Higher Wave 1 bullying victimization predicted lower Wave 2 English language proficiency (β = −.273, SE = .130, 95% CI [−0.528, −0.018], p = .036), indicating that when a child reported more victimization than expected at Wave 1, the child tended to show lower English language proficiency than expected at Wave 2. Higher Wave 1 school belonging also predicted higher Wave 2 bullying victimization (β = .336, SE = .140, 95% CI [0.062, 0.610], p = .016). By contrast, the language‐belonging paths were no longer significant once random intercepts were introduced (see Table 1). Thus, the adjacent‐wave continuity and the confounded cross‐lags in the CLPM reflected the child's stable common component rather than potential time‐varying school‐experience processes.

FIGURE 2.

FIGURE 2

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The RI‐CLPM diagram.

DISCUSSION

The main purpose of this study was to examine longitudinal associations between English language proficiency, sense of school belonging, and bullying victimization in a sample of Syrian refugee children and distinguish these associations from time‐varying school‐experience processes after stable child differences were separated. To our knowledge, there is very limited prior research using a cross‐lagged panel design to examine social adjustment at school among Syrian refugee children with specific reference to English language proficiency. Therefore, we first built a CLPM that identified four statistically significant cross‐lagged paths suggesting overall associations between bullying‐language and language‐belonging. However, the RI‐CLPM, which unconfounds stable child effects from within‐child time‐varying school‐experience processes, showed that only two of those paths remained. That is, higher early bullying victimization predicted lower later English language proficiency, and higher early school belonging predicted higher later bullying victimization. This comparison indicates that the observed associations in the CLPM mostly reflected stable between‐child differences rather than time‐varying school‐experience processes, except for early bullying‐language and belonging‐bullying paths.

Model comparison and stable child effects

In the CLPM, adjacent‐wave autoregressive paths and cross‐lagged paths both carry stable child effects (Curran & Bauer, 2011). The CLPM is, therefore, useful for describing observed temporal ordering across children, but it cannot determine whether those paths reflect time‐specific school experience processes.

Stable child effects are theoretically meaningful in the context of refugee children. They may reflect prior schooling and language‐learning histories, cognitive and language development differences, family resources, exposure to adversity, classroom placement, peer‐network position, temperament, or appraisal and reporting biases (e.g., De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005; Popham et al., 2022, 2023; Schachner et al., 2016). These factors could explain why some children showed consistently higher or lower random intercepts in English language proficiency, school belonging, or bullying victimization across years. The finding that stable differences remained significant, especially for school belonging and English language proficiency, suggests that refugee children's adjustment includes enduring risk and resource profiles, not only year‐to‐year time‐varying school experience processes. This distinction also clarifies the role of the CLPM findings. The CLPM‐only language‐belonging paths indicate that children with stronger English language proficiency also tended to show stronger school belonging over time. However, because those paths did not remain significant in the RI‐CLPM, they should not be interpreted as evidence that language gains caused later belonging gains, or vice versa. They are better understood as stable child‐level associations, confounded with stable between‐child differences, rather than evidence of time‐varying school experience processes.

Within‐domain stability and between‐child random intercepts

The contrast between the adjusted CLPM and adjusted RI‐CLPM provided additional information about within‐domain stability and between‐child differences. In the CLPM, adjacent‐wave autoregressive paths and cross‐lagged paths both carry stable child effects (Curran & Bauer, 2011). The RI‐CLPM offers the more rigorous test of time‐varying school experience processes because it estimates each child's stable common level across the study period before testing within‐child lagged paths (Hamaker et al., 2015; Lucas, 2023). The disappearance of most CLPM cross‐lags in the RI‐CLPM indicates that those observed‐score associations were largely confounded with stable child differences.

The RI‐CLPM decomposition added nuance to the interpretation of stability. Stable child effects may reflect prior schooling and language learning histories, cognitive and language development differences, family resources, exposure to adversity, classroom placement, peer‐network position, temperament, or appraisal and reporting biases (e.g., De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005; Popham et al., 2022; Pieloch et al., 2016; Schachner et al., 2016). These factors could explain why some children showed consistently higher or lower levels of English language proficiency, school belonging, or bullying victimization across years. The finding that stable differences remained significant, especially for school belonging and English language proficiency, suggests that refugee children's adjustment includes enduring risk and resource profiles, not only year‐to‐year time‐varying school‐experience processes. This distinction also clarifies the role of the CLPM findings. The CLPM‐only language‐belonging paths indicate that children with stronger English language proficiency also tended to show stronger school belonging over time (e.g., Buchanan et al., 2018; Martin et al., 2024). However, because those paths did not remain in the RI‐CLPM, they should not be interpreted as evidence that language gains caused later belonging gains, or vice versa. They are better understood as stable child‐level associations rather than evidence of time‐varying school‐experience processes.

