Close Readings of Young Children's Spatial Experiences

• In Event: Reimagining Early Childhood Education Research Using Video-Cued Ethnography

Abstract

This research is an empirical study seeking to understand young children's spatial experiences by analyzing video-cued ethnographies (VCE) using interdisciplinary concepts. This paper explores how young children experience and engage with space and place in early childhood educational settings. Particularly, I will identify young children's spatial experiences in marginalized spaces using three concepts: sense of place/topophilia (Tuan, 1977), heterotopia (Foucault, 1986), and threshold (Benjamin, 1999; 2006). I conducted a microanalysis of VCE that recorded young children's daily lives in different preschools in three countries: China, Japan, and the United States (Tobin, Hsueh & Karasawa, 2009).

The criteria for choosing the VCE moments and the situations for analysis will be based on what teachers have overlooked in young children's spatial experiences and what they should recognize to better understand young children's experiences of preschool spaces. Additionally, using the conceptual framework that I have developed, I will investigate specific moments to learn how young children perceive, acknowledge and experience different spaces and places.

As an example of VCE analysis, I have reviewed a clip of a classroom fight between Japanese preschool students over a teddy bear. In the scene, a group of girls fight over a teddy bear. Later, one girl is observed hiding under a table with the teddy bear, while blocking her space off using a chair. In Hayashi and Tobin's previous studies (2015), which analyzed this scene, the researchers did not study the space under the table. The focus was only on the fight over the teddy bear. In my study, I focused on how the child created her own space and on how she was experiencing space at that moment. For example, it is clear that this girl has created a safe space where she feels protected, and used the chair as a barrier for security. Her created space becomes a space insulating here from the fight happening “outside.” Once the conflict has ended, she pushes the chair aside and reenters the public space. Considering that the classroom is a shared space for all the children there, creating a personal or private space can be difficult. However, the perception that the public space was threatening or dangerous motivated the girl in the video to create her own space, despite the challenges imposed by the social and architectural design of the classroom. Such scenes provide content that allows teachers to better understand young children's spatial experiences.

As indicated by the example above, my approach moved beyond/behind the analyses in the published accounts of these scenes by focusing on non-narrative, spatial details. I employed specific microanalytical strategies to investigate young children's spaces, places, and spatial experiences. These techniques alter the way we understand the scenes and offer novel interpretation of the events and their significations. The result of this new focus is that previously invisible places and spaces can be made visible so that we can better analyze children's spatial experiences. Using VCE video clips, this presentation offers a way for researchers to explore children's spatial experiences and better understand how children use spaces in the early childhood classroom.

Author

• Shin Ae Han, University of Georgia - Athens