Article

'Territorialising' the primary school playground: Deconstructing the geography of playtime

April 2005
Children s Geographies 3(1):63-78

DOI: 10.1080/14733280500037224

Authors:

UK primary school playgrounds differ in architecture, size and presentation. Some are bleak and empty; others are crammed full of colour and exciting play equipment. Overall, however, the assumption is that it is a dedicated play space that promotes children's social and physical freedom. This paper, using Sack's (1986) notion of ‘territorialisation’, deconstructs the contemporary playground space and examines the spatial strategies invoked by those in charge of playground supervision and management. It also presents the children's territorialisation of the playground and their reactions to, and transgressions of, the adults' spatial control.

“Children are precious cargo; we don’t let them take any risks!”: Hearing from adults on safety and risk in children’s active play in schools: a systematic review

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022
INT J BEHAV NUTR PHY

Background Understanding determinants of children’s outdoor play is important for improving low physical activity levels, and schools are a key setting for both. Safety concerns shape children’s opportunity to play actively outdoors, therefore, this qualitative evidence synthesis aimed to i) examine adult (e.g., parent, teacher, yard supervisor, principal) perspectives on safety and risk in children’s active play during recess in elementary and/or middle schools, and ii) identify how safety and risk influence playground supervision and decision making in this setting. Methods Six electronic databases were systematically searched in March 2021, with an updated search in June 2022. Records were screened against eligibility criteria using Covidence software, and data extraction and synthesis were performed using predesigned coding forms in Microsoft Excel and NVivo. Framework synthesis methodology was employed, guided by a conceptual framework structured on the socio-ecological model (SEM) and affordance theory. Results From 10,370 records, 25 studies were included that represented 608 adults across 89 schools from nine countries. The synthesis identified 10 constraining and four affording factors that influenced whether school staff were risk-averse or risk tolerant during recess, and, in turn, the degree to which children’s play was managed. Constraining factors stemmed from fears for children’s physical safety, and fear of blame and liability in the event of playground injury, which shaped parent, school staff and institutional responses to risk. Interrelated factors across SEM levels combined to drive risk-averse decision making and constraining supervision. Emerging evidence suggests children’s active play in schools can be promoted by fostering a risk tolerant and play friendly culture in schools through play facilitation training (e.g., risk-reframing, conflict resolution) and engaging stakeholders in the development of school policies and rules that balance benefits of play against potential risks. Conclusions Findings show several socio-cultural factors limited the ability of school staff to genuinely promote active play. Future work should seek to foster risk tolerance in schools, challenge the cultural norms that shape parent attitudes and institutional responses to risk in children’s play, and explore novel methods for overcoming policy barriers and fear of liability in schools. Trial registration PROSPERO registration: CRD42021238719.

“All the fun stuff, the teachers say, ‘that’s dangerous!’” Hearing from children on safety and risk in active play in schools: a systematic review

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2022
INT J BEHAV NUTR PHY

Background Active play is vital for healthy child development, and schools are a valuable setting to promote this behaviour. Understanding the determinants of children’s physical activity behaviour during recess, particularly the role of risk-taking and the influence safety concerns have on active play, is required. This systematic review aimed to 1) synthesise qualitative research with children that explored their perceptions of safety and risk in active play during recess in elementary and/or middle school, and 2) develop a model from the findings to guide efforts in schools to optimise children’s active play opportunities during recess. Methods Six online databases were systematically searched for articles published between January 2000 and March 2021. Following PRISMA guidelines, records were screened against eligibility criteria using Covidence software, and data extraction and synthesis was conducted using customised forms in Excel and NVivo software. Framework synthesis methodology was employed, conceptually guided by Bronfenbrenner’s socio-ecological model and Gibson’s affordance theory. Results Of 9664 records, 31 studies met inclusion criteria, representing 1408 children across 140 schools from 11 countries. An emergent conceptual framework was developed encompassing 23 risk and safety themes and 10 risky play types that children desired in schools. Individual characteristics (age, gender, physical literacy) influenced children’s engagement with risk and how they kept themselves safe. Across outer SEM levels, factors interacted to constrain or afford children’s active play. Socio-cultural factors (supervision practices, rules, equipment restrictions) constrained active play, which children perceived were driven by adults’ concern with physical safety. These factors contributed to a cycle of risk-averse decision making and diminished play affordances, which could inadvertently exacerbate safety issues. A model for risk tolerance in children’s active play has been proposed. Conclusions The findings show a disparity between the active play children want in schools and what they are able to do. Future work should balance the concerns of adults against the active play children want, involve children in decisions about playground policy, and foster a risk-tolerant culture in schools.

Russell, W. (ed.), Ardelean, A. and Smith, K. (2021) The Case for Play in Schools: A review of the literature, Bristol: Outdoor Play and Learning

Technical Report

Oct 2021

To Connect and be Heard: Informal Dimension of School Mealtimes Represented by Students’ Self-initiated YouTube Videos

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2021
Young

This qualitative observational study examines Finnish students’ self-initiated YouTube videos of school mealtimes, leaning theoretically on childhood sociology and social constructionist philosophy. Conceptualization of formal and informal dimensions of school mealtimes supported an examination of social media as a tool for children and young people for creative content production and expressions of agency, while acknowledging how their activities challenged formal rules and restrictions. The study shows how YouTube enabled students to construct cool and fun spaces within school mealtimes and provided them ways to voice their opinions of its formal contents. However, the publicity of social media resulted also with collisions between formal and informal dimensions, as the differing norms of online and offline contexts clashed. Overall, results illustrate social meanings of school mealtimes for students, their expressions of agency in relation to institutional boundaries and YouTube as a pathway for children and young people to connect and be heard.

Stigma and the doomed-to-fail school careers of young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2018
Child Geogr

Anita Gulczynska

The paper contributes to ‘geographies of education’ (Holloway, S., and H. Jöns. 2012. “Geographies of Education and Learning.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37 (4): 482–488), as it presents the typical school careers of students stigmatized in educational institutions because of their disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Drawing on qualitative research with male residents of one disadvantaged neighbourhood in Łódź (Poland), I identify their typical careers as ‘doomed-to-fail school careers’. The paper has three aims. First, it highlights the significance of stigma-based spatially embedded school practices on the educational failure and low-paid employment of students from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Second, it uncovers forms of school control over stigmatized students and the students’ resistance to these. Finally, I argue that Erving Goffman’s theory of stigma in human geography (Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma. Notes on Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall) offers a unique language to describe and explain the spatially embedded educational experiences of marginalized students.

Three playgrounds: Researching the multiple geographies of children’s outdoor play

Article

Oct 2017

This paper argues for more careful, combinative approaches to children’s outdoor play that can better apprehend the social-material, political and spatial constitution of children’s play with/in diverse urban communities. Much extant scholarship on play starts either from macro-scale generalisations about the ‘state’ of children’s play, or from micro-scale analyses of the performances, materialities and feelings that constitute play. Our approach in this paper is to both combine these approaches and, more significantly, to focus elsewhere. Drawing on a large-scale, multi-method study of children’s outdoor play in three London communities, we start our analyses with three ostensibly similar, and geographically-proximate playgrounds. Through detailed attention to children’s narratives about these playgrounds, we assert the value of a comparative approach that demonstrates how the three playgrounds articulated both overlapping and strikingly divergent social-political processes in each community. Children’s narratives ranged from humorous and affirmative accounts of relaxation, fun, friendship and wildfowl, to haunting urban myths that make manifest community anxieties about ‘strangers’, sexual violence and intravenous drug use, to troubling, stinging critiques of how playgrounds evinced longstanding concerns about social-political marginalisation. The paper opens out a number of important avenues for future scholarship on play, specifically, and for research in children’s geographies and childhood studies more generally. In particular, it emphasises the value of a comparative approach to outdoor play that pays detailed attention to the enduring role of myths and rumours in the co-constitution of playspaces with, in and as the social-political lives of communities.

