ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author raises questions about why a spatial theoretical perspective matters when researching and teaching reading. Bakhtin is careful to emphasise the mutual relationship between time and space, arguing that they are intrinsically connected but never merged. The task encourages a spatial representation of reading which integrates verbal and visual modes, each mode involving a different but complementary fundamental organisational principle or logic. An interesting professional development activity is for teachers to take one or two pictures of the classrooms in which they work and reflect critically together on what messages about reading their classrooms afford students. Students are very reliant on what teachers bring into the classroom for study or what they encourage students themselves to bring in. What ends up in the English classroom, therefore, is never fixed. Work on mapping also lends itself extremely well to learning in out-of-school contexts.
