This book weaves together two central dimensions of contemporary educational research, namely the attention to school spaces and the use of visual sources. Its sixteen brief case studies deal with both contemporary and historical settings, topics including teachers’ perception of educational change, their working places and daily tasks, the interlacing of social, spatial and knowledge differentiation in schools, discrepancies between students’ and teachers’ ways of visualizing school life, commercial representations of the school environment and the spatial fluidity between indoor and outdoor. The ongoing technology shift and its impact on schooling is an undercurrent running through the entire volume.
The authors – the majority of whom are practicing teachers – are Ulrika Boström, Maria Deldén, Carl Emanuelsson, Catharina Hultkrantz, Aleksandra Indzic Dujso, Cecilia Johansson, Kristina Ledman, Synne Myreböe, Lena Almqvist Nielsen, Peter Norlander, Annie Olsson, Karin Sandberg, Lina Spjut, Robert Thorp, Åsa Wendin and Andreas Westerberg. The book is edited and introduced by Catherine Burke, Ian Grosvenor and Björn Norlin.
Engaging with Educational Space is suitable to both academic courses focusing on methodological issues associated with the study of school spaces and to the use of visual sources in educational research, and for the in-service training of teachers and other individuals involved in education.
Umeå: Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier , 2014. , p. 181