The evolution of young people’s spatial knowledge

In this article, we address the central topic of the call for papers, childhood educates space, from the perspective of children’s and young people’s spatial knowledge. We argue that both childhood and youth educate as much as are educated by space. To shed light on this dynamic and complex interaction, we focus on the arenas and agencies at play within the production and acquisition of spatial knowledge. The term arena refers to the spatial conditions that delineate an area of activity related to the production and acquisition of spatial knowledge, and agency denotes the crucial means, agents, and tools that are instrumental in and buttress such area of activity. To render operative the analysis, we draw on two driving themes: (i) the gradual development of a comprehensive conception of space and (ii) its accompanying (and traversing) learning processes. Moreover, to substantiate the assertion that education between childhood and youth and space is mutually constitutive, we present a selection of findings from a qualitative meta-analysis conducted to reconstruct the evolution of young people’s spatial knowledge from the 1970s onwards. All in all, we claim that the process of production and acquisition of spatial knowledge forms the basis of, on the one hand, the keenness and depth of the perception that children and young people have of the physical world and, on the other, the ways they subjectively and symbolically characterize it.

This chapter focuses on how young people accommodate latent-objective and/or manifest-subjective conflicts experienced in their everyday lives into their spatial knowledge. It is claimed that through this internalization, young people manage to spatialize conflicts by way of their spatial perceptions and practices. For example, conflicts emerge from the discrepancy between intended and actual perceptions and uses of spaces. Furthermore, the notions of “place” and “territory,” understood as “spatial figures,” are drawn upon to shed light on spatial conflicts. Existing literature on the interplay between youth, conflict, and space argues that young people's presence and practices are remarkably subject to control and regulation. Particularly in public spaces they are attracted to, young people are positioned as being both “risky” and “at risk”—and thus in need of taming and safeguard. Against this backdrop and based on case studies located in the cities of Berlin and Lima, manners in which the binomial control + regulation is made operative (by adults) and endured (by young people) are identified. All in all, the researched young people are, figuratively speaking, being brought up inside an “imperceptible cage” that visibly territorializes their everyday lives and therewith reproduces the being-risky-and-at risk loop they are ensnared in.