Movements and Transitions in Everyday School Life

During a regular schoolday, pupils move in and between different classrooms, through corridors and assembly halls, into school dining halls or PE changing rooms. These places, and many more, are part and parcel of the everyday school life of young people.

The project’s contribution is that we are approaching everyday school life not as exclusively segmented in lessons but as a mobile, changing, uncertain and fragmented space where young people navigate and make sense of their schooling.

A greater understanding of this provides opportunities to enhance learning, interaction, physical activity and well-being in the school environment.

The purpose is to investigate the educational consequences of secondary school pupils’ movements and transitions in and through liminal spaces in everyday school life.

The transitional rhythm of school life is socially, materially and affectively experienced by pupils as they move in and through liminal spaces.

By viewing pupils’ school life as an in-transit activity, the project focuses, for example, on how pupils gear up and down as they change physical and digital environments, objects and tools in and between different classrooms.

The project uses four techniques that will generate various forms of data and provide rich, multi-dimensional empirical material on pupils’ movements and transitions: 1. Classroom video recordings, 2. Participant observation, 3. Walk-and-talk interviews, and 4. Key-event elicitation (photo and film).