Chapter 3 of Thomson, P. & Hall, C,. (2017) Place-based methods for researching schools. Bloomsbury.
Getting to Know the Neighbourhood
Thompson Pat & Christine Hall
The use of the terms ‘local school’ and ‘neighbourhood school’ implies that the school exists not only in a material location, but that it also has a special association with its surroundings.
The notion of ‘school community’ is often used to mean those who live around the school site. But school community additionally suggests a singular and homogeneous population, bound together through a meaningful association with the school.
Neighbourhoods also imply borders or something which differentiates its inhabitants from those outside of it. Questions are raised from this:
What counts as being in or out?
Which histories are recognised?
Who is associated with the area and who isn’t?
Problematising neighbourhoods:
There are some assumptions about neighbourhoods that don’t stack up. Far from being neatly bordered areas on maps:
Neighbourhoods are not homogeneous;
The boundaries of neighbourhoods are arbitrary and do not necessarily equate to the diverse ways in which residents live, work and mix or don’t mix together;
Neighbourhoods are porous – people physically move in and out of them at various times of the day/night;
Official and market driven representations of neighbourhoods are only one version of the neighbourhood – there are others;
Neighbourhoods are joined to other neighbourhoods near and far through the movement of people, things, images, information and so on;
Neighbourhoods are not static, they have various histories which variously frame their present/future
Community can be thought of as something which is more profitable to consider in regards to the school than its neighbourhood.
Community: A social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government and often have a common cultural and historical heritage; a locality inhabited by such a group; and a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists.
Like neighbourhoods, the people in a community are assumed to share either some kind of history or cultural characteristics. However, community can also mean people who are joined together through mutual activity or sets of beliefs which set them apart from others. These social communities are not necessarily connected to a neighbourhood, although they may have some kind of shared location associated with their raison d’être – a church, clubhouse, playing field or meeting room for instance
The notion that many people belong to more than one community, and only one of them might be associated with where they live or where they go to school, is important.
Membership within a community might influence conversations, connections and memories.
Community members are often assumed to have regard for each other, perhaps to exercise some degree of care about each other, and to offer support.
Communities may have informal rules, rituals and norms of behaviour which bind people together. - In order to adapt to a school efficiently, it is productive to recognise, identify and respect these rules and rituals.
David Plank's argues that Four types of communities are invoked in contemporary political discourse(1996):
Autochthonous communities – Characterised by ‘mutual interest and mutual concern’
Atavistic communities – Those that seek to find a lost sense of community, relying on ‘identity politics, exclusion, and intolerance as strategies for building or maintaining boundaries and enforcing compliance with community norms’.
Ascribed communities – Communities that may choose to be together, but this may also serve to exclude them from wider politics and communities.
Atomised communities – Those with no social solidarity nor any particular desire to regain a sense of community.
The notion of a community, when applied to schools, is likely to carry some unhelpful assumptions unless we are clear that:
People belong to several communities at once, and these may be of different kinds and orders;
Communities are not necessarily harmonious and the social ties that are created within them are various, and not always positive;
the notion of community is a powerful imaginary used for various political and policy ends.
Do Schools serve their neighbourhoods?
Many schools serve specific locations, often with tightly defined borders which determine who has the right to attend and who cannot.
Not everyone inside these ‘catchment areas’ or ‘zones of right’ choose to attend.
There is often a relationship between the school and its surrounds, regardless of how tightly the school enrolment matches the immediate material location
Gregory and Williams adopted a multi-layered approach which used ethnographic methods to examine the phenomena and social context
The importance of getting a historical perspective; *
The usefulness of seeing change over time;
The benefits of using existing data sets;
The possibilities for incorporating more than one spatial level of analysis;
The detail provided by combining multiple qualitative methods;
*The authors argue that this history, this rich mix of cultures, religions and politics, was experienced by the generations still living.
Where can we look?
Visiting the local newspaper website is often rewarding
There is potentially a lot of useful information online in the form of local websites
Further academic reading may bring further enlightenment
There is no substitute in our view for actually getting out into the local area yourself
In Situ questions:
How modern/old is it?
What are the gardens like?
How well maintained is the streetscape?
What shops and other amenities are there?
Where is the bus or train stop?
Where is the local shop the students might go to before or after school or perhaps at lunch time?
What does it sell?
Who else seems to go there?
Is there a bigger shopping centre nearby or does it seem as if the local residents have to depend on small and expensive options or travel further afield?
Is there a doctor handy?
A dentist?
Is there a local park or playground?
Who seems to use it and when?
Is it maintained?
What churches, sporting facilities and other local amenities are there?
Does it seem as if the school has to be self-sufficient, or can it use amenities in the neighbourhood?
After you’ve completed your walking around, it is very helpful to write a short description of the school surrounds as you first saw them.
Guy Debord - If one sticks to the direct exploration of a particular terrain, one is concentrating primarily on research for a psychogeographical urbanism.
Clear the mind of any preconceptions. Rather than approaching the school surrounds with a set of questions already in mind (a what-is-there-in-this-locality agenda), the dérive requires you to simply walk/drive around, open and observant to the surroundings and any encounters that you have.
Debord’s thesis was that the physical make-up of a city, or neighbourhood, did not necessarily map onto its psychic layout
Look out for:
The presence or absence of commercial activity;
The location, condition and use of public spaces;
The amount of activity on the streets at given times, and who is involved in doing what;
The noise level in various part of the area;
The level of traffic and frequency and accessibility of public transport and its use;
The nature, age and condition of housing;
The public buildings, their location, condition and use;
Differences that suggest cultural diversity or economic inequalities.
We can then plot these things on a proximity based influence map:
You hear a lot about schools and their communities and much of this kind of conversation assumes that what goes on inside the school fence, and what goes on outside, is stable, coherent, static and homogenous. This is not the case, and it is important to investigate the particular neighbourhood(s), catchment and population of the school in which you are interested. A lot can be learnt through walking and driving around, chatting, and using readily available sources of information. This kind of information provides a good foundation from which to venture into the school itself.
Comments