The role and place of mid-day supervisors in primary schools

Article

Jul 2022

Steven McNichol

This study focused on a group of staff who undertake an occupational role in almost every primary school in the United Kingdom: mid-day supervisors. Despite mid-day supervisors being present in most primary schools for a proportion of each day, little is known about the functions of their role or about those who undertake it. No previous research has focused solely on this role within primary schools, nor included mid-day supervisors themselves as sole participants. This thesis therefore makes a contribution to knowledge by exploring the functions of the mid-day supervisors’ role, the place of this role within primary school communities and the experience of undertaking the role from the perspective of mid-day supervisors themselves. The study took place within three primary schools in the East Midlands. At each school, I worked alongside the mid-day supervisors, taking on the role myself, for fifteen consecutive days. During this participatory stage, I made field notes to record my own experience, informal observations and, most often, conversations between myself and the mid-day supervisors I worked alongside. This provided an insight into not only the experience of undertaking the role myself, but of the mid-day supervisors’ experience of doing so at the school. This data was supplemented by interviews with some mid-day supervisors at each school, allowing further exploration of their past and current experience undertaking the role. This study finds that the role of the mid-day supervisor within each school was either marginalised from or legitimised within the school community (Wenger, 1998) through organisational positioning, influences within the wider community and interactions with those undertaking different roles. The study draws on various theories of role (Linton, 1936; Newcomb, 1950; Dahrendorf, 1973; Biddle, 1986) to highlight the impact this had on the obligatory, optional and forbidden aspects of how the role was enacted and the functions that mid-day supervisors performed in each school. The experience of occupying the role of a primary-school mid-day supervisor was heavily influenced by factors that either minimised or contributed to role strain, such as role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload. Where these factors were minimal, the experience of being a mid-day supervisor was generally a positive one. Where these factors were significant, this led to a negative experience of being a mid-day supervisor for those who occupied the role and resulted in frustration and job dissatisfaction.

Play diversity and student agency in the redevelopment of a school playspace

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2021
Child Geogr

The role of unstructured nature-based play in children’s wellbeing, health and learning is a significant focus in research into child development and is increasingly a concern for schools and early childhood settings. There is a groundswell of interest in redesigning children’s outdoor playspaces to better support diverse, nature-based play experiences. Additionally, broad interest in promoting children’s rights and perspectives in matters that concern them has stimulated efforts to involve children in this redesign. This paper reports a case study of a playspace redevelopment project in an Australian primary school, aiming to support greater play diversity in the school grounds. The redevelopment project was led by a teacher who actively involved students in designing and building the space. We consider the extent to which the children were able to define an institutionalised playspace, discussing the complexity of child agency as it relates to the curricularisation and regulation of learning and play. Our analysis suggests the children’s engagements with the playspace were complex and multiform, involving both their agentic definition and inhabitation of the space and their interpellation into adult worlds. Implications are identified for practitioners and researchers interested in child agency and voice in outdoor school playspace redesign.

Multilingual communication under the radar: how multilingual children challenge the dominant monolingual discourse in a super-diverse, Early Years educational setting in England

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2019

The operant “one nation – one language” model in Western culture has resulted in linguistic hegemony being almost universally presented as an uncontentious reality. This article accepts Foucault’s challenge to deconstruct this officially sanctioned “truth” by looking at how the educational system in England legitimises the discourse that speaking English is normal, marginalising multilingual practices. Data is drawn from a year-long study of thirty “super-diverse” children in an inner-city school in the north of England. The research presents language portraits in which the children demonstrate they have internalised the rhetoric that English should be spoken in school. These are contrasted with ethnographic observations which provide co-constructed researcher-pupil cartoons representing social interactions in a range of contexts. The illustrations demonstrate how the children challenge the idealisation of English language in school by operating spatial agency in which they seek (and find) opportunities in peripheral and liminal spaces to speak their own language.

The lived experiences of school lunch: an empathy-based study with children in Sweden

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2019
Child Geogr

School lunch is in general regulated through policies and agendas constituted by the perspectives of adults. In this article, we focus on children’s lived experiences of school lunch with a special emphasis on emotions and how they relate to social and physical dimensions. This study draws on empathy-based stories written by 10–11 year olds (n = 171) from schools in Sweden. We identified three themes: Interaction and exposure, Routines and restrictions and Food and eating. The children’s lived experiences of school lunch and the emotions attached to them are closely associated and intertwined with the socio-spatial dimension of school lunch. A pleasant meal experience seems to require harmonization between the physical and social space whilst negative experiences contain tensions between them, something that actors working with school lunch and school lunch environments should take in consideration when resourcing, planning and scheduling school lunch, and also when designing new school restaurants.

Primary school playgrounds as spaces of inclusion/exclusion in New South Wales, Australia

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2018

The purpose of this study was to determine how the design and organisation of primary school playground spaces may result in the inclusion or exclusion of some groups of children. Two primary school playgrounds in rural New South Wales, Australia, were selected for this investigation. Data were collected through observations and unstructured interactional interviews. Data analysis revealed the design and organisation of primary school play spaces may lead to segregation among school children. Gender, safety concerns and school rules were also established as factors restricting full use of the playground space. The identification of these factors is vital in guiding future school reform programmes and policies aimed at enhancing participation in play and a sense of belonging for all children. The results suggest that there is need to promote schools’ understandings of the significance of playground spaces in children’s social lives so children can fully benefit from the time they spend in school playgrounds.

CHILDREN’S CONCEPTUALIZATION OF CHILDHOOD IN RELATION TO PLAY ACTIVITIES

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2022

Children’s play articulates the social ideologies and discourses of childhood and play. This study combined espousals from childhood studies, and play theories to analyze children’s conceptualization of childhood play, and trace social influences of their conceptions. The research consisting of 112 fifth-grade students who live in an urban environment indicated that their conceptualization of childhood referred to many types of play. In contrast to the discourse of the competent child, they almost exclusively appropriated the romantic discourse of the innocent child who plays outdoors with other children or alone, unsupervised by adults, far from institutionalized learning, intellectual games, urban activities, and new technology toys. Their conceptualizations reflected gender stereotypes of play and the influence of a competitive social structure. Article visualizations: </p

“NADIE TIENE LAS PAREDES DE ROJO”: INVESTIGAR LAS GEOGRAFIAS ESCOLARES DE LA INFANCIA

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2021
Cadernos Pesquisa

Resumen Esta investigación tiene como propósito analizar las geografías de la infancia escolarizada. Se enuncian los resultados del primer ciclo de una investigación más amplia, en torno a la experiencia del alumnado de 2-6 años de 47 escuelas, a través del análisis que los maestros en formación realizan sobre cómo usan, interpretan y se relacionan los niños en el espacio escolar. Desde los postulados de la investigación cualitativa, se usan como estrategias el Map-making y la propuesta de análisis de espacios educativos de Trueba (2017). Los resultados visibilizan los espacios utilizados por la infancia, esencialmente las aulas y el patio, y aquellos otros prohibidos o invisibles, zonas de uso exclusivo para adultos o alumnado de mayor edad. Destacan las aulas como espacio elegido por su significatividad, las cuales se diseñan desde parámetros adultos alejados de los criterios propuestos por Trueba.

