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Abstract
This dissertation, presented in three articles, explores young children’s spatial experiences in early childhood education settings. I focus particularly on children’s experiences in marginal and invisible spaces and how they demonstrate agency in those spaces. In the first article, I identify four different approaches for understanding children’s experiences of place and space: cognitive-developmental, sociocultural, critical, and posthumanist. My review of existing research suggests that each approach is useful in understanding certain elements of children’s spatial experiences, but it is possible to gain a more comprehensive understanding of those experiences when the approaches are combined. Additionally, the review reveals a lack of research on children’s place and space experiences in marginal and invisible spaces. In the second article, as a response to the research gap identified in the first, I develop a conceptual framework for visualizing young children’s spatial experiences. The framework uses the interdisciplinary concepts of sense of place and topophilia (Tuan, 1977), heterotopia (Foucault, 1986), and threshold (Benjamin, 1999) to focus the study of children’s spatial experiences on marginal and invisible spaces, and children’s agency in those spaces. Furthermore, this framework can support teachers in reconceptualizing and reshaping their classroom management strategies by approaching children’s spatial experiences from children’s perspectives and needs.
Finally, in the third article, I analyze children’s spatial experience using the conceptual framework. Using microanalysis on ethnographic video data, I examine young children’s lived experiences in preschool classrooms by focusing on the framework’s concepts. I find that young children demonstrated agency in their spatial experiences by showing their topophilia, creating heterotopic spaces, and occupying threshold spaces in preschool classrooms. I suggest that teachers should be supportive of children’s sovereignty in their classrooms by encouraging children’s marginal and invisible spatial experiences.