School Space Research Articles

Losing lockers: the disappearance of a social space in US middle schools and high schools

ABSTRACT Lockers in middle schools and high schools in the United States are currently disappearing. Due to safety concerns and digitalized textbooks and other school supplies, lockers are becoming obsolete. As larger societal and technological changes drive this trend, the loss of lockers as a shared social space demands careful attention and consideration. Many students use lockers as a means in which to project their identities and membership in different social groups. At the same time, visiting lockers during passing periods provides students opportunities to run into (often literally) students from other social groups, creating unique possibilities for relationship-building that are rare in other school spaces. As social and political polarization continues to intensity in the US and other countries around the world, the loss of lockers in American schools can serve as a caution of the consequences that accrue from disappearing shared social spaces.

Оценка родителями инклюзивной образовательной среды школы и своего участия в ее создании

<p style="text-align: justify;">The role of parents as participants in educational relations, and especially in the context of inclusive education, has attracted the attention of researchers for a long time, and this attention does not weaken, confirming the importance of this topic. In this work, we set ourselves the goal, based on monitoring data for 10 regions of Russia, to determine, on the one hand, the opinion of parents about the readiness of schools for inclusive education based on a number of indicators of the inclusive educational environment, and on the other hand, their participation in various forms of work offered by schools. The sample was randomly formed by strata (selection of regions, selection of schools, selection of parents). The total sample size was 121,364 parents from 679 schools, where the proportion of parents of students with disabilities was 6,99% (8 478 respondents). For data processing, a random sample (10% of the total number) was formed and used for frequency and correlation analysis. A frequency analysis of parents’ opinions on various aspects of a school’s readiness for inclusion revealed three groups of characteristics of an inclusive educational environment, differing in levels of readiness: the first concerns the professional level of teachers and support specialists, the second concerns the relationships between teachers and students, as well as between students, the third concerns the general material and technical equipment of schools, materials, textbooks and educational equipment adapted for children with disabilities, as well as the adaptability of the school space and its territory. The frequency analysis is confirmed by the results of correlation analysis: the characteristics included in one group showed a strong correlation with each other, and in different groups showed an average correlation. An important exception was the strong correlation between the level of professional readiness of teachers and the relations between teachers and students. Parents' participation in the forms of work offered by the school turned out to be significantly less than the perceived opportunities for participation, which confirms the hypothesis that there is a significant difference between the perceived opportunities for participation and the actual participation of parents in the forms of work offered by schools. This is consistent with the position that the key to attracting parents to participate in creating an inclusive educational environment is the connection between the conditions created by schools and the requests of parents as subjects of educational relations, their active position in supporting the efforts made by the school.</p>

Parental perception of inclusive education: mothers’ narrative construct of the school space

ABSTRACT For many decades the emphasis of inclusive education policies in England and Western countries has been on schools and educational professionals. Recent research on the concepts of family and parents’ involvement in their children’s education emphasises reciprocity and shared responsibility between family and school programmes and recognises that schools play an important role in supporting families and encouraging them to become actively involved in schools. This approach requires further empirical knowledge about parents’ experience of school space, the cultural and linguistic resources in families, parental aspirations and expectations and, significantly, their own biographical experience of education. This article focuses on perceptions of school space as described by mothers of primary and pre-primary school children who participated in the EC H2020 Inclusive Education and Social Support to Tackle Inequalities in Society (ISOTIS) project qualitative study (2017–2019) in England. The variety of local and personal contexts within these cases allowed for comparative analyses that reveal the impact of mothers’ experiences on their perception of school space. The article addresses a wide range of ways for parents’ involvement in their children’s schooling, such as individual, social and cultural.

Individual and environmental parameters in children with and without developmental coordination disorder: associations with physical activity and body mass index.

