Participants

Thirteen fifth graders (7 boys and 6 girls, aged 10 and 11 years) from Bonner Springs Elementary School participated in the research. Nineteen students were in the class. The author did not interview two students without permission from their parents and four other students due to absence, appointments, or classroom duties. The author did not interview students from Eisenhower Elementary School because the school district management did not approve the questions shown at Appendix A.

Materials

All students were presented a lesson on the culture of Ireland. The author used this lesson to ensure that all the students had a working knowledge of the terms used during the interview and that the baseline definition of culture was the same for all students. This lesson was part of a larger unit the author instructed that included the geography, politics, economics, music, and dance of Ireland. The written questions were sent home with students to obtain written permission to interview the students. Prior to the interview the author checked with the classroom teacher to make sure she received all the parental permission slips. Students did not have a copy of the questions prior to the interview and did not write out any of their answers. The author used a Sony microcassette recorder to capture the results of all interviews.

Procedures

Interviews took place during free or group work time during the regular school day. The author used the 5^th grade commons area for the interviews. The commons area is well traveled by students from the other three classes that share it, but there was a reasonable amount of privacy for the author to talk without interruption. The classroom teacher called out one student at a time, at her discretion, and that student exited the classroom and came to the commons. The author began each interview by asking several easily answered questions in order to relax the student and establish some rapport.

During the interview the author read each question from Appendix A exactly as written. Only when the student did not understand the question did the author elaborate. The most common problem was not knowing what "ethnic background" meant. The author made no attempt to distinguish between ethnic origin and ethnic identity. He left that distinction up to the respondents. Several times the author did offer ethnic group choices to help define the choices a little for the student. Typical choices included: Native American, Mexican American, African American, German Jewish, Irish, and Greek. The only other time the author presented choices was when a student had no idea of how many different cultures there were in the world. The author would offer the following choices: 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000.