Influential Factors on Children′s Spatial Knowledge and Mobility in Home–School Travel A Case Study in the City of Tehran

Ahmadi, Ehsan; Taniguchi, Gen

doi:10.3130/jaabe.6.275

Cited by 26 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In addition, Malone (2007) argues that over-protecting children by driving them everywhere by car is reducing children's opportunities to build the resilience and skills critical to be competent and independent environmental users. The study by Ehsan & Taniguchi (2007) supports this argument with the finding that a longer home-school distance weakens children's spatial knowledge. One nine-year-old child in Rooney's (2008) study expressed her experience being driven in car: 'When you're in a car you just go straight past, I never noticed the flowers on the hedge when I was just driving past'.…”

Section: Why Is Children's Independent Mobility Necessary?supporting

confidence: 55%

Danger from Traffic to Fear of Monkeys: Children's Independent Mobility in Four Diverse Sites in Japan

Drianda

Kinoshita

2011

Global Studies of Childhood

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The study reported on in this article was based on a study of children's independent mobility in four different areas in Japan. Interviews were given to the head principals of the sampled schools, and the Parents and Teachers Association (PTA) members, and questionnaires were sent to a total of 530 children aged 7-15 years and their parents. These were conducted in order to obtain information regarding the possibilities for children to engage in independent mobility within a variety of community settings. The findings showed that many young children in Japan are allowed by their parents to travel to and from school alone. The older the children were the more they were granted many varied licenses and freedoms for independent mobility. However, a change in children's attitudes toward the home-school journey was identified in this study. While it is a common norm in Japan that children should go to school on foot or by public transportation, the findings showed that some children have started to rely on private cars as the main transportation to travel to and return from school. In particular this was evident with children who live in small towns and rural areas. This study reveals that in a diverse geographical environment, the extent to which Japanese children can engage in independent mobility is varied. Overall, for children living in the capital city of Tokyo it appears they have more freedom to engage in independent mobility than their counterparts in suburban, small town and rural areas.

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Section: Why Is Children's Independent Mobility Necessary?supporting

confidence: 55%

Danger from Traffic to Fear of Monkeys: Children's Independent Mobility in Four Diverse Sites in Japan

Drianda

Kinoshita

2011

Global Studies of Childhood

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“…In addition to physical activity and related health outcomes, CIM can contribute to children’s psycho-social and cognitive development [ 55 , 56 ], their social competencies [ 28 ], and their psychological wellbeing [ 57 , 58 ]. The independent interaction of a child with the environment while walking to school on their own provides better knowledge of environmental orientation and structure, as well as map reading [ 55 , 59 ]. Mackett et al [ 56 ] pointed out that children walk slower when they are not under adult supervision, which may be associated with exploring the environment and socializing.…”

Section: Children’s Independent Mobility As Health-related Behaviomentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s Independent Mobility: Current Knowledge, Future Directions, and Public Health Implications

Marzi

Reimers

2018

IJERPH

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Environmental changes significantly impact health behavior. Active travel behavior is mostly affected by increasing motorization, urban sprawl, and traffic safety. Especially for children, active and independent travel can contribute to physical activity, social and motor development, and other health-related outcomes. A reduced number of children engaging in independent mobility over the last 20 years demanded researchers to further examine the construct of children’s independent mobility. By examining relevant literature, this narrative review aims to provide the current state of knowledge on children’s independent mobility, and identify future directions in research, as well as practical implications. From a public health perspective, considering children’s independent mobility in intervention programs is recommended, since it is associated with numerous health and environmental benefits. To develop interventions, multilevel socio-ecological influences on children’s independent mobility are widely examined; however, evidence is limited due to heterogeneous measurements and a lack of high-quality prospective studies. To oppose the decline in children’s independent mobility, further analysis using comparable measures is needed to understand the determinants of children’s independent mobility and to enable international comparison.

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“…The independent and active mobility of children is an outcome of a very complex set of developmental (Ahmadi, 2007;Burgmanis et al, 2014;Rissotto and Tonucci, 2002), familial (Barron, 2014;Jensen et al, 2014), sociocultural (Depeau, 2001;Malone and Rudner, 2011;Valentine, 2004), and environmental characteristics (Alparone and Pacilli, 2012;Mitra and Buliung, 2014;Villanueva et al, 2013), as well as the policy context (Fyhri and Hjorthol, 2009;Rudner, 2012). Individual and family characteristics that are affecting CIM include children's age, maturity and gender (Johansson, 2006), family structure, socioeconomic status, ethnicity (Loebach and Gilliland, 2014;Weir et al, 2006), gender of parent, and parent employment (Valentine, 2004;Witten et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The last free-range children? Children’s independent mobility in Finland in the 1990s and 2010s

Kyttä

Hirvonen

Rudner

et al. 2015

Journal of Transport Geography

123

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a b s t r a c tThe study reports the degree of children's independent mobility (CIM) in Finland for over two decades, from the beginning of the 1990s up to 2011. The first part of the research examined the differences of CIM in five different settlements in 2011: inner city, suburban, large town, small town, and rural village. A cross-sectional survey was used on a total of 821 7-to 15-year-old children in various settlements in different parts of Finland. Independent mobility was operationalized both as mobility licenses, meaning parental permits to perform certain activities independently, and as actual mobility, the proportion of active and independent school travel and independent weekend activities. In the second part of the study, we used the same measures to compare the independent mobility of Finnish children in the 1990s and 2010s. The second sample consisted of a total of 306 8-to 10-year-old children and their parents who participated in the CIM study in 1993-94 or in 2011. The major finding of the study was that in Finland children's independent mobility had decreased significantly during a span of 20 years, even more noticeably in the small town and rural village settings than in the inner city settlements. Finnish children, nevertheless, still enjoy a very high degree of independent mobility when compared with the children from the 16 countries involved in the large international comparative study for which the current research was conducted. In the discussion, we give some possible factors that can provide some understanding of and explanation to these trends.

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Influential Factors on Children′s Spatial Knowledge and Mobility in Home–School Travel A Case Study in the City of Tehran

Cited by 26 publications

References 6 publications

Danger from Traffic to Fear of Monkeys: Children's Independent Mobility in Four Diverse Sites in Japan

Danger from Traffic to Fear of Monkeys: Children's Independent Mobility in Four Diverse Sites in Japan

Children’s Independent Mobility: Current Knowledge, Future Directions, and Public Health Implications

The last free-range children? Children’s independent mobility in Finland in the 1990s and 2010s

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