Roots and Branches of Research on Children’s Friendship in Culturally Diverse Classrooms

The research on children’s friendships has developed along separate lines of investigation, despite the fact that these lines are bound together by common theoretical issues related to children’s friendships in culturally diverse contexts. these lines of investigation are organized in this review under the following categories:

1. The etiology of scientific interest in children’s friendships in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries;

2. Dominant developmental trajectories in children’s conceptions of friendships;

3. Themes in mainstream sociological research on children’s friendships, and; 4. Themes in research on children’s friendships in culturally diverse

classrooms; and selected recent studies that have attempted to problematize children’s friendships ‘at promise’ in theoretically and conceptually fresh ways.