Rooms with gender: physical environment and play culture in kindergarten

environment in kindergarten, and how the physical environment impacts children's play culture. This is done by investigating how kindergarten staff describe the indoor physical environment, and how they perceive that the physical environment impacts children's play.

Overall, the authors conclude that gender is closely interwoven with the physical environment of the kindergarten. Analysis of the interviews indicates that the staff associate children's play with gender, and this sets requirements for the kindergarten's physical design. According to the informants, female employees are responsible for forming the physical environment, and consequently the environment is seen as symbolising femininity. The various rooms and zones in the kindergarten (such as the dolls corner and the paint corner) are constructed for specific activities, and this sets clear expectations to how the rooms are to be used. According to the authors, the physical environment thus has a structural power on children's play.

The interviews also indicate that the children's play produces and reproduces the staff's stereotypical ideas of gender, and vice versa. The staff believe that play which they associate with boys demands masculine qualities such as toughness and roughness and physical activity using the body and voice. While play associated with girls demands feminine qualities such as being gentle and using an "indoor" voice and using limited space. The authors find that, although the children occasionally cross these gendered lines by taking part in play that is not associated with their gender, the staff perceive that girls and boys use the rooms differently, and girls and boys use different rooms and zones in the kindergarten. According to the informants, boys most often prefer to play in rooms containing materials associated with boys (such as LEGO), whereas girls tend to use rooms with activities related to girls (such as the dolls corner). The analysis indicates that if rooms and zones in the kindergarten are used specifically by either girls or boys, this can mean that the physical environment is not available for every child; i.e. not all children have equal opportunities to use the various rooms and zones in the kindergarten.

The data material consists of eight in-depth, individual interviews with four female kindergarten teachers as well as two male and two female assistants from one kindergarten. The kindergarten was an age-integrated institution and had a traditional organisational structure with two departments for children aged 1 to 3 years and two departments for children above 3 years. Each department had a wardrobe, a large play and dining room, a smaller playroom and a gender-neutral toilet. In addition, the kindergarten had a large common room, a kitchen, a gym and a staffroom. During the interviews, each informant was asked to describe the physical environment of the kindergarten and answer follow-up questions, such as "Who designed the rooms?" and "How do the children use the rooms?". Each interview lasted around 90 minutes and was audio recorded and then transcribed.

Børve, H. E., & Børve, E. (2017). Rooms with gender: physical environment and play culture in kindergarten. Early Child Development and Care, 187(5-6), 1069-1081.