Geography education, grey literature and the geographical canon

Geography's disciplinary canon may appear a 'top-down' enterprise, focused on the formal educational spaces of the academy and the sole or joint authored monograph. This paper argues for a supplementary critical examination of the most widely encountered form of geographical education, school geography, and an associated 'counter-canon' of grey publishing literature to which geographers, educators, and geography educators have contributed. The paper suggests that such material serves to simultaneously disrupt and enliven narratives of the subject's identity and its canonicity. This paper's empirical focus is the school teacher initiated, geography and education journal, Contemporary Issues in Geography and Education (1983 1991), a literary endeavour of critical vibrancy informing the dissenting activities of geographers across schools and higher education during the time. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.