Narrating kinship and connection: the life stories of adult-children raised by LBTQ parents

Thesis

Jan 2020

Eliza Garwood

Despite the increasing literature on LGBTQ families, there continues to be limited research on the children within these families. The social, legal and political context for LGBTQ people has transformed drastically over the twentieth and twenty-first century. However, we know little about how these changes will have shaped the life courses of people raised by LGBTQ parents. The data within this thesis comes from 20 biographical interviews with adult-children raised by lesbian, bisexual, trans and queer (LBTQ) parents in England and Scotland. This thesis explores how people with LBTQ parents narrate their life stories, particularly addressing the intersections of family, identity, social norms and historical context. I use a combination of life course and queer theory to discuss the complex and messy everyday spatialities and relationalities found in participant life stories. The study examines the interplay between notions of normative families, genders and sexualities, and alternative everyday practices in families with LBTQ parents. This analysis is combined with a geographical and temporal lens, discussing how family practices, emotions and relationships can shift through time and space. I firstly discuss this in relation to genetic normativity, noting that although people with LBTQ parents often live in families that seem to resist dominant notions of biological relatedness, genetic discourses remain significant to those raised by LBTQ parents. This suggests that children raised in LBTQ households must navigate between the non-traditional aspects of their families and ongoing normative genetic discourses. Secondly, I examine queer origin stories, highlighting the ways that adult-children with LBTQ parents emphasise the importance of knowing their queer family histories, rather than only their genetic relations. This demonstrates the ways that adult-children can re-create, re-shape and re-tell their queer origin stories in adulthood. Third, I look into how participants narrated their experiences within the various spaces they moved between. I focus on the idea of ‘coming out’ or disclosure, to discuss how the power within specific contexts prompt different practices, displays, and feelings from people with LBTQ parents. Finally, I explore how participants related to ideas of normality and normativity more broadly, noting adult-children’s pursuit of intelligibility and legitimacy; how adult-children engage in quiet forms of everyday activism; and complicate traditional notions of the idealised life course. These findings contribute to the geographies of family and intimacy and sociological understandings of LGBTQ and queer kinship, adding to the limited body of work on children raised by non-heterosexual or gender confirming parents.

Proximal or peripheral: temporality and spatiality in young people's discourses on gender violence in Sweden

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2020
GENDER EDUC

This article explores how young people in Sweden talk about and understand violence, with a particular emphasis on how violence, gender, space and time are co-constructed in this discourse. We found that young people display an ambivalent attitude to violence, reinforcing several contradictory discourses of violence. Young people adopt various understandings that place violence differently in time (ongoing vs. past) and space (distant/absent vs. close/present). They discursively construct the school as a non-violent space while considering digital spaces to be violent. Yet, they still find that violence occurs at different places and times at school. These ‘discursive manoeuvres’ highlight how views on violence that territorialises and re-territorialises places as being ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’ is part of the gendered spatial regulation of young people's lives. By specifically analysing time and space in young people's discourse on violence, this article contributes to research on their perspectives on gendered violence.

Territory and territoriality: retrospect and prospect

Chapter

Nov 2020

David Storey

A Research Agenda for Territory and Territoriality

Book

Nov 2020

David Storey

Fences of childhood: Challenging the meaning of playground boundaries in design

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2020

Scholars have criticized the capacity of playgrounds to support children's participation in public life. Fences of childhood, such as walls, fences, and enclosures, dominate children's “public” spatial experiences in the global north. Challenging well-established critiques of the fenced playground as a space that segregates and controls childhood experiences, this study offers a novel and nuanced perspective, emphasizing the qualities of the playground fence that support play and playful connections, on, through, and around it. Employing an ethnographic methodology, this study includes 167h of observations in three typical urban public playgrounds in Greece and 65 semi-structured interviews with 124 participants. Drawing on recursive thematic qualitative analysis, the fence emerges as a blurred boundary, that is, an element that transgresses assumptions and questions spatial classifications and hierarchies. Rarely the subject of design discourse, these findings are particularly significant in design disciplines globally and offer new understandings on the possibilities afforded by the playground fence. Emergent themes, namely, indeterminacy, climbabilty, playability, and porosity, are proposed as principles to guide fenced playground design as part of a fundamental reconceptualization. This reconceptualization positions the fenced playground as a public space infrastructure, supporting intergenerational interaction and play as well as children's presence and play in the public realm.

EXPLORING SOME TOPICS FOR A POTENTIAL RESEARCH IN THE FIELD OF CHILDREN'S GEOGRAPHIES IN ROMANIA

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2019

Irena Mocanu

Worldwide, Children's Geographies have developed continuously, increasing its research topics with the explanation of Cultural Geography. In Romania, the children have not so far been sufficiently explored geographically, despite the fact that the Romanian society passes through a difficult period of change which affects the whole population, children included. This paper aims to explore some topics for a potential research in Romania, in the new field of Children's Geographies (e.g. children in different environments, the relationships between children and the natural or anthropic environments and landscapes; different categories of spaces for children and childhood). The topics of the research have emerged from references to the international literature on Children's Geographies. Most of the issues debated in this paper are accompanied by some suggestions/ideas related to Children's Geography adapted to the country's background, but so far neglected by Romanian Geography.

Play and Playgrounds in Children’s Geographies

Chapter

Jan 2019

Ann Marie F Murnaghan

Play and Playgrounds in Children’s Geographies

Chapter

Jan 2019

Ann Marie F Murnaghan

Echoes Of The Enlightenment Child: School Spatialities Constructed And Contested

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2017

Kelly Power

Full text available at: http://www.undergraduatelibrary.org/2017/education/echoes-enlightenment-child-school-spatialities-constructed-and-contested

“Football is a boys’ game”: children’s perceptions about barriers for physical activity during recess time

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2017

The aim of the study was to know the factors that influence boys and girls’ perceptions for performing physical activity during playground recess from their own perspective. Ninety-eight schoolchildren aged 8–11 years from five schools from Cuenca (Spain) participated in 22 focus groups and carried out 98 drawings following the socioecological model as a theoretical framework. A content analysis of the transcripts from the focus groups and drawings was carried out by three researchers. Results showed that, in spite of boys and girls identified same barriers, there were gender differences in their perceptions. Gender socialization was the key as central category and helped to understand these differences. Boys preferred play football and this sport had a monopoly on the recess space. Weather was a barrier for boys. Girls and boys, who did not play football, were relegated to peripheral areas and lack of materials was a barrier for them. Teachers were a barrier for all children who did not play football. Thus, in order to promote recess physical activity, researchers, teachers and educational policy makers should take into account gender socialization and promote inclusive non-curricular physical activity in schools.

Pupil participation and playground design: listening and responding to children’s views

Article

Sep 2017

This article outlines a small-scale research project that attempted to involve primary aged pupils actively in the redesign of their school playground. The project stemmed from concerns raised by school staff regarding the frequency of problematic behaviours during unstructured times, particularly lunchtimes, and the decision to redesign the playground was one component of a larger scale research project. This article provides a critical account of this process, and an overview of the approach taken to involve children as co-researchers to ensure that their views were not only heard, but that they played a key role in decisions that would affect them. This offers an alternative way in which educational psychologists (EPs) can address teacher concerns regarding behaviour by attempting to involve and empower young people in the process.

