Science rates as one of the core subject areas in school, and within society, it holds a relatively high social status. For decades, however, there has been widespread international concern that science, compared to other school subjects, is failing to engage pupils. Moreover, participation in science education has been rather narrow concerning the distribution of gender, social and ethnic diversity (Moote et al., 2020; Archer et al., 2013). Thus, it is not only necessary to widen and increase the intake to science education, but to ensure scientific awareness and understanding among the broader population (see Archer et al., 2015). The empirical data of this paper derive from a ten-year longitudinal research project studying children’s ‘science capital’ (science-related interest, qualifications, literacy, and social contacts; see Archer et al., 2015) and how it develops over time. The wider project follows children from five schools located across Denmark. Specifically in Denmark, there is only limited research on the relation between science practice and children’s everyday life and family background, and studies focusing on intersectionality are also rare (except e.g., Krogh & Andersen, 2013; Madsen et al., 2015). Thus, the wider project contributes by exploring how children’s resources, experiences and backgrounds shape their participation (i.e., access, positions, and opportunities) in science. This allows us concurrently to unravel wider, complex patterns of (structural) inequalities within the Danish education system.

The aim of this paper is to use a spatial approach to explore how children’s spatial networks and socio-spatial practices shape their educational experiences and opportunities within the field of science. Inspired by Massey (2005), we understand space as a product of interrelations. Space is a dimension of the social, constituted through interactions, continuously under construction, and it represents a dynamic multiplicity of trajectories. In this regard, we may think of, for instance, a classroom as a meeting point for pupils and teachers as constructed relationally, rather than assuming its solidity and uniformity. Each school becomes a place where the educational and social lives of children are interconnected rather than as “just” places of school lessons (Kramer & Jahnke, 2019).

This requires then to take seriously the geography of the relations through which, for example, a school or classroom is established and reproduced. We do so by attending to individual children’s social and cultural histories and locations, capital, and family identity narratives. We approach identity as fluid and performative (Gonsalves & Danielsson, 2020) to learn about children’s individual negotiations around subject positions and interactions with science (see Archer et al., 2020; Moote et al., 2020). A spatial approach allows us to trace webs of connections between, for instance, school and family and to make the interrelationship between different social and physical spaces within children’s life-worlds apparent. In this way, we can concurrently learn about each school in their respective educational and social, but also political and spatial dimensions. We can study similarities, differences, and relations that stretch across the country, are shaped by wider structural processes, but retain local particularities. Thus, a spatial lens helps us to move beyond the binaries of, for instance, school/home, school/freetime, and local/national (see Larsen, 2016).

In this paper, we draw on two cases (school 1 and 5). School 1 is in a suburban area characterised by low socioeconomic status and high ethnic diversity. School 5 is in a small town with middle-class families and a more ethnically homogenous pupil population. We use qualitative data gathered in 2020/21 among 10–12-year-olds. The empirical material stems from 26 semi-structured interviews and workshops. The interviews revolved around questions about families (home, everyday life, members, pets, and activities), free time (hobbies and friends), school (subjects they dis/like and class), and imaginations or thoughts about the children’s future. During the interview, we also asked the pupils to write down their associations to nature, health, and technology on small paper circles. We gave them a small drawing of a person to design as themselves and asked them to place the circles with the categories and associations around them (closer – more important, further away - less important). The workshops were held in one class during the first school visits and included individual and collective tasks. The activities revolved around the following four tasks: 1. Letters from the pupils about their favourite subjects, and other things they like to do in school and their freetime, 2. Pupils wrote their associations to nature, health, and technology on post-its and placed them on mega-posters with the respective category. 3. Pupils wrote about with whom and about what they talk in relation to mathematics, nature, technology, and health. 4. Pupils listened to a story about an alien visiting the earth. Pupils wrote to the alien explaining about health, technology and nature, and their importance for and influence on themselves and the earth. The overall aim of the workshops and the interviews was to primal map pupils’ network in terms of how, where and with whom they engage in science, and how they themselves relate to science, but also how they perceive science in relation to their surroundings. Further, we sought to gain insight to pupils’ interests and aspirations towards science. To gain an overview of information and patterns, we mapped and organised the material from the workshops and interviews by emerging themes (see Braun & Clark, 2006), and coded the interview data in the software programme NVivo.

In our analysis, place (i.e., local neighbourhood and community) appeared to be a decisive factor for differential access to science and educational opportunities. The analysis shows three forms of place effects: First, place has different consequences for the individual schools concerning pupil composition, resources, teachers’ responsibilities, and pedagogies. For example, while the children from school 5 experience strong parental support, the children from school 1 named their teacher as their dominant resource person regarding receiving help and information about science. Second, the empirical material shows effects of place on the individual. We found that children’s everyday individual and collective socio-spatial practices play into differential access to science and the accumulation of science-related forms of capital. Compared to the group of children from school 1, the participants from school 5 named activities and networks (e.g., visits to museums, scouts, youth club, relatives) that provide them with different access to science-related experiences beyond school. And third, impacts of the school in relation to its place on the individual. How the institution is embedded in its social and spatial surroundings does not only affect the neighbourhood in which the school is located but also pupils’ everyday (school) life and (future) opportunities (Kramer & Jahnke, 2019). This paper demonstrates the intimate connection between education and place and details the complex spatiality and relationality of people and places. It unravels differences in opportunities for pupils to participate and interact with science, and to acquire science knowledge. Applying a spatial perspective, we illustrate how the effects of place play into the uneven distribution of capital, unequal access to resources and positions and the re/production of inequalities in the Danish education system. Thus, this paper makes a case to examine the role of ‘place’ in discussions of educational inequality as a factor in social immobility (see Lupton, 2006).

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