AAG 2017 | Boston, MA | 5^th-9^th April – Call For Papers

 

Session title: Theorizing the Geographies of Education and Learning

 

Session run in conjunction with: What’s School Got to Do with It?: Race, Resistance, and a Call for Critical Geographies of Education (session details below)

Organizers: Nicole Nguyen (University of Illinois-Chicago), Alice Huff (UCLA), Dan Cohen (University of British Columbia)

 

Whilst it may have been the case that until recently “education has remained on the margins of critical geographical thought” in Anglophone literature at least (Hansom Thiem, 2009: 154), there has been a significant burgeoning of the geographies of education since then. Though not conceived as having the coherence of other subdisciplines, a more positive reading of the wider state of research is that that the geographies of education have avoided “subdisciplinary confinement” by consistently situating “education in the context of broader debates within the discipline” (Holloway, 2010: 584). With a call for a Critical Geographies of Education AAG specialty group the promise and risk of that subdisciplinary coherence may both be realized.

 

Nevertheless, whether the geographies of education and learning have been disparate or, more charitably, resolutely plural such diversity provides creative challenges for theorizing the geographies of education and learning. The interaction with 'turns' (Kenway and Youdell, 2011; Waters, 2016) or engagement with existing geographical subdisciplines (see list below for examples) has widened the field of view considering education across the lifecourse; the histories, presents and futures of education; the relevance of attending to learning not only education, and the importance of 'alternative' forms of education and education and learning across in/formal spaces. Whether drawing on marxisms, critical race theories, post-colonialisms, feminisms, ANT and post-structural approaches there is a similar theoretical diversity (Bauer, 2015; Lipman, 2011; Madge et al., 2009; Olds, 2007).

 

The session therefore seeks papers which consider:

-          what kind of theories for what kinds of geographies of education and learning?

-          what theories, or theoretical innovation, do geographies of education and learning offer the wider discipline and other disciplines?

-          the place, promise and risks of theory in boundary-making/marking or policing subdisciplines with respect to geographies of education and learning

-          empirical papers which foreground their theoretical contribution to the geographies of education and learning

  

Please submit paper abstracts to session organizer: Matt Finn (University of Exeter) at [log in to unmask] no later than September 30, 2016.
Please provide a title, presenter details and an abstract (250 words) - http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/call_for_papers/abstract_guidelines

 

References

Bauer, I. (2015) Approaching geographies of education differANTly, Children's Geographies, 13 (5): 620-627

Butler, T. and Hamnet, T. (2007) The geography of education: Introduction (Editorial), Urban Studies 44 (7): 1161-1174

Collins, D., & Coleman, T. (2008). Social geographies of education: looking within, and beyond, school boundaries. Geography Compass, 2(1), 281-299.

Collins, F. L. and Ho, K. C., Guest Eds. (2014) Special Issue: Globalising Higher Education and Cities in Asia and the Pacific, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 55 (2): 127–257

Driver F. and A. Maddrell, (1996) Editorial: Geographical Education and Citizenship, Journal of Historical Geography, 22: 4.

Dwyer, C., and Parutis, V. (2013) 'Faith in the system?' State-funded faith schools in England and the contested parameters of community cohesion, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38 (2): 267-284

Gagen, E. A. (2000) An example to us all: child development and identity construction in early 20th-century playgrounds, Environment and Planning A, 32:599-616

Gagen, E. (2004) Making America flesh: physicality and nationhood in early-twentieth century physical education reform, Cultural Geographies 11: 417–42.

Hamnett, C., & Butler, T. (2011). “Geography matters”: The role distance plays in reproducing educational inequality in East London. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36(4), 479–500.

Hanson Thiem, C. (2009) Thinking through education: the geographies of contemporary educational restructuring, Progress in Human Geography, 33 (2): 154–73

Hemming, P. J. (2015) Religion in the primary school: Ethos, diversity, citizenship. Abingdon: Routledge

Holloway, S. L., Hubbard, P., Jöns, H., and Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2010), Geographies of education and the significance of children, youth and families, Progress in Human Geography, 34 (5): 583-600

Holloway, S. L., and Jöns, H. (2012) Geographies of education and learning, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37 (4): 482-488

Holt, L., Lea, J. and Bowlby, S. (2012) Special units for young people on the autistic spectrum in mainstream schools: sites of normalisation, abnormalisation, inclusion, and exclusion, Environment and Planning A, 44:2191-2206

Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. New York: Routledge.

Madge, C., Raghuram, P., Noxolo, P. (2015) Conceptualizing international education: From international student to international study, Progress in Human Geography, 39(6): 681-701

Madge, C. Raghuram, P. and Noxolo, P. (2009) Engaged pedagogy and responsibility: a postcolonial analysis of international students, Geoforum, 40, 1, 34-45.

McCreary, T., Basu, R. and Godlewska, A. (2013) Introduction. Critical Geographies of Education, The Canadian Geographer/ Le Géographe canadien. 57, 3: 255-59

Mills, S. (2013) ‘An instruction in good citizenship’: scouting and the historical geographies of citizenship education, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38(1):120-134

Mills, S. (2016) Geographies of education, volunteering and the lifecourse: the Woodcraft Folk in Britain (1925–75), cultural geographies 23(1), 103-119

Mills, S. and Kraftl, P. (2016) Cultural Geographies of Education, cultural geographies, 23 (1), 19-27

Olds, K. (2007) ‘Global assemblage: Singapore, Western universities, and the construction of a global education hub‘, World Development, 35(6): 959-975.

