A study of the Environment and children's Activities in Kindergartens and Elementary Schools.

本研究通过观察幼儿园内外环境和小学生活环境课程的使用情况。通过两年的纵向研究，对幼儿教育和学校课程进行了观察。1993年，我们在幼儿园和一、二年级进行了儿童认知实验。从这些研究中，我们发现了以下结果。首先，我们将幼儿园环境对儿童的意义分类如下。一种是根据他们的感受对环境进行心理建构，这是一个根据他们的需要使用环境要素的过程。这种秩序被称为对环境的心理利用，即通过适当地使用环境要素而深入地参与其中。在这些过程中，我们呈现出三种发展趋势，即通过对环境的依恋实现意识，从接受环境到构建环境，从心理空间到生态环境的变化。在seikatsuka课程中，我们也发现了类似的过程，孩子们通过对几个熟悉的地方的依恋，反复去那里，从而获得生态意识。我们在实验中检查了这些结果，我们考虑了孩子们是否真的对他们熟悉的环境有了这些意识。我们向孩子们展示了幼儿园内外熟悉的地方的图片，询问他们对这些地方的看法。活动的自由度，对地点的理解，地点的事件记忆，与人的联系被认为是地点的因素。研究了这些因素是否与地点依恋有关。提出了儿童喜欢的地方与他们的游戏和活动之间的关系。

This research examined through observations how environments inside and outside of kindergartens and Seikatu-ka(Life-Environmental Studies) lessons of elementary schools are used. We observed the nursery education and school lessons through two-year longitudinal studies. In 1993, we examined children's cognition by an experiment of kindergarteners and 1st and 2nd garders. From these studies, we found following results. First, we classified what kind of meanings kindergarten environments have for children as follows. One is called here as psychological construction of the environment in terms of their feelings, which is a process of using environmental elements according to their needs. The order is called as psychological use of environments, which is a deep engagement in environmental elements through using them properly. In these processes, we assumed three developmental trends, which are the realization of awareness through attachment upon the environment, the change from receiving to constructing the environment, and the change from psychological space to ecolgical environment. In Seikatsu-ka lessons, we also found similar processes, where children acquire the ecological awareness, based on the attachment on the several familiar places through going repeatedly there. We examined these results in the experiment, where we considered about whether children really get those awareness concerning their familiar environments. We asked children how they think about the familiar places inside and outside their kindergarten and school by showing them the pictures of the places. Degree of freedom of activities, understanding of places, event memories in the places, connections with the people were identified as factors in the places. These factors were examined concerning whether they related with attachment on the place. The relationships between places children like and their play and activities was suggested.