Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Notes on author
- Acknowledgments
- one Introduction
- two Conceptual frameworks: towards geographies of alternative education
- three Alternative learning spaces in the UK: background to the case studies used in this book
- four Connection/disconnection: positioning alternativelearning spaces
- five Mess/order: materials, timings, feelings
- six Movement/embodiment: learning habits (I)
- seven Inter/personal relations: scale, love and learning habits (II)
- eight Towards the ‘good life’: alternative visions of learning, love and life-itself
- nine Conclusion: geographies of alternative education and the value of autonomous learning spaces
- References
- Index
six - Movement/embodiment: learning habits (I)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Notes on author
- Acknowledgments
- one Introduction
- two Conceptual frameworks: towards geographies of alternative education
- three Alternative learning spaces in the UK: background to the case studies used in this book
- four Connection/disconnection: positioning alternativelearning spaces
- five Mess/order: materials, timings, feelings
- six Movement/embodiment: learning habits (I)
- seven Inter/personal relations: scale, love and learning habits (II)
- eight Towards the ‘good life’: alternative visions of learning, love and life-itself
- nine Conclusion: geographies of alternative education and the value of autonomous learning spaces
- References
- Index
Summary
One of the key arguments of this book is that the spatialities of learning are lively. In other words, the seeming obduracy of the physical environment may be brought to life in ways that lend learning spaces a dynamic, complex quality. In Chapter Five I began this argument by attending to temporal and material forms of dis/order. In this chapter I turn to a related but distinct set of ways in which alternative learning spaces may be enlivened: in the movement of human bodies within and between learning spaces. I focus upon movement for two reasons. The first is empirical: because many alternative educators believe that bodily movements are somehow central to their approaches. As I will show, they argue that children in their learning spaces should cultivate different kinds of bodily movements from learners in mainstream schools. In turn, I will demonstrate how some (but not all) educators are engaged in the production of particular learning habits, which flow from those bodily movements. The second reason is conceptual. For, contemporary human geographers – like social scientists in general – have been engaged in theorising the centrality of movement to geographical processes (like globalisation). For instance, conceptualisations of movement have heralded the so-called ‘mobility turn’ in the social sciences (for overviews, see Urry, 2007; Adey, 2009). In a sense, I take these literatures for granted, accepting as they do that an understanding of mobility is crucial to an understanding of contemporary spatialities. Therefore, the mobilities literature is not the principal frame of reference I use in this chapter. Rather, the chapter is situated within an overlapping and more particular series of literatures that has focused on bodily movements – on how gestures, dress, performances and habits are central to the experience of social spaces (for guiding examples, see Goffman, 1959; Butler, 1990; Longhurst, 2001). Since these are large literatures, this chapter leads towards discussion of a quite specific kind of bodily movement: of habit. And indeed, I want to orient my later arguments around a particular understanding of habit, which centres upon the work of Félix Ravaisson (2008).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Geographies of Alternative EducationDiverse Learning Spaces for Children and Young People, pp. 151 - 176Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2013