Mobility, informal learning and citizenship in mobile preschools
Urban childhoods and mobility are changing and meanwhile spaces for children are decreasing in Swedish cities. Children's active participation in the spaces of the city is however crucial not only for children being physically active, but also in order to claim rights to the city, gain spatial competence in navigating the city and learn how to handle people and places. This is especially crucial since increased urban and school segregation have led to divided cities where children from different backgrounds seldom meet. Local school markets today also include preschools and a new phenomenon and an additional choice of preschools has emerged, the mobile preschool. As yet, not much is known about children's sense of citizenship in relation to preschool age mobility. Mobile preschools are located in buses that on a daily basis travel to different locations in and around the city to provide children with new learning environments. In order to understand children's mobility in public space, learning and citizenship, the aim of the project is to map the phenomenon of the mobile preschool and critically investigate the ways in which mobile preschools allow children to navigate, participate in and learn from, different spaces of the city. With theories of mobility, learning and citizenship we will conduct an ethnographic study with multiple methods, including a national survey. The research team has well documented expertise in the field of children's geographies and education.
Final report
The project Mobility, informal learning and citizenship in mobile preschools started 1 February 2015 at the Department of Education at Uppsala University.
The aim of the project and development
In order to understand children’s mobility in public space, learning and citizenship, the aim of the project was to map the phenomenon of the mobile preschool and investigate the ways in which mobile preschools allow children to navigate, participate in and learn from, different spaces of the city. How do different municipalities in Sweden organize the mobile preschools and what are the social and cultural reasons for and implications of this? What are the affordances and constraints for children’s learning and active citizenship within mobile preschools? What kinds of spaces in the city do mobile preschools visit and how do children and pedagogues navigate and participate in these spaces?
The main data collection was done with a long-term ’mobile ethnography’ in three mobile preschools located in Vårby gård, Uppsala och Malmö. The field work consisted of participant observation, video and (informal) conversations during the preschool buses’ daily travel in order to study mobile practices. Ethnography involves ongoing methodological and ethical considerations, for example did we choose to refrain from gps-tracking since we noticed that the tracker bothered children. The initially planned survey to Swedish municipalities for mapping how and why mobile preschools were started was replaced by a mini-survey to Swedish municipalities, interviews with civil servants and teachers in municipalities with mobile preschools, and an analysis of workshop discussions with appr. 70 mobile preschool professionals. The mapping also involved telephone interviews with parents.
Main results
1) The emergence of mobile preschools has to be understood in relation to municipal strategies for providing preschool spaces, strategies to reach educational goals and to work with integration. There are currently about 55 mobile preschools. The number of mobile preschools is increasing and is described as popular among children, teachers and parents. The decision to start a mobile preschool was often a consequence of acute lack of preschool space due to demographic reasons and/or bad quality spaces. In parallel, there were considered to be educational advantages of having a bus in order to travel to new and ’better’ learning spaces to engage in educational activities. Particularly nature spaces are considered suitable for this and for promoting a variety of citizenship skills. Mobile preschools are also viewed as tools for integration of migrant children since the bus affords visits to places outside the children’s neighbourhoods and hence for them to see other parts of society and work with language development.
2) Affordances and constraints for children’s learning and active citizenship are interrelated with the mobile preschool’s time-spatial organization and the specific practical and educational implications this brings along, together with ideas on the type of mobility and places that are viewed as ‘good’ for young children. The everyday mobility and the choice of places are central in the daily organisation of mobile preschools. A variety of public spaces is visited with the bus as well as walks in order to perform learning, care och routine activities. Our results point at three overarching reasons for how places are chosen. Firstly, places are chosen based on the possibilities to fulfill the intentions of the preschool curriculum these places are thought to have. Places are seen as specific learning spaces that are related to themes in the curriculum (what children need to learn), and with a specific type of learning (embodied, experiential learning involving all senses). Pedagogues and children collaboratively establish a content for learning over time departing from a shared and lived experience in different places. Within the context of the mobile preschool, children obtain a variety of skills and competences, such as for example motor skills, walking-in-line in varying spaces in a safe manner, and environment awareness. Secondly, places are selected based on representations of what is considered a good childhood, and what contemporary children are lacking (places associated with nature, that encourage physical activity and a healthy lifestyle). Thirdly, places are selected based on ideas of educating good future citizens; places where children attain skills such as endurance, curiosity, being prepared for the unexpected, as well as place-based security thinking/acting. Regarding migrant children, choice of places is constructed also in relation to how these places are considered to be able to compensate the children and their parents for what is seen as lacking knowledge and experiences of the Swedish society. By taking children to places associated with ’Swedishness’, mobile preschools are viewed as able to help the children to become full Swedish citizens.
