ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we trace the evolution of young people’s spatial knowledge by looking into its production and acquisition from the perspective of the underlying learning arenas (conditions that demarcate formal-institutional and non-formal learning processes) and agencies (the ability to perform learning actions autonomously or act as a conveyor to achieve learning goals). By and large, we see a much wider array of non-formal learning arenas that, in a few cases, overlap with formal-institutional ones. We also identified recurrent factors that define the explorative and performative character of non-formal learning processes along gender and class lines. For example, across geographic contexts and periods of time, boys almost unequivocally enjoy greater freedom to wander around and thus broaden their production of stocks of spatial knowledge. While this makes the evolution of young people’s spatial knowledge rather consistent, the growing relevance of virtual spaces together with socioeconomic, political, and physical transformations have marked striking turning points. All in all, our findings reveal a twofold phenomenon. On the one hand, young people’s spatial knowledge evolves as a result of their ability to produce an (internal-subjective) comprehensive view of both space and spatial systems, which eventually translates into a consistently objective view of the world. On the other hand, formal-institutional and non-formal learning processes substantially impact not only this competence, but also much of how spatial knowledge is produced and acquired, for they mediate the internalization of (natural/built) environmental (external-objective) transformations.
