Interview I

This interview is divided into three sections. The first section is about teaching experience and the teacher's educational background. The second section considers the teacher's understanding of the Taiwanese EFL context. The third section addresses principles and practice of teaching.

Section 1: Information about the teacher's background The teacher's English language teaching experience

1. Could you tell me about your teaching experience (e.g., years of teaching, teaching contexts, courses taught)?

2. Could you give me examples of your teaching English for communication purposes before this course?

The teacher's educational background

1. Could you briefly describe your educational background?

2. When receiving teacher education, did you receive training about WE, EIL, and ELF? If yes, what courses did you take and how did you feel about them? Did you feel the knowledge you gained useful to your teaching in the Taiwanese context? If not from previous courses, how did you learn about ELF, WE, or EIL? Did you find any of this knowledge useful to your teaching in the Taiwanese context?

Section 2: The teacher's perspective on Taiwanese EFL contexts Language use

1. How do you perceive Taiwanese people's English in general as a teacher as well as a foreigner in Taiwan?

2. How do you find international students' English and their communicative use with Taiwanese people?

3. Are there any further comments on Taiwanese people's English you would like to provide (e.g., anecdotes from other foreign friends)?

Language teaching and learning

1. In general, what about language teaching and learning do you think teachers and students in Taiwan have paid more or less attention to?

2. What do you think of Taiwanese students' approach to English language education? Can you name the approaches used by your previous students which you think are useful and useless to preparing them for communicative language use?

English as a lingua franca and internationalisation of higher education in the Taiwanese context

1. What did you think of the university staff s English when you were an international student?

2. When you were an international student, how did you feel about local and international students' use of English to communicate with one other? Can you give me some examples?

Section 3: The teacher's evaluation of his teaching

1. How have you taught Taiwanese students or other EFL learners before this project?

2. Can you identify the major difference or changes in your teaching and ideas of learning English language before and after this research project?

3. While teaching during this research project, did you find any principles of teaching and learning particularly useful for students to develop their English?

4. What ideas of learning and teaching were not very effective or helpful in creating opportunities for language use?

Interview II

The following interview questions were formulated based on the teacher's reflection report and videoed classroom practices.

1. Why did you focus on vocabulary rather than grammar, pronunciation, or other linguistic input? Was this decision related to your expertise? Were there any theories or ideas of teaching English for intercultural communication that supported your decision?

2. In addition to students' scenarios for language use, what other resources did you refer to when you wrote the dialogues in the first two months? Did you add any ideas of yours when writing the dialogues? If yes, what were those ideas and why did you add them? If not, why not add some of your own ideas?

3. Can you tell me how your students practised English using the written dialogues and target vocabulary? Did they have to memorise the written conversations, or did they use other ways to practise English?

4. What made you decide that students should write their own dialogues? What theories of teaching or other ideas supported your decision?

5. Why did you think your students would be unwilling or not confident to use English in their own ways? Are there any examples of the ways you used or you think can make students confident in their English use?

6. Can you give examples of students' English which was intelligible or unintelligible to you? How did you make judgments about whether your students' English was internationally intelligible or unintelligible? Did students help you understand their English when it was unintelligible? How did the students do this?

7. Was the use of dialogue writing a strategy that you used to prepare students who have lower proficiency of English to become a user of English?

8. Can you tell me what kind of strategies you used to help students become English users? Do you find these strategies useful to your students to learn and use vocabulary? Why is that?

9. Do you find L1 resources can help your students use English? Could you give examples to support your viewpoint?

10. You stated in the reflection that students like vocabulary strategies. Do you mean they like the strategies because they find them useful for learning or using English? If not, what did you mean?

 

Appendix 4

Student Interview Questions

1. How do you feel when you are communicating with foreign students? For example, do you feel it is difficult or easy to communicate with them?

2. Do you think you speak differently when talking to someone whose first language is English compared to someone whose first language is not English?

3. Do you think that after you have had this kind of experience with foreign students that there is anything that has changed about your attitude and/or perception of English learning?

4. Is there anything else that you would like to describe or just tell your feelings about when dealing with international students, learning English, or taking a training course like this one? Is there anything else you would like to add? You can share your feelings, or you can express your feelings about anything you would like to share.

