Disrupting Cartographies of Inequity: Education Journey Mapping as a Qualitative Methodology

• In Event: Critical Race Theory and the Spatial Analysis: Cases of Praxis to Disrupt Racial Injustice

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose: Education inequities are often both a social and spatial phenomenon. This socio-spatial dialectic wherein “the spatiality of (in)justice…affects society and social life just as much as social processes shape the….specific geography of (in)justice” (Soja, 2010, p. 5). (Soja, 2010). However, much education research surrounding inequities has focused only on the ways social processes perpetuates inequities. Therefore, this paper addresses a qualitative methodology for equity-focused educational research from a socio-spatial dialectic, the creation and application of Education Journey Maps.

Theoretical Frameworks: Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) allow an intersectional framing and therefore a comprehensive analysis of educational inequities (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013; Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1995). CRT and DisCrit center racism and ableism, recognizing the ways both make particular bodies susceptible to educational injustice through uneven distribution of resources based on race in a system of white supremacy.

Methods & Data Sources: In this presentation, I explore the steps to creating the maps, cautions to consider, and ways to do the deep narrative dives that allow for mapping to be a rich data source. Finally, I end with a description of the Cartographer’s Clinic, a data analysis technique that is participatory, to further situate students as the experts in their own lives, capable of generating and analyzing knowledge.

Result/Conclusions/Significance: The socio-spatial dialectic in the students’ Educations Journey Maps was revealed to be multidimensional including topographical, physical, and political. Topographical dimensions illustrated relief, including elevations and depressions. In Education Journey Maps, relief was texture and content, which illustrated participants’ high and low points in their education journeys. This topography allowed for a multilayered presentation of selves in motion throughout the education trajectory. Physical dimensions represented features of environments. Education Journey Maps provided an opportunity for students to draw the educational spaces, both internal and external, as well as the space between. It made visible power dynamics and state violence, along with factors that protected against those forces. Political dimensions reflected boundaries (e.g., national, state, regional, city). Through Education Journey Maps historically marginalized children were able to represent the social and spatial impacts of the boundaried color-line (DuBois, 1903). In other words, they were able to make visible the ways race and racism impacted their worlds through the barriers, both constructed and maintained. Yet, Education Journey Maps also allowed for a re-boundaried cartography. Boundaries were drawn, torn down, and re-imagined in the Education Journey Maps.
Education Journey Mapping is a qualitative methodology informed by a socio-spatial dialectic that provided an opportunity to collaborate with students to socially and spatially study the injustice that occurs in their lives and also, how they resist those cartographies of inequity. I hope that with continued applications, Education Journey Mapping can develop into a widely utilized tool for a variety of purposes, which is rooted in a critical commitment to address inequities to harness “hope and determination that research can strengthen public education” (p. 1).

Author

• Subini Ancy Annamma, The University of Kansas