西方教育地理学研究评述与本土反思

近20 a来,西方教育地理学受马克思主义地理学以及社会文化地理学思想的影响,重新审视教育空间与社会结构的关联,从多维度进一步认识教育空间建构过程中的政治经济与社会文化机制。对西方教育地理学的产生和发展演变进行分析,并尝试从政治经济和社会文化两大视角,总结和归纳当前西方教育地理学研究的主要成果和内容。教育地理学是一门新兴而又发展迅猛的人文地理学分支,但该学科的理论和实证发展尚处于以西方为主导的阶段,强势的西方话语体系还未充分涉及和理解非西方国家背景下的教育现象。当前是非西方国家建构自身教育地理学理论特色,并与西方教育地理学研究展开理论和实践对话的重要机遇和窗口。中国拥有世界规模最大的教育群体,当前社会经济发展的转型和人口结构的改变也进一步塑造了教育空间的多样性和特殊性。总之,加深教育与空间关系的研究,增强教育地理学研究的中西对话,构建中国化的教育地理学研究体系,使教育空间成为考察中国社会经济转型的重要视角,是中国教育地理学研究未来应努力的方向。

Progress in Geographies of Education: Literature Review and Local Reflections

Influenced by the development of Marxist geography and social and cultural geography in the past two decades, geographies of education, which focus on the connections between educational space and social structures with a multi-dimensional perspective, have become one of the most fast-growing research fields within human geography in the west. This paper focuses on its definition, approaches and topics in the existing literature on geographies of education, sorting out the current research from two aspects: political-economic perspective and social-cultural perspective. The findings of this paper include: 1) geographies of education is a relatively new but fast-growing sub-field of human geography; 2) its process of knowledge production is mainly based on the western social contexts; 3) few research has focused on the educational phenomenon in non-western social contexts, and China in particular. This research argues that China -one of the biggest and most diverse educational systems in the world-has great potential of contributing to the current western-dominant geographies of education, especially given that the social and economic transformations in China has led to significant changes to its educational spaces.