Emotional geographies and the study of education spaces

Abstract

Both emotion (and affect) and education have become important topics for disciplinary human geographers over the past decade. Simultaneously, a ‘spatial turn’ has been observed in the broader social sciences that has inflected research on emotion and education. This chapter-written from the perspective of a human geographer-examines the implications of such a turn for studying emotion in education. It begins by outlining how geographers have theorised emotion and affect, noting productive tensions between these two terms. Thereafter, it reviews- through four examples-how emotional geographies have inflected research on education. In so doing, it raises a series of conceptual questions that should underpin the planning of research on education and emotions-especially about the ways in which space ‘matters’ to a particular educational practice.