Thinking and Creating Space with Children: A Terrestrial Perspective

Trafi-Prats, Laura ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3468-1073 (2025) Thinking and Creating Space with Children: A Terrestrial Perspective. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education CDIS. ISSN 1469-3739 (In Press)

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Abstract

This study introduces a novel focus on children’s spatial thinking by synthesising insights from posthuman childhood studies, research on spatial literacies, and collaborative methodologies in childhood research. It advances a Terrestrial perspective inspired by Bruno Latour’s philosophy after Gaia, which foregrounds children’s participation in urban design as embedded in their lived spatial experiences and attentive to limits, dependencies, and attachments. Such a focus offers a critical alternative to dominant urban policy frameworks that prioritise a humanistic ethos, often reducing children's participation to individualised expression not acknowledging complex anthropogenic relationalities. The study explores these ideas through workshops with nine-year-olds in a university Saturday School, where compositional methods—such as block play and architectural drawing—supported spatial negotiation and material agency through play and creativity.