Children's place exploration: The geographies of ten -year olds in New York City

This study, conducted in the mid 1990s, focuses on the geographic exploration of ten-year-old children in New York City. It documents and investigates their ways of discovering and learning about different local places in New York City and the factors that influence children’s geographic exploration.;These questions are answered by using multiple methodologies. Research methods included open-ended interviews with eighteen 10-year-old children and eighteen parents, child-produced atlases in which they provided information concerning their place exploration in New York City. In addition, each child was given a notebook to record places he/she remembered between interview sessions. I also conducted informal observations of each child’s home and immediate outdoor environments.;This study is concerned with improving children’s lives in New York City and thereby more generally urban settings, which possess a contradictory nature as rich places for learning and exploration and as challenging places within which to raise children. It addresses how parents deal with these urban ecologies, and documents the consequences of these urban contradictions for children. As such it has implications for urban design and policies dealing with children’s environments; can inform the body of research which examines children’s environmental and geographic education under contemporary conditions; and can contribute to curriculum development in social studies that recognizes children’s everyday modes of learning, and raises issues of importance to developing teachers’ awareness of the urban child’s geographic exploration.