'Nothing Can Ever Be the Case of "Us" and "Them" Again': exploring the politics of difference through border pedagogy and student journal writing

Linda McDowell (1994) has called for styles of teaching which put into practice arguments about the 'politics of a difference', which has become an increasingly central part of human geographical research. This paper draws on a number of years experience of teaching an undergraduate course on multicultural historical geography, irt which this was attempted. Here students were encouraged to get more involved in these debates, to rake them more personally, and to develop 'situated knowledges' about the UK as a multicultural society. The approach to reaching, learning and assessment which made this possible was based on the principles of 'border pedagogy' and on students writing journals throughout the course which charted the development of their understandings of the materials they encountered.