Mapping the Neighbourhood: Using Maps to Elicit Primary Students’ Thinking about Urban Green Spaces and Sustainability

Many of us live in neighbourhoods that are the sites of everyday yet complex socio-ecological interactions between human and non-human elements. Urban green space, which includes urban forests, trees, parks, and gardens, is one such collection of elements and it plays an important role in these interactions. In the present study, we report on how primary students enacted sustainability competences as they created and interpreted maps to identify and address issues related to sustainability and urban green space in their neighbourhood. We found that students incorporated diverse representations of green space and demonstrated nuanced ways of negotiating the balance between the role of urban green space and other aspects of their everyday lives in sustainability-related contexts.