ABSTRACT
My concern throughout the preceding chapters was not to present a grandiose schema of interrelated thematic trajectories on children’s friendships in culturally diverse classrooms. Neither was it an attempt to engage in debunking the inherited research context of any given discipline. Instead, it was an attempt to explicate certain linking patterns that are evident in the theory, research, and pedagogy of children’s friendships across disciplinary boundaries, and to demonstrate the usefulness of seeking linkages that often remain covert, or neglected, as a result of hidebound academic traditions and divisions. A more comprehensive fusing of the ‘tensions’ between and among all relevant disciplines is beyond the scope of this book. Having addressed the etiological (see Chapter 2), operational (see Chapter 3), and applied (see Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7) ‘interrogatives’ of children’s friendships which were stated at the outset (see Chapter 1), the parting question becomes: What ‘resonances’ are sparked by my attempts to link the theory, research, and pedagogy of ‘promising’ nonsynchronous children’s friendships in culturally diverse classrooms? This book sparks the following four distinct resonances:
1. Children’s friendships as caring; 2. Children’s friendships as motivational contexts for learning; 3. Children’s friendships as meaningful explanatory frameworks for everyday
living; and 4. Children’s friendships as diffusive and generative phenomena.
