Research Questions

The following formulated question guides the research: 1) How is school space produced in schools located in disadvantaged communities? The three formulated sub-questions are a). What social practices do learners engage in at school? b) How is pledge time and free time produced in/at school? c) How is power distributed in the production of school space? What opportunities for learning does the production of school space make possible?

Theoretical framework

The paper is informed by spatial theory, a sub-discipline of sociology that is a result of several scholars in the 20th and 21st Century (Harvey, 1973; Soja, 1989; Foucault, 1991; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1999; Thrift, 2003a) and the mobilities turn. The mobilities turn is often recognised as an advancement of spatial theory as opposed to a new paradigm. (Castells, 1997; Nespor, 1997; Sheller, Mimi & Urry & John, 2006; Leander, Phillips & Taylor, 2010; Cresswell, 2011). Spatial theory is a move away from conceptualising space as absolute: a container waiting to be filled consisting of land and seas instead spatial theory is a move towards conceptualising of space as social, relational and produced- consisting of everything in space that is produced (Kern, 1983; Smith, 2003). This move includes everything that is physical, mental and imagined (Lefebvre, 1991: 101) and hence enables a study into a hyperconnected and entangled schooling system.

Lefebvre (1991) provides a framework to explore space as a triad that is used in this paper to disentangle and tangle school space. This triad explores the three facets of being: historically, spatiality and sociality to respond to questions of ontology and the triad of spatiality: perceived space, conceived space and the lived space in order to respond to questions of epistemology. Percieved space - grapples with the experienced layer of the school space that is sensual. Conceived space grapples with the theoretical layer that includes sign and symbols of what is mental, and lastly, the lived space grapples with the imagined aspect of school space or new spaces that are not congruent to what currently is practised (Soja, 1998; Merrifield, 2006).

Similarly, a focus on mobilities ensures that what is physical, mental and imagined is not conceptualised as immobile in research. The mobilities of children have been identified as both undertheorized and understudied by Leander, Phillips and Taylor (2010). This gap in the literature is critical because one of the primary changes in the current social life in comparison to previous generations is and continues to be how people, ideas and objects move across space and time (Leander, Phillips & Taylor 2010). In Britain, 80% of the children ages 7- 8 went to school on their own in 1970, and by 1990 less than 10% travelled to school unaccompanied (Hillman, 1993). Likewise, in South Africa, a nationally representative survey revealed that more than 24.9% of grade 12 students resided more than 10 km from school (Kadt et al., 2013). The primary determining factor in school choice is parents’ affording the fees and transportation costs, and therefore parents/guardians with higher income can opt for schools further away (Kadt et al., 2013). Changes have also emerged in how children travel to school as a more significant number now travels by car, and the number of children arriving on foot has decreased in the United Kingdom and South Africa.

As a result, spatial theory and the mobilities turn provide the theoretical blueprint that gives this paper a shared worldview from which to support its argument about the production school space and analysis of data (Grant & Osanloo, 2014)

The study was conducted in three public schools in South Africa located in the Eastern Cape province in a peri rural named Makhanda. Makhanda is a socially and economically deprived peri rural town that has been declared a disaster area due to drought (O’Halloran: 2016). The three schools are Themba Primary School, Kamva Primary School and Amila Primary School (Pseudonyms). These schools are non-fee-paying schools situated in underdeveloped racially segregated areas in Makhanda. Over the course of six weeks, data was generated with a particular interest in the spaces outside the four walls of the classroom. Field notes, video recordings and observations took place 1) before school began (as learners arrived at the school premises) 2) during break times and 3) after school as the learners left school or remained for extracurricular activities. Two weeks were spent with each grade six class sitting in lessons making observations and recording the lessons. During this time, the grade six learners complete a time-space diary for one week (7 days). The diary entries were- both writing and drawn and focussed on how time and space is utilised before and after school and during breaks. During this time, semi-structured interviews with teachers, vendors, caretakers and learners were conducted to gain insight into the spatial productions. Thus, data was generated in the project across three interrelated ‘spaces’ where the learners’ bodies moved: the classroom, the school and other places leaners frequented both before and after school. These spaces regularly couple in collaboration, conflict and creation. The study yielded a corpus of data: 89 Time-space diaries for one week translated into English amounting to 623 pages and 98 drawings, 60 videos of break time activity as well as before and after school activities, 67 pages of field notes, ten interviews with extensive transcriptions and 38 images The data is analysed in two ways to answer the research questions: the first method is data walking: an expansive means that avoids closure or identifying a central aspect and instead identifies the links of multiple explanations and the spaces for communication across these explanations. This is followed by a rhythmanalysis focused on the alignment of rhythms in the production of formalised teaching i.e pledge time and free time in the ‘shadows’ of teaching and learning (see Lefebvre, 2004).

Detangling and tangling the rhythms of space in schools located and forming part of poor socioeconomic status communities helped study complex relations between school and community and identify the learners need for continuity across space (Lefebvre, 2000). In these schools, the socio-temporal rhythms produce a controlled body. One that acts and need not think – a programmed individual (Zayani,1999). This programming in the post colony still carries the ideology of coloniality through a capitalistic, racially hierarchized, Christian-centric, hetero-normative binaries that are legitimised through repetition and interactions with the material (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015). The coloniality, is now maintained and administrated in the school/community both culturally and economically and no longer by force. The result is the control of the mobilities, body, sound/communication, knowledge and relations by the robust classification and framing of space and time. Teachers and learners internalise roles and rituals that fragment social life into pledged time for work, free time for leisure and compulsive time for various errands(Lefebvre, 1991; Zayani,1999). In the strong framing and classification, it is during the free time that leaners have reduced surveillance and participate in spontaneous activity (Evans & Pellegrini, 1997) that foregrounds choice, affect and relationality. Here although learners’ cross boundaries across gender and age, as they carve out spaces that allow them to choose who to be, they still reconstitute themselves in spatial productions that mimic the pledge time classification. The learners’ third space imaginaries reveal conflicting rhythms of transcending the community by seeking employment or higher education outside of the peri-rural space and wanting to transform the community (O’Halloran, 2016). Learners also creatively repurpose the materials in their schools to mimic the resources available in schools in the city (Christie & McKinney, 2017). In so doing, the learners bypass their firstspace limited mobilities and social practices (Soja, 1991).

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