Making Spaces: teacher workplace topologies

Abstract

Studies of the workplace of teachers commonly focus on the spaces of the classroom, staffroom and school as pre-given and bounded entities. This article explores the possibilities of moving beyond such topographies of enclosure, towards seeing space(-time) as recursively constructed with social relations and so made and remade. Boundaries are then far more porous than suggested by the egg-crate image of isolated classrooms or the individual school embedded in its local context. This article draws on an empirical study of two secondary schools in England to illustrate the utility of a spatial perspective in explaining patterns of association. We may see that the school is not fixed and static but the site for intersecting networks of relations, technology and practice which extend in complex interrelations beyond what is (variably) seen as the institution. If space-time is constantly remade, performed and produced by interconnecting social practices, then there are greater possibilities for understanding the topologies of the school as a workplace for adults.