 

Appendix 5

Transcription Conventions

 

Click to enlarge

^rND^sBaker^nW.^rND^sChang^nY.-J.^rND^sDogancay-Aktuna^nS.^rND^nJ.^sHardman^rND^sFang^nF.^rND^nW.^sRen^rND^sGalloway^nN.^rND^nH.^sRose^rND^sGao^nX.^rND^sHall^nC. J^rND^sHall^nJ. K.^rND^nA.^sCheng^rND^nM. T.^sCarlson^rND^sJenkins^nJ^rND^nC.^sLeung^rND^sKang^nS.-Y.^rND^sLamb^nT.^rND^sLeung^nC.^rND^nJ.^sLewkowicz^rND^sLittle^nD^rND^sLittle^nD.^rND^sLu^nY.-L.^rND^sNation^nI. S. P.^rND^sNation^nI. S. P.^rND^nA.^sYamamoto^rND^sReynolds^nB. L.^rND^nM. H.^sYu^rND^sReynolds^nB. L.^rND^nM. H.^sYu^rND^sRose^nH.^rND^nJ.^sMcKinley^rND^nN.^sGalloway^rND^sSung^nC. C. M.^rND^sTomlinson^nB.^rND^nH.^sMasuhara^rND^sWang^nJ.^rND^nS.-I.^sLiang^rND^nG.^sGe^rND^sWiddowson^nH. G.^rND^sXu^nZ.^rND^sYu^nM. H.^rND^sYu^nM. H.^rND^1A01^nYijie^sWang^rND^1A02^nQiran^sWang^rND^1A01^nYijie^sWang^rND^1A02^nQiran^sWang^rND^1A01^nYijie^sWang^rND^1A02^nQiran^sWang

ARTICLE

 

How Female Students Are "Educated" to Retreat from Leadership: An Example from the Chinese Schooling Context

 

 

Yijie Wang^I; Qiran Wang^II

^IUniversity of Glasgow, United Kingdom 2431528w@student.gla.ac.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6927-6505
^IIBeijing Normal University, China wangqiran1917@163.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4137-6747

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

Women's continued under-representation in leadership positions is well documented. This article asserts that part of the reason for this can be found within educational settings. Chinese educational environments are examined using secondary data analysis, and it is argued that a) the protective approach that teachers adopt towards female students, b) the reserved and unworldly female images exhibited by textbooks, and c) the improper view of leadership that girls tend to develop through classroom-based leadership experiences combine to damage girls' leadership potential. These mechanisms are usually unintentional and hard to detect, which means that part of the solution lies in promoting the awareness of teachers and educational leaders. Meanwhile, it is important to note that this issue is not merely about equal treatment for both genders; rather, it is broadly linked to our construction of leadership as a concept. Ultimately, the educational setting is expected not only to produce an equal number of "great women" and "great men", but also-partly through its explorations of how to cultivate the female version of a "great man"-to contribute to updating and advancing the "leadership" concept and practice as a whole.

Keywords: gender; leadership education; sociology of education; Chinese educational context

---

 

 

Introduction

Both globally and within the Chinese context, women are significantly under-represented in leadership roles. Although some take the perspective that women are socialised against developing leadership attributes very early on in life (Nkomo and Ngambi 2009), there are also sufficient reasons to assume that girls may gradually withdraw from leadership roles as they mature. A number of studies have pointed to the fact that girls are fully capable of assuming leadership roles in childhood (Li et al. 2007; Shin et al. 2004; Sun et al. 2017; Yamaguchi and Maehr 2004), and, in certain cases, being a girl is in fact associated with being a leader (Li et al. 2007). Yet, by the time young women have transitioned into adulthood, they are under-represented in leadership positions (see, for example, Hoyt and Johnson 2011). From this standpoint, women seem to have grown out of leadership.

Several factors that contribute to this phenomenon are worth exploring. Like any social phenomenon, girls' gradual withdrawal from leadership roles may be the result of many causes. Because schools are both where children develop leadership-related qualities (Brungardt 1996) and where they learn to conform to gender norms (Paechter 2007), it is assumed here that part of the answer lies in the educational setting. This article draws on data gathered from existing research in Chinese academia to explore how educational settings, despite the intention to cultivate more female leaders and challenge the status quo, end up preventing female students from taking up leadership roles.

