Cartographies to Recognising Ourselves in Otherness

Abstract

The cartographic methodology helps foster necessary forms of agency in education where the researcher proposes a methodological alternative without neglecting the other. This chapter explores how this methodology impacts teachers' professional development and can be used within schools to promote recognition of otherness. It describes the enforcement of methods in our research to develop this alternative knowledge. We reveal the research's political and ethical positions and reflect on the transition from research proposals to teacher education while considering professionals as plural, changing and heterogeneous subjects. We describe the evolution of a new relationship between educators and teachers. Starting from visual analysis, we review the vignettes that account for otherness to reflect on the scope and possibilities of cartographic experience and practice. We suggest that teachers should have the right to be the first to narrate the reality they live in schools, articulate how that social reality works, and decide how relevant topics should be defined and organised. We discuss how the cartographic methodology offers new forms of practice and a theoretical foundation, allowing us to approach difference without absorbing, accommodating, homogenising or integrating it into academist totalising schemes.