The Significance of Place in the Curriculum of Children's Everyday Lives

For a number of years, studies of places focused on their economic efficiency, though more recently, attention has shifted to questions about social justice with an emphasis on the experienced actualities of place. The places of children's everyday lives have limited their opportunities for nurturance, growth, and learning. In this article, the author maintains that making questions about "the place of children's everyday lives" more central in research with children and youth can also contribute to improved social justice for children. Furthermore, classrooms and schools can be understood and researched as places intended to support young people's growth and well being. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section offers a sense of the lived meaning of place, drawing upon "place stories" from students in a graduate course on "Children and Place" to introduce some of cultural geography's ideas about place in a contextualized way. The second section reviews a theoretical framework for understanding everyday life as curriculum and for appreciating the significance of place in everyday life. It suggests that an awareness of children' needs/rights should serve an interpretive framework for evaluating the places of their everyday lives. The final section discusses some examples of practices in schools that are responsive to students' needs of place. The author maintains that school itself should be a good place in terms of students' needs for nurturance and growth. She also suggests that research on the places of students' lives outside of school should inform the curricula offered within schools. (Contains 2 notes.)