Everyone knows me …. I sort of like move about”: The friendships and encounters of young people with Special Educational Needs in different school settings

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2017

This paper examines the peer-related social experiences and friendships of young people (aged 11–17) diagnosed with Special Educational Needs in four different school settings: two mainstream schools with special units and two special schools in Southeast England, UK. Findings from qualitative research involving young people with Special Educational Needs and adults, and participant observation, are presented. The young people had one or a combination of the following diagnoses of Special Educational Need: ‘Moderate Learning Difficulties’, on the ‘Autistic Spectrum’, and ‘Social, Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties’. We use the term ‘differences’ rather than ‘difficulties’ to express the interconnected socio-spatial construction of, and corporeality of, the experiences of these differences. There has been limited scholarship about the social experiences of young people with these diagnoses. In our study, young people’s experiences of friendships, exclusion, inclusion and bullying were socio-spatially shifting. Young people had varying experiences in the different school settings. In all settings, most had friends within the school, although those in special schools and units tended to have more friends within the school. However, bullying and ‘othering’ were also experienced in all three settings based on a variety of perceived ‘differences’. All young people needed opportunities for ‘encounter’ to forge friendships. Encounters are risky and can reproduce and reinforce difference as well as generating social connections and friendships. In many spaces, young people’s opportunities for encounter were constrained by the socio-spatial organisation of schools.

ISLANDS FOR LEARNING AND PLAYING – LEOPOLD PRIMANRY SCHOOL PLAYGROUND STRUCTURES

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Nov 2015

‘Islands for learning and playing’ – Leopold Primary School Playground Structures History and context of the project: On average children in the UK spend around 2000 hours of their live in school playgrounds. Yet current guidelines for outdoor play spaces by the Department for Education are very basic and do not referring to any clear design statements only referring to a space for ‘pupils to play outside.’ (DoE: Advice on Standards for School Premises. p13). The Area Guidelines for Mainstream Schools defines outside spaces as areas offering a ‘wide range of educational opportunities and social space.’ (DoE: Area Guidelines for Mainstream Schools. p36) Harlesden in North-West London is one of the most deprived areas in London. In 1999 it had the highest murder rate in the whole of the UK according the Police Crime League Tables. The population is historically of a mostly Caribbean culture but in the last couple of years it attracted as well a sizable Brazilian, Somalian and Portuguese community. In the past it has been compared to the London Bronx. Although bordering on Zone 2 of the public transport with excellent links to central London it has still the lowest property prices in inner-London and is classified as a low participation neighborhood in terms of university applications. Leopold Primary School is a mixed community school in the heart of Harlesden. It has overall around 500 pupils. Nearly 1/3 of them are on free school meals, over 40% with English not their first language and about 40% of the pupils being cared for by local authorities or other family members. In the past Leopold Primary School has managed to be provide an excellent early year education inspiring pupils to archive higher than average results. The headteacher, Mrs Kendall, is an inspirational figure in the local community and the main driver for a positive change in the early year education. The facilities of Leopold Primary School are far from ideal, suffering from years of neglect by the local authorities due to budget cuts in the borough of Brent. Especially the outside spaces are lacking an inspirational and challenging environment in line with the new curriculum taught at the English KS1. It is not possible to overhaul the entire school and its outside spaces so over the last two years we have started to improve the school environment by using specific local authority funding to tackle urgent issues in and around the school. After an initial consultation with the staff and the pupils we implemented a change in the restrooms of the entire school, changing, modernising and improving the basic environment for the pupils. Through a colour coding and changing of surfaces this main area of concern is now working well. The ‘Learning Islands’ will continue the approach of a specific localised intervention into the exisiting fabric and running of the school. The project aims to enrich the outdoor playing area with a series of educational fun structures that enable the teacher to engage the early year pupils in a series of curriculum-related activities. The learning islands will enable the teachers and learning advisors to use the precious outside space for engaging and inspiring learning games. At the same time the pieces will enable the children to engage with current issues of recycling and greening of the city in a creative and fun way. The project follows principles of creative play developed and implemented by Aldo van Eyck in the 1950-1970 and more recently the work of the Baupiloten practice in Berlin in their school projects. The project will draw in help from the local school parent communities, engage the children in the design and creation of the structures and present surrounding schools with a blueprint for further dissemination. The impact of the structures will last for years to come as they will engage and (hopefully) inspire many future generations of primary school children. The project is planned for the last term with the school community and will be implemented during the summer break to be ready for the start of the new autumn term. Research questions: How can you enrich a school play area with well-designed learning structures? How can a structure be adapted for teaching and learning throughout the seasons? How can a series of architectural interventions be designed to be self-supporting and self-sufficient? Research methods: Enriching the learning environment Promoting creativity Encourage physical activities Develop confidence Enjoy play Keywords: -Architectural education through play -Social engagement in the creative process -Alternative ways of designing and constructing -Architectural learning -Perception of ‘space’ through an ‘architectural object’

How listening to student voice can enable teachers to reflect on and adjust their use of physical space

Article

Jan 2011

The carpet as a learning space has become the received way of delivering literacy and numeracy in English primary schools, yet remains little examined either academically or professionally. Different understandings of teaching and learning have different implications for carpet-time. As carpet time is so widespread it seems important to find out how and why it is used, and how children and teachers respond to this use of space. This research comprised a mixed-method study of carpet use in an English primary school. Government policy has stated through the Every Child Matters (ECM) agenda that the child should be at the centre of teaching and learning (DfES, 2004). This study, therefore, asked both children and adults for their ideas about carpet-based teaching and learning. Results show a mismatch between what children think, what teachers think and what actually happens. They also demonstrate the potential to overcome these contradictions: obtaining children’s views on teaching and learning can enable teachers to reflect on (and improve) their use of physical space.

Comparative cultural case studies on neighborhood playgrounds of Korea and Australia

Article

Jun 2016

전가일

‘I have to be at home’: Place and gender among student-mothers in higher education

Article

May 2020

Thi Bogossian

Mothers who study in higher education (HE) experience many roadblocks that typical traditional students do not. These challenges are most referred to in terms of a lack of time to dedicate to their responsibilities as students and carers. However, there is an overlooked relation between student-mothers’ identities and space, considering the classic dichotomy of private/home space and the public sphere that had prevented many women to study. Based on interviews (N=4) and one focus group (N=3) with student-mothers at a prestigious university in Scotland, this research examines their place in HE in the United Kingdom. Data analysis revealed that these students’ mobilities are constrained by their caring responsibilities but that they also challenge established gendered norms by building bridges between their homes and public spaces. Moreover, although all these students are marginalised due to their motherhood, other axes of power impact on their educational experiences. This paper provides an original contribution to discussing gendered spatial norms and accessibility of educational spaces using intersectional lens and moves the academic debate forward by exploring not only the spatial relations that constrain, but are also produced by, these mothers.

Gender-bias in the built environment: how young women’s experiences in public space are understood and addressed in London

Article

Nov 2022

Athough young women have an equal right to public space, socio-cultural influences both manifested in and sustained by the built environment contribute to their exclusion. Using mixed qualitative methodologies, this research explores the spatial and non-spatial causes of this injustice, and examines solutions presented by Key Independent Organizations addressing the issue in London. The analysis problematizes how inequitable social conditions may constrain young women’s design preferences, potentially leading to solutions that perpetuate gendered behaviours with detrimental outcomes. This study provides a point of reference for future initiatives addressing the problem and adds to the growing discourse surrounding inequality in public space.

