Critical geographies of education: an introduction

This special issue contributes to scholarship on critical geographies of education (Kraftl, 2013a) along with research that has emerged as a result of the spatial turn in educational studies (Gulson & Symes, 2007; Helfenbein & Taylor, 2009). Such research had proceeded through a variety of subdisciplinary lenses in human geography, including political, urban, social, and cultural geographies (see Holloway et al., 2010; Kraftl, 2014). Moreover, scholarship outside geography has increasingly adopted, refined, and retheorised geographical tropes in respect of diverse education spaces (Brooks et al., 2012; Gulson & Symes, 2007). Collectively, this work seeks to map the recursive production of education, space, and society as a form of boundary crossing in the sense described by Massey (1999, p.5) for whom ‘some of the most stimulating intellectual developments of recent years have come either from new, hybrid places or from places where boundaries between disciplines have been constructively breached and new conversations have taken place’. Attempts at defining the field of geographies of education have been part of reviews and introductions to special issues. Evident in such works are the ways in which those crafting these definitions have attempted to pull together multiple and disparate literatures and to apportion the designate geographies of education onto work that may have been identified differently elsewhere, that is, where the focus is not necessarily on locating the work as part of geographies of education. As Holloway and Jöns (2012, p.482) posit, this ‘multiplicity of roots is reflected in review pieces that are noteworthy for their variety in that they often address markedly different literatures and audiences’. In reviews of the geographies of education, at times, the objects and subjects under investigation are unclear. Taylor (2009, p.660) draws on Bradford (1990) as a way to clarify the distinction between geography and education: ‘The objects of study—where education and/or geography are used to help understand other social, economic or political processes—and research that makes education and/or geography the subjects of study—where other social, economic or political processes help understand education and geography better’. The work that is included in this special issue is part of a re-combination, where geography is used to understand educational phenomena in ways different from methods of understanding used in other disciplines such as sociology, politics, or psychology. The geographical turn in educational studies has not gone uncontested. In particular, there has been concern that the field has not moved beyond spatial fetishism. For example, Taylor (2009, p.652) notes that ‘much use of geography in education research does not go beyond utilising the language and vocabulary of geography’. For Collins and Coleman (2008, p.1), the conceptualisation is around place—schools as a place, and schools as being in place—on the premise that ‘schools are central to the social geographies of everyday life: they are [among] the few institutions that can be found in almost every urban and suburban neighbourhood, and with which almost every individual has meaningful, sustained contact at one or more points in their lives’. Holloway and Jöns (2012) posit that the geographies of education span across sectors from early childhood to tertiary education, including both formal and informal spaces, and the processes that shape these, along with the experiences of those who are part of education as students, teachers, and other actors. What is interesting about their conception of the geographies of education is that it is encompassing other disciplines, as a ‘“new geographies of education and learning” that is intra- and inter-disciplinary as well as increasingly international in terms of knowledge producers and sites of study’ (p.485). Whilst the geographies of education are emergent, amorphous, and somewhat disparate—as suggested in the preceding texts—this special issue finds two key points of inspiration in the more defined subdisciplines of cultural geographies and children's geographies. Arguably, some of the earliest labour on the geographies of education emerged in work on the cultural (and historical) geographies of school spaces, with a particular focus on citizenship. For instance, several papers in a special issue of the Journal of Historical Geography sought to explore issues as diverse as the use of physical geographical models in schools in constructing English citizen subjects (Ploszajska, 1996) or the ways in which the rural landscape was viewed as an ‘educator’ in interwar Wales (Gruffudd, 1996). The special issue from which these papers are drawn—and many of the authors contributing to it—became influential in what became known as the ‘new cultural geographies’. In the first instance, cultural geographers became interested in how landscapes and cultural texts represented (or hid) power relations within societies, and some moved away from the North American landscape research traditions of observation and culture regions. More recently, under the influence of feminist and nonrepresentational theories, cultural geographers have become increasingly invested in notions of affect, embodiment, and nonhuman materialities (see Lorimer, 2005). Those two same theoretical