Mapping/Remapping Discourse in Educational Policy Studies. Occasional Paper Series. APS Conceptual Mapping Project.

This essay demonstrates the origins, rationale and utility for social cartography as a process capable of portraying the interrelations of truth and value choices in the field of educational policy studies. The article focuses on the particular domain of environmental education-related discourse while presenting both a primary conceptual mapping project and a critique of the work performed. The authors explain the interrelations of the discourse and disclose interactions between themselves and with their readers to demonstrate how the intertextual field opens the heuristic circle to include readers as active participants in the process. They essay argues that social cartography is a methodology which attends to the spatial dispersion of ideas so as to explicitly portray their value and power relations. Conclusions touch on the potential and limitations of social cartography as a useful methodology for attending to postmodern considerations within the realm of educational policy studies, including its practical application to environmental education, the metanaratives of science and technology. (Contains 34 References.) (Author/CK)