Space, Place and Scale in the Study of Education

The term ‘space’ is inherently geographical. Educational provision and activity takes place within spaces ranging from a room at home or in a school to a campus to an administrative area which could be a state within a country, a whole country or a group of countries. Such spaces are known as geographical surfaces. Within these spaces the process of learning and teaching takes place at particular points that are often nodes in a network which may be formal, such as a group of schools or universities, or non-formal, such as in cyberspace. Understanding what goes on depends on the scale at which it is observed, ranging from individuals to global outreach. Altogether, this constitutes the geography of educational reality.

This comprehensive volume includes a theoretical background, plus a sample of situations including school level, policy and administration, inequitable access, education hubs, and small states. It offers an introduction to a relatively neglected member of the family of education foundation disciplines, the geography of education.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.

Lorraine Pe Symaco is Director of the Centre for Research in International and Comparative Education (CRICE) at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She holds a DPhil in Education from the University of Oxford, UK. Lorraine is editor/author of the Journal of International and Comparative Education, Education in South East Asia (2013), Education, Poverty, Malnutrition and Famine (2014) and Education and NGOs (2016).

Colin Brock is Honorary Professor of Education at the University of Durham, UK, and formerly UNESCO Chair in Education as a Humanitarian Response at the University of Oxford, UK. He holds first and higher degrees in Geography as well as Education. Since the 1970s he has published numerous articles and chapters on aspects of the geography of Education.