School space production as cultural reconfiguration: re-imagining peace in everyday education

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Critical Pedagogies, Dialogue, and Peacebuilding

Proposal

At a time of increasing global conflict and division, education has been entrusted with the vital mission of fostering understanding and advancing peace. Yet education does not unfold in a vacuum,but deeply embedded in specific cultural and social contexts, and its operational logic is closely related with the configuration of school space. Adopting an educational anthropology perspective, this paper focuses on the interaction between school space and educational processes, exploring how school space reflects and reconstructs cultural conflicts, and how it nurtures the possibilities of cooperation, understanding, and peace in everyday practices.
This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a high school in Shanghai, China. The school is in the process of reconfiguring its physical environment and curricular practices in around new educational concepts. Notably, through the creation of a technology-themed campus culture and the promotion of interdisciplinary project-based learning (PBL), it has generated a wide range of spatial practices. Employing participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and textual analysis, the research records and analyzes the interactive process between teachers and students in spatial creation, curricular practice, and cultural activities.
Theoretically, this paper construct an analytical framework based on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space. Lefebvre distinguishes three dimensions of space: spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space. Spatial practice refers to the material spaces that is perceived and used on a daily basis, reflecting the production and reproduction of social relations. Representations of space refers to the abstract mental space constructed by professional knowledge and power relations, often embedding the institutional intentions and ideologies of managers. Representational space is the social space that individuals directly experienced and emotionally identify with, containing a variety of symbolic and non-verbal systems (Lefebvre, 1999). This theory suggests that space is not a mere physical container but a dynamic process that carries meaning, shapes relationships, and generates culture. On this basis, the paper argues that the production of school space is simultaneously a process of cultural reconfiguration: different design forms and usage practice of space may reinforce segregation and exclusion, or alternatively, foster dialogue and mutual understanding.
Through the analysis of spatial practice, this paper finds that school space embodies and reshapes cultural conflicts at four levels: spatial taboo, spatial game, spatial carnival, and spatial reconstruction. First, spatial taboos reflect hidden hierarchies, such as separate buildings for senior students, distinctions between “key” and “ordinary” classrooms, meeting rooms reserved for student leaders, or lounges exclusively for teachers—each reinforcing internal divisions of power and status. Second, spatial game highlights the struggle and negotiation of discourse. For instance, a public blackboard for student to post small notes once became a contentious issue in an administrative meeting, while formal feedback channels varied in effect, sometimes perfunctory, other times genuinely integrating students into spatial governance and enhancing trust and responsibility. Third, spatial carnival is visible in school festivals and club exhibitions, where everyday order is temporarily suspended, creating atmospheres of cooperation and shared culture. Finally, spatial reconstruction occurs through PBL projects, where teachers and students jointly redefine and repurpose spaces—assigning them new cultural meanings and even prompting physical transformations at the school level. These practices not only mirror culture tensions, but also provide opportunities for the transformation of conflict and the generation of peace. Students learn to listen and negotiate in collaboration, gradually developing empathy and a sense of co-responsibility; teachers break through the traditional authority structure and form a more egalitarian interaction in the process of co-creation of space with students.
This paper argues that reinterpreting school space as a cultural process can help education play a peace-building role in a divided world. Education can not only convey the idea of peace through the curriculum, but also through space and cultural practices that allow students to “experience peace” and “practice peace” in their daily lives. This culturally responsive approach to education emphasizes collaboration, sharing and creativity, transforming the competition and exclusion that are embedded in the education system into cooperation and understanding, thereby promoting intercultural dialogue and social cohesion.
The contributions of this study is mainly reflected in three aspects. First, at the theoretical level, it advances the perspective of “spatial production as cultural reconfiguration,” enriching the interdisciplinary path of education and peace studies. Second, at the practical level, it demonstrates how Chinese high schools can explore educational improvement in specific cultural and institutional contexts, providing lessons for educational reform in other regions. Third, at the policy level, it calls for more attention to the impact of spatial factors on educational equity and cultural diversity in school construction and educational reform, so as to promote the deepening and realization of peace education.

Author

• Yuqian Zong, Faculty of Education, East China Normal University