Physical Activity (PA) is a complex behavior, and the relevance of other factors such as BMI, SES and children's behavior at school and home still lacks investigation for children, especially those at risk or with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). The objective of this study was to examine whether socioeconomic status (SES), school's spaces for children's movement, active play, screen time, motor skill proficiency, perceived motor competence, and engagement in the physical education lessons were associated with PA and BMI in children with typical development (TD), at risk of DCD (r-DCD), and with DCD. Children (N = 352; 4-10-year-old) from six public schools in a major urban city, in southern of Brazil, were assessed regarding motor skill proficiency (locomotor and ball skills), perceived motor competence, and weight status. PA and engagement in the lesson were assessed using pedometers and a behavior checklist of motor experience of success. Parents recorded the daily time that children spent on screen and in active play. The hierarchical multivariate linear regressions showed that age, sex, SES, Schools with more favorable space for children's movement, locomotor and ball skills, and successful engagement, were associated with PA for children with TD. Age, screen time, locomotor, and successful engagement were associated with BMI. For children at r-DCD, age, sex, SES, with more favorable space for children's movement, and locomotor were associated with PA. Age, active play and screen time were associated with BMI. For children with DCD, sex, SES, Schools with more favorable space for children's movement, screen time, and successful engagement were associated with PA. Age, sex, active play, and screen time were associated with BMI. Different factors were associated with PA and BMI for children with different levels of motor impairment (r-DCD and DCD) and children with TD.

School principals’ responses in creating an inclusive schooling space for gender and sexual diverse learners

School principals’ responses in creating an inclusive schooling space for gender and sexual diverse learners

Using a mosaic-based approach to construct children’s understanding of safe space in school

AimThis participative, creative research aimed to explore the meaning of ‘safe space’ at school, defined as areas which children could access when emotionally dysregulated. This study aimed to answer the research question – how do children and teachers understand the meaning of safe space at school?RationaleSafe space is an overused and conceptually confused term, which has been described as the second-most popular strategy for supporting children’s anxiety in UK schools. However, the scarce research literature documents adult views of the benefits of safe space, with little reference to children’s perceptions.MethodA Mosaic-based approach, which offers child-centred, multi-modal methods for exploring views, was used to enable seven children and their three teachers to construct their understanding of safe space in school. Children designated as users of safe space led the researcher on a school tour and took photos of a puppet in their chosen safe spaces. Teachers participated in a semi-structured interview. Visual data was categorised using content analysis and combined with inductive, reflexive thematic analysis of verbal data to identify themes.FindingsChildren’s multiple, dynamic understandings of safe space generated themes of liberated places, safe bases and belonging, contrasting with teachers’ differing understanding of a static, boundaried, restricted space. The value of psychological safety in school alongside giving children agency to self-regulate according to context and need is emphasised when considering safe space.ImplicationsDiscussing the ‘dilemmas of difference’ regarding teachers’ operationalising of a safe space in school leads to consideration of the potential implications for educational policy and practice. The value of deconstructing dominant adult discourses through visibly listening to children using a humanistic, empowering psychological framework is highlighted.LimitationsChildren’s words, photographs and actions were filtered and interpreted by the researcher which could be conceived as constraining child voice and furthering adult-child power imbalances. The full Mosaic approach where a platform for communication between adults and children is facilitated did not take place due to school closures because of the pandemic.ConclusionsThis research extends, and to a degree challenges previous UK literature which suggests that safe space is a beneficial strategy for managing anxiety, as child participants had a more dynamic and flexible understanding of safe space than their teachers. Concerns were raised about the understanding and awareness teachers have regarding wellbeing interventions and how these have the potential to become stigmatising within a behaviourist-dominated school perspective.

Greenness and biodiversity of open spaces in primary schools and their local surroundings in England

