Children and the physical environment in school settings
The present research explored how children's interactions with the physical environment take place and what they mean in the everyday life of school. The school was viewed as a setting for children's socio-cultural development, and how space works in this context was studied. The aim was to provide empirical material and a frame of understanding for a deeper insight into the school environment as a place children 'live' in.
Children's interactions with space were viewed in a broad sense, including active, immediate and passive, in-direct interactions. Since how adults set-up and use space influence children's experience of space, two types of interactions were explored: how space is used in educational activities creating the situations children experience space in, and how children use space in their behavior. Field studies were carried out in four Danish folkeskoler and the observations were interpreted in compraison with my earlier case studies in Japanese schools.