School experience processes retained in the RI‐CLPM

The first retained RI‐CLPM path was from Wave 1 bullying victimization to lower Wave 2 English language proficiency. Because this path remained after stable child effects were separated, it provides the clearest evidence for a possible environmental process in the study. Periods of higher‐than‐expected victimization may reduce classroom participation, peer learning opportunities, confidence, or emotional availability for language learning. This interpretation is consistent with work showing that bullying of immigrant and refugee children is often tied to language, culture, appearance, and social identity and can disrupt participation and peer inclusion (Ertanir et al., 2021; Pottie et al., 2015; Stevens et al., 2020). The impact of bullying on academic outcomes is well documented, and our results provide further support that early bullying victimization may also affect English language acquisition especially in refugee children (Pottie et al., 2015; Salam et al., 2022). It is important to note that our findings support the pathway from early bullying victimization to later English language proficiency, but not a fully reciprocal association; the path from language proficiency to later bullying victimization did not remain significant in the RI‐CLPM.

The second retained RI‐CLPM path was unexpected: higher Wave 1 school belonging predicted higher Wave 2 bullying victimization. One possible interpretation is that stronger early belonging reflected greater integration into peer settings, which increased exposure to both supportive and harmful interactions as students moved beyond sheltered language settings and entered broader peer networks. A recent Canadian qualitative study similarly suggests that greater school integration does not fully protect refugee youth from racism and exclusion by peers (Rabiah‐Mohammed et al., 2025). This path should not be interpreted as evidence that belonging is generally harmful; rather, it suggests that integration may bring increased peer exposure in contexts where racism, discrimination, or xenophobia are also present. This is consistent with research showing that language competence and social inclusion of refugee children in mainstream settings increase intergroup contact, which can include both positive and negative peer interactions (Beißert et al., 2020). While improvements in English language proficiency are linked with a greater ability to connect with peers, they may also come with greater awareness of racism, discrimination, and xenophobia, and potentially greater exposure to social exclusion. Therefore, while refugee students may wish to integrate into mainstream classes and have interethnic peer relationships, this transition may also place them at higher risk for bullying victimization. Future research should examine whether this belonging‐to‐bullying victimization path is moderated by characteristics such as the proportion of refugee students in the classroom.

Although age and gender were included as covariates rather than focal study questions, two findings are worth noting cautiously. In the RI‐CLPM, older children showed higher stable levels of bullying victimization and lower stable levels of English language proficiency across waves. This pattern is consistent with the possibility that arriving at older ages can make language acquisition and peer integration more difficult during early resettlement (Stolk et al., 2025; Wong & Edwards, 2024). Given the limited sample size, these demographic findings should be treated as secondary and in need of replication.

Random intercepts as stable child effects

In addition, the random intercepts from the RI‐CLPM provided a complementary picture of stability. Significant random‐intercept variance remained for school belonging and English language proficiency, indicating that children differed reliably in their overall levels of belonging and English proficiency across the three waves. By contrast, bullying victimization did not show significant random‐intercept variance, suggesting that stable between‐child differences were less pronounced for bullying victimization than for belonging and language proficiency. This may indicate that bullying experiences are potentially shaped by year‐to‐year peer dynamics and classroom contexts, whereas belonging and language proficiency might reflect more child‐level characteristics. The absence of significant random‐intercept covariances further suggests that children who were stably higher in belonging were not necessarily those who were stably higher in English language proficiency or lower in bullying victimization, pointing to partly distinct associations of child‐level factors across the three domains. This does not mean that belonging or language proficiency were fixed. Rather, it suggests that some children tended to remain consistently higher or lower than others while still showing year‐to‐year fluctuations around their own expected levels. This pattern is consistent with evidence that school belonging shows meaningful stability over time even if it fluctuates year to year (Ruedas‐Gracia et al., 2023). The distinction is especially important for school belonging, which may shift as refugee children acculturate to the host society, form new peer relationships, experience inclusion or exclusion at school, and move from second‐language learning classes into mainstream classrooms (Correa‐Velez et al., 2010; Gillen‐O'Neel & Fuligni, 2013; Schachner et al., 2016; Wang & Eccles, 2012).

Thus, the two‐model approach clarified two forms of stability. The CLPM showed observed‐score continuity across adjacent waves, which is informative to educators for identifying children who remain relatively more vulnerable or more protected during resettlement. The RI‐CLPM showed that this continuity was largely explained by stable between‐child differences, with limited evidence that temporary within‐child deviations persisted across years. The main longitudinal pattern, therefore, indicates stable differences among children in language proficiency and school belonging across the early years after migration.

CONCLUSION

Taken together, the findings suggest that social and language adaptation are linked during resettlement, but the level of inference matters. The strongest evidence points to early peer victimization as a proximal correlate of later language adjustment. Our study's strengths lie in the investigation of English language development and school adjustment among Syrian refugee children over three years, based on direct assessments and child reports. This is important both methodologically, because it combines multiple methods, and substantively, because child report privileges children's own experiences. Much of the prior literature on language and school adjustment among refugee children is qualitative or cross‐sectional, and our study adds longitudinal quantitative evidence on how language proficiency, bullying victimization, and school belonging are related during resettlement. The use of a CLPM and a RI‐CLPM further allowed us to reduce confounding as we examined time‐varying school‐experience processes on children.

