ABSTRACT
Space is commonly seen as an essentially neutral category, and moreover as ‘completely transparent, unmediated and therefore utterly unknowable’ (Rose 1993: 70). Educational space is typically seen therefore as a ‘container’ within which education simply ‘takes (its) place’, with varying degrees of effectiveness and effi ciency. From classrooms and schools to larger administrative jurisdictions such as ‘districts’, ‘regions’, and ‘clusters’—all such sites and territories operate as commonsense, convenient registers of educational organization and governance, activity and application. Following a long tradition of programmatic scepticism, however, the question can and should be asked: Are they? What if space is problematized, in an explicit Foucaultian sense? What would result from according spatial relations and dynamics a more deliberate, focused attention, with space taken seriously as a matter of interest and concern, for policy and pedagogy alike? What happens when space is thought differently, and other spaces are drawn into calculation?