Navigating dis/ableist school playgrounds and toilets with geographic maturity: stories of young people with dwarfism from their secondary education

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2022
Child Geogr

Antonios Ktenidis

Little attention has been paid to the experiences of disabled young people of school playgrounds and toilets in mainstream settings. Drawing on the qualitative, first-hand accounts of 19 young people with dwarfism, this paper explores how they make sense and navigate school playgrounds and toilets during their secondary education from a Critical Disability Studies perspective. The findings suggest that playgrounds are experienced as inaccessible, hierarchical, panoptic and unsafe. Moreover, several factors affect the choice of school toilet – disabled or gender-binary – including the in/accessibility of toilets, the regulation of access to disabled toilets, and the social meanings attached to them. I argue such experiences are the outcome of both spaces being dis/ableist, designed for and with the ‘normatively developing’ body in mind. Participants’ stories also illustrate how they are aware of and resist the spatial scripts of these spaces – how they are meant to be used and who is allowed to inhabit them. This paper concludes with the need to listen to and engage with disabled young people for inclusive spaces to be achieved.

'Real' boys, sissies and tomboys: exploring the material-discursive intra-actions of football, bodies, and heteronormative discourses

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2021

Marios Kostas

School playgrounds are critical arenas wherein children’s gender performances unfold, and ‘games’ of gender subordination or domination transpire. Theoretically predicated on Butlerian and Baradian gender performativity approaches, this qualitative study analyses how children negotiate and perform gender, exploring the material-discursive effects of human and non-human agents (e.g. football, sartorial elements) in their intra-actions with the body. Data were collected through observations and semi-structured interviews with 80 pupils from two Athenian elementary schools. Findings showed that playgrounds were dichotomised into rigid gender zones, and the children reaffirmed their gender allegiances by forming gender-homogeneous playgroups and engaging in diametrical activities. Gender-zone transgressions were frequent, albeit with high social and emotional cost, especially for boys who were uninterested in football and lacked athletic dexterity. Finally, the results highlighted the effects of material-discursive forces in gender identity development and, specifically, how ‘successful’ masculinity, girly femininity, sissies, and tomboys emerged through the material-discursive intra-actions of playgrounds, bodies, football, and heteronormative discourses.

School Buildings (and Grounds)

Chapter

Nov 2021

Clive Harber

The final substantive chapter begins by summarising some key propositions about the nature of school buildings and points out that they have a strong influence on learning, teaching and pupil teacher relationships. It discusses how schools often lack space and are overcrowded, not necessarily a good thing in the age of Covid. It also discusses differences in the nature of school buildings mainly attended by the rich and the poor. The chapter next addresses the safety of school buildings considering lack of adequate facilities such as safe drinking water and adequate toilets. However, other factors are even more dangerous, for example building schools in areas prone to earthquakes without the proper foundations in Italy and Japan and building code violations in Russia leading to high death tolls from fires in schools. Two examples are also provided of schools or parts of schools collapsing and pupils being killed in Nigeria and South Africa. The chapter also considers the problem of air pollution affecting the health of children at schools in China and London as well as lack of fire sprinkler systems in English schools and the continuing problem of asbestos in school buildings. It then proceeds with analysis from Foucault to look at the use of school buildings for surveillance such as the use of CCTV cameras in schools in India, security measures in American schools, pupil tracking systems in South Africa and surveillance cameras in British schools. The rest of the chapter then takes various aspects of school buildings one by one: the selling off of school playing fields in England; the poor and unhygienic nature of school toilets in Tanzania, Ghana, Cambodia and Ethiopia and how this affects menstruating girls in particular (including in the UK); the intimidating nature of school sports changing rooms in Australia; the issue of food waste in school kitchens in Italy, Spain and Malaysia; issues of food hygiene in school kitchens in Spain, Ghana and Kenya; pollution level in school canteens in Lithuania; Foucault and social control in primary school dining rooms in the UK; unhealthy food in school tuck shops in South Africa and the role of companies sponsoring their own food products; unhealthy food in school tuck shops in South Korea, Canada and Poland; the school playground as an enjoyable space for children but also in the UK one where social control and surveillance is still very much in evidence and which in both the UK and South Africa can be dominated by boys and where bullying takes place including, in South Africa, sexual bullying; the school playground as a regular place of pupil injury and accident in America with unsuitable surfaces and too little protection from the sun.

British Journal of Sociology of Education ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbse20 'Real' boys, sissies and tomboys: exploring the material-discursive intra-actions of football, bodies, and heteronormative discourses 'Real' boys, sissies and tomboys: exploring the material- discursive intra-actions of football, bodies, and heteronormative discourses

Article

Nov 2021

Marios Kostas

faculty of arts, humanities and Education, canterbury christ church university, Kent, uK ABSTRACT School playgrounds are critical arenas wherein children's gender performances unfold, and 'games' of gender subordination or domination transpire. Theoretically predicated on Butlerian and Baradian gender performativity approaches, this qualitative study analyses how children negotiate and perform gender, exploring the material-discursive effects of human and non-human agents (e.g. football, sartorial elements) in their intra-actions with the body. Data were collected through observations and semi-structured interviews with 80 pupils from two Athenian elementary schools. Findings showed that playgrounds were dichotomised into rigid gender zones, and the children reaffirmed their gender allegiances by forming gender-homogeneous playgroups and engaging in diametrical activities. Gender-zone transgressions were frequent, albeit with high social and emotional cost, especially for boys who were uninterested in football and lacked athletic dexterity. Finally, the results highlighted the effects of material-discursive forces in gender identity development and, specifically, how 'successful' masculinity, girly femininity, sissies, and tomboys emerged through the material-discur-sive intra-actions of playgrounds, bodies, football, and heteronormative discourses.

Breaking the gender binary: using fairytales to transform playground possibilities for year 3 girls

Article

May 2020

Gabrielle Katie Spears

This critical, ethnographic action research project presents the heavily gendered playground interactions between 14 girls and 16 boys at a state funded, mixed-sex, multicultural primary school in the heart of London. Through casting a critical eye on the notion of spatiality and human territoriality and the role in which schools play when creating prescriptive socialising spaces, I aim to transform social possibilities for the majority of girls and some boys in my sample size of 30. I construct an immersive, age-appropriate, fairytale-inspired experience that seeks to subvert the ‘typical’ gender binary and attain social justice for those who feel ostracised in this communal socialising space on account of biological sex.

Loisir et éducation. La formalisation éducative des jeux dans un accueil périscolaireLeisure and education. The educational formalisation of games in an after-school centre

Article

Sep 2018

Baptiste Besse-Patin

The hidden value of in-between spaces for children’s self-directed play within outdoor school environments

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2020
LANDSCAPE URBAN PLAN

Despite the important role of outdoor school environments in children’s recess, school ground design does not often manage to support children’s self-directed play. This paper argues for the value of so called ‘in-between spaces’ for children in outdoor school environments that has not been studied sufficiently from their perspectives. Employing a socio-ecological framework, this participatory qualitative study used three methods to identify the multiple environmental characteristics of in-between spaces that support children’s self-directed play. Sixty behaviour mapping sessions, 78 walking tours, and 18 focus groups were completed with children aged 8–10 during school recess. The context–sensitive data were collected in three public primary school grounds in Sydney, Australia. Using inductive thematic analysis, the physical, social and organisational characteristics of children’s chosen in-between spaces were identified. The results revealed that children’s preferred in-between spaces included small enclosures, edges and natural settings with affordances supporting their self-directed play. These spaces offered children an opportunity to redress gender imbalance and mitigate the impact of overcrowding, problems that often inhibited children’s self-directed play in the formal spaces of school grounds. Despite children’s interest in in-between spaces, they were not valued in school grounds and were often characterised as out-of-bounds where children were not allowed during the recess time. The discussion argues for the value of in-between spaces where children can find the support of all the environmental characteristics to operate their self-directed play. School design and school policy should recognise these spaces for their spatial value for children’s play in schools.

Hey teachers leave us kids alone? Can playtimes be enjoyable for all?

