ABSTRACT
The main context to this edited collection is to consider the future of education research in light of the changing demographics, and their consequences, in the field of education (Mills et al., 2006). The proposition that education may lose subject specialists is important given the significance of different disciplines to education research. However, as Doreen Massey, one of the best-known British geographers, reminds us above, the role of different disciplines within the social sciences is not just about ‘borrowing’ ideas – knowledge, theory and methods – it is also about ensuring there are new and constructive interdisciplinary developments at the interface of different subjects. This distinction is quite important and illustrates, to some extent, the past contributions of geography to the field of education, but also highlights the challenges ahead. As we will see there has been considerable and growing use of geographical ideas in education research. However, this has not been matched with any significant and formal developments at the interface of these two subjects, necessary to both fully exploit the inter-relationship between these two subjects and warrant the existence of recognised subdisciplines in each subject. While the former suggests there are many exciting questions and areas of research still to be addressed, the absence of the latter makes it difficult to foresee how geography could play a sustained part in the future of education research. For some current and future education researchers the notion of ‘borrowing’ geographical ideas may be enough to sustain or offer new insights into the key challenges of education. But throughout this chapter I want to make a case for distinguishing between what Collins and Evans (2007) term interactional expertise and contributory expertise. This is, rather crudely, the
difference between education researchers being fluent in the language of geography and education researchers having the tacit knowledge to practice or ‘do’ geography. As we will see later, much use of geography in education research does not go beyond utilising the language and vocabulary of geography. As Robertson also argues, ‘it is not sufficient to simply bring a spatial lexicon to our conceptual sentences (as in “geographies” of classroom emotions; the school as a “place”; communities of practice). This is to fetishize space’ (2009, p. 2). Clearly, the practice of ‘borrowing’ geographical ideas may be more than a matter of linguistics, but nonetheless, contributory expertise suggests something more. And this is important, since, as will be argued later, the key developments in geography that may be of most relevance to education now and in the future are likely to require geographical skills equivalent to contributory expertise. But this is not straightforward either, since it raises wider concerns about inter-disciplinary research and new divisions of labour within an integrated social science academy (Harvey, 1990; Massey, 1999). The chapter is necessarily organised into four main sections. First it considers the main mechanisms and sites of production of what can be considered the geography of education. Second, I attempt to define and then outline the major contributions of geography to the field of education research, before then presenting what I consider to be the most important developments in geography of relevance to the field of education now and in the immediate future. The chapter concludes by considering what the future might hold for the geography of education, in terms of its intellectual contributions but also in terms of the institutional and practical challenges that this discussion raises. Before proceeding, however, it is important to outline a number of assumptions and limitations to this discussion. First, my own interdisciplinary journey may privilege a particular perspective on the issues being addressed in this chapter. Therefore, it is important to declare that the following discussion is likely to be partial and really only provides the basis from which, hopefully, further discussions and debates may follow, in education and in geography. This brief ‘glance’ across the two disciplines is further compounded by the breadth of these two subjects across the three dimensions of knowledge, theory and method. The next set of limitations to this discussion relates to the boundaries that I place around the two subjects of geography and education. Clearly one of the important ways that geography and education are related is in terms of the process of teaching and learning the subject of geography, particularly in schools and higher education. And of course there are some very important contributions and sites of production for this kind of research (such as the work of the Geographical Association and the Journal of Geography in Higher Education). However, in line with the rest of this edited collection, I will largely focus on the contribution geography can make to our understanding of education. In turn this also means the focus is more precisely on the
contribution of human geography to education. Almost conversely, the discussion considers education research in its broadest definition. While the difference between education research and educational research (Whitty, 2006) should be recognised, it would be perhaps be short-sighted at this stage of the discussion to consider only the role of geography on educational research that is solely geared towards improving policy and practice. Lastly, since this volume is principally about the future of education research in the UK, most of the following examples are largely taken from the UK. However, processes and practices of any social science discipline are now firmly embedded within an international framework; the recent 2008 Research Assessment Exercise demonstrates this. Therefore it is important that the often local practices of education research (say, within the UK) are situated alongside the international development of knowledge, theories and methods. This, as will also be shown, is itself an important way in which geography can contribute to the field of education research, particularly within the higher education sector.