Philo, C. (2016), ‘Looking into the countryside from where he had come’: placing the ‘idiot’, the ‘idiot school’ and different models of educating the uneducable, cultural geographies, 23(1): 139-157

Pykett, J. (2010) Editorial: The Pedagogical State. Education, Citizenship, Governing, Citizenship Studies 14: 6, pp617-619

Pykett, J. (2012) “Making youth publics and neuro-citizens: critical geographies of contemporary educational practice” in P.Kraftl, J.Horton and F.Tucker (Eds.) Youth Matters: critical geographies of children and youth: policy and practice. Policy Press, Bristol

Waters J. L. (2016) Education unbound? Enlivening debates with a mobilities perspective on learning, Progress in Human Geography, OnlineFirst, 1–20

 

 

AAG CFP, apologies for cross-listing

 

Session title: What’s School Got to Do with It?: Race, Resistance, and a Call for Critical Geographies of Education

 

Organizers: Nicole Nguyen (University of Illinois-Chicago), Alice Huff (UCLA), Dan Cohen (University of British Columbia)

 

In August 2016, Black Lives Matter published a report, A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice, that detailed its organizing platform. In this report, Black Lives Matter denounced the privatization of education and called for the installation of “real community control by parents, students, and community members” through democratic school boards and community control of curriculum, hiring and firing, and discipline policies. The report recognized that education reform in the United States continues to “strip[] Black people of the right to self-determine the kind of education their children receive.” For the Black Lives Matter movement, community-controlled public education is essential to Black freedom and thus a key policy demand and site of struggle.

 

Given the urgency of the current political moment, this session examines the centrality of education in struggles for freedom, justice, and self-determination. Whether understood as the “final frontier” of gentrification (Hankins, 2007) or an essential element of social reproduction (Katz, 2008), schools increasingly serve as important sites of geographic inquiry, both in intellectual pursuits (Lipman, 2011) and in grassroots organizing (Huff, 2013; Kearns, Lewis, McCreanor, & Witten, 2009). Despite the compelling associations between education and geography and an enduring disciplinary interest in various aspects of this relationship, a cohesive subfield dedicated to the critical examination of geographies of education has not yet emerged.  We invite proposals that advance the subfield of critical geographies of education (e.g., Basu, 2004; Gulson, 2011; Hamnett & Butler, 2011; Holloway, Hubbard, Jons, & Pimlott-Wilson, 2010; Mitchell, 2003; Witten, Kearns, Lewis, & McCreanor, 2003) and/or examine the centrality of education in broader geographic inquiry (e.g., Butler, Hamnett, & Ramsden, 2013), with particular attention to social movements. Through the organizing of this session, we aim to develop a Critical Geographies of Education AAG specialty group.

 

Potential areas of inquiry might include:

 

·         Grassroots organizing related to education and broader social struggles contesting anti-Black and racist policies, neoliberalization and austerity (e.g., Black Youth Project 100 and Black Lives Matter).

·         The independent but co-constitutive ordering systems of racism and classism and the role of schooling.

·         How social processes central to geographic inquiry are shaped by, and shape, schools (e.g., citizenship, gentrification, placemaking).

·         The role of schools as sites of social reproduction in both reproducing and contesting dominant logics.

·         The relationship between education policy/reform and possibilities for new forms of citizenship and collective action.

 

Please submit paper abstracts to [log in to unmask] no later than September 30, 2016

 

References

 

Basu, R. (2004). A Flyvbjergian perspective of public elementary school closures in Toronto: A question of “rationality” or “power”? Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 22(3), 423–451.

Butler, T., Hamnett, C., & Ramsden, M. J. (2013). Gentrification, education and exclusionary displacement in East London. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(2), 556–575.

Gulson, K. N. (2011). Education policy, space, and the city: Markets and the (in)visibility of race. New York: Routledge.

Hamnett, C., & Butler, T. (2011). “Geography matters”: The role distance plays in reproducing educational inequality in East London. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36(4), 479–500.

Hankins, K. B. (2007). The final frontier: Charter schools as new community institutions of gentrification. Urban Geography, 28(2), 113–128.

Holloway, S. L., Hubbard, P., Jons, H., & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2010). Geographies of education and the significance of children, youth and families. Progress in Human Geography, 34(5), 583–600.

Huff, A. (2013). Reforming the city: Neoliberal school reform and democratic contestation in New Orleans. The Canadian Geographer, 57(3), 311–317.

Katz, C. (2008). Bad elements: Katrina and the scoured landscape of social reproduction. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 15(1), 15–29.

Kearns, R. A., Lewis, N., McCreanor, T., & Witten, K. (2009). “The status quo is not an option”: Community impacts of school closure in South Taranaki, New Zealand. Journal of Rural Studies, 25(1), 131–140.

Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. New York: Routledge.

Mitchell, K. (2003). Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: From the multicultural self to the strategic cosmopolitan. Transactions of the Institute of British Geography, 28(4), 387–403.

Witten, K., Kearns, R. A., Lewis, N., & McCreanor, T. (2003). Educational restructuring from a community viewpoint: a case study of school closure from Invercargill, New Zealand. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 21(2), 202–223.