The living city: Thirdspace and the contemporary geography curriculum

ABSTRACT

With the widening of the national curriculum, geography teachers in secondary schools can now develop their own curricula around a series of ‘key concepts’. This article describes how ideas from academic geography can be used to inspire and motivate students in secondary schools. Here, Soja's (1996, 2000) concept of ‘Thirdspace’ forms the basis of classroom-based activities for year 10 (14–15 year old) students. It focuses on perceptions of urban space which are conveyed through the ‘Thirdspace’ of illicit drug users in Edinburgh. The article indicates how those concepts and ideological traditions that underlie geography curriculum in schools, including the need to employ the ‘grammar’ of geography, have helped to inform the classroom-based action research described here. It also argues that introducing approaches such as Thirdspace in school geography may help to overcome the perceived irrelevancy of the subject by students and thus address the decline in the number taking geography at GCSE and A-level.