This research project examines how young children perceive and experience kindergarten spaces. The aim is to make children’s voices central to understanding and redesigning early learning environments. While traditional educational research often prioritises adult perspectives when defining the quality and function of educational spaces, this project highlights children as active social agents and 'experts in their own lives', whose spatial experiences provide valuable insights into the quality, meaning and use of kindergarten environments. The project adopts the Mosaic research approach, a participatory, multi-method methodology developed by Alison Clark and Peter Moss that systematically integrates children’s voices into qualitative research.
This project is theoretically grounded in interpretivist and participatory paradigms, which assert that children can meaningfully contribute to the research process and that their subjective experiences are essential for understanding social phenomena such as space and place. This perspective aligns with Clark’s position that children should be recognised as competent meaning-makers whose perspectives can and should influence research outcomes and subsequent practice.
A central concept guiding the research is the Mosaic approach: an innovative methodology designed to engage young children in research in ways that respect their modes of expression and communication. Developed by Alison Clark and Peter Moss, the Mosaic approach uses multiple participatory tools, including photographs taken by the children, child-led tours, drawing and map-making, interviews and observations, to compile a 'mosaic' of data pieces that together reflect the polyvocal and multimodal nature of children’s experiences. Rather than relying solely on verbal reporting, this approach integrates visual, spatial, narrative and action-based data, enabling children to express their perspectives in ways that are authentic to their developmental capacities.That strongly corresponds with ECER’s theme - Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research.
The Mosaic framework is underpinned by a commitment to ethical listening and respectful engagement, ensuring that participation is voluntary and that children’s contributions are taken seriously in both data generation and interpretation. This is conceptually anchored in broader debates in childhood studies about children’s participation, agency, and rights, and draws on constructivist understandings of knowledge as co-constructed between researchers and participants.
The framework is further informed by relational theories of space and place, which conceptualise educational environments as dynamic assemblages of material, social, and symbolic dimensions. This perspective resonates with internationally influential pedagogical traditions such as Reggio Emilia, where space is described as a “third teacher,” and supports comparative analysis across European contexts.
By integrating participatory methodology with spatial and childhood theory, the research offers a theoretically robust and internationally relevant approach to understanding kindergarten spaces. It contributes to European debates on democratic education, inclusive design, and child participation, while generating knowledge that is transferable across national and cultural boundaries.

Researchers' interest in childhood issues began at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and was intensively developed in studies conducted until the 1980s, mainly by representatives of developmental psychology. This was research on children, treated as research subjects, aimed at establishing developmental norms for specific age categories. In accordance with the positivist paradigm recognized at the time, derived from natural science, the aim was to obtain knowledge that would be objective, representative, and verifiable. This paradigm of childhood was verified at the end of the last century. Personal knowledge and children's negotiating skills began to be appreciated (Zwiernik 2020). I am keen to explore space from the perspective of children, which is why I favor participatory research involving children. Aligned with the Mosaic approach, this study will adopt a qualitative, multi-method design, engaging 20 children aged 3–6 in a series of research activities embedded within their kindergarten routines. Data will be generated through child photographs, spatial tours led by children, drawings and map creation, recorded dialogues, and observational field notes. These data fragments will be systematically compiled and interpreted collaboratively with children and educators to ensure authenticity and reflexivity. Ethical considerations—including informed consent, respect for children’s agency, and confidentiality—will guide every stage of the research process. By applying the Mosaic approach, this research aims to contribute both empirically and theoretically to early childhood studies and to offer a model for participatory research that can support transformative practice in early learning environments. he research quesion is how do children conceptualise and experience kindergarten space, and how can participatory research methods reveal the role of space in shaping children’s agency, learning, and everyday social practices across different European contexts? This overarching question is supported by the following sub-questions: How do children identify, use, and attribute meaning to specific spatial elements of the kindergarten environment? In what ways do participatory, child-led methods (such as those proposed in the Mosaic approach) enable children to articulate spatial experiences that are often inaccessible through adult-centred research tools? How do children’s perspectives on space reflect broader cultural, pedagogical, and institutional traditions within European early childhood education systems? How can insights from children’s spatial narratives inform internationally relevant discussions on the design, organisation, and pedagogy of early childhood learning environments?

This research aims to provide empirically grounded and theoretically informed insights into how young children perceive, use and interpret kindergarten spaces. Employing a participatory Mosaic approach will foreground children’s perspectives as a legitimate and indispensable source of knowledge about early childhood environments, challenging the adult-centred assumptions which often dominate spatial design and pedagogical decision-making. A key expected outcome is a deeper understanding of kindergarten spaces as relational and pedagogical constructs, shaped by everyday interactions between children, educators, materials and institutional norms. The findings are expected to show that children’s experiences of space go beyond mere functionality to include emotional, social and symbolic dimensions that affect their sense of belonging, agency and well-being. These insights will inform international debates on learning environments, providing evidence of how spatial arrangements can support or constrain children’s participation and autonomy. Methodologically, the research is expected to confirm the value of the Mosaic approach as a robust, ethically responsive framework for working with young children in diverse cultural contexts. It is likely that the study will show that multimodal tools, such as child-led tours, photography, drawing and mapping, enable children to articulate spatial experiences that remain invisible in conventional research. This has significant implications for European and international researchers seeking inclusive methodologies that align with children’s rights and participatory principles. From a comparative and European perspective, the findings are expected to reveal shared patterns and variations specific to context in how children experience kindergarten spaces across different educational and cultural settings. Such results will facilitate cross-national dialogue on early childhood education. By placing children's voices at the heart of research into educational spaces, the study will generate internationally significant knowledge on early childhood education, participatory research and the impact of spaces on learning and social life.

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