Article

Sep 2019

Playtimes in English primary schools are a perennial and mainly enjoyable event. They are, however, largely overlooked in educational reform and have experienced ‘benign neglect’. The paper presents the findings from a research project which investigated the playtimes of primary school children. Questionnaire data gathered by pre-service teachers focused on children’s views of playtimes, including the role of adults, and the children’s use of playground space. Whilst generally positive about their playtimes, a minority of pupils find playtimes challenging. Pupils recognise the complexity and challenge of the social expectations of playtimes. This paper proposes that perhaps the time is right now to focus anew on playtimes to consider whether change should take place, why and how this change might be effected.

Girls’ perspectives on the ideal school playground experience: an exploratory study of four Australian primary schools

Article

Apr 2018
Child Geogr

Based on research conducted as part of the Sydney Playground Project, this paper provides an exploratory investigation of the perspectives of girls relating to the ideal school playground experience, and whether their perspectives are influenced by a loose-parts playground intervention. The focus is on the play behaviours of 22 girls aged 8–10 years, from the perspective that school playgrounds are generally designed in ways that are more suited to the play behaviours of boys. The research is based on a qualitative analysis of children’s drawings, interviews and focus groups, exploring meanings associated with desired play experiences. Findings indicate that girls’ views of the ideal school playground are influenced by the geographies of the spaces they play in, and that girls highly valued changes provided by a loose-parts intervention.

For the love of cuddly toys

Article

Mar 2018
Child Geogr

John Horton

This essay reflects upon a particular moment at the end of Chris Philo’s Children’s Geographies lecture [see Philo 2016. “‘Childhood is Measured Out by Sounds and Sights and Smells, Before the Dark Hour of Reason Grows’: Children’s Geographies at 12.” Children’s Geographies 14 (6): 623–640. doi:10.1080/14733285.2016.1187896], when discussion turned to cuddly toys. I recall a particular mood constituted in and by this moment: of apparent bashfulness, hesitancy, things-left-unsaid, and disinclination to discuss cuddly toys within the formal space of an academic conference. I suggest that this incident might be understood as indicative of three sets of silences which, still, characterise a great deal of work within the fantastically vibrant sub-disciplines of Children’s Geographies and Cultural Geographies. This argument is accompanied by photographic portraits of three particular toys: Angus, Arnold and the B.B.D. I hope that the presence of these portraits helps bring to the surface something of the often-silenced geographies – of memories, affects, intimacies and vulnerabilities, of play, fun and care, and of material and popular cultures – upon which my argument is focused.

Images of Play Experiences Through a Child’s Lens: An Exploration of Play and Digital Media with Young Children

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2017

Angela Eckhoff

This research documents the use of digital media by young children in outdoor play spaces. The research was conducted at a child care center on an urban university campus in the southeastern USA. The research employed a participatory design and used a qualitative, reflexive approach to include the child’s voice, ideas, and understandings of their play through the use of child-created, digital images. Four forms of digital imagery were evident: performance imagery in which an image or scene was orchestrated; live action imagery in which a playful experience was created so that the photographer or videographer would appear on film; documentary imagery in which the camera became a tool to capture or describe an everyday image or event; and mobile image audiencing in which the original photographer or videographer was unintentionally captured in the digital record or intentionally recorded by other children as the original artist paused to review, edit, or display their work to others. Children displayed a sophisticated understanding of how they could construct or co-construct knowledge, culture, and identity through the use of digital media. This research provides insight into children’s spontaneous play and their roles as creators and consumers of digital media and imagery.

‘Favourite places in school’ for lower-set ‘ability’ pupils: school groupings practices and children’s spatial orientations

Article

Dec 2016
Child Geogr

Ceri Brown

This paper contributes to the recent turn within Children’s Geographies concerned with understanding and illuminating educational inequalities. The focus is upon pupils assigned to lower ‘ability’ groupings, in a school under pressure to raise attainment. The objective of the paper is twofold, firstly to consider how school grouping practices affect children’s sense of belonging in lessons, and secondly, to contextualise these findings against children’s spatial orientations within the broader school environment. It is argued that a spatial focus may shed light upon the educational policy drivers that contribute to the exclusion of disadvantaged children. Neo-liberal imperatives of accountability and performance can be seen to shape hierarchies of belonging, where pupils’ positioning in ‘ability’ groupings enables/limits the spatial agency that they can exert. Macro policy concerns are mapped onto micro school processes concerning the construction and governance of school spaces, using theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and R.D Sack.

Sexual choreographies of the classroom: movement in sexuality education

Article

Nov 2016

Louisa Allen

This paper is interested in thinking more about sexuality education at school. As such, it is concerned with a mundane and unacknowledged feature of the sexuality classroom – the mapping of movement. While human movement is a familiar focus of educational research, the movement of things is not. With reference to Barad’s concept of intra-activity, the paper maps human-non-human movements and characterises these as a sexual choreography of schooling. Instead of asking what does movement mean or reveal about sexuality education, I attend to the event movement inaugurates. Predominantly theoretical, the paper weaves together ideas from conventionally disparate disciplinary fields. These include Edensor’s concept of rhythm from geography, Eggermont’s notion of the choreography of schooling from education, and Barad’s spacetimemattering from quantum physics. This theorisation enables a recognition of movement as a force in human-non-human classroom intra-actions implicated in the becoming of sexuality education as event.

Introduction to Play, Recreation, Health, and Wellbeing in Geographies of Children and Young People

Chapter

Jan 2016

The introduction chapter provides an orientation and companion piece to the wonderfully rich array of chapters collected in the volume on Play and Recreation, Health and Wellbeing. It draws attention to three themes discussed by chapters in the section on play and recreation: a critical theorization of play and recreation, spaces designed or designated for play and recreation, and the everyday playful and recreational practices and mobilities of children and young people. In relation to the section on health and wellbeing, the following three themes are outlined: children as knowledgeable actors in the context of health and wellbeing, challenging dominant policy and media representations of children and young people’s health and wellbeing, and the everyday and institutional spaces of children’s health and wellbeing. The chapter also draws out some of the key contributions of children’s geographies to understandings of play and recreation, health and wellbeing in relation to intergenerational approaches and agency, and introduces the range of theoretical influences and geographical contexts covered by the chapters in this volume.

Can space teach? Theorising pedagogies of social order

Article

Aug 2016
GEOGR RES-AUST

Megan Watkins

Space, and it various permutations, affects bodies but to what extent does it teach? This paper explores the pedagogic dimensions of space. Engaging critically with phenomenological accounts of body/space relations, it examines how certain aspects of space – what here are termed non-human didactics – equip the body with skills that have application in terms of a broad notion of social order requisite for cohabitation and the sharing of social space. As Theodore Schatzki (2002, 1) points out, ‘Order is a basic dimension of any domain of entities’. He foregrounds the notion of Zusammenhang or ‘hanging together’ as a crucial element of social life. Such ‘hanging together’, however, does not just happen; it involves individuals acquiring certain ways of being, to navigate social space and to operate as part of a larger whole. Importantly, this process of acquisition is not just a matter of learning, it also involves teaching but understood in broad terms as pertaining to the many ways in which, as Raymond Williams (1966, 15) explains, ‘the whole environment, its institutions and relationships, actively and profoundly teaches’. This paper explores these processes. It focuses on the neglect of pedagogy within theorisations of space and draws on examples from within the institutional space of the school to exemplify their role in the spatial formation of social order.

Rematerialising children’s agency

Chapter

Dec 2015

Matej Blazek

The concluding chapter draws a connection between the conceptual and practical strategies presented in Part Two and the empirically driven discussions in Part Three. It proposes to ‘rematerialise’ children’s agency by a) recognising heterogeneous elements that constitute children’s capacity to act; b) reconnecting this capacity with children’s everyday environments; c) establishing this capacity in how we, as adults, act towards children but also the rest of the society.

