Spaces of early childhood: Spatial approaches in research on early childhood education and care

Abstract

When Friedrich Froebel established his first ‘Kindergarten’ in late 1830s, he chose purposefully the name of this institute, dedicated to educating young children in radically new ways by means of play and guided activities. For him, the term ‘Kindergarten’ – the garden of children – signified two spaces “a garden for children, a location where they can observe and interact with nature, and also a garden of children, where they themselves can grow and develop in freedom from arbitrary imperatives”1. As a paradise ‘given back to the children’, the Kindergarten was construed as a confined, protected non-societal place where the innocent children could grow to full potential. Hence, as such a natural place aside from adult’s society – that similarly to Rousseau he has seen as corrupted –, the kindergarten was not just a place for educating young children. Rather, it was a whole new kind of spatial arrangement to let the children come to their dignity in substance with god and nature and, therefore, become through their play the founders of a more human future society.