The Role Ethnicity Plays in Who Elementary Students Choose as Friends

Friendships and their formation are an important part of the educational experience for K-12 students. With the ever increasing ethnic and racial diversity that is filling our schools, it is paramount that we examine how children choose their friends. This study examined whether or not race and ethnicity play a role in how children choose with whom they will spend their time. In order to determine this, a pre and post test was administers to two groups, treatment group and control group, of elementary students to determine with whom they would choose to be friends. The treatment group was given the opportunity to engage in a personal narrative activity where their stories were translated into Spanish and shared with their classmates. Our hypothesis was that children's baseline choice to interact with another child in close proximity would most often be a child of their own ethnicity. Therefore, our second hypothesis was that introducing children to the first language of their classmate in a literacy context that facilitated connections to similarities between their cultures would increase children's choices to interact with another child in close proximity across ethnic lines. (Contains 2 tables.)