Project ULe

Urban Learning Spaces – Practices and Perceptions of Out-of-School Learning Spaces of Children Living in the Bahnhofsviertel City District in Frankfurt/Main

The research area is a very heterogeneous city district in the vicinity of Frankfurt central train station. The study focuses on how specific locations in which children spend time before, apart from, and after school can actually become learning spaces, and which changes can be observed and analysed in the children’s practices and perceptions. From a social-constructivist perspective, the child is regarded as an actively acting and also shaping person. The focus is on the perspective and experience of the children. The study is planned to run for three years as a qualitative longitudinal research project accompanying the children from 2nd grade (approximately age 7) onward until they start attending secondary school (approximately age 10). This will make it possible to determine which and how locations become learning spaces, and what kind of significance can be attributed to specific locations. The project aims to reconstruct urban locations as learning spaces, to identify locations that are important for children in the city district, to examine the children’s spatial practices and perceptions, and to discover changes and continuities in out-of-school learning spaces in the family, after-school care centre, and the urban district itself.