Candia Vallejos, CristianRodríguez-Sickert, CarlosOyarzún Wolf, Melanie2025-04-282025-04-282024https://hdl.handle.net/11447/9991Tesis doctoral presentada a la Facultad de Gobierno de la Universidad del Desarrollo para optar al grado de Doctor en Ciencias de la Complejidad SocialThis research explores how social interactions in educational settings influence academic outcomes, cooperation, and group dynamics in primary school classrooms. By applying methods from Computational Social Sciences and Complex Systems, this work integrates three key approaches: network science to measure social structure and student positioning, the collection of behavioral data through field experiments based on game theory applied in the classroom, and econometric analysis to approximate causal effects. The first study examines how reciprocity in social relationships within the classroom enhances academic performance, showing that students who engage in reciprocal interactions achieve better results. The second study investigates how friendship modulates hierarchical relations in public schools, finding that cooperation dynamics among peers are strongly influenced by social status, but friendships can mitigate these hierarchies. The third study focuses on the social interactions of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) within classrooms that incorporate both students with and without special educational needs, showing that these students tend to occupy peripheral positions in social networks and engage less frequently in reciprocal relationships. The findings of this project provide a deeper understanding of social relationships in educational contexts, with significant implications for managing classroom dynamics and designing educational policies aimed at improving school coexistence and social inclusion.133 p.enSocial NetworksFriendshipEducationAutismCooperation060005SThesishttps://doi.org/10.52611/11447/9991