Geospatial Educational Research and the Importance of Historical Context

• In Event: Place, Geography, and Geographic Information Systems in Educational Policy and Politics

Abstract

Objective

This paper discusses the promise of geospatial techniques for education researchers and how increased attention to the historical context of spatial data can enhance that work.

Perspective

While scholarship utilizing GIS has added considerable breadth to our understanding of education policy, recent geospatial studies in education have tended to neglect long-term, historical trends. This paper draws on work from policy scholars pointing out the limitations of ahistorical policy analysis and research by historians calling for greater attention to questions of space and place. In addition, it draws on the contention from the various intellectual traditions and sub disciplines of geography that spatial analysis is incomplete when it lacks a broad temporal frame.

Methods

This paper provides an intellectual history of geography scholarship to suggest the importance of historical context for spatial data. Then, it uses traditional historical methodologies and methods from quantitative geography to illustrate the benefits of locating education not only in space, but also in time.

Data sources

The analysis uses geographic, demographic, and funding data from a spatial history project examining the evolution of educational opportunity in California between 1850 and 1950. It uses the example of contemporary research on school district boundaries to suggest how insights from spatial history projects like this one can deepen our understanding of education policy in the present.

Findings

The paper contends that attending to the historical context of spatial data can (1) help researchers generate new questions while developing a critical perspective on the data contained in maps, (2) provide indispensable information that can improve the geospatial measurement techniques that we use, and (3) deepen our understanding of how geography and policy have interacted over time to shape contemporary patterns in the distribution of educational opportunity.

Scholarly Significance

This paper suggests both the opportunities and challenges that confront education researchers focused on spatial questions examined through software programs like ArcGIS. It also suggests the broader importance of interdisciplinary work that combines the work of policy analysts and historians of education. The disciplinary divide between historians of education and quantitative research in education policy can be, at times, quite wide. Some commentators insist that education policy analysts have not given as much attention to history as they did in the past. Historians of education, for their part, often produce work in isolation and sometimes avoid direct engagement with the present. This paper calls for more collaboration between policy analysts and historians of education, and suggests how geospatial research is a meaningful place for this collaboration to start.

Author

• Matthew Kelly, The Pennsylvania State University - University Park