Schooling, Space and Social Justice

The representational space of teachers and children in schools has changed beyond all recognition. Drawing on the idea that the school is a socio-spatial landscape, a highly significant institutional space with which children engage, we can understand forms of educational inequality as consequences of spatial production. This article contributes to the emerging literature suggesting that the spatial dimension of education is increasingly important in analysing the re/production of individual identities and social inequalities. Putting space at the centre of the article provides a further tool in which to analyse the possibilities for change in terms of educational social justice for all children. Using spatial theory, this article examines the overlapping relationships of spatial production, including: spatial practices of teaching and learning; representational space in terms of policy discourse; and spatial representations in terms of the daily experiences of school life. The particular emphasis is to examine the stories of people’s schooling experiences in order to investigate how schools shape, have shaped, and are shaped by the ‘structures’ and ‘landscapes’ of the education process, as well as by the social practices and interactions of participants. With a particular focus on Gypsy/Traveller experiences of school, this article examines the situation of children from these communities and their unique relationship with the schooling system and education more widely.