Introduction to the special issue “Young People and New Geographies of Learning and Education”

Historical geographies of alternative, and non‐formal education: Learning from the histories of Black education

“…Far from situating non-formal education spaces as a panacea to neoliberal practices however, geographers have increasingly argued that a formal-non-formal dichotomy overlooks the 'messiness' of education, and have encouraged context-specific analyses that account for rather than overlook the intersecting and complex nature of these ostensibly disparate educational worlds (Bauer & Landolt, 2018).…”

“…Such studies have also captured the potential of education to produce collective experiences of agency and envisage other possibilities for educational worlds that operate beyond the tenets of individualism, entrepreneurialism, and meritocracy so often fostered in formal educational settings such as mainstream schools and universities (Mitchell, 2017). Far from situating non‐formal education spaces as a panacea to neoliberal practices however, geographers have increasingly argued that a formal—non‐formal dichotomy overlooks the ‘messiness’ of education, and have encouraged context‐specific analyses that account for rather than overlook the intersecting and complex nature of these ostensibly disparate educational worlds (Bauer & Landolt, 2018).…”

Geographical education I: fields, interactions and relationships

“…Internationally, attention to the geographies of education has grown through distinctive traditions in a range of settings (Bauer and Landolt, 2018; Eikli, 2013). Kučerová et al, (2020) discuss a range of international bodies of work and institutional patterns, each of which has attended to the distinction between formal and informal educational spaces (Gough et al, 2019), and in varying ways to movements across, between and within these spaces.…”

The institutionalization of the geography of education: An international perspective

“…Many researchers continue the tradition of using quantitative methods for spatial planning (Johnston, Burgess, Wilson & Harris, 2006;Taylor, 2001), but this is now augmented by in-depth, often qualitative, studies of the contested and contingent nature of state policy, and the difference the peopling of the state makes to the emergence of policy in practice (Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2012). Moreover, the strength of research on Children, Youth and Families in the Anglophone tradition and Geographien der Kindheit and Jugendgeographien in German research, has seen greater attention paid to the role of the formal and informal curriculum in shaping young people's and parents' spatial and social identities, reflecting on both their experiences of education in their present and its implications for their future life-worlds (Sidorov, 2009;Bauer, 2010;Bauer & Landolt, 2018, Schaefli, Godlewska & Lamb, 2019Kučerová, Kučera & Novotná, 2018;Holt & Bowlby, 2019).…”