Young Children's Perceptions of Their Classroom Environment: Perspectives from England and India

This chapter explores the use of different participatory methods to enable us to understand children's perceptions of their school experience. It is based on a study carried out with 12 5–6-year-old children from a primary school in south-east England and 15 5–6-year-old children from a school in northern India. The chapter's aims are twofold: first, to discuss the use of qualitative participatory methods – children's drawings, children's pair interviews and photographic/video evidence of different areas of the class/setting, taken/videoed by children themselves – as a means to understand children's perceptions of their classroom experience and, second, to interpret children's meaning making of their classroom experience using the cultural-historical framework of understanding human behaviour.