Heterotopic Place-Making in Learning Environments: Children Living as Creative Citizens

Abstract

This paper reconceptualizes children as already-being- citizens within kindergarten learning environments. It draws on Foucauldian heterotopology to show what type of heterotopias entangle two and three-year-old in everyday place-making practices and how they empower themselves to inhabit learning environments as creative citizens. After a collaborative ethnographic immersion in 16 Chilean public kindergartens during the academic year 2019, findings show three types of heterotopic place-making that enact children’s citizenship: Unpredictable movements and wanderings, new ruling artifacts, and serendipitous spatial transgressions. We discuss how these unsettle ECE learning environment utopias and invite teachers’ improvisatory practices for alternative spatialities and children’s creative citizenship.