Abstract
The aim of this paper is to systematize the study of children from a geographical viewpoint and to identify new perspectives in children's perception of the environment and education.
From the 1960s to the 1970s, studies of children in geography began with the introduction of a behavioral approach into geographical studies. Summing up the findings of the 1960s and 1970s, the area perceived by children, their action space, and the increase in perception of their environment as they grow older.
In 1979, Roger Hart argued that various constraints could explain children activities and children's life space was thus re-interpreted from the viewpoint of these constraints.
From the 1980s to the 1990s, the gender approach and postmodern geography developed. Gender geography's concern with children is that children are born and brought up by women, and that gender roles determined children's spatial activity range. Postmodern geography's concern is with children as "others" and the objection to the image of childhood made by modern society.
Until the 1990s, children's geography explained and interpreted children from an individual perspective. From the 1990s, children's behavior has been explained in relation to their socioeconomic and educational context.
The future direction which these studies should be taken, based on an empirical approach, is as follows: (1) more consideration should be given to children's living experience in the environment or in places; (2) children's life space and perceptional environment from a socioeconomic and educational context should be examined.
