This year, I have had the wonderful privilege of writing alongside Simon Oakes and Noel Castree to explore the importance of power as a concept in geographical education alongside the traditional space, place, Earth systems and environment.
We comment on the absence of power as a guiding concept and explore the potential impacts that its presence could have on the discourse of Geography education. I contribute to the article through an educational and decolonial lens, exploring the use of power as a lens when approaching geographical topics, and the support such a lens provides to critical, decolonial and anti-racist geographies.
Below is an excerpt from the article, I encourage you to read on and we are excited for the discourse that this article will inspire.
“Questions of power can enrich geographical education in countless ways. For example, system and network ideas are used widely in our classrooms. Yet far more might be done to stimulate critical thinking about how economic systems in particular are powered. Development education soon becomes descriptive without much discussion of causality and power. In GCSE exam specifications and textbooks, critical thinking about power is too often framed as an ‘extension’ or ‘challenge’ activity rather than a guiding concern (AQA, 2022; Cambridge, 2021).”