3) Mobility in mobile preschools takes place within the setting of local mobility arrangements, and should be understood as a collective process; performed by children, pedagogues, and the bus collectively, in relation to experiences and representations of places and of ideas about young children’s competence to handle places in public space. Mobile preschools promote children’s urban citizenship by making visible young children in adult dominated public space, and enables children’s everyday participation here. Children can create their own relations to these places through interaction with things and people in these places which results in a wealth of knowledge and skills in relation to these places, as well as place attachment. Children and pedagogues navigate in the places as a concerted and coherent group characterized by mutual communication and clear discipline that is performed and maintained (more or less playful) by children and pedagogues collaboratively. This ’collective embodiment’ enables young children’s mobility in public space as well as young children’s appropriation of their democratic ‘right to public space’. Walking in line is a central part of the mobility and these lines are not just ’transports’, instead they are important social and learning spaces. Within the framework of the mobile preschools’ ’collective body’, there are continuously ongoing negations on how far the children are allowed to go, what they are allowed to do in this or that place, and how the are allowed to do this. Every mobility situation and place has clear rules of conduct that are also (re-)negotiated depending on situation. In certain places and situations, the children have freer reins and the collective body can spread out and appropriate more space than in other places. Which these places are and how this is done depends on the prevailing norms and ideas on children’s competence to handle risks in nature spaces and in traffic in particular mobile preschool practices. There are considerable differences between the studied preschools in how children are allowed to claim places for their activities depending on how pedagogues ‘do safety’ within the framework of the local mobility arrangement.
The project makes an important contribution to international research field on mobility and participation in public space with knowledge about young children’s mobility and citizenship practices.
To the field of early education research, the project contributes with knowledge about how ideas on young children’s competences, learning and citizenship are intertwined with mobility practices within the context of preschool practice, and with knowledge on how educational activities are shaped in interaction with pedagogues and children in ways that address more general questions about educational practices in preschool.
To research on societal planning and social and ecological sustainability the project contributes with knowledge about the interplay between municipal planning decisions in different sectors (space provision, education, transport infrastructure).
The project contributes with knowledge to research on school choice by illustrating that parents’ choice of preschool is not only linked to structural aspects as accessibility, it is also linked to societal and educational discourses of what children need to learn and how mobile preschools respond to these needs.
New research questions generated by the project are concerned with young children’s mobility, learning and citizenship practices in public space in other contexts than mobile preschools. What does children’s access to public space look like in ’stationary’ preschools? Today, many preschools in inner city locations do not have a preschool yard of their own or have just a small enclosure. In the light of this, it is important to study the mobility and citizenship practices of these preschools and look into the ways these can appropriate public places for preschool activities.
The projects international dimensions– Discussions have taken place in internal workshops and international conferences with an international reference group consisting of prominent researchers in the fields of mobility, public space, early childhood education and young children. The reference group has made study visits to a mobile preschool.
Dissemination of results and collaboration has taken place through publication of scientific articles in international journals, through a popular science report, through participation in national as well as international conferences and through interviews in radio and specialist press. Collaboration has taken place with mobile preschool professionals with the context of a conference – organised by the research group – for pedagogues and civil servants responsible for mobile preschools in Sweden.
The aim of the project and development
In order to understand children’s mobility in public space, learning and citizenship, the aim of the project was to map the phenomenon of the mobile preschool and investigate the ways in which mobile preschools allow children to navigate, participate in and learn from, different spaces of the city. How do different municipalities in Sweden organize the mobile preschools and what are the social and cultural reasons for and implications of this? What are the affordances and constraints for children’s learning and active citizenship within mobile preschools? What kinds of spaces in the city do mobile preschools visit and how do children and pedagogues navigate and participate in these spaces?
The main data collection was done with a long-term ’mobile ethnography’ in three mobile preschools located in Vårby gård, Uppsala och Malmö. The field work consisted of participant observation, video and (informal) conversations during the preschool buses’ daily travel in order to study mobile practices. Ethnography involves ongoing methodological and ethical considerations, for example did we choose to refrain from gps-tracking since we noticed that the tracker bothered children. The initially planned survey to Swedish municipalities for mapping how and why mobile preschools were started was replaced by a mini-survey to Swedish municipalities, interviews with civil servants and teachers in municipalities with mobile preschools, and an analysis of workshop discussions with appr. 70 mobile preschool professionals. The mapping also involved telephone interviews with parents.
Main results
1) The emergence of mobile preschools has to be understood in relation to municipal strategies for providing preschool spaces, strategies to reach educational goals and to work with integration. There are currently about 55 mobile preschools. The number of mobile preschools is increasing and is described as popular among children, teachers and parents. The decision to start a mobile preschool was often a consequence of acute lack of preschool space due to demographic reasons and/or bad quality spaces. In parallel, there were considered to be educational advantages of having a bus in order to travel to new and ’better’ learning spaces to engage in educational activities. Particularly nature spaces are considered suitable for this and for promoting a variety of citizenship skills. Mobile preschools are also viewed as tools for integration of migrant children since the bus affords visits to places outside the children’s neighbourhoods and hence for them to see other parts of society and work with language development.