The School Dining Room: A Governable Space?

Chapter

Jan 2014

It is almost axiomatic to suggest that a concern with space, its organisation, effects and usage has traditionally been the dominant concern of geographic inquiry. But this interest in space, as we have indicated in our engagement with the concept of moral geographies, has also been the focus of both empirical and theoretical work in other social scientific disciplines. Gerry Stimson (1986, p. 652) argues that: The history of human beings is a history of the arrangement of spaces and places. It is found in the most minute and mundane aspects of daily living: for example, places of education with their lecture halls indicate the relationship of teacher and taught; the three-bedroomed family house which embodies the idea of the nuclear family; the front and back gardens around many houses indicate the English idea of privacy, property and attachment to the land.

Embodied Childhood in the Health-promoting School

Chapter

Jan 2010

In the UK over recent years, the issue of childhood obesity has dominated the public health agenda with a proliferation of government policies and initiatives aimed at stemming the year-on-year increase in childhood obesity and overweight. Underpinning much of these efforts is an approach which centres on modifying the lifestyles of individuals and which has been widely critiqued by academics for some time (Crawford 1986, Naidoo 1986, Rodmell and Watt 1986, Kickbusch 1989, Colquhoun and Robottom 1990). Attempts at lifestyle modification are regarded as explicitly rooted in a victim-blaming ethos, accompanied by a moral evangelism which demonises those whose bodies fail to conform to expected norms (Evans 2006, Leahy 2009). Conversely, health promotion literature has stressed the role that structural factors, such as the environment, play in contributing to health outcomes (Naidoo 1986, Dahlgren and Whitehead 1991). Health geographers have also extended their analysis beyond the immediate environment to explore the ways in which space relates to embodied experiences of health and illness (Parr and Butler 1999, Moss and Dyck 2002). Others have proposed the concept of the ‘obesogenic’ environment to explore the effects of the physical environment on children’s bodies (Egger and Swinburn 1997, Lake and Townsend 2006).

Education unbound? Enlivening debates with a mobilities perspective on learning

Article

Mar 2016

Johanna L. Waters

This paper contributes to recent debates on the geographies of education. I argue that research in geography over the past decade has conceptualized education principally in terms of attachment to – and boundedness within – particular (often institutional) places and spaces. Yet a productive tension has emerged in contemporary scholarship around the competing concepts of mobilities and emplacement. The paper considers what the ‘mobilities turn’ offers for understanding geographies of education and learning, with a focus on ripple effects, structures and subject positionings. Four different but related bodies of work are identified that productively engage a notion of ‘mobilities’ to challenge bounded conceptions of education through their focus on (i) community and mobility; (ii) ‘alternative’ spaces of education; (iii) student mobilities; and (iv) embedded institutional capital and internationalization. Through the lens of mobilities, the paper advances research agendas within both geography (on ‘geographies of education’) and cognate disciplines (such as sociology and education).

Visual methods and geographies of children: Drawing their daily environment

Article

May 2012
SCRIPTA NOVA

This paper explores the use of drawings, one of the most used qualitative techniques in the context of the geographies of childhood. It outlines an overview of the oral, written and visual methods commonly used in research with children and young people. Moreover it points out some of the major ethical issues faced by this type of research and gives proposals to address them. Based on exemples from a research by the authors on the role of playgrounds in the daily lives of children in different cities, the paper explains drawings as one of the elements of field work, how they are implemented and how the results have been analyzed. Despite limitations, this methodological experience is highly valued and could be combined with other techniques in research on children's geographies. © Anna Ortiz Guitart, Maria Prats Ferret y Mireia Baylina Ferré, 2012.

For Ethnography

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2000

Steve Herbert

Ethnography is an underused methodology in geography. This neglect is especially injurious to the discipline because ethnography provides unreplicable insight into the processes and meanings that sustain and motivate social groups. These processes and meanings vary across space, and are central to the construction and transformation of landscapes; they are both place-bound and place-making. Ethnography's potential contribution to geography is thus profound. The aversion to ethnography may derive from three major criticisms frequently directed toward it: that it is unscientific; that it is too limited to enable generalization; and that it fails to consider its inherent representational practices. Considered responses to these critiques, however, restore ethnography's significance for geographic study.

Children's Health In Primary Schools

Book

Nov 2002

Special Places, Special People: The hidden curriculum of school grounds

Article

Jun 1997

Wendy Titman

Children’s geographies and the new social studies of childhood

Article

Jan 2000

The power of school grounds: the philosophy and practice of learning through Landscapes.

Chapter

Jan 1994

Bill Lucas

Children spend a significant time outside at school. Here Bill Lucas, founding director of Learning through Landscapes, reflects on some of the ways in which school grounds can be designed and managed to provide better opportunities for children to learn and play.

Playing the part: Performing gender in America?s playgrounds

Article

Jan 2000

Elizabeth

Children's Geographies is an overview of a rapidly expanding area of cutting edge research. Drawing on original research and extensive case studies in Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia, the book analyses children's experiences of playing, living and learning. The diverse case studies range from an historical analysis of gender relationss in nineteenth century North American playgrounds through to children's experiences of after school care in contemporary Britain, to street cultures amongst homeless children in Indonesia at the end of the twentieth century. Threaded through this empirical diversity, is a common engagement with current debates about the nature of childhood. The individual chapters draw on contemporary sociological understandings of children's competence as social actors. In so doing they not only illustrate the importance of such an approach to our understandings of children's geographies, they also contribute to current debates about spatiality in the social studies of childhood.

Is there a "place' for children in geography?

Article

Jan 1990
AREA

S. James

Many premises of geographical studies of the behaviour of adults can be advantageously applied to the study of children - a group whose very numbers and unique characteristics demand more attention than geographers have given them in the past. In many ways children's geographies differ to those of other social groups. We need not only to document these differences but also understand how these differences come about and how they affect children. We also need to incorporate the fact that adult actions mediate the relationship between children and the environment in many ways. This paper aims to provide a forum to discuss the reasons for the exclusion of children from geographical studies so far and also suggests ways in which they might be included. -Author

The Geography of Children: Some ethical and methodological considerations for project and dissertation work

Article

Nov 1998

With the 'cultural turn' in geography children have been positioned on the geographical agenda. There is an evident and growing interest amongst undergraduates in the geography of children as a topic for project work and dissertation study. This seems an appropriate time to consider a series of related ethical and methodological issues which are important when working with children. The paper is organised into four parts. First, discussion focuses on the background which has given rise to a growing expectation that social (geographical) investigation should be with children rather than on or for children. These ideas are presented in order to encourage students and their supervisors to think about their work from the perspective of children. Second, a set of ethical issues to do with working with children are discussed. Third, examples of good methodological practice when working with children are presented. Lastly, a range of provocative issues to do with geographers studying children are examined. Throughout the paper, the emphasis is upon how recent changes in human (cultural) geography inform the way in which we get (or expect) students to work.

Book Review: Nested identities: nationalism, territory and scale

Article

Dec 2000

Anssi Paasi

A well-equipped hamster cage: The rationalisation of primary school playtime

Article

Jun 2003

Sarah Thomson

This article reports a small-scale study into four primary schools within in one local Education Authority. Whilst initially exploring the nature of playtime activities I became aware that a number of head teachers and other members of staff where taking a rigorous approach towards the management of playtime with the result that playtime was becoming a highly rationalised activity. The study revealed that in the search for safety, and in a desire to avoid confrontation with parents and prescriptive agencies, some schools were in danger of taking all the fun and spontaneity out of playtime.

