Att skapa platser i naturmiljöer: Om hur vardagliga praktiker i en I Ur och Skur-förskola bidrar till at ge platser identitet.

On the basis of a study of a Swedish ‘outdoor’ daycare facility, the purpose of this study is to show how children and early childhood educators create meaning in nature.

The study concludes that children can develop a strong appreciation of nature through their varied use of nature with the facility’s staff. At the same time, they also create their “own” spaces. The study shows that children and staff in the daycare facility in question create different types of “conceptual spaces” of the natural environment. Both children and staff create primitive, perceptual and existential conceptual spaces. Creation of these primitive spaces allows for spaces where the children can eat, rest and play. The perceptual spaces are spaces where the children can move freely and use their senses. Existential spaces are created when the early childhood educators and the children endow the natural surroundings with symbolic meaning through rituals and imaginary games.

The study is based on a Swedish outdoor daycare facility. The data consists of transcribed video footage from a single, yet central outdoor location used by the daycare facility. Formal and informal interviews were conducted with children and adults, and the researcher took field notes. In the analysis, emphasis was on examining how children and staff create and recreate environments in the outdoors and ascribe meaning and importance to the outdoor environment.

Änggård, E. (2012). Att skapa platser i naturmiljöer: Om hur vardagliga praktiker i en I Ur och Skur-förskola bidrar till at ge platser identitet. Nordisk Barnehageforskning 5(10), 1-16.