Questioning recontextualisation: considering recontextualisation’s geographies

Abstract

This chapter explores the spatial imaginaries at work in Bertsein’s model of the pedagogic device and considers the implications for accounts of recontextualisation. I argue that the fields of production, recontextualisation and reproduction are more blurred than implied by Berstein’s model, and increasingly so with actors taking on hybrid, boundary-crossing roles. I consider what might be gained by conceiving of the relationships between these fields, and their actors, in less hierarchal or horizontal (planar) ways – and what networked, relational spatialities might offer. By exploring alternative ways of thinking about the relationships between the fields, I draw out implications for how we understand the relationships between the academic discipline of geography and school geography. The effect is to consider how we might better value the teaching and communication of geography in and across all spaces of learning. This opens up new questions, and avenues for research, about the connections, collaborations and exchanges between academic geographer, teacher educator and school communities.