SummaryThere is increasing disconnect between children and nature in the UK. Given that childhood nature experiences are important for the development of nature connection, well-being benefits and aspects of children’s development, mapping the existing biodiversity that children are exposed to on a daily basis in schools and their grounds is vital to identifying areas of low biodiversity and to developing strategies to increase exposure to nature. Despite children spending a large portion of time at schools, there has not yet been an in-depth, in situ assessment of the biodiversity present in school grounds. Using a sample of 14 English schools, including state-funded and non-state-funded schools, we used remote images to quantify green-space area within a 3–km buffer around (buffer greenness) and within (school greenness) each school, including the school’s grounds surrounding the buildings, and in situ images to quantify vegetation visible to children within each school’s grounds (visible vegetation). We also surveyed trees, ground plants, ground invertebrates and birds within school grounds. School greenness correlated positively with visible vegetation, but buffer greenness was not related to either school greenness or visible vegetation. Buffer greenness correlated positively with plant richness, and school greenness correlated positively with tree abundance and richness. Visible vegetation correlated positively with tree abundance and richness, maximum tree diameter at breast height, plant richness and invertebrate abundance. Non-state-funded schools had higher visible vegetation than state-funded schools. Our sample indicates that schools can support considerable biodiversity and that this is broadly consistent across state-funded and non-state-funded schools. We suggest that increasing the amount of vegetation, through planting of trees, shrubs and borders, may be the most effective method of increasing school biodiversity, as visible vegetation had effects on the greatest number of taxa.

“They’re Already Punished Enough:” Fugitivity and Abolitionist Lessons from Black Women Alternative School Teachers

ABSTRACT While much of the literature on Black women teachers documents their legacy of addressing anti-black racism in traditional public-school settings, there is room for more dialogue about the labor of Black women teachers who teach in non-traditional school settings. This study draws on endarkened storywork, a methodological approach derived from the convergence of Endarkened Feminist Epistemologies (EFE) and indigenous storywork (ISW) to grasp insight from the storytelling of Black women teachers at an alternative school in central Georgia. To honor the breadth and depth of storytelling as an analytical tool, this paper focuses on how one of the three Black woman alternative schoolteachers creates a “fugitive space” in which she subverts conventional ways of schooling and offers nuanced narratives about herself and her students. The question that guides this study is how do Black women teachers’ praxis in non-traditional school spaces invite us to imagine liberatory possibilities in education?

Functions and principles of creating quality information support for the educational space of higher education institution

The article reveals the main provisions and shows the necessity of informatization of the educational space of the higher school at the current stage. The purpose of the article is to show the necessity and to define the main provisions of the informatization of the educational space of the higher school at the current stage to ensure the quality education of those seeking education. The methodology of the article characterizes the totality and connection of the following methodological techniques: competence, acmeological, systemic, interdisciplinary, personal-activity, comparative, prognostic; methodological principles of research; patterns of educational and professional activity; global trends in the development of informatization of the educational space of a higher school to ensure quality education of education seekers; trends of globalization. The article reveals the requirements for informatization of the educational space of a higher school, lists the advantages, shows the main positions of the teacher's role in creating an informational educational space using computer technologies. The most important educational areas of high-quality education of education seekers with the help of informatization of the educational space of the higher school during pedagogical interaction, which create decent conditions in educational activities, are singled out.

Comprehensive diagnostics of the level of Russian language proficiency in a multiethnic Russian school

The most important tool for the adaptation and integration of foreign-speaking children into the Russian educational space is the Russian language. In modern Russian schools, the most pressing issue is the assessment of the level of proficiency in Russian by foreign children, since in the situation of formed migration there is no common institutional complex for the diagnosis of these children's language and speech skills. It is necessary first of all to make diagnostic measurements of the ability of school children from migrant families to master school subjects in Russian. The lack of methodological tools of this kind complicates the process of adaptation of foreign language students to the educational space of the Russian school. This circumstance conditioned the tools for developing and implementing complex diagnostics aimed at determining the language skills and the level of speech competence not only of foreign-speaking children, but also of all students in educational institutions of the Domodedovo city district. The aim of the study was to determine the general didactic and methodological requirements for a foreign-speaking student in a Russian school, and to create an effective tool for defining the linguistic and socio-cultural competencies of this category of students. The research development of the diagnostic procedures carried out and their results aimed at determining the levels of Russian language proficiency among students of 5-9 grades in the polyethnic composition of the Domodedovo city district are presented. Within the framework of the study, methods of pedagogical observation, statistical method, method of diagnostic testing and expert evaluation, method of quantitative processing of the obtained data were applied. In the diagnosis 1248 students of Domodedovo city district schools took part. The testing was carried out in electronic format, which made it possible to obtain and process the results in the shortest possible time. The methodological basis for the research and development of testing materials was the manual by Elizaveta A. Khamraeva “Linguodidactic diagnostics” (the series “Russian school”), which includes tests for children aged 6-14 years, compiled on the basis of the meta-subject approach. The results of this study can serve as a content base for individual educational trajectories, based on the principles of differentiated learning, which will contribute to the successful learning of academic disciplines in accordance with the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard in a modern multicultural school.

