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This field of study investigates and provides a voice for children’s perspectives on their use of space, places and the environment that identifies and clarifies their personal everyday or ethno-geographies. It draws out: how children feel they are perceived in the environment by adults; how experience in places engages them in practices of identity; the ways in which they utilise environments differently alongside adults, layering places with diverse meanings; as well as how they develop environmental and way-finding skills, understanding and knowledge. While past research has been interested to describe children’s environ-mental and place experience, the focus of children’s geographies has become increasingly engaged in understanding children’s sense of their own geographies. Through such studies researchers have begun to appreciate that children not only develop their experience but construct their knowledge and understanding through that experience, including the affordances and constraints provided by places, their growing sense of values in relation to the environment and their encounters with the wider world through a variety of media. Evidence suggests that while children constantly encounter a wide range of ‘particulars’ and items of ‘information’ as they learn, through trial and error, risk-taking and their application of skills and under-standings to new contexts, they are constantly reflecting on, reconstruct-ing and reapplying their growing ‘geographical’ knowledge and understanding (O’Brien 2003; Ba 2009). Through this broad-based everyday reconstituting of evolving schemas children develop a con-ceptual base about their local world and the wider world and environment, providing a basis for action, further reflection and reconceptualisation. This has been described from the days of early investigations into this area (e.g. Piaget 1929; Piaget and Inhelder 1956) and subsequently in terms of children’s construction of their knowledge in, of and about the world, and is the basis for their everyday spatial, environmental and place competence, that is, their ethno-geographies. Studies of children’s experience of their locality reveal ways in which they construct their knowledge of the environment and their sense of place. The older primary age children in Ba’s (2009) study of their explorationof their local area inNewYork,USA, identifiedhowandwhat they learnt through experience from the affordances an area provides, such as which of the various commercial sites are child-friendly and will accommodate younger children ‘hanging out’ rather than as customers. Pike’s (2008) studies in Dublin and Waterford, Ireland, noted that children’s perspectives included ways in which they appropriated places, naming them for their own use, to be sites of activity. Similarly, Derr (2006) identified that the freedom to explore enables children not only to construct, for instance, ‘dens’ within their own locale but to recognise the specialness of sites that matter to them. Children’s awareness of the
DOI link for This field of study investigates and provides a voice for children’s perspectives on their use of space, places and the environment that identifies and clarifies their personal everyday or ethno-geographies. It draws out: how children feel they are perceived in the environment by adults; how experience in places engages them in practices of identity; the ways in which they utilise environments differently alongside adults, layering places with diverse meanings; as well as how they develop environmental and way-finding skills, understanding and knowledge. While past research has been interested to describe children’s environ-mental and place experience, the focus of children’s geographies has become increasingly engaged in understanding children’s sense of their own geographies. Through such studies researchers have begun to appreciate that children not only develop their experience but construct their knowledge and understanding through that experience, including the affordances and constraints provided by places, their growing sense of values in relation to the environment and their encounters with the wider world through a variety of media. Evidence suggests that while children constantly encounter a wide range of ‘particulars’ and items of ‘information’ as they learn, through trial and error, risk-taking and their application of skills and under-standings to new contexts, they are constantly reflecting on, reconstruct-ing and reapplying their growing ‘geographical’ knowledge and understanding (O’Brien 2003; Ba 2009). Through this broad-based everyday reconstituting of evolving schemas children develop a con-ceptual base about their local world and the wider world and environment, providing a basis for action, further reflection and reconceptualisation. This has been described from the days of early investigations into this area (e.g. Piaget 1929; Piaget and Inhelder 1956) and subsequently in terms of children’s construction of their knowledge in, of and about the world, and is the basis for their everyday spatial, environmental and place competence, that is, their ethno-geographies. Studies of children’s experience of their locality reveal ways in which they construct their knowledge of the environment and their sense of place. The older primary age children in Ba’s (2009) study of their explorationof their local area inNewYork,USA, identifiedhowandwhat they learnt through experience from the affordances an area provides, such as which of the various commercial sites are child-friendly and will accommodate younger children ‘hanging out’ rather than as customers. Pike’s (2008) studies in Dublin and Waterford, Ireland, noted that children’s perspectives included ways in which they appropriated places, naming them for their own use, to be sites of activity. Similarly, Derr (2006) identified that the freedom to explore enables children not only to construct, for instance, ‘dens’ within their own locale but to recognise the specialness of sites that matter to them. Children’s awareness of the
This field of study investigates and provides a voice for children’s perspectives on their use of space, places and the environment that identifies and clarifies their personal everyday or ethno-geographies. It draws out: how children feel they are perceived in the environment by adults; how experience in places engages them in practices of identity; the ways in which they utilise environments differently alongside adults, layering places with diverse meanings; as well as how they develop environmental and way-finding skills, understanding and knowledge. While past research has been interested to describe children’s environ-mental and place experience, the focus of children’s geographies has become increasingly engaged in understanding children’s sense of their own geographies. Through such studies researchers have begun to appreciate that children not only develop their experience but construct their knowledge and understanding through that experience, including the affordances and constraints provided by places, their growing sense of values in relation to the environment and their encounters with the wider world through a variety of media. Evidence suggests that while children constantly encounter a wide range of ‘particulars’ and items of ‘information’ as they learn, through trial and error, risk-taking and their application of skills and under-standings to new contexts, they are constantly reflecting on, reconstruct-ing and reapplying their growing ‘geographical’ knowledge and understanding (O’Brien 2003; Ba 2009). Through this broad-based everyday reconstituting of evolving schemas children develop a con-ceptual base about their local world and the wider world and environment, providing a basis for action, further reflection and reconceptualisation. This has been described from the days of early investigations into this area (e.g. Piaget 1929; Piaget and Inhelder 1956) and subsequently in terms of children’s construction of their knowledge in, of and about the world, and is the basis for their everyday spatial, environmental and place competence, that is, their ethno-geographies. Studies of children’s experience of their locality reveal ways in which they construct their knowledge of the environment and their sense of place. The older primary age children in Ba’s (2009) study of their explorationof their local area inNewYork,USA, identifiedhowandwhat they learnt through experience from the affordances an area provides, such as which of the various commercial sites are child-friendly and will accommodate younger children ‘hanging out’ rather than as customers. Pike’s (2008) studies in Dublin and Waterford, Ireland, noted that children’s perspectives included ways in which they appropriated places, naming them for their own use, to be sites of activity. Similarly, Derr (2006) identified that the freedom to explore enables children not only to construct, for instance, ‘dens’ within their own locale but to recognise the specialness of sites that matter to them. Children’s awareness of the
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