Beyond the Classroom: Territory, Educational Spaces, and Students’ Emotion Regulation and Mental Health

BackgroundEmotion regulation, wellbeing and mental health are central to the experience of school, and research has mostly explained them through individual traits and relationships. Yet children do not learn in neutral places. Where a child lives shapes the school they attend, and schools in poor, rural, peripheral and Indigenous territories often have worse buildings: more noise and crowding, poorer light and temperature control, and fewer outdoor and green areas. These spaces may affect how safe students feel, whether they feel they belong, and how well they can manage their emotions during the school day.If that is true, some of the emotional differences between students that we put down to the child or the family are really differences between places. That matters, because places can be changed. The field still lacks evidence that joins psychology to educational architecture, geography and the study of territory, so we can say which spatial and territorial conditions matter, for whom, and through which psychological processes.This Research Topic looks at how territory and the physical spaces of education shape the emotion regulation, wellbeing and mental health of students and teachers.GoalThe main goal is to find out how territorial conditions and the physical features of educational spaces relate to emotion regulation, wellbeing and mental health, and through which psychological mechanisms.A second goal is to understand how territorial inequality shows up in school spaces, and whether unequal buildings and surroundings help explain unequal emotional outcomes.A third is to identify spatial and design changes to schools and campuses that support students’ and teachers’ wellbeing, and to evaluate them with psychological outcomes.Scope1. Territory and inequality Rural, urban, peripheral and Indigenous territories and the schools within them; unequal school infrastructure; how the surrounding territory shapes students’ experience of school.2. Architecture and design of learning spaces Classroom and building design; noise, lighting, temperature and crowding; accessibility and inclusion in the built environment of schools and universities.3. School grounds, nature and outdoor space Playgrounds, courtyards, school gardens and campus green space; outdoor learning; restorative effects of nature within educational settings.4. Sense of place, belonging and safety Place attachment to schools; feeling safe or unsafe in educational spaces; how space supports or limits belonging, especially for students from Indigenous and marginalised communities.5. Space-based interventions Redesign of classrooms and school grounds, and other spatial interventions, evaluated with psychological outcomes; participatory design with students and communities.All contributions must measure a psychological outcome or mechanism, such as emotion regulation, wellbeing, stress or mental health. We welcome quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods studies, including longitudinal, ethnographic, geospatial and intervention research, reviews and conceptual work. Studies from Latin America and other under-represented regions are particularly welcome.Outside the scope. Architectural, design or geographical studies with no psychological outcome; studies of green space or the built environment outside educational settings, which other open collections already cover. Topic editors: Gerardo Fuentes-Vilugrón, Ignacio Montero, Enrique H. Riquelme Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86716/beyond-the-classroom-territory-educational-spaces-and-students-emotion-regulation-and-mental-health