The main limitation of our study is the small sample size in the context of the complex processes that we investigated. It is notable, however, that even with the small sample we observed evidence consistent with an early risk pathway from bullying victimization to later English language proficiency. Replication with larger samples, more than three waves, and richer measures of classroom placement, peer networks, discrimination, and family socioeconomic conditions will be important. The small sample also limited power to detect cross‐lagged effects, particularly in the more demanding RI‐CLPM, so null within‐child paths should not be overinterpreted.

A second limitation is that we did not directly measure objective features of the school environment, such as teacher attitudes, classroom climate, or school policies. Thus, retained RI‐CLPM paths should be interpreted as child‐level, time‐varying school‐experience processes rather than direct measures of the objective school environment. These processes could still partly reflect time‐varying child appraisal, reporting bias, or unmeasured child‐level factors; however, because the RI‐CLPM partitions stable shared variance into random intercepts, stable child differences, and stable reporting tendencies are less likely to account for the retained within‐child cross‐lagged paths.

Recommendations for practice relate to second‐language learning on entry into the host country and to fostering inclusive practices from teachers and peers toward refugee children. In addition to formal English‐language instruction, informal supports such as peer mentoring and conversation circles may help foster belonging. Successful bullying interventions can be adapted to support the safety and inclusion of refugee children. Our findings suggest that these supports may be especially important early in resettlement, because early bullying victimization appears to carry forward into later language difficulties. More broadly, the prominence of stable child effects in our findings suggests that supports targeting children's circumstances on arrival, such as interrupted schooling and classroom placement, may be as important as interventions focused on school experiences over time. Our findings are consistent with developmental models suggesting that early negative peer experiences can carry forward and shape later outcomes across domains (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010), underscoring the importance of early prevention and intervention during resettlement.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Alexandra Gottardo: Funding acquisition; project administration. Redab Al‐Janaideh: Investigation; resources; project administration. Katholiki Georgiades: Funding acquisition. Jennifer Jenkins: Funding acquisition; supervision; conceptualization; writing – review and editing. Songtao Wang: Methodology; software; formal analysis; validation; visualization; conceptualization; writing – review and editing; data curation. Xi Chen: Conceptualization; funding acquisition; methodology; supervision; project administration. Johanne Paradis: Conceptualization; funding acquisition; methodology; supervision. Irene Vitoroulis: Conceptualization; writing – original draft; supervision; methodology; writing – review and editing. Adriana Soto Corominas: Investigation; project administration; resources.

FUNDING INFORMATION

This study was funded by an SSHRC Insight Development Grant (PIs: Chen, Jenkins), no. 430‐2017‐00371.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

ETHICS STATEMENT

Ethics approval was obtained from the REB at the University of Toronto, the University of Alberta, and Wilfrid Laurier University.

CONSENT

All participants provided informed consent and child assent.

Supporting information

Figure S1.

Figure S2.

Table S1.

JORA-36-0-s001.docx (877.9KB, docx)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are deeply grateful to the Syrian‐Canadian families who generously shared their time and experiences with us over the course of this study. We also thank the research assistants across the three study sites whose work made the data collection and preparation possible.

APPENDIX A.

TABLE A1.

Descriptive statistics for the analytic sample.

Construct Wave 1 M Wave 1 SD Wave 2 M Wave 2 SD Wave 3 M Wave 3 SD
Bullying victimization 0.519 0.750 0.483 0.604 0.311 0.424
Sense of school belonging 3.389 0.748 3.188 0.764 3.110 0.548
English language proficiency 52.632 17.139 58.716 17.441 60.967 20.487
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Note: Descriptive statistics are based on the analytic sample used in the adjusted longitudinal models.

TABLE A2.

Correlations across the three waves.

Victimization W1 Victimization W2 Victimization W3 Belonging W1 Belonging W2 Belonging W3 English W1 English W2 English W3
Bullying victimization Wave 1 1 0.306* 0.233 −0.339** −0.079 −0.096 −0.037 −0.143 −0.024
Bullying victimization Wave 2 1 0.352** 0.101 −0.185† −0.008 −0.091 −0.001 −0.061
Bullying victimization Wave 3 1 −0.074 −0.112 −0.292* −0.259† −0.281* −0.277*
Sense of school belonging Wave 1 1 0.299† 0.310* 0.167* 0.193* 0.116
Sense of school belonging Wave 2 1 0.169 0.259* 0.178* 0.309**
Sense of school belonging Wave 3 1 0.217† 0.159 0.241†
English proficiency Wave 1 1 0.850*** 0.658***
English proficiency Wave 2 1 0.669***
English proficiency Wave 3 1
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Note: Entries are zero‐order correlations. † p < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Study materials and data analytic code are available by emailing Irene Vitoroulis. Because the data involve minors, the dataset cannot be made available.

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

Figure S1.

Figure S2.

Table S1.

JORA-36-0-s001.docx (877.9KB, docx)

Data Availability Statement

Study materials and data analytic code are available by emailing Irene Vitoroulis. Because the data involve minors, the dataset cannot be made available.

Articles from Journal of Research on Adolescence are provided here courtesy of Wiley

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