When children move to middle school: a small transition or a major change in their daily travel autonomy?

Abstract

In the context of urban transformation, children's mobility is a field of study in the social sciences that has been growing rapidly over the last twenty years. In this research, we aim to understand how children’s autonomy evolves during a “normative transition” from elementary (T1) to middle school (T2). Children’s autonomy is studied through daily independent travel, types of places visited as well as by observing children’s ability to deal with unexpected and unfamiliar situations. Based on a longitudinal Mobi’kids survey using mixed methods (GPS travel/stop data; data from prompted recall interviews with children), children’s autonomy (based on independent travel, types of places visited and the ability to deal with unexpected situations) was analyzed over two periods (T1, n=86 and T2, n=56). The results show differences in mobility habits between the suburban and city children (in both T1 and T2), but also the same evolution trend in terms of independent travel while attending middle school (T2). The normative transition seems to have a role in some travel patterns and consequently on a few coping strategies to deal mainly with unfamiliar contexts.

Keywords

• Children’s autonomy
• Independent travel
• GPS tracks
• Longitudinal study
• Routines