Development of emotional intelligence of schoolchildren in the context of a holistic pedagogical process

The article discusses the features of the process of developing the skills of the XXI century in the educational space of a modern school. Emotional intelligence is a key skill of the future. After studying the theoretical aspects of the problem, the experience of developing “soft skills” is revealed. Since emotional intelligence in education requires a comprehensive study, in the article we consider the theoretical foundations of the need for the formation of emotional intelligence of schoolchildren, with an emphasis on the means of self-knowledge and cognition of emotional development in a modern school. The interpretation of the search and the choice of the research implementation is given, which are aimed at the analysis of emotional intelligence with the installation of the problems of necessity and the possibility of their solution in the conditions of modern school. The pedagogical experiment was conducted in order to identify both positive and negative sides of the studied problem: it was found that it is possible to obtain positive dynamics according to all evaluation criteria that allow students to control the development of a high level of emotional intelligence by using a model of emotional intelligence formation, which includes effective support technologies aimed at supporting emotional behavior. Having found the relationship between emotional intelligence and intellectual development, it is proposed to set tasks for a modern school and its teachers to introduce new technologies that allow developing emotional intelligence. In terms of research special attention should be paid to the emotional culture of teachers, which should be transformative and defined as one of the professional competencies of a teacher. The article recommends reviewing the requirements of educational standards and curricula in terms of the introduction of subject-based development of soft skills.

Primary school bathrooms as hybrid technologies: materials, objects and practices (Buenos Aires, 1880-1930)

ABSTRACT This article aims to share part of some middle-term research focused on Argentinian school bathrooms. Bathrooms in Argentina emerged around 1850 and have been present – with nuances – in public and domestic buildings since the last third of the nineteenth century. Particularly, primary-school bathroom history is marked by two facts. First, these spaces are closely related to central schooling topics such as behaviours, privacy, intimacy, as well as gender and generational roles. Second, architectural and engineering developments and the proliferation of bathrooms were contemporary processes. The goal here is to trace some relationships between school spaces, materials, objects, and practices present in school bathrooms in the city of Buenos Aires between 1880 and 1930. The focus will be on school bathrooms, but it is also worth mentioning some connections with broader networks such as sanitary bureaucracy and transnational commercial circuits. As a general method, we pursued the Grounded Theory proposal. We worked with several sources: National Council of Education (CNE) files, construction and sanitary regulations, the Sanitary Ministry memories and documents. Due to our interest in objects (for example, sanitary artefacts) and materials, we took in commercial catalogues, a sanitary workers’ journal and archaeological works. First, we will briefly describe some features of the “latrine model”. Then, we would like to discuss the mutation to a more industrialised model, which is the one that persists to this day.

Dehumanising experiences of teaching in the private schools in neoliberal India: an autoethnographic study

In the neoliberal economic policies adopted by nations, services for social welfare including education are rendered commodities to be purchased by citizens, and the employees’ (teachers’) skills too get commodified. The pedagogical skills of teachers may often be judged predominantly in terms of their contribution towards ease of profit-making by the private schools rather than facilitating students’ learning and growth. Through qualitative autoethnographic analysis of my experiences within private schools as an employee in a major city of Uttar Pradesh state of India, I explore the ways in which commodification of private school education, including teachers’ skills and roles, could be potentially dehumanising (being treated as persons unworthy of humanness or care) for teachers. The findings of my autoethnographic analysis point to aspects of such dehumanisation and the challenges ahead for the teachers to work towards making school spaces a growth-inducing experience for students and themselves.