Samuel Wilderspin and the Infant School Movement

Article

Oct 1983

Social life in school

Article

Jan 1998

Peter Blatchford

Human Territoriality: Its theory and History

Article

Jan 1986
ANN AM ASSOC GEOGR

Robert David Sack

As a strategy, territoriality occurs at all human geographical scales and in practically every society. It is the primary geographical expression of social power, and the means by which space and society are interrelated. After introducing the meaning of territoriality and its theoretically possible advantages, the volume explores changing relationships between territory and society since primitive times, with case studies of the history of the Catholic Church, and for the modern context, the last 400 years of North American political territorial organisation, and the territorial organisation of factory, office and home. -J.Sheail

From the political economy of regions to regional political economy

Article

Mar 2000

John Agnew

Defining an Agenda for the Geography of Children: Review and Prospect

Article

Mar 1999

There is still only a limited development of a solidly grounded social and cultural geography prepared to conceptualize children as a neglected social grouping undergoing various forms of sociospatial marginalization. Given the focus and momentum of the ‘new’ cultural geography, we contend that this is an apposite time to define an agenda for the geography of children, which not only takes into account earlier studies which can inform contemporary debate, largely drawn from an environmental psychology tradition, but which also recognizes the interface between sociology, anthropology and cultural studies and draws upon important work being undertaken by feminist and critical geographers. To date, much of the research on the geography of children has been blighted by fragmentation, narrow disciplinary perspectives and methodologies which do not sufficiently engage themselves with the lifeworld of children in the ‘here and now’. In this article we propose a working agenda based upon a set of seven generic propositions which highlight different aspects of children's relationship with their physical and built environment, beyond the home, school and playground. Our emphasis in this review is on work which examines the experiences of children and how they ‘see the world’ around them. We recognize, however, that part of what children see are structures which constrain them. These may include the adult values imprinted on the physical and built landscapes in which they live, or the social constraints of the adult gaze. We argue that research on the lives of children should not just be reported for its own sake, but should lead to outcomes which encourage empowerment, participation and self-determination consistent with levels of competence.

Harmless fun can kill someone

Article

Mar 2002
Entertain Law

Sarah Thomson

1 is a quotation taken from a television commercial, which at the time of writing, is broadcast on Channel Five. It is the final written and verbal punch line promoting a personal injury claims service. The advertisement goes out frequently, particularly during the daytime and I have seen it displayed during evening schedules. Another firm 2 also vying for the personal injury claims market attracts the viewers' attention by showing a young boy in a public playground. In the background are slides and a climbing frame, the implication is that the boy has damaged his eyesight whilst playing and requires glasses because of his injury. (The use of the playground as a site for advertising this type of product is interesting; it obviously suggests that it has been identified as an area of potential complaint and compensation). Comforted by a reassuring voice- over, viewers are informed that this particular firm, on behalf of the boy's mother, successfully claimed damages for her son's injury. The advertisement concludes with the suggestion that the mother received a large payment as recompense for a presumed negligence. Similar commercials publicising different personal injuries claims services are broadcast on other terrestrial television channels. 3

Problems in the Playground

Article

Jun 1994

John Evans

An Example to Us All: Child Development and Identity Construction in Early 20th-Century Playgrounds

Article

Apr 2000

Elizabeth X Gagen

At the turn of the 20th century, children's play came under new and heightened scrutiny by urban reformers. As conditions in US cities threatened traditional notions of order, reformers sought new ways to direct urban-social development. In this paper I explore playground reform as an institutional response that aimed to produce and promote ideal gender identities in children. Supervised summer playgrounds were established across the United States as a means of drawing children off the street and into a corrective environment. Drawing from literature published by the Playground Association of America and a case study of playground management in Cambridge, MA, I explore playground training as a means of constructing gender identities in and through public space. Playground reformers asserted, drawing from child development theory, that the child's body was a conduit through which 'inner' identity surfaced. The child's body became a site through which gender identities could be both monitored and produced, compelling reformers to locate playgrounds in public, visible settings. Reformers' conviction that exposing girls to public vision threatened their development motivated a series of spatial restrictions. Whereas boys were unambiguously displayed to public audiences, girls' playgrounds were organised to accommodate this fear. Playground reformers' shrewd spatial tactics exemplify the ways in which institutional authorities conceive of and deploy space toward the construction of identity.

Promoting children's physical activity in primary school: An intervention study using playground markings

Article

Nov 2000

Gareth Stratton

The physical activity levels of 47, 5- to 7-year-old children were assessed before and after a school playground was painted with fluorescent markings. Children's physical activity was measured using heart rate telemetry during three playtimes before and after the markings were laid down. Children in the experimental and control groups spent 27 and 29 min, respectively, in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) before the intervention, increasing to 45 and 36 min, respectively, during the intervention period. MVPA, vigorous physical activity (VPA) and mean heart rate remained relatively stable in the control group compared to respective increases of 10 and 5% of playtime and 6 beats min(-1) in the experimental group during the intervention period. The ANCOVA analysis revealed significant interactions and main effects for the intervention for MVPA, VPA and mean heart rate. Conversely there were no main effect differences between groups. These results suggest that while playground markings had a significant and positive influence on children's physical activity, factors other than playground markings may also influence children's physically active play.

Dancing when the music is over: A Study of deviance in a kindergarten classroom

Jan 1991
95-112

F C Waksler

Waksler, F.C. (1991) Dancing when the music is over: A Study of deviance in a kindergarten classroom, in: Waksler, F.C. (ed.) Studying the Social Worlds of Children: Sociological Readings, London: Routledge and Falmer, 95–112.

) Can I Stay in today, Miss? Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books

Jan 1991

C Ross
A And Ryan

Ross, C. and Ryan, A. (1991) Can I Stay in today, Miss? Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.

Personal conversation at Designing Modern Childhoods: Landscapes, Buildings and Material Culture

R Hart

Hart, R. (2002) Personal conversation at Designing Modern Childhoods: Landscapes, Buildings and Material Culture. An International, Interdisciplinary Conference, Berkeley USA.

Changing playground society: a whole-school approach

Jan 1994

C Ross
A And Ryan

Ross, C. and Ryan, A. (1994) Changing playground society: a whole-school approach, in: Blatchford and Sharp (eds) Breaktime in the School, London: Routledge.

Promoting health and related physical activity in primary school playgrounds

Jan 2002

G Stratton

Stratton, G. (2002) Promoting health and related physical activity in primary school playgrounds, Research Monograph, Liverpool: John Moores University (downloaded www.liv.ac.uk).

Walk on the left! Children's geographies and the primary school, in: Children's Geographies

Jan 2000
230-244

S Fielding

Fielding, S. (2000) Walk on the left! Children's geographies and the primary school, in: Children's Geographies, Playing, Living, Learning, London: Routledge, 230–244.

Breaktime and the School: Understanding and Changing Playground Behaviour

Jan 1994

P Blatchford
S Sharp

Blatchford, P. and Sharp, S. (1994) Breaktime and the School: Understanding and Changing Playground Behaviour, London: Routledge.

An analysis of junior school children's lunchtime behaviour

L Green

Green, L. (2000) An analysis of junior school children's lunchtime behaviour, paper given at the British Educational Research Conference, Cardiff University, September 2000.

Listening to Children: Children, Ethics and School Research, Ilford: Barnados Landscapes of Modern Sport

Jan 1994

P Alderson

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'Territorialising' the primary school playground: Deconstructing the geography of playtime

Abstract

No full-text available

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