ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the uses and meanings of space in school settings, exploring the feelings of marginalised students. It highlights ways in which the students in each context acquiesced, resisted or challenged spatial structures and processes that positioned them as outsiders, as well as ways in which they sometimes constructed new meanings for places they did inhabit. Structures of spatial hierarchy within a school do not operate solely through adult management and organisation. Far from being neutral, spaces in classrooms are hierarchical, gendered, and racialised in ways that can be easily overlooked. Far from being neutral, the spatial organisation of schools constructs boundaries of inclusion/exclusion while also contributing to the formation of ‘technologies of domination’ that serve to establish normality. The chapter suggests that spatial structures in schools are not only alien but oppressive, noting difficulties of adaptation to individualised spaces, with fixed borders, characterised by competition as opposed to collaboration.
