‘This is where we are’: (Re)imagining pedagogy as a spatial practice.
Author(s):
ML White (presenting / submitting) Jean Murray
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
07. Social Justice and Intercultural Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

07 SES 06 B, Doing Research on Interculturality and Social Justice in Education

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-23
15:30-17:00
Room:
W3.17
Chair:
Kerstin von Brömssen

Contribution

The ways in which the worlds of children and young people are conceptualised, defined and represented has emerged as a core concern for researchers, particularly those working from ‘student voice’ perspectives. But the effects of poverty on children and young people’s beliefs, aspirations and achievements remain largely under-researched, as do school and community views on how poverty and social exclusion might be effectively tackled in education. We also know little about how student teachers and those who aspire to a career in teaching and work within their local community, conceptualise poverty and aim to address its effects on children’s educational lives. Of particular concern to teacher educators is how best to prepare undergraduate and student teachers for the experiences they will have on the practicum and future employment both in schools in socially and economically deprived areas as well as in schools where poverty, though less prevalent, still has a significant detrimental effect on a minority of learners.

 

Today, perhaps more than ever, inequality across Europe and beyond, in urban and rural contexts is inscribed in the spacial, temporal, material and social practices of education.  Like others (cf. Lefebvre, 1991; Soja, 2010) we believe that space is socially constructed as well as material (metaphoric and discursive) and embodied. In one of the few studies of the social geography of teacher education, Hargreaves (1995, 32) argues that: ‘what it means to be in teacher education … can only properly be understood by firmly locating our studies of teacher education in space as well as in time’. 

 

Following a research-informed pedagogical enquiry with PGCE students training to be English teachers (White & Murray, 2016), this paper reports on a multi stage research project which further explores and develops a bespoke theoretical framework that combines perspectives on teaching for social justice through teacher education, research on the processes of learning to teach and studies of space and place in relation to personal identities and emotional experience. The setting for much the research is a university-based post-graduate teacher education programme in one London borough, which with 30% child poverty levels ranks the third highest in the city and the thirteenth in the UK overall.

Method

This research is firmly located within the geographical location and we begin with a focus on consequential geography – a spatial expression used by Soja (2010) to describe more than just the physical attributes of the location but the social, the political and the personal. In this research, we develop the work of social geographers to consider spatiality as a way of understanding and being in the world using space and place to investigate the complex intersectionality between teacher education and schooling, educational achievement, poverty, physical and social geography (or ‘spaces’) and the socio-economic positioning of children, their parents and their communities. In this research the movement of people, policy and research necessitates our understanding and engagement with power geometry (Massey, 1994), and a consideration of the historical and contemporary distribution of resources – both material and discursive - as we work to ensure social justice in education. The research is situated within the traditions of practitioner enquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993) and feminist research (Letherby, 2003) and the findings are analysed using a bespoke theoretical framework, combining perspectives on teaching for social justice through teacher education (Clarke & Drudy, 2006) research on the processes of learning to teach (Burns and Mutton,2015) and studies of space/spatiality (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2007; Soja, 2010). Working with pre service teachers this research involves systematic documentation and analysis both of the spatial context and of the research materials including photography and participatory maps produced by the student teachers.

Expected Outcomes

This paper describes exploratory research into the development of innovative visual and spacial pedagogies for investigating how pre-service student-teachers articulate their views about the effects of poverty on educational attainment. The findings of this study indicate how space both structures and is structured by the social practices of teacher education, and how it affects the possibilities for the construction of student teachers’ identities and the social and psychic boundaries of their ‘self’ as they come to terms with working in schools in deprived areas with pupils living their lives in poverty. At a time of educational inequality throughout Europe and beyond (Wilson & Picket, 2009) this paper offers one methodology for addressing some of the complex and challenging questions we face in teacher education. While the purpose of this paper is not to offer an analysis of the visual and spacial materials produced throughout the research they do offer some insight into the participants experience of training to teach and an articulation of the question “how do we educate for social justice in a world that is neither just, nor social." (Steinberg, 2012, v).

References

Burn, K, & Mutton, T (2015) “A review of ‘research-informed clinical practice’ in Initial Teacher Education”, Oxford Review of Education.  41(2)  217-233. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.1020104 Casey, E. (2001) Between geography and philosophy: what does it mean to be in-place-world? Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91 (4) 683-93 Clarke, M. & Drudy, S. (2006) Teaching for diversity, social justice and global awareness. European Journal of Teacher Education, 29(3), 371-386. Doi:1080/02619760600795239 Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle. S. L. (1993). Inside/Outside Teacher Research and Knowledge. New York, New York: Teachers College Press  Hargreaves, A. (1995) “Towards a Social Geography of Teacher Education.” In Teacher Education in Industrialised Nations: Issues in Changing Social Context, edited by N. Shimahara and I. Holowinsky, 87–124. New York: Garland Lefebvre, H. (1991) The production of space. Oxford, OX, UK: Blackwell Letherby, G. (2003) Feminist Research in Theory and Practice Buckingham: Open University Massey, D. (2004) Foreword, Forum, 46(1), 1 Massey, D. (2007) World City.  Polity, Cambridge Soja, E.W., (2010) Seeking Spatial Justice, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press Steinberg, S.R. (2012) Foreward. In Down, B. & Smyth, J. (eds). Critical Voices in Teacher Education: Teaching for Social Justice in Conservative Times.  New York, London: Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg 22, V. Wilkinson, R., & K. Pickett. (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London: Allen Lane White, M., & Murray, J. (2016) Seeing disadvantage in schools: exploring student teachers’ perceptions of poverty and disadvantage using visual pedagogy, Journal of Education for Teaching, 42:4, 500-515, DOI: 10.1080/02607476.2016.1215543

Author Information

ML White (presenting / submitting)
University of East London, United Kingdom
Jean Murray
University of East London, United Kingdom

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