The Relationship Between School and Neighborhood: Child-Oriented Perspectives on Educational Locations

Abstract

For organizational reasons, school administrators tend to classify pupils based on the neighborhood they live in. The residential area is therefore an important indicator of the composition of different school classes—at least in the case of Swiss primary schools. Due to this logic, teachers are confronted with the characteristics of the neighborhood in which their schools are situated. Because pupils carry their everyday problems with them, the social situation in the neighborhood is also reflected in the classroom. In areas with a high concentration of social problems, this poses an especially big challenge for teachers. But what do we know about the children’s perspective? How do they see their neighborhood? What do they expect from school? How do they view the relation between neighborhood and school? The author discusses these questions on the basis of findings of a research project about lived spaces in a medium-sized Swiss town.