Activities on the schoolyard, whether they take place during free recess or as a part of a more structured pedagogical practice, are highly important both to pupils’ social experiences of schooling and to their concrete learning processes. This has been made evident through several studies during the last decades (e.g. Blatchford & Sharp 1994; Pellegrini & Blatchford 2003) and it is today an increasingly common starting point for researchers engaged in the study of contemporary schooling. In educational history however, the picture is somewhat different. Even though the schoolyard seems to have a past almost as long as organised schooling itself, very little analytical attention has been provided this space (and the outdoor school environment as such), especially in the form of long-term historical studies.

The main purpose of our study is to contribute to the understanding of the outdoor school environment as a pedagogical and social space by analyzing the history of the schoolyard in a Swedish educational context from the formation of the “modern” state governed school system in the early 17^th century up until the very present.

The theoretical point of departure is Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) theory of the production of social space. This implies that space should not be seen as a passive physical manifestation or merely a context for material activities but also a producer of subjectivities, mental conditions and social relations. Lefebvre’s three spatial dimensions are highlighted in our analysis, namely a) representations of space (conceived space); b) spatial practice (perceived space) and c) representational spaces (lived space). The first dimension corresponds to the imagined, planned, conceived space (often the professionalized public space), the second to the material, physically perceived space, and the third to the existential, lived space, which includes actions, experiences and feelings. Although analytically distinctive and useable, we understand these three dimensions as mutually intertwined in practice. Thus, intended schoolyard activities and material conditions merge with actions, social relations and mental structures. Based on Lefebvre, the schoolyard is seen as a physical place, which by nationally and locally formulated formal and informal representations becomes loaded with collective symbolic ambitions and expectations. On an everyday basis, pupils and teachers continuously participate in the forming of the schoolyard and negotiate its meanings and significances. In the ambition to examine and analyze the production of the schoolyard as a social space the following analytical dimensions and research questions will be guiding our study:

A) Representations of space (conceived space): How has the conception of the schoolyard been formed and transformed in educational planning on a national and a local level? What central ideas about the ideal uses and features of the schoolyard have marked formal and informal regulation at different points of time, and how has this varied as regards to different parts of the educational system? What influences from dominating discourses (i.e. premises concerning childhood, play, pedagogy, knowledge, and so on) has effected these formal representations?

B) Spatial practice (perceived space): How has the schoolyard been formed physically and materially?

C) Representational space (lived space): What kinds of social activities have been conducted on the schoolyard, and what cultural and symbolic values have been attached to this space by pupils, school staff and others?

Blatchford, Peter & Sonya Sharp (1994) Breaktime and the School: Understanding and Changing Playground Behaviour. London: Routledge. Pellegrini, Anthony & Peter Blatchford (2003) The Child at School: Interactions with Peers and Teachers. London: Arnold. Henri Lefevbre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991).