Geographies of education and the significance of children, youth and families

Abstract

This paper engages with Hanson Thiem’s (2009) critique of geographies of education. Accepting the premise that education warrants fuller attention by geographers, the paper nonetheless argues that engaging with research on children, youth and families reshapes understanding of what has been, and might be, achieved. Foregrounding young people as the subjects rather than objects of education demands that attention be paid to their current and future life-worlds, in both inward and outward looking geographies of education. It also requires a broadening of our spatial lens, in terms of what ‘count’ as educational spaces, and the places where we study these.

The politics of aspiration: neo-liberal education policy, ‘low’ parental aspirations, and primary school Extended Services in disadvantaged communities

“…The specificities of these empirical findings are of broader significance for the study of aspirations in geographies of education because they highlight the potential to complement research on aspirations and access to education, with research on the ways aspirations are shaped through the formal and informal curriculum within the educational setting, thus allowing us to contribute to two of the core threads of research in geographies of education (Holloway et al, 2010). This is crucial because while we present these threads separately here -reflecting their sometimes different intellectual heritages -there are clearly links between issues of access to and experiences within education, and thus both need to be on the agenda in geographies of education.…”

“…On the one hand, this allows us to contribute to current debates about the need for inward and outward looking geographies of education (Hanson Thiem, 2009: Holloway et al, 2010, by demonstrating how attention to social processes within schools can teach us about the importance of education in (re)shaping wider social processes (in this instance as teachers seek through their practices to enhance social mobility) at the same time as we examine how these wider processes shape schooling (for example, as neo-liberal policy developments shape perceptions of what constitute appropriate aspirations). On the other hand, by showing how the local context of the school matters -in this instance because of the perceived importance of parents and communities in shaping aspirations and the apparent disjuncture between home and school cultures -the paper also contributes to a movement within educational research to recouple studies of schooling with the environments in which they are located .…”

“…A range of research strands are evident in the current literature on geographies of education, lines of enquiry that build upon and extend a relatively long history of research in this area (Hanson Thiem, 2009;Holloway et al, 2010). One key concern for geographers has been the social geographies of educational provision and consumption, with an interest in social justice informing studies of differential access to education, and geographical variations in educational attainment.…”

“…This wide-ranging body of literature does not have clearly defined boundaries, and the subdisciplinary structures which help promote other fields of research are largely absent (Hanson Thiem, 2009;Holloway et al, 2010). Nonetheless, the appearance of specialised sessions at the annual conferences of the Association of American Geographers, the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers, as well as seminar series and independent international conferences such as the one held at Loughborough University in 2009 from which this special issue emerges, are a testament to the active and vigorous interest in this area of research.…”

Changing children's geographies

“…Less regular concern is expressed about children's geographies position in newly emerging fields of study. My own experience in geographies of education is that, as new fields of research develop in size, we need to be alert to and challenge the ways their formation can exclude both existing research by children's geographers, and children, youth and families as the objects of study (Holloway et al 2010).…”