2) Affordances and constraints for children’s learning and active citizenship are interrelated with the mobile preschool’s time-spatial organization and the specific practical and educational implications this brings along, together with ideas on the type of mobility and places that are viewed as ‘good’ for young children. The everyday mobility and the choice of places are central in the daily organisation of mobile preschools. A variety of public spaces is visited with the bus as well as walks in order to perform learning, care och routine activities. Our results point at three overarching reasons for how places are chosen. Firstly, places are chosen based on the possibilities to fulfill the intentions of the preschool curriculum these places are thought to have. Places are seen as specific learning spaces that are related to themes in the curriculum (what children need to learn), and with a specific type of learning (embodied, experiential learning involving all senses). Pedagogues and children collaboratively establish a content for learning over time departing from a shared and lived experience in different places. Within the context of the mobile preschool, children obtain a variety of skills and competences, such as for example motor skills, walking-in-line in varying spaces in a safe manner, and environment awareness. Secondly, places are selected based on representations of what is considered a good childhood, and what contemporary children are lacking (places associated with nature, that encourage physical activity and a healthy lifestyle). Thirdly, places are selected based on ideas of educating good future citizens; places where children attain skills such as endurance, curiosity, being prepared for the unexpected, as well as place-based security thinking/acting. Regarding migrant children, choice of places is constructed also in relation to how these places are considered to be able to compensate the children and their parents for what is seen as lacking knowledge and experiences of the Swedish society. By taking children to places associated with ’Swedishness’, mobile preschools are viewed as able to help the children to become full Swedish citizens.
3) Mobility in mobile preschools takes place within the setting of local mobility arrangements, and should be understood as a collective process; performed by children, pedagogues, and the bus collectively, in relation to experiences and representations of places and of ideas about young children’s competence to handle places in public space. Mobile preschools promote children’s urban citizenship by making visible young children in adult dominated public space, and enables children’s everyday participation here. Children can create their own relations to these places through interaction with things and people in these places which results in a wealth of knowledge and skills in relation to these places, as well as place attachment. Children and pedagogues navigate in the places as a concerted and coherent group characterized by mutual communication and clear discipline that is performed and maintained (more or less playful) by children and pedagogues collaboratively. This ’collective embodiment’ enables young children’s mobility in public space as well as young children’s appropriation of their democratic ‘right to public space’. Walking in line is a central part of the mobility and these lines are not just ’transports’, instead they are important social and learning spaces. Within the framework of the mobile preschools’ ’collective body’, there are continuously ongoing negations on how far the children are allowed to go, what they are allowed to do in this or that place, and how the are allowed to do this. Every mobility situation and place has clear rules of conduct that are also (re-)negotiated depending on situation. In certain places and situations, the children have freer reins and the collective body can spread out and appropriate more space than in other places. Which these places are and how this is done depends on the prevailing norms and ideas on children’s competence to handle risks in nature spaces and in traffic in particular mobile preschool practices. There are considerable differences between the studied preschools in how children are allowed to claim places for their activities depending on how pedagogues ‘do safety’ within the framework of the local mobility arrangement.
The project makes an important contribution to international research field on mobility and participation in public space with knowledge about young children’s mobility and citizenship practices.
To the field of early education research, the project contributes with knowledge about how ideas on young children’s competences, learning and citizenship are intertwined with mobility practices within the context of preschool practice, and with knowledge on how educational activities are shaped in interaction with pedagogues and children in ways that address more general questions about educational practices in preschool.
To research on societal planning and social and ecological sustainability the project contributes with knowledge about the interplay between municipal planning decisions in different sectors (space provision, education, transport infrastructure).
The project contributes with knowledge to research on school choice by illustrating that parents’ choice of preschool is not only linked to structural aspects as accessibility, it is also linked to societal and educational discourses of what children need to learn and how mobile preschools respond to these needs.
New research questions generated by the project are concerned with young children’s mobility, learning and citizenship practices in public space in other contexts than mobile preschools. What does children’s access to public space look like in ’stationary’ preschools? Today, many preschools in inner city locations do not have a preschool yard of their own or have just a small enclosure. In the light of this, it is important to study the mobility and citizenship practices of these preschools and look into the ways these can appropriate public places for preschool activities.
The projects international dimensions– Discussions have taken place in internal workshops and international conferences with an international reference group consisting of prominent researchers in the fields of mobility, public space, early childhood education and young children. The reference group has made study visits to a mobile preschool.
Dissemination of results and collaboration has taken place through publication of scientific articles in international journals, through a popular science report, through participation in national as well as international conferences and through interviews in radio and specialist press. Collaboration has taken place with mobile preschool professionals with the context of a conference – organised by the research group – for pedagogues and civil servants responsible for mobile preschools in Sweden.