Environments that Favor the Child

Pretty much wherever you look, the universe of care, learning, and play environments is limited and disappointing. It certainly is not inspiring. Last year I wrote about the need for more varied spaces for children. Since then, the question of why we don’t create environments that truly favor children has persisted for me and, I think–perhaps hopefully–for others as well.

We locate spaces for young children in basements when they need to see the world. We make children sit down at desks and be quiet, just when they are really good at talking and moving in exciting ways. We expect children to learn as they learn naturally, and then we scour environments clean of rich textures, sounds, and varied materials that are intriguing and full of information for their thinking and learning. At the same time, we clutter early childhood spaces with cartoony penguins, leprechauns, and pumpkins dangling from ceilings where children can see only a bit. We saturate rooms with bright red, blue, and yellow, and compete with children’s faces, hands, and their work.

Even babies are put in spaces we call classrooms that are miniature versions of 1^st grade classrooms; those classrooms are miniature versions of high school classrooms. Activity areas and room arrangements in preschool classrooms and kindergartens are based on preschool models from the 1950’s.

Options aren’t more promising if you look at furniture and equipment for play and learning spaces for toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergarteners in early childhood and school catalogues. Selected with an adult worldview rather than a child’s sense and sensibility, these products find their way into museum preschools, program spaces for toddlers and “mommy and me” programs, early childhood exhibit spaces, and museum play yards. The relatively new colorful carpets with giant alphabets, numbers or rainforest images do not change the paradigm.

How can we change the paradigm and create environments that favor the child?

How can we move away from settings that favor the janitor, the teacher, the nanny, the education commissioner, the parent, the furniture salesman, or the accreditation team?

Environments that favor children cannot happen without a full, positive image of children, their capabilities, and potential as well as an understanding of the power of a setting to extend those promising qualities. Yes, there are found places to play and wonderful places planted for play that support children’s exploration, discovery, and connections. With few exceptions, however, the spaces we create for children in schools, infant, toddler and preschool and care settings; in museum classrooms, and exhibits are limited, especially compared to the many more examples of environments designed for selling and for nurturing animals in zoos.

Recognizing Who Children Really Are

Children are moving through their world, learning as they go. They watch, they reach, they want to find out. They have questions, spoken and unspoken. The world is full of sensory information where knowledge begins. Children respond to the present and to what is present and in that moment.  At 15, 35, or 75 years old, we see this same world very differently. We know a lot about how it works and what to expect. We are no longer fascinated by simple cause-and-effect; generally we are not surprised by gravity. We can imagine where a sound came from and what made the sound. While we may be pleased to see lightning bugs, we are not enthralled and dash about in wonderment. 

Very often we view children through the lens of what we need to accomplish or we think of them as what they are supposed to become in the future. We need to get our errands done or return email. We need them to be quiet in an exhibition or get ready for school. As sorry as we are to see children grow up so fast, we nevertheless hurry them to settle down and act older. A five year old is not a small sixth grader who can’t do mental operations. A three-year old is not an inadequate five-year old. We often say, “When you get bigger…when you can ride a two-wheeler, when you go to school.” What about the four year-old standing before us right NOW?

Thinking of children as curious, competent, full of strengths, makes children important. It also reflects what research is making clear.

…there is strong evidence that children, when they have accumulated substantial knowledge, have the ability to abstract well beyond what is ordinarily observed. Indeed, the striking feature of modern research is that it describes unexpected competencies in young children, key features of which appear to be universal. These data focus attention on the child’s exposure to learning opportunities, calling into question simplistic conceptualizations of developmentally appropriate practice that do not recognize the newly understood competencies of very young children, and they highlight the importance of individual differences in children, their past experiences, and their present contexts.[i]

Environments Embody Meaning

Most of us view the built environment as 3-D wallpaper. It’s background for our lives, surroundings that we take for granted. The physical environment, however, is more than the arrangement of furniture in a room. Not only does the environment encompass the full volume of a space, the surfaces, and materials that cover walls, the views outside, and the quality of light that enters, it is also greater than the sum of these parts.

Spaces are not necessarily legible, readily understood when first approached and explored. Often they prompt questions, spoken and unspoken, about what might occur in a space, the behaviors that are expected or discouraged. What can I do here? What does this place do? How long can I stay? Where can I go? What can I touch? Is this a place to play or sit? To make choices or follow directions? To wait or get busy? Do I stay at this table or visit all the tables? Is this a place to try new things or do the same things again?

Environments are also context with meaning. Just as context gives helpful clues to a word’s meaning in a sentence, the environment provides clues to a space and its possibilities. When we shape a setting and its physical character, we can help anticipate and answer questions. In planning an environment, we express our intentions for the space along with our understanding and assumptions about those who use it. While we are not fully determining what will occur in a space, we are opening up some possibilities and closing down others. We have an opportunity to send messages about mood, actions, and what will be done here and can be learned here. So, what are we conveying in the care, learning, and play environments we create for children in schools and museums?

