Learning within Socio-Political Landscapes: (Re)Imagining Children's Geographies. Occasional Paper Series 48

This issue of the Bank Street "Occasional Paper Series" brings together educators and researchers to (re)imagine what it means to teach and learn within the immediacy of the here and now, an orientation crucial to confronting contemporary threats to children's lives, democracy, and the planet. The papers seek to extend and broaden Bank Street College founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell's original conceptualizations by centering the past and future alongside the immediacies of the now, elevating Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) perspectives in children's geographies and exploring potentialities of mapping in analog as well as emerging digital forms. The authors also aim to carry forward her commitments to listening to children with curiosity and care, rooted in a belief that young people know a lot about the world already and that they are fully capable of delving deep into complex processes and problems. As such, this collection situates young peoples' here and now within sociopolitical landscapes, the wider nested systems and structures that constitute and reconstitute land, place, and children's geographies. The authors in this special issue extend, critique, and reimagine what it means to center young people's worlds and ways of knowing to make sense of the here and now.