Seeing the Unseen

Critical Geospatial Mapping as a Pedagogical Tool to Center the Margins

Abstract

A hyper-standardized and alarmist educational climate in the U.S. propagates deficit discourses about students and creates a roadblock for teachers seeking to center their students’ lives through critical and multicultural pedagogies. Scholars have called for attention to mapping as a pedagogical tool to unearth and push back against sociospatial injustice. In line with this, I offer the tool of critical geospatial mapping and provide two examples of how its application allowed preservice and in-service teachers to see the previously unseen strengths and resiliencies of historically-marginalized and multicultural communities. This allowed them to critique and reframe deficit narratives.