Children’s Strong Relationships With Environments

Young children live continuously in the here-and-now of experience, engaging with the qualities of the environment, its volumes, touch, sounds, light, odors, and movements. Right from the moment of birth, infants are engaged in developing a relationship with the environment. Research on babies from 12-33 months shows that their interactions with the physical environment account for approximately 80-90% of waking time. Social interactions comprise approximately 10-20% of waking time.[ii]

A lap, a crib, or a room, environments are the containers for the everyday moments that matter to children. Babies’ draw on, live in, and act on the environment as a primary source of information about the world. With brains active from birth and through physical and sensory exploration, they inhabit spaces fully.

Children are active participants in their environment. They are not merely consumers. From a very early age, they exert control over their environment in a relationship that is reciprocal. A child pushes on the environment, intentionally or unintentionally, and it pushes back. A baby drops a spoon, and gathers information about gravity. A preschooler pulls a chair up to the counter to reach higher. A seven year old throws a ball and breaks a window.

Environments speak directly to children. We may think a child is “misbehaving” when he is responding to an interesting feature that is present. In the Adventures in the Arts exhibit at the Museum of the Rockies, a 5 year-old boy repeatedly scooted up-and-down a ramp. His mother kept shushing him without, apparently, considering that the ramp was far more engaging than the flat floor or the paintings hung too high for him to see. His feet, however, made interesting sounds as they moved fast and slow, hard and soft, up and down the ramp.

Both the social and the physical environment are important: “…early environments matter and nurturing relationships are essential”.[iii]  Yet, in children’s programs, the physical environment is often what distinguishes program quality. In programs, classrooms, and exhibits, children notice and respond to the aliveness of space, even when an adult or another child is not present.

Environment as the Third Teacher

Among the leading ideas from the Municipal Schools of Reggio Emilia (Italy) is the environment as the third teacher. In the infant, toddler, preschool, and elementary schools, social and physical relationships are reinforced in the school settings. Clear physical organization makes space legible so, at every age, a child is competent in navigating. Environments are planned to create opportunities for the child to explore in open-ended ways and to find many possibilities. Thoughtful attention is given to environments that are beautiful, hospitable, and amiable.

In strengthening physical relationships about the world; encouraging social connections; arranging space to be attractive and create possibilities; selecting varied materials and objects for exploration; and inspiring with beauty, an environment can serve as a full curriculum. It carries messages, content, and invitations to explore. When adults are more attentive to the environment, possibilities for children’s exploring, thinking, and learning can be increased.

For young children, physical development is cognitive development. Toddlers love to move; they fall; they learn about gravity. Those short, somewhat wobbly toddler legs are meant for covering territory, not for sitting at short chairs and tables. Recently, I visited an early care and learning program and noticed the very tiny table and chairs in the infant room. The director told me that they were required as part of NAEYC accreditation. As if babies (or children) can’t learn unless seated at a table! What about steps, the floor, a cushion, or the middle of a sand pile as platforms for play and exploration?

Creating Environments that Favor the Child

Environments that favor the child are alive and responsive to a child’s potential; they enable the child to build on her curiosity; build his competence; and grow into the possibilities the space offers. These environments:

Hold an image of the child as curious, capable, competent, and full of potential at the center, grounding choices for all aspects of a space in that rich image.

Make the organization of space legible and invest spaces with meaning that is relevant and particular to that group of children and adults.

Enable children’s sense of agency and accomplishment by inviting possibilities with a rich and varied array of materials and objects.

Connect the daily world inside with the larger world outside, through windows and doors, linking with families, and reaching out to adventures beyond.

Are beautiful, hospitable, pleasant spaces, rich in detail and meaning.

These are full and rich dimensions of environments worthy of exploring, ones that respect and engage children’s great capabilities. Over the next few months, I intend to explore them. I hope to do so with input from readers–your questions, curiosities,  experiences, and images you feel express these qualities. I invite you to think about and share your thoughts as a comment here or via email (jwverg@earthlink.net).

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[i] National Research Council, Committee on Early Childhood Psychology. 2000. Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers in Bowman, Barbara T., M. Suzanne Donovan, and M. Susan Burns. (Eds.). National Academy Press: Washington, DC.

[ii] White, B.L., B. Kaban, B. Shapiro, and J. Attanucci. (1977). Competence and Experience in I.C. Uzgiris and F. Weizman (Eds.) The Structure of Experience. Plenum Press: New York. (p.115-152).

[iii] National Research Council, Committee on Early Childhood Psychology. 2000. Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers in Bowman, Barbara T., M. Suzanne Donovan, and M. Susan Burns. (Eds.). National Academy Press: Washington, DC.