World Making, Critical Pedagogies, and the Geographical Imagination: Where Youth Work Meets Participatory Research

Abstract

Renewed interest in the critical geographies of education has raised productive yet under-examined synergies with reflections taking place among radical youth work and participatory research practitioners. In particular, such intersections point to important ways that the geographical imagination might advance a critical yet creative means of learning through the living material forces of everyday worlds. This paper examines this common ground through a collaborative, London-based case study exploring young people's sense of home and belonging in the inner-city. It argues that cross-overs between the praxis of participatory research and youth work offer generative potential to act alongside young people in the production of autonomous geographical knowledges. Specifically, the case is made for prioritising an imaginative, experiential and intersubjective pedagogical process of "world making", as an alternative to practices that intervene in, act upon and ultimately "other" the everyday lives of young people.

Going public? Re‐thinking visibility, ethics and recognition through participatory research praxis

“…Our account here necessarily begins half‐way through a participatory project, focusing on the later stages of our various public engagements. While there is limited scope to fully account for the participatory processes of production that took place in the summer of 2013 here (see Butcher in press; Dickens forthcoming; Dickens and Butcher forthcoming), some details of this process offer useful context . First, the PRAs’ individual film production was supported by a professional social enterprise, Mouth That Roars, an organisation that specialises in working at the intersection of outreach youth work and media production .…”

Pedagogía Crítica Y Aprendizaje-Servicio en La Universidad Neoliberal

“…En estas crisis, resulta extremadamente difícil implementar metodologías pedagógicas experienciales y participativas críticas que buscan comprender y desafiar los mecanismos estructurales generadores de abismales desigualdades e injusticias bajo el neoliberalismo (Cahill, Sultana y Pain 2007), así como avanzar en geografías académicas que integren a la universidad en la construcción del tejido social que la aloja (Dickens 2017). Estos esfuerzos, aunque producen resultados educativos valiosos, son difíciles de medir mediante métricas productivistas, lo que los lleva a ser considerados como una "pérdida de tiempo" en el contexto de la nueva economía política universitaria neoliberal (Meyerhoff et al 2011, 492;Castree et al 2008).…”

“…Diversas autoras han resaltado la importancia de utilizar la pedagogía crítica, propuesta por el filósofo y educador Paulo Freire, para desafiar los procesos neoliberalizadores presentes en las universidades (Dickens 2017;hooks 1994;Mott Scripta Nova, vol. 27, Núm.…”

Geographical education I: fields, interactions and relationships

“…Research attention on the geographies of education has expanded rapidly in quantity and scope (Waters, 2016). Part of this expansion includes generative synergies across multiple diverse areas of research, including: critical geographies of education, radical youth work and participatory research (Dickens, 2017); shifting infrastructures, financial capital and geographies of schooling (Cohen and Rosenman, 2020); cultural and affective geographies (Ang and Ho, 2019); critical race theory (Hunter, 2020); children’s and young people’s geographies (Baillie Smith et al, 2016); and educational landscapes, neoliberalism and the ‘social reproduction of enduring regimes of power’ (Holloway and Kirby, 2019: 164), often understanding ‘schools as key sites at which issues such as power, identity, citizenship and participation are illuminated’ (Pini et al, 2017: 14). Holloway et al, (2010) draw attention to the ways in which unruly neoliberal logics, government policy and market responses from individuals and companies might be productively explored through the geographies of education, offering an example of Thiem’s (2009) argument that education is not a ‘discrete topical speciality’ but instead is a resource for decentred and outward-looking research, ‘one in which education systems, institutions, and practices are positioned as useful sites for a variety of theory-building projects’ (p.154).…”