 

Theoretical Framework

Gender, Gender Roles and Leadership

Gender has been regarded as both an essence and a social construct, with the former emphasising the natural dimension and the latter the environmental and social elements (Giraldo and Colyarb 2012). Although biological factors do play a part in gender identity, gender-relevant behaviours are learned from other members of society (Bandura 1977). From this perspective, gender is more than a fixed, predetermined trait, but is a social construct continuously shaped by external forces. The presentation of a gender role is not expressive of a construct that already exists but is purely performative; it is "real only to the extent that it is performed" (Butler 1988, 527). Gender-related acts performed by people in their everyday lives are essentially what gender is, and the repetition of these acts, risen out of habits or fears of being sanctioned, in turn reinforces the illusion that gender is an entity. This leads to further performances. Fundamentally, gender-related acts exist before gender itself. Without any mystical, pre-existing force, gender acts are both the effect and the cause of the phenomenon.

Based on the perspective that gender is a performance, it is thought that in addition to more direct and explicit factors (for example, not receiving a sufficient educational level required for leadership roles), women are prevented from becoming leaders due to the gender-related roles assigned to and expected of them. Early socialisation compels young females towards roles such as mothers and wives and directs them away from leadership positions (Nkomo and Ngambi 2009). The attributes associated with being female and those associated with leadership differ, meaning female leaders are faced with role conflicts and may be penalised for violating their gender roles (Baker 2014).

Consistent with this framework, the premise of this article is that female students retreat from leadership not because females essentially lack leadership qualities, but because they are educated to perform in a non-leader-like role. The gender-related attitudes and behaviours that girls believe are expected of them, instead of gender per se, are responsible for their retreat from leadership.

The Reproductive Effects of Education

On the one hand, one of the basic premises of education is that it can foster positive social change (Dewey 1916). On the other hand, the ineffectiveness of education in this regard is also well documented (Coleman et al. 1966). Many theorists maintain that the education system, rather than breaking the status quo, in fact often leads to the reproduction and reinforcement of the current social order, albeit this is often not planned or intended (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990; Willis 1979). Within the educational system, because all the standards and actions are already shaped by, and are therefore beneficial to, the privileged, those with a less privileged status are subject to a hidden form of oppression. In this article, it is argued that in educational settings today, although female students are explicitly encouraged to break down the "compliant-girl" stereotypes and take up leadership positions, the potential for them to do so is nonetheless hindered, or even sabotaged, during the educative process that is supposed to empower them. The productive effects of education are also demonstrated here.

Gender, Leadership, and Education within the Chinese Context

In terms of gender and leadership, the Chinese context shares some similarities with the overall global context. Within China, despite there being various institutions that encourage women to develop leadership skills and apply for leadership roles, female leaders are significantly fewer in number compared to their male counterparts, and this holds true at various levels (Dong 2016). Additionally, in addressing the problem of women's under-representation in leadership, the role of education is greatly emphasised. A series of educational programmes (Du 2013; Zhang, Zheng, and Guo 2013), some of which have been backed by the central government, have been established to cultivate women leaders. These educational programmes have achieved significant results, albeit they mainly address the explicit and ignore the implicit; that is, they regard the role of education purely as directly imparting leadership orientations to women-without touching on the implicit messages inherent in the general educational process.

In relation to the current study, what may be specific to the Chinese context is that explicit messages regarding how females are directly taught to take up (or give up) leadership roles may be augmented and focused on, rendering the implicit part, that is, how females are inadvertently and unintentionally educated out of leadership, all the more overlooked. Consistent with the Chinese socialist-feminist tradition in which women's welfare is pursued from the top down rather than the bottom up (Croll 2013), scholars have noted that, in seeking to cultivate women leaders through education, the approach that suits China's sociopolitical situation is to seek support from a higher political power within the country (Du 2017; Zhang, Zheng, and Guo 2013). The higher political power is expected to enable circumstances that directly and specifically empower women in leadership roles, which is a valid, situation-appropriate approach for its own sake, and yet reflective of how wider Chinese society has a linear way of thinking in relation to education and women's leadership abilities in general. This not only renders the analysis of implicit messages all the more timely, but also indicates a contrast: the situation in which female students are inadvertently educated out of leadership through everyday practice constitutes a sharp distinction to that in which a large number of educational programmes are designed to empower women so that they can attain and retain leadership roles.