Pausing to witness latinx siblings’ relations in an elementary bilingual program

ABSTRACT This article describes how one Latinx sibling pair, Sebastian and Sophia, negotiates dominant forms of family-school relations that permeate their experiences within a bilingual elementary program. I report on focal interactions that I, as an aspiring Latina school administrator, had with Sophia and Sebastian in fall semester 2021. In this narrative, Sophia and Sebastian resisted, reconfigured, and repurposed expected behaviors and routines in school spaces to engage in collective meaning-making and assert their sense of selves as family members. Despite deficit institutional labels about their language and literacy practices, these Latinx siblings connected their understandings of disciplinary concepts to their everyday experiences inside and outside of school. Sebastian’s and Sophia’s interactions demonstrate how creative, joy- and freedom-centered possibilities for learning, leading, and relationality are here because they have been born out of necessity within minoritized groups to resist and survive oppressive schooling structures and norms. Their portrait demonstrates the importance of educational leaders, researchers, and policy makers recognizing the brilliance, joy, and creativity of Latinx children as catalysts for reimagining education in a post-pandemic, heightened racially tense world.

School Space and Sustainability in the Tropics: The Case of Thermal Comfort in Brazil

This work aims to discuss thermal comfort and school architecture in Brazil, within the Anthropocene framework. The objective traverses the fields of school management, curriculum, and educational policy. The importance of the environmental emergency in the context of the Anthropocene is recognized, understanding it as a space-time in which climate change biopolitically impacts both local and global daily life. In this way, we consider that the curricular dimension together with school architecture, in the Anthropocene scenario, tends to respond to the demands of biosecurity. The methodology of this article is the analysis of documentary sources, particularly current Brazilian legislation on school architecture, thermal comfort, and public funding. The initial hypothesis of this work operates with the argument that in Brazilian legislation there is a predominance of HVAC (Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning) systems over sustainable forms such as natural ventilation, design of classrooms, placement of windows, use of trees and vegetation and management of the student’s schedule. The assumption of the research lies in the need for reconfigurations of the principles of school architecture, considering both biosecurity and bioclimatic architecture essential for the future in the scenario of climate extremes along the Anthropocene.

Places and spaces: exploring interconnections between school environment, resources and social relations

ABSTRACT Background Relational issues at school, including bullying, tend to be interpreted primarily in terms of the behaviour of individual students. Whilst research has broadened this focus, more needs to be understood about how the design and management of the school environment and its resources may influence peer relations. Purpose The study sought to consider interconnections between the physical and organisational environment, resources, and social relations in school settings. Method Ethnographic research was conducted at three schools in Sweden, consisting of 6 to 8 weeks of participant observations at each school, and interviews with school safety or health teams, 21 teachers, and 121 students from preschool class (ages 6–7) to sixth grade (ages 12–13). Field notes and interview data were analysed using an approach based on constructivist grounded theory. Findings In-depth analysis of data identified a complex network of interconnections between the school environment, resources and peer relationships. In particular, it illuminated how competition for limited resources can influence social relations negatively. This may lead to brief minor conflicts, which, in turn, could potentially precipitate or become part of more systematic school bullying situations. Conclusions Our findings highlight the significance of decisions about the uses of space in schools, including choices in design (e.g. of play spaces) and the distribution of resources (e.g. equipment). Deeper understanding of the interconnections between the school environment, resources and peer relations can help inform efforts to support student wellbeing.

“It’s a financial decision”: students’ ethical understandings of non-government faith-based schooling in a neoliberal society

