Pomiędzy lękiem przed paragrafem a kompetencją dziecka. Notatki na marginesie badań fenomenograficznych

Abstrakt

This article attempts to reconstruct the ways in which teachers conceptualise the preschool environment in the context of the tension between institutional safety protocols and a pedagogy of trust. The text presents a preliminary analysis of the findings of research conducted as part of a doctoral thesis, grounded in an interpretative paradigm. Using a phenomenographic approach, the author analyses the teacher-space-child relationship, seeking to identify a ‘space of variability’ in the sense of the physical and symbolic educational environment. In the course of the analysis, three preliminary descriptive categories were identified: ‘Space as a field of risk’, where the dominant fear of legal liability (audit culture) leads to the restrictive curtailment of the child’s agency; “Architecture of surveillance”, in which transparency and monitoring become tools of discreet control; and “Space as a workshop of agency”, where risk is treated as an educational category supporting the child’s competences. The research findings indicate that the key factor shaping pedagogical practices is not the physical infrastructure itself, but the way in which the teacher conceptualises it internally. The author posits that the transition from ‘architecture of fear’ to ‘space of freedom’ requires a renegotiation of the meanings attributed to safety and the recognition of the child’s agency in relation to the physical environment.