Education in the City: Young children, Public Spaces and Participation

Educational processes are widespread within a plurality of environments, formal and informal, private and public. The family, the school and the whole community reciprocally participate in a complex relational system, in which precise learning environments are defined from early childhood, for a full development of knowledge, skills and competences. Educational institutions need to reflect on how to understand and live “out of their doors” spaces, in particular, public spaces, so that the experiences in/of these spaces are significant for the practices that these institutions embrace and consistent with their goals, among which we have promoting the capability to exercise full citizenship. Children’s peculiar perceptions and uses of urban and natural public spaces - places that are generally free, open and accessible to people, regardless of gender, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level - have gained attention in recent years (Leahy Laughlin and Johnson, 2011). The importance of these kind of spaces for children’s social and physical well-being has been well documented (Carpenter, Harper, 2016). Even if international studies show that both urban public spaces and outdoor environments offer a richness of educational experiences (Canning, 2010; Bourke, 2017), there’s a lack of such educational experiences in Italy and a partial acknowledgement of the quality of outdoor educational experience for children, families, educators and teachers (Farné, Agostini, 2014; Guerra, 2015; Serreli, Calidoni, 2017). In order to fill this gap of knowledge, our study focuses on the exploration of outdoor public spaces made by toddlers and preschoolers in the province of Reggio Emilia. We refer to a critical reading of a project funded by the EU (BRIC), involving the democratic engagement of young children in public spaces in their communities. The aim of the project was to investigate participation in public space by children in order to provide formative feedback to educators and teachers for developing children citizenship competencies. Method Video-documentation analysis of children explorations of urban public spaces (e.g. parks, squares).