Walking with preschool‐aged children to explore their local wellbeing affordances

Abstract

An increasingly well‐developed body of research uses neighbourhood walks to better understand primary school children's experiences of local environments, yet virtually nothing is known about preschool‐aged children's connections to their neighbourhoods. A reason for this omission is the commonly held view that preschool children lack competency to reflect on lived environments beyond playgrounds, kindergartens, and other confined settings that dominate early childhood. However, preliterate children walk around, use, and create intimate relationships with local environments as shown by 10 children aged 3–5 years from Dunedin in New Zealand during go‐along interviews. We asked each to walk us around their locale, explaining and pointing out favourite and less beloved places and activities. In this article, we advance two arguments: first that preschoolers are knowledgeable meaning makers of place; second that walking with them is a key step to understanding their life worlds and provides a way for preliterate and preverbal children to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of their spatial worlds, including as research participants. We challenge the idea that children of this age lack large‐scale spatial competency and understanding. Walking with them generated an in‐depth appreciation of their experiences of environments and revealed deep connections they had with their locales at varied scales. The work enables us to offer novel insights into spatial competency, sociospatial complexities, and the multiple dimensions of young children's wellbeing affordances in urban environments. Such insights are highly relevant for geographers, planners, and others who shape children's urban environments.

Children's perceptions of environment and health in two Scottish neighbourhoods

“…Our research responds to an increasing recognition that “children are rarely recognised in neighbourhood research and their perceptions of the neighborhoods and the environments they occupy every day go largely unnoticed” ( Schaefer-McDaniel, 2009 , p. 417). However, the approach of ‘putting children first’ and enabling children and young people in research has been gaining traction, and as such, our understanding of child-friendly spaces is improving ( Bradbury-Jones and Taylor, 2015 ; Carroll et al, 2015 ; Ergler et al, 2021 ). It must however be recognised that there were limitations to our approach.…”

“…To address this, researchers have begun to engage with children and young people as active participants, particularly within the sub-discipline of children's geographies. Rather than objectifying children in the research process and performing research ‘on’ children, researchers have begun to involve children as active agents in child-centred methods ( Ergler et al, 2021 ). Such an approach is centred on the idea that children are “closer to understanding their world and how to improve their well-being” than adult researchers (Ergler in Coles and Millman, 2013 , p. 187).…”

Danced movement in human geographic research: A methodological discussion

“…Mobile methods encompass a diverse range of activities (Merriman, 2014; Spinney, 2015). As well as more established methods such as go‐alongs (Ergler et al., 2021; Spinney, 2015), physical activities such as biking (Heim‐LaFrombois, 2019), and walking (Edensor, 2000; Wylie, 2002, 2005), not previously considered methods within geography, have become integral in mobilities research. Mobile methods have also embraced approaches to research influenced by Sarah Pink's work on sensory ethnographies (Clement & Waitt, 2018).…”

Pre‐Schoolers’ Vision for Liveable Cities: Creating ‘Care‐Full’ Urban Environments

“…In Stage IV, we visited ten of the children who had completed a city map at their home and invited them to take us on a neighbourhood tour (Ergler et al . 2020b). These were children from the 27 who built the city maps, whose parents had indicated on the consent form that they would be happy to participate in the home based stage.…”