A school is a place in which the process of education of a young person and his socialization takes place. As an educating institution it has a great influence on the student. The impact takes place on two levels: apparent and hidden. Usually the hidden curriculum is in the opposition to the apparent one (meaning the formal curriculum and goals of teaching). The hidden curriculum means everything which the students learn apart from the official curriculum. For this reason it is important to diagnose the hidden influence of the school.

In the conducted research I focused on the dimension of hidden curriculum which is the space of the school. Within the school I distinguished between the architectonic space (classrooms, multi-purpose rooms, administration rooms, infrastructure of the surrounding) and the communication space (corridor). Their appearance and the way they are situated has an significant influence on the perception of the school as a place liked or disliked or as a symbol of freedom or oppression.

As a theoretical framework I assumed emancipatory pedagogy. The most important theoretical category in my research  is emancipatory competence. This competence is defined as a created and dynamic efficiency of person, which manifest in perception of personal constraints and level those constraints.

For the diagnosis of the problem I used the method of photography as the photos allowed the students to express their attitude towards the school. Photography is a great medium of communication regarding the reality and provides information on the authors' attitude towards the photographed object. For this reason a digital camera is a worthy exploratory tool.

The research has been conducted in two schools (a Polish and a Norwegian school). Their aim was to diagnose the differences between the perception of the school space by the students. The research has shown that students from the both countries point the same spaces of the school as their liked and  disliked spaces. The students with difficulties show more disliked places compared to the students who do not have learning difficulties. The gender did not influence the perception of the school space.

The most important references for my abstract are: - emancipatory pedagogy - hidden curriculum - use a digital camera as an exploratory tool - the space of the school