Engaging Lessons: Classrooms as Sites of Engagement in Activist Critical Geography

Abstract

This paper introduces a special collection on classrooms as sites of engagement in activist critical geography and discusses three ways in which classrooms might be understood as such sites. They may be regarded as places for thoughtful information transmission and debate; as socially embedded political sites; and as research contexts. The paper acknowledges the difficulties of activist critical practice in the austerity universities of the new millennium, but nevertheless encourages geographers to give greater attention to the opportunities teaching offers for egalitarian social transformation and justice.