 

The Current Study

Methodology and Data Source

This article draws data from pre-existing studies, relying mainly on data that was presented in research papers and theses. This choice comes from the nature of research within Chinese academia: most research, including that which draws from the relatively rich data set, does not disclose or share its raw data, and this is even more common in the case of qualitative research. The limited access further renders the re-use of data necessary and justified. Although the data available for secondary analysis is relatively limited, analysis is nevertheless made possible by the existence of a large amount of research that features abundant details. Among the chosen articles are published academic papers that provide illustrated observations and degree dissertations (authorised or approved by formal institutions) that, due to less stringent restrictions on word count, often contain substantial details and in-depth depictions. Articles have been accessed via the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), one of the most comprehensive databases of academic articles written in Chinese, and Muduo Search, a database that includes many dissertations.

Data Selection and Article Selection

Any secondary analysis needs to consider the consistency of the data sources; because researchers are immersed in data and are heavily influenced by broader contexts, secondary analyses based on qualitative studies must pay attention to the original context of each specific data source (Irwin 2019). As the current study aims to investigate the development of women's leadership qualities in Chinese education, the primary criteria for data selection are a) the articles must feature empirical research that was conducted within or directly addressed the educational landscape of mainland China, and b) the articles must, either strictly or broadly, address issues that are relevant to the development of leadership skills in female students. To avoid obvious complications relating to the contexts and positions of researchers, this study narrows the data sources to articles written in Chinese by Chinese scholars. In addition, the data sources must have been published between 2001 and 2020. The year 2001 was chosen as a starting point because that is when gender issues in educational settings were first addressed at a micro level in official documents in China.¹ Forty-eight articles were eventually included for analysis.

Data Analysis and Presentation

Thematic analysis was employed to make sense of the data. The lead researcher followed the six steps outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006): familiarisation with the data; generation of initial codes; searching for potential themes; reviewing and refining the themes; defining and naming the themes; and producing written accounts of the themes. The first stage (familiarisation with the data) took place during the article screening. The second round, which was accompanied by note-taking that would later help in generating initial codes, occurred after the article screening. After those two rounds, a series of preliminary codes were summarised, listed and repeatedly reviewed. As a result, several patterns emerged: a) the articles as a whole tended to reach the general consensus that female students are discouraged from taking up leadership roles or developing leadership qualities; b) the articles as a whole tended to portray the aforementioned educated-out-of-leadership process as unintended, unexpected and hidden (these articles were generally informed by a sociological perspective); c) a wide variety of mechanisms contribute to the educated-out-of-leadership process. Using these three patterns as a foundation and building on the researchers' existing knowledge of theories relevant to the topic (for example, the different ways of making sense of leadership within academia), three main themes, which are presented in the later sections, were identified. Before these three main themes are presented, the frameworks that inform the development and presentations of the themes are outlined.

 

Leadership: What It Means and What It Implies

In today's academic world, there are various types of leadership positions and styles, each with its own set of orientations and implications. While the usage of the term varies according to the specific situations being studied, and it is impossible to find a single definition (McCleskey 2014), a review of its usages will nevertheless help us to get at its core meaning.

First, to clarify what leadership is, it is important to trace how it used to be defined, and how it developed over time. As is concluded by Silva (2016), at the earlier stages of human wisdom, the term "leadership" was mostly seen as an individual quality. The ancient thinkers, such as Confucius and Plato, put major emphasis on the characteristics and behaviours of leaders and leadership as a "great man" exercising his powers, as represented by Carlyle et al. ([1841] 2013), who maintained this idea, even in the nineteenth century (Silva 2016). It was only after World War II that the term transcended the domain of individual traits and began to be viewed as a social process (Silva 2016). When this change occurred, the interaction between the leader and the follower, rather than the leader himself, became the central focus. For instance, Tannenbaum, Weschler, and Massarik ([1961] 2013, 24) define leadership as the "interpersonal influence, exercised in a situation, and directed, through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals".

