Activities on the schoolyard, whether they take place during free recess or as a part of a more structured pedagogical practice, are highly important both to pupils’ social experiences of schooling and to their concrete learning processes. This has been made evident through several studies during the last decades (e.g. Blatchford & Sharp 1994; Pellegrini & Blatchford 2003) and it is today an increasingly common starting point for researchers engaged in the study of contemporary schooling. In educational history however, the picture is somewhat different. Even though the schoolyard seems to have a past almost as long as organised schooling itself, very little analytical attention has been provided this space (and the outdoor school environment as such), especially in the form of long-term historical studies.
The main purpose of our study is to contribute to the understanding of the outdoor school environment as a pedagogical and social space by analyzing the history of the schoolyard in a Swedish educational context from the formation of the “modern” state governed school system in the early 17th century up until the very present.
The theoretical point of departure is Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) theory of the production of social space. This implies that space should not be seen as a passive physical manifestation or merely a context for material activities but also a producer of subjectivities, mental conditions and social relations. Lefebvre’s three spatial dimensions are highlighted in our analysis, namely a) representations of space (conceived space); b) spatial practice (perceived space) and c) representational spaces (lived space). The first dimension corresponds to the imagined, planned, conceived space (often the professionalized public space), the second to the material, physically perceived space, and the third to the existential, lived space, which includes actions, experiences and feelings. Although analytically distinctive and useable, we understand these three dimensions as mutually intertwined in practice. Thus, intended schoolyard activities and material conditions merge with actions, social relations and mental structures. Based on Lefebvre, the schoolyard is seen as a physical place, which by nationally and locally formulated formal and informal representations becomes loaded with collective symbolic ambitions and expectations. On an everyday basis, pupils and teachers continuously participate in the forming of the schoolyard and negotiate its meanings and significances. In the ambition to examine and analyze the production of the schoolyard as a social space the following analytical dimensions and research questions will be guiding our study:
A) Representations of space (conceived space): How has the conception of the schoolyard been formed and transformed in educational planning on a national and a local level? What central ideas about the ideal uses and features of the schoolyard have marked formal and informal regulation at different points of time, and how has this varied as regards to different parts of the educational system? What influences from dominating discourses (i.e. premises concerning childhood, play, pedagogy, knowledge, and so on) has effected these formal representations?
B) Spatial practice (perceived space): How has the schoolyard been formed physically and materially?
C) Representational space (lived space): What kinds of social activities have been conducted on the schoolyard, and what cultural and symbolic values have been attached to this space by pupils, school staff and others?
Method: The most important sources for our study are formal instructions on national as well as local level, such as school curriculum texts, state regulations, construction plans and blueprints. This will make up the spine of the study. In addition to this, photographs and drawings are also being examined, as well as teacher, pupil and architect magazines. For the more recent parts of the investigated period interviews have been carried out with pupils, teachers and others engaged in schoolyard issues. The sorting and the analysis of the data are based on the three spatial dimensions described above, and has been carried out in a hermeneutic tradition. There are of course several methodological problems that need to be handled in a study like this. First of all, a challenging problem is caused by the long time-span of the study and the different nature of sources at hand at different time periods. The pre-modern sources more or less exclusively consists of formal, national and local decrees on schooling, whereas the sources from mid-19th century and onwards becomes successively richer, and therefore permits more in depth studies on several areas. This, in turn, creates problems as regards to finding a balance in the overall analysis, for example when it comes to studying spatial change. It also has an impact on where the main focus of our study is placed; namely on representations of space and on formal planning on different levels (as this is the dimension where we can achieve a comprehensive long-term study). This imposes an inevitable hierarchisation both between the three general analytical dimensions of the study but also within each category. Secondly, Lefebvre’s grand theory about the production of social space might work well as a joint analytical hub, but needs to be combined and added up with other (spatial and discursive) theories and approaches, and perhaps also with a more common framework for understanding the role of education in society. Finally, methodological difficulties also stems from the schoolyard being an atomized and multi-functional space (including for example a plot, plantations, botanical garden, a play area, a privy, a flagpole, secret places, etc.) and thus also multi-dynamic as regards to change. This creates challenges as to how sort out different patterns of change related to this space.
Expected Outcomes: Although the study is far from completed some preliminary conclusions can be discussed against the background of the analytical dimensions presented above. As regards to the schoolyard as a conceived space, it has, to varying extent, been a place for play and sports, for rest and recreation, for teaching, fostering or for moral influence; it has been an instructive and model outdoor space for pupils or the surrounding community due to its aesthetics, as well as an object for economic, safety and health considerations. This has had effects on the physical schoolyard where both changes and continuities over the long investigated period can be seen. The lived schoolyard appears to be highly age differentiated and partly gender differentiated and strongly connected to activities and social relations. The lived schoolyard is both a safe and a dangerous place, and even if it is regulated, it offers possibilities to challenge the rules of the school. The lived schoolyard is also a children’s place - the presence of adults has been minimal except from the latest two or three decades. When intersecting the analyses of the three dimensions can we see that central ideas about the schoolyard, formed in relation to historical changes in school and society, have been materialized in the physical shaping of school sites. We can also see how central ideas have affected the lived schoolyard, but also the other way around. In the presentation the conclusions about the production of the schoolyard as a social space will be discussed in the light of illustrating empirical examples.