ABSTRACT The expansion of faith-based schools as marketised non-government institutions raises ethical questions, including their appeal to students. This article utilises focus groups with 24 Australian secondary students to identify ethical virtues in their perceptions of non-government faith-based schooling in a neoliberal education market cultivating a conflicting ethics character seeking to respond to both collective and individual goals. Taking the virtue ethics approach, the paper portrays how students perceive faith-based schooling as a financial enterprise contesting the virtues of justice, self-improvement, and courage. Firstly, findings illustrate students’ ethical discomfort with how a push for more socially just outcomes in such schools has, ironically, resulted in greater injustice. Specifically, findings capture a disjuncture between the schools’ emphasis on fee/affordability programmes for greater accessibility and their implications, i.e., the creation of unjust social divides between the “haves” and “have-nots”. Secondly, a mixed picture portrays some students’ virtuous behaviour of self-improvement in a faith-based schooling space seen as a “client”-oriented environment that should be utilised for one’s advantage, while others illustrate how such a system can, in fact, alleviate their need to actively seek to improve their skills and/or social engagement. Correspondingly, some students highlight how being outside the non-government faith-based schooling system “forces” them to strive academically or be socially proactive– regarded as working towards developing their virtue of self-improvement. The paper concludes with the students’ call for a courageous course of action for faith-based schooling, envisioned to promote more affordable and equitable educational opportunities and produce ethical forms of socially just schooling.

Civic Sovereignty: Indigenous Civic Constructs in Public School Spaces

Context:This study examines how urban American Indian high school students negotiate their civic identities within the settler colonial structures of urban American public schools.Research Question:How do urban American Indian students negotiate civic identities in spaces where civic concepts are taught, such as American history classes in an urban public high school and a Native Youth Council (Native YC)?Research Design:This critical participatory ethnographic study examines the negotiation of civic identity by 11 urban Indigenous students in social studies classes, a Native YC, and a school in Washington State, where the STI curriculum is taught. Safety zone theory and tribal critical race theory were used to understand students’ experiences and their stories from observations, participant interviews, and focus groups, which were employed as data.Conclusions/Recommendations:The study found that the social studies classes and Native YC were zones of sovereignty (ZoS), forwarding survivance and self-determination for Native students. Students learned about the Indigenous civic constructs of sovereignty, self-determination, dual citizenship, tribal self-government, and federal Indian policy inside and outside of school, all of which supported Native students in civic identity development. Recommendations on teaching Indigenous civic constructs to all students as part of teaching for critical democracy in public schools as a component of social studies classes and extracurricular activities are discussed.

Bloody Edification: The Violence of Education in Sutton Griggs's Imperium in Imperio

Abstract: This article contends that scenes and themes of education in Sutton Griggs's Imperium in Imperio deploy the threat of corporal punishment as a means of reincarnating antebellum plantation systems of surveillance and punishment in the postbellum school space. By copiously tracing the logic and references in a commentary on education by a parson early in the novel, the article shows that Griggs's book makes learning, violence, and space inextricable in Black Reconstruction life. Drawing on theorists like Hortense Spillers and Karen Sanchez-Eppler, who argue that violence on the body renders Black bodies legible, I suggest that Black education manifests itself through the same bodily terror that dictated life for enslaved persons. Griggs, I propose, depicts knowledge accumulation and dissemination as harmful to the Black populace not only physically but politically as well. With an eye towards the book's eponymous Black insurrectionary state, this article argues that the plantation's regime of intimidation, which continues to impose itself through the illusion of academic installation, might be overturned through a motivated manipulation of space.

Identification Of Productive Landscape Potentials To Support The Eco-Pesantren Daar El-Qolam 3 Banten

DAAR El-Qolam Islamic Boarding School, Tangerang Regency, Banten Province, has an area of ​​around 20 hectares. The development and arrangement of green open spaces is not good, the condition of open spaces in Islamic boarding schools is generally only grass fields and a few trees which are still wide. The DAAR El-Qolam Islamic Boarding School land has the potential to be developed and utilized for an eco-Islamic boarding school program in the form of a productive landscape. The purpose of this research is to identify the potential of green open space at Daar El-Qolam 3 boarding school as a productive landscape, to find out land use as a productive landscape that provides landscape elements, and to support aspects of agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries and other productive businesses that can be used. as an educational medium at the Daar El-Qolam Islamic Boarding School 3. Data collection in this study used survey, interview, observation, and documentation methods. This research was conducted with a qualitative descriptive approach. The results of this study are expected to be a reference for the development of Islamic boarding schools Daar El-Qolam 3. Land use in open space areas as productive landscapes can optimize the function of land use for agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries and productive businesses.