A Hundred ways of listening: gathering children's perspectives of their early childhood environment

This article explores how young children can play active roles as researchers, explorers, and designers of their outdoor environment. It introduces the Mosaic approach, a framework for listening and responding to young children's perspectives, first developed in a study in a London preschool in 1999 (Clark & Moss 2001). The author used this approach in a study--Spaces to Play--undertaken with three- and four-year-olds, practitioners, and parents in a preschool in Kent, England, that was preparing to upgrade its outside space. The study revealed how children valued use of the outdoor space. As a result of the study, practitioners adapted their practice to enable free-flow access to the outdoor space. Families supported this change by making a canopy to provide shade so children could use the outdoor space in bright sunshine.