How School Trips Modify the Pupils’ Representation of Space - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 95

comparing the two research fields. The benefits expected from the school trip vary
in the function of their length. Thus, according to a regulatory text effective in
France, the discovery classes with the length equal to or longer than 5 days allow
the pupils to escape significantly from the usual context and space of the class.
Thus, they constitute the actual change of scenery and the privileged moment of
collective life apprenticeship. As there is a great number of “discovery classes”,
I thought it very important to concentrate my research only on one kind of school
trip. As Giolitto ( 1978 ) argues, the educative quality of “green classes” seems to be
superior to that of other “discovery classes”, because the true contact with nature is
more formative than at a simple trip of skiing or horse-back riding. This explains
why I chose “green classes”.
I constructed my sample of pupils from five classes at Cracow and Lyon. Their
ages ranged from 9 to 12. All these children went on a 5-day school trip in the
period from 19 May to 20 June 2008. In order to be sure that the changes observed
in the children are the results of their stay in the “discovery classes”, I conducted
my survey in the shortest possible time before and after the school trip.
8.2.4 Research Methodology
I collected two kinds of data: graphic (children drawings) and discursive (question-
naire for the children)—before and after the school trip. I started with the question-
naire in order to identify the age, the origin, the place of residence and the sex of the
children, but also their experience of mobility (number of departures on holiday per
year, destinations, previous experience in discovery classes). In the next step,
I wanted to obtain their mental map, which is defined by Bailly ( 1985 ) as the
product that is the individual representation of spatial environment. According to
Bailly, the mental map permits the subject to fix the images of his or her environ-
ment and find the limits of spatial knowledge. As a result, this approach allows us to
comprehend individual and collective representations of space while allowing each
subject a great amount of freedom in their manner of expressing themselves.
Subsequently, after the school trip, I asked the children to draw one more mental
map and to draw their city on a white paper, without documents or oral supplemen-
tary indication. According to Gumuchian ( 1988 ), drawing constitutes the material
able to translate the space representation of a child. It is a child friendly means of
expression: drawing can be particularly significant and permit a formulation more
spontaneous and direct than writing. Because of the different conditions of
collecting our research materials (ten classes in two different education systems),
I made the most precise translation to be able to compare them. I personally
conducted each survey and I asked the teacher who was present during the research
not to give any information to the pupils. As I carried out my research in two cities
using two different languages, I took care of giving the simplest and the shortest
possible instructions.