A pedagogy for space: Visually framing the 2011 Chilean student movement

Abstract

The 2011 Chilean student protests were a powerful social movement aimed at transforming education and, with it, the social spaces and formations of daily life. This social movement was pedagogical because students transformed the city into a classroom to gain control over the production of space. In this vein, the student movement provided a catalyst for reconstituting public education as a universal social right. Based on the perspective of spatial educational theory, I conducted a visual framing analysis of three photographs taken during the 2011 Chilean student movement. I employed a four-tiered visual framing method. The three photographs were purposefully selected from different media sources to represent the three dimensions of spatial educational theory, including learning in conceived space, studying in lived space, and teaching in perceived space. In doing so, this article provides a novel way to explain spatial educational theory by visually operationalizing it as a pedagogy for space during the Chilean student movement. This article also works to broaden our conceptualization of student movements as pedagogical events for social transformation.