Geographies of Children: Quo Vadis Hedum?

Studies of childhood geography reflect the significance of place and space of childhood. It is inseparable from the geography of the child, the main actor of childhood. The geographies of childhood are primarily focused on the way adult society shapes childhood, whereas the children’s geography is more concerned with their experiences. In order to analyse and identify the framework and tendencies of contemporary geographies of children, the author formulates the following questions: 1) What research methods have been applied to research the geographies of children? 2) Which factors define the ‘map’ of geographies of contemporary children in the context of education? To identify the spatial and time frame of geographies of contemporary children and to answer the stated questions, the following criteria were set for the scoping review: the Web of Science database was chosen and open access articles in English with the period 2019–2023 were selected using the keywords “geographies of children” in the category “Education; Educational Research”. A selection of 47 articles was made of which 19 were analysed as relevant to the focus of this scoping review. Public and private narratives of geographies of contemporary children are intertwined, driving geographies of children from the micro to the macro level. The promoters of geographies of children in educational contexts identified in the review are largely socio-geographical, with human rights as an important feature of geographies of children, since a significant amount of research focuses on the geographies of children from marginalised groups.