Researching Children's Understanding of Safety: An Auto-Driven Visual Approach

Abstract

Safe learning spaces allow children to explore their environment in an open and inquiring way, whereas unsafe spaces constrain, frustrate and disengage children from experiencing the fullness of their learning spaces. This study explores how children make sense of safe and unsafe learning spaces, and how this understanding affects the ways they engage with their learning spaces. Using a qualitative research method that employed auto-driven visual and observation approaches, this research conducted at one centre in the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia, examined children's movement and interaction within their learning spaces. The results suggest that the children felt safe in spaces that offered them the best opportunities for play. These are the spaces where they behaved well, laughed freely, reacted positively, and played without too much restriction and intimidation, keeping in mind the restrictions imposed on them by their teachers at other spaces. The implications for constructing and managing safe learning spaces for children are discussed.