Places to Develop Democracy: Relevance of Relph's Concept of Place for the History of Education

Abstract

This paper, based on the research developed in the Erasmus+ project Reimagining Creative Democracy (2018-1-SE01-KA203-039115), provides a synthesis of Relph’s concept of place giving examples of its use in the study of past and present educational spaces. The reappraisal of Relph’s concept might help address new perspectives from which spaces and places of education may be seen differently.

Spaces are relevant to the History of Education and Relph’s essay is important for us because it represents the phenomenological approach to the study of place and space from at least two perspectives: 1. The distinction between place and space; 2. The delimitation, when writing about educational spaces, of the emotional attachment to or detachment from a specific learning place (inside or outside the school buildings).