Exploring the Spatial Characteristics of In-School Educational Support Centers: Children’s Agency in Flexible Spaces

Abstract

This paper examines how classroom spaces within in-school educational support centers—positioned as “intermediary spaces” that integrate characteristics of both school-based and non-school-based educational environments—shape children’s behaviors. By analyzing the hidden curriculum emerging from classroom spatial organization and object arrangement in institutionally regulated schools, this study clarifies how these unique educational spaces influence children’s actions and interactions.

The classroom spaces of these centers, though influenced by the regulated settings of regular school classes, also incorporate elements of alternative educational spaces. As such, they function as distinctive environments where regulations directing children toward fixed educational objectives, such as structured learning, are comparatively relaxed. These spaces provide children with greater autonomy in choosing their engagement with educational materials, allowing for a more flexible learning environment than traditional classrooms.

While these spaces are designed to facilitate children’s reintegration into regular classrooms, they simultaneously allow for greater spatial flexibility in object arrangement—something difficult to achieve in conventional settings. This flexibility enables children to exercise agency in selecting both the spaces they use and how they interact with them. The in-school educational support centers analyzed in this paper remain influenced by traditional classroom environments yet retain distinct characteristics. As such, they can be conceptualized as “loosely institutionalized spaces” that emerge from the coexistence of school-based and non-school-based elements.

Moreover, children in these centers interact with spaces and objects arranged according to the intentions of teachers and staff. Simultaneously, they actively utilize the flexibility and autonomy permitted, often engaging with objects in ways beyond the intended design. This suggests that in-school educational support centers not only embody the “loosely institutionalized” framework described above but also provide opportunities for children to transform and redefine the institutional structures governing these spaces.