Advancing a Spatial Justice Vision and Framework for Social Studies Education Research

• In Event: Rethinking Place and Space in Social Studies Research: Toward a Spatial Justice Agenda

Abstract

Objectives

Given Soja’s (2010) argument that social justice and spatial justice are inherently linked, scholars have begun to foreground place and space in education research to understand and further equity, justice, and liberation (e.g., Butler & Author, 2020). The methodologies of critical place inquiry (Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) and critical race spatial analysis (Morrison et al., 2017) are promising approaches for this work. This paper builds from this foundation to provide a spatial justice vision and framework for social studies research. Whereas previous research taking up space and place in social studies education often centers geography education and praxis (Schlemper, et al. 2018), we suggest a spatial justice framework for social studies researchers to recognize how place and space shapes and is shaped by social studies teaching, practice, and policy. The implications of such scholarship advance social justice and liberation in the social studies by providing new inquiries, theoretical frameworks, and imaginations into pervasive issues. We respond to the following questions: How might we conceptualize a social studies education research framework grounded in spatial justice? What might a spatial justice framework reveal about social studies research, teaching, practice, and policy?

Theoretical Framework

This paper is grounded in a belief in a trialectic ontology that centers space along with, and as an equal to, more predominant social and historical frames. Our ontological perspective privileges a distinctly spatial understanding of the world(s). In this view, humans are not just social beings, but spatial beings as well (Soja, 1996). Places are inherently political and are the backdrop upon which political behavior and engagement unfolds (Agnew, 1987). The potentialities of social studies research should be explicitly attuned to questions of space and place as spatial justice frameworks provides social studies scholars the ability to illuminate spatialized relations and knowledges. This paper highlights and extends the work of existing scholars who are pushing forward critical social studies research (see Hawkman, 2020; Rodríguez, 2018; Sabzalian, 2020; Schimidt, 2013; Shear & Krutka, 2019).

Modes of Inquiry

Social studies researchers are well served by focusing deeply on critical spatial frames in research to mobilize an “optimistic strategy” (Soja, 2010, p 7; see also author and author, under review) which centers the agency, knowledge, and lived realities of local places and spaces. Critical spatial frameworks invite inquiry and analysis of the social studies disciplines (history, geography, civics, economics, etc.) to further advance the liberatory aims of social studies research and practice. In this full paper, we posit and develop the six “decision points” that guide spatial justice research in the social studies: How is spatial justice engaged in (1) ontological, (2) epistemological, (3) axiomatic, (4) political (5) methodological, and (6) data representation/dissemination approaches to social studies research?

Scholarly Significance

Through critical spatial frameworks, we acknowledge and disrupt the tension of (s)places with no name in social studies research. We contend that advancing a spatial justice vision and framework for social studies education research may more fully center local places, people, families, and communities in the pursuit of liberatory futures.

Authors

• Timothy Monreal, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Kaitlin E. Popielarz, The University of Texas-San Antonio

• Kristin Sinclair, Georgetown University