Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

For several years has there been a leading line
from the government and the municipalities
in Sweden to invest in schools and school
grounds. The outdoor environment of
schools has been rediscovered and given a
greater importance. Investments have been
made both practically with reconstruction
and in a research context. Although, my
work started with an assumption that these
investments were mainly made at primary
schools, and that secondary schools were set
aside. The thesis This is my schoolyard. Creating a
pleasant outdoor environment through participation
discusses how these investments have reached
secondary schools. The main intention for
this thesis has been to investigate how the
pupils can participate and become involved
with making a difference in their outdoor
environment. It also discusses the issue of
how participation can inspire the pupils to
use it more frequently. Everyone has a right
to infl uence what their surroundings should
be like. Unfortunately, the adolescents are
involved on a very low degree. The school
can therefore be an important way for them
to be involved in democratic processes.
Process;
The thesis is based on cooperation with
Stavsborgsskolan, a secondary school in the
municipality of Nacka. Together with the
pupils and employees of Stavsborgskolan
and Nacka Municipality, I have investigated
how this process can be carried out. By
arranging workshops have I investigated how
the pupils use their school grounds today and
how they would like to be using them. The
work has been made in cooperation with the
landscape architect student Julia Åberg. By
using the material from the workshops she
has created a design of the school grounds of
Stavsborgsskolan infl uenced by the ideas of
the pupils.
I been inspired by literature, predominantly
concerning children’s participation in the
buildup of the workshops. My visits to three
different schools has also aided my further
work. There I have met and talked to pupils,
a headmaster and a teacher. All of them with
experience of a schoolyard project. A visit
to the municipality of Malmö, who runs
the project Gröna skolgårdar, was as well a
source of inspiration for my work to come.
The choice of schools that I visited was
made with the idea that I wanted to meet
people who were in different stages of the
transformation.
Workshops at Stavsborgskolan;
The workshops that took place at
Stavsborgsskolan were divided in two parts.
The fi rst workshop involved the use of the
Walk-Through Evaluation and the collage
workshop and was conducted together
with pupils. Walk-Through Evaluation is an
established method, and it has mainly been
used to evaluate newly built housing areas (de
Laval, 1997). I have modifi ed this version to
make it appropriate for work together with adolescents. At Stavsborgsskolan the Walk-
Through Evaluation was used to survey what
the pupils thought of their school grounds.
The pupils would mark good and bad places,
and places that they would like to change on a
map. The collage workshop aimed to get the
pupils to create a collage. The collage would
contain their ideas of what they wanted to
do at the schoolgrounds and what sense they
wanted to create there.
The Walk-Through Evaluation gave a dismal
picture of the school grounds and the pupils
expressed their thoughts about it with words
like “boring” and “ugly”. They also expressed
that the school grounds did not offer any
activities. Many of them came with ideas of
how the school grounds could develop for
the better. The collage workshop resulted in
ideas about what character the pupils wanted
in their school grounds. “Create a cosy
feeling”, “many different activities to choose
from” and “add something that stands out”
were some of the wishes the pupils had.
After the fi rst workshop Julia Åberg had
one week of sketching before a proposal
of a design would be performed at the next
workshop.
The second workshop was based on
questions prepared by Julia Åberg and I.
The questions were a base for discussions
in smaller groups. Expect for the pupils
did the employees of Stavsborgsskolan and
representatives from Nacka municipality
participate. We started the day by letting the
pupils retell the fi rst workshop for the others.
Then Julia showed her design proposal and
the participants got to tell their opinions.
The design was very much appreciated
by everyone and they came with valuable
critique. At last we investigated the use each
one can have in this project and similar ones in the future.
The second workshop was the end of mine
and Julia’s work at the school. But both the
pupils and the adults came with many ideas
of how they could work further with this
project. The pupils came with the idea to start
their own project group and engage more
pupils to join them. Many of their ideas were
easy and cheap to realize. It could easily be
fi xed by themselves and with some help from
the caretaker of the school. By organizing
it could the whole school be involved. The
representatives from the municipality of
Nacka thought that it was their responsibility
to extend the information of the workshop
so it could be reached by the politicians.
Main findings;
My aim with my thesis was to investigate
how pupils can participate in making a
difference in their outdoor environment.
The workshops at Stavsborgsskolan were
successful and can be used as a source of
reference to be adapted and used in other
similar projects.. Adapting the workshops for
working with adolescents has been necessary
to make their results useful in the next
step. Involving adolescents in participation
has shown to be important for their selfconfi
dence with the fact that someone is
listening to them. To design school grounds
based on the ideas of the pupils has shown to
be signifi cant for their sense of belonging. As
they have been a part in creating the school
grounds is it also a better suited environment
for them. Thereby is it of greater use and
hopefully more time will be spent outdoors.
It also prevents vandalism that otherwise can
be a great issue for the schools. The fi nal
conclusion is; yes, it is important to involve
the pupils! Adapted school grounds are as
important as having school grounds at all.