Educational renovation in a South African ‘township on the move’: A social–spatial analysis

This article presents an account of the ways education reform has been mediated in one South African township. It suggests that the normative policy intentions of the reforming post-apartheid state have been reworked in light of the specific social configuration of the township and its schools. It employs social–spatial lenses to understand the formative interaction between the township's social configuration processes and the institutional identities of its schools and teachers. The article shows how educational reform has been renovated in light of the spatially networked processes that played out in and around the schools. It suggests that the effects of educational policy reform can best be understood by the uses to which it has been put in this localised terrain.