commitments to power and to feminist and/or nonrepresentational concerns have been prominent in the startling ascendancy of subdisciplinary field of children's geographies (Holloway, 2014). Allied with work in interdisciplinary childhood studies, for the past two decades, children's geographers have sought to emphasise the voice, agency, and participation of children in both research and wider social processes (Kraftl, 2013a). Most scholars have continued to work in a social constructivist vein, asserting that childhood is generally constructed by adults and that therefore, and despite obvious global and local differences, children are a structurally marginalised social group (Holt, 2010). Of greatest significance to this special issue is the point that a large proportion of the research on geographies of education has been undertaken by children's geographers—as Holloway et al. (2010) argue so convincingly. Again, one could repeat the observation made in the preceding texts: Much of that work is not badged as such and, in many cases, children's geographers have either based their work in schools (as sites where children are, in many cultures, readily accessible for participation in research) or have sought to focus on schools as key sites at which issues such as power, identity, citizenship, and participation are illuminated (Cairns, 2016; Collins & Coleman, 2008; Farrales, 2016; Smyth & Hewitson, 2015; Valentine, 2000). Indeed, a glance at the content pages of one of the key subdisciplinary journals—Children's Geographies—will throw up from each issue at least two or three articles either on or based in schools. Arguably, therefore, research on education spaces is far more prominent in children's geographies than it is in cultural geographies—as well as in some of the social geographies listed in the preceding texts (see also Mills and Kraftl, 2016). Whilst research in cultural geographies and children's geographies has not necessarily been closely entwined, there is now a plethora of exciting geographical research on education that has drawn on the insights of both subdisciplines. Most obviously, there are several edited collections on, for instance, emotion and education (Emotion, Space and Society, 2011), embodiment and education (Social and Cultural Geography, 2011), informal education (Mills & Kraftl, 2014), and changing spaces of education (Brooks et al., 2012). Most recently, in reflecting upon the contributions to a special issue of Cultural Geography on the ‘cultural geographies of education’, Mills and Kraftl (2016) outline a range of potentially important emergent themes with which critical geographers of education more widely might wish to engage. First, they identify a range of emergent and pressing contemporary socio-political concerns that require greater critical analysis—from securitisation to the use of (neuro)scientific and data-based knowledge (Finn, 2016; Gagen, 2015; Pykett & Enright, 2016) and from a (re)turn to overtly faith-based schools to the increasing role of educational ‘alternatives’ in various guises (Kraftl, 2013b). Second, they note new and emerging research foci, which often extend beyond a concern with children's education and, indeed, beyond one with any specific age-based groups. These include attempts to ingrain anti-terrorism legislation into schools, universities, and other public institutions (in the UK through the Prevent Agenda); debates over the gendering of school, college, and workplace uniforms; the role of education spaces (conceived broadly) in forms of cultural oppression (Cahill et al., 2016); and the role of education in carceral spaces, such as prisons (Moran et al., 2016). Taken together, these emerging frames provide important bodies of work to which this special issue contributes and which it extends, as do more established trajectories in cultural geographies and, especially, children's geographies. Critical Geography seeks to then take the oft-neglected next step of analyzing how… spaces change, change over time, and impact the lived, material world. Seeing spaces as relational—a geography of the rhizomatic interaction of space—place, power, and identity emerge to point to new understandings of people in the world. Similarly, for McCreary et al. (2013, p.255), the connection between the focus on power, place, and identity in critical geography shows an intent similar to that expressed in this special issue insofar as the editors placed ‘particular emphasis on what geographic analysis can contribute to understanding the dynamic of difference in contemporary schools’. The papers that comprise this special issue take up the issues of power and difference in a range of ways. Topics include the globalisation of education; alternative spaces of education; the ways in which educational spaces constitute, and are constituted by, different identity categories such as gender, race, disability, and sexuality; emotional geographies of education; the consumption of education across varied spaces; educational transitions and mobilities; multiple scales and sites of educational experiences; spatiality and educational policies, including the spatiality of educational restructuring and the introduction of high-stake testing; the socio-spatial practices of education and their relationship to social justice; geographies of professional development for teachers; and the formation of educational