There is still only a limited development of a solidly grounded social and cultural geography prepared to conceptualize children as a neglected social grouping undergoing various forms of sociospatial marginalization. Given the focus and momentum of the ‘new’ cultural geography, we contend that this is an apposite time to define an agenda for the geography of children, which not only takes into account earlier studies which can inform contemporary debate, largely drawn from an environmental psychology tradition, but which also recognizes the interface between sociology, anthropology and cultural studies and draws upon important work being undertaken by feminist and critical geographers. To date, much of the research on the geography of children has been blighted by fragmentation, narrow disciplinary perspectives and methodologies which do not sufficiently engage themselves with the lifeworld of children in the ‘here and now’. In this article we propose a working agenda based upon a set of seven generic pr...

Defining an agenda for the geography of children: Review and prospect

Children's sense of place in Northern New Mexico

Plants are essential to life on Earth and yet are often deemed invisible by the human populace. Botanic gardens are an under‐researched educational context and, as such, have occupied a peripheral arena in biology education discussions. This article seeks to readdress this absence and present the case for a more sustained use of informal learning environments, such as botanic gardens and homes, to make public the private life of plants and their role in sustaining life on Earth. By drawing on empirical data from a doctoral thesis and reviewing relevant research literature, the author argues for a renewed focus on botanical education within science education in both formal and informal contexts.

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Making Public the Private Life of Plants: The Contribution of Informal Learning Environments.

The Geography of Children: An Annotated Bibliography

Injuries in children aged 0-14 years and inequalities

Few studies have explicitly examined the importance of cultural settings to children's environmental awareness, especially in a non-Western context. In this paper, the author reviews those studies which have drawn attention to how culture affects children's behaviour in large-scale environments and refers to an empirical study of a group of young Kenyan children which examines the relationship between environmental experience and environmental awareness. The findings are interesting for three principal reasons. First, they demonstrate that children who are without formal training and with limited access to maps are able to draw relatively sophisticated place representations and to recall their local environment in vivid terms. Secondly, these maps and place descriptions are different to those of their age-sex-counterparts from Britain, which suggests that culture influences expressive style if not cognitive ability. Thirdly, they suggest that further studies, set within other cross-cultural contexts, are needed, if the importance of culture to environmental capability is to be understood. The author argues that although geographers are well-placed to carry out this kind of investigation little geographical research on children's place relationships has been undertaken. In this sense, geographers are particularly remiss and are guilty of forgetting their 'roots'.

Hugh Matthews

Papers

Culture, Environmental Experience and Environmental Awareness: Making Sense of Young Kenyan Children's Views of Place