My Friends: The View of Primary School Pupils On the Phenomenon Of Friendship

Abstract

Friendship is an important thing in a person’s life for both an adult and a child. Parents are nervous if their child does not have friends, adolescents are unhappy if they do not have friends, and, in general, it can be said that people who have friends are happier in life. The role of the school in this context is to create optimal conditions for internalisation, socialisation, and personalisation. Friendship begins to form from preschool age onwards, but it develops dynamically during younger school age, taking into account developmental specificities. This is what we focused on in our research. We conducted structured interviews with pupils, which looked at two levels – the meaning of friendship for the pupil and the pupil’s position in friendship relationships. In our paper, we present the view of primary school pupils on what friendship means to them.