identities and their relationship to place and historical geographies of education. In the opening paper, Louise Phillips and Wajuppa Tossa demonstrate the contribution geographers of education can make to challenging power relations through their methodological choices. Utilising a mobile, sensory, and child-led research design, they reveal an innovative way of capturing and understanding how children engage with public space. The method brings to the fore capacities and competencies in children's civic capacities as well as shifts adult participants' construction of children from vulnerable to agentic citizens. As such, they highlight that it is both what we research and how we research that are crucial to furthering critical geographies of education. In the next two papers of this special issue, Vicky Plows, Dorothy Bottrell, and Kitty Te Riele and, following their work, Gry Paulgaard, continue to explore questions of power whilst also taking up issues of difference. For the authors, difference is manifested in the educational site at the centre of investigation. Difference can also be seen in relation to the participants involved in the research projects. Plows and her co-authors argue that alternative flexible learning programmes operate as a hybrid space for marginalised Australian youth where normative definitions of educational success are reworked and expanded in inclusive and productive ways. In contrast, constructions of educational success tied to out-migration and further study dominate for the young rural Finnish men interviewed by Paulgaard. These constructions differ from their own lived experiences and so lead to a sense of indignity and failure. Educational (im)mobilities and globalisation in the context of rurality are themes that continue to resonate in Michael and Leif Helmer's paper on small schooling in Canada and Martin Forsey's case study of education in mining community in remote Western Australia. Indeed, in a personal anecdote that begins his paper, Forsey reminds us that today, many understand it as self-evident that mobility and education are deeply intertwined. What concerns him is how this assumption is shaped by social locations such as class or social location to create disadvantage and advantage. Similar issues underpin Corbett and Helmer's careful and detailed exploration of the rhetorical strategies used by different stakeholders in debates over rural school closures. In this analysis, we see the potential that critical geographies of education have for contributing to a wide range of areas of geographic inquiry, including studies of affect, communities, rural development, and social movements. In the next two papers, Mark Holton and Megan Watkins then take up subjects quite different from those considered by the aforementioned authors, demonstrating the diversity and breath of critical geographies of education. In his contribution, Holton utilises 31 walking interviews with different year groups of undergraduate students around Portsmouth to understand how their use of ‘activity space’ changes over time and how shifting-spatialised practices are connected to identities. In her contribution, Watkins offers conceptual insights on the relationship between pedagogy and space. Like Forsey, she begins by reflecting on a relatively mundane event—a children's birthday party—using it to emphasise the ways in which, even by a very young age, a child has been instructed in how to embody space. In this and subsequent examples drawn from schooling, Watkins mounts a compelling argument for attending to the question of ‘can space teach?’ as one infused with power relations. The final paper in this special issue by Christopher Lubienski and Jin Lee returns us to the subject of methodology that was a core concern of the opening article by Phillips and Tossa. Underpinning their discussion is an interest in the politics and inequalities associated with discourses of school choice and a concern to ask how we may best research this key area of inquiry to theorise, generalise, and agitate for policy change. They chart the divide between quantitative and qualitative approaches in school choice research noting the strengths and limitations of both sides of the methodological divide. As a means of advancing policy-relevant knowledge on school choice, they advocate for methodological pluralism advancing an argument for the adoption of mixed-method geographic information systems. Overall, this special issue attends to the multitude of complex and intersecting spatial locations, scales, configurations, and relationships relevant to the field of education. Papers cover diverse geographical and educational contexts whilst applying and developing critical perspectives to the study of education spaces. They seek to uncover counter-factual and/or alternative renderings of mainstream, globalising, neoliberal discourses on education and the production of ‘flexible’ future labourers—whether through deconstruction of mainstream educational imperatives or through attention to alternative education spaces that attempt to subvert or avoid the educational mainstream. Collectively, they have provided a solid platform on which to build further critical geographies of education that will continue to map inequalities and disadvantages in the educational landscape. None declared.

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