A Space Apart

Abstract

This article examines how the preschool child is enabled to withdraw from the peer group and create a private, individual space within the institutional collective. The question under consideration is, “What factors are necessary to enable a child to create and maintain a withdrawal space in the preschool?” Data were collected through ethnographic fieldwork at two Montessori schools in the south of Sweden. Analysis of the results reveals that a child is enabled through a combination of two elements: a level of opportunity to create a space and a level of defense of a created space. These two factors are dependent on the teachers’ ability to correctly identify space creation, alongside their desire for the child’s space creation effort to be successful.