Telling Spatial Stories/Envisioning Academic Futures: Adolescents Map Their Lives Across Spaces

• In Event: 61.066 - Multimodal Narratives of Literacies for Equity: Possibilities and Limits for Democratizing Evidence

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the spatial experiences and stories of adolescents who come from a neighbored in Halifax, Nova Scotia that has been historically underrepresented in advanced academic programs at the neighborhood high school. This study took place in the last five months of the participants’ time in junior high. Situated in interests in the spaces where adolescents spend time, and in concerns about equity and access to school programs, the work draws on spatial theory (Lefebvre, 1991; Soja, 1996), and specifically spatial justice (Soja, 2010) to explore how adolescents define and map the spaces where they spend time, and how they describe their identities, experiences and relationships across space and time, and how this connects to their visions of themselves in high school.

Soja’s work, Seeking Spatial Justice (2010), takes a critical social justice stance to lived experiences. Drawing on the idea that social spaces are socially produced, and thinking about the impact this has on cities, he argues, “geography is consequential” (p. 6) and that the people who are most negatively impacted need to take greater control and be given greater power in the social production of urban spaces. This study assumes this stance, both theoretically and methodologically, drawing on social cartography, “the writing, and reading of maps addressing questions of location in the social milieu” (Paulston, 1996, p. 7) as the framework for entering into conversations about spatial justice, giving the participants the opportunity to author their own maps of the spaces they travel, connecting the experiences of the participants with their visions for themselves in high school. Subsequently, through data sources including maps, photo elicitation (Lutrell, 2010), walking with video (Pink, 2007), and timelines, coupled with life history interviews (Seidman, 2006), the participants constructed stories illustrate that the navigation of academic identities across spaces, and specifically “real-and-imagined” (Soja, 2006, p. 10) borders is a reality of their lives in and out of school, and that access to understanding them requires non-linear entry points to the stories.

This presentation will focus on the constructed narratives of Tia and Charlie, two of the participants whose spatial stories illustrate these findings. However, the reporting of these findings becomes a critical question in considering both the affordances and limits of multimodal narratives, and their abilities to leverage conversation, action and change. While these findings give credence to the power of complex data sources in revealing and challenging spatial inequalities, the representation of them for, in this case, a doctoral dissertation, still privileges the researcher as the arbiter of the product. Subsequently, the community members, families and the participants themselves who have been historically excluded from these kinds of analysis, save for PAR studies, continue to be excluded from the conversation in a substantive way. This raises questions about whether multimodal narrative alone can achieve equitable pursuits or if the academy, and the reporting of research more broadly needs to not only consider how narratives are constructed, but also who gets to be a researcher.

Author

• Heather Michael, Teachers College, Columbia University