However, even as the view of leadership was transformed to be more social-oriented and the importance of individual leaders seemed to be downplayed, it is imperative for us to note that "the leader" never disappeared; instead, the concept re-emerged in the hidden form of "exerting influence". The above-mentioned definition by Tannenbaum, Weschler and Massarik ([1961] 2013), along with those offered by other post-War scholars (Stogdill 1950; Zaleznik 1977), used the term "influence" to characterise leadership, and the literature of the last decades continued to describe leadership as an exercise of social influence (Murphy 2011). Even in the cases where both the leader and the exercise of influence are not mentioned in a literal sense, such as phrasing leadership as "taking responsibility and initiative for the functions that must be fulfilled" (Sun et al. 2017, 213), their presence is nevertheless implied. The more social-oriented views of leadership do not dismiss leaders as less significant; rather, they modify the previous version of leadership-that leaders have a series of fixed, isolated qualities-and are more involved in social action. Following this line of thinking, the leader and the influence upon others are two irreplaceable elements of the leadership concept. Originally, leadership emerged as an individual; then the leader began to exert influence.

So what does all of this imply about leadership? First, leadership, in its most primal form, exhibits the image of an individual who, rendered visible by his personal qualities, stands out markedly against the crowd. This ancient version of a superior man condescending over the mediocre masses is out of sync with modern society, but it represents the roots of leadership and therefore says a lot about it. The first thing our ancestors noticed about leadership was the leader's individual traits, which must have been dazzling enough to feature the whole concept. To lead, there must be people who are out there to be seen, who distinguish themselves from the rest and step onto the stage, either literally or metaphorically, for a short period of time or for their lifetime. Second, to constitute leadership, the man who successfully stood out must not stop there, but continue to influence, that is, effect changes among, the group. To do so requires extending a part of one's property (ideas, goals, action plans, etc.) onto other people, which means that, rather than sitting in the confines or comfort of his own territory, the leader must look outward and make connections with the outer domains. To sum up, leadership implies that people (as leaders) stand out and extend/expand outward.

The above is not meant to introduce a cynical or backward view of leadership; it is merely an attempt to establish the more fundamental elements of a concept that bears a vast range of representations today. In contemporary times, there have been numerous proposals for redefining leadership (Blackmore 1989; Levitt 2010; Perreault 2001), which in a way serve to instil a certain amount of humanism into the concept and move it away from the ancient "great man" version. However, the very act of calling for redefinition indicates that the more humanistic views, though perhaps starting to gain ground, are not yet a reality. It is important to note that the intention here is to gain insights about what leadership was/is likely to be, rather than to dictate what leadership should be. Apart from this, of equal importance is that the seemingly backward view of leadership as presented above, albeit lacking in humanistic elements, is not meant to be the exact opposite of the modern version. Claiming that to be leaders people have to stand out and exert influence in outer domains does not imply that leadership positions are in any way permanent, or that there can only be one leader in a certain context. Nor does it mean that the relationship dimension of leadership is unimportant, or that the acceptance of followers is not of vital significance. Leaders must distinguish themselves from others and exert their power; whether they do this in a dictatorial or democratic manner is not inherently relevant here. Two elements are highlighted and deemed fundamental, but this does not deny the possibility that other elements can be added to constitute an improved form a leadership.

 

The Seeds of Leadership: How One Develops into a Leader

The seeds of leadership take root early in life (Murphy 2011). To develop into a leader, one needs both baseline characteristics and learning experience (Murphy 2011; Popper and Mayseless 2007).

Baseline Characteristics

A series of personality traits have been shown to be associated with developing leadership skills. One of the most frequently mentioned characteristics is extraversion, with much research (Antonakis, Cianciolo, and Sternberg 2004; Ilies, Gerhardt, and Le 2004; Judge et al. 2002; Reichard et al. 2011) showing that being extraverted is linked with assuming leadership roles. In fact, certain findings (Judge et al. 2002) even indicate that extraversion may be the single most consistent predictor associated with leader emergence. Additionally, a longitudinal study has proved that there is a significant relationship between extraversion earlier in life and leadership emergence afterwards (Guerin et al. 2011). What exactly is extraversion? As proposed by Jung ([1921] 2009), it is an outward orientation of energy flow, enabling people to put their focus on the outer world. Present-day psychologists deem it to be based on the approach/withdrawal dimension (Guerin et al. 2011), implying that extraverted people welcome, rather than retreat from, outer stimuli. Thus, it is perhaps not hard to understand that traits such as openness to experience, self-confidence, proactive orientation, caring for others-which are largely in line with the implication of extraversion-are all well-documented personality traits related to becoming leaders (Popper and Mayseless 2007).

Besides personality traits, another important aspect of leadership characteristics is the motivation to lead (Avolio and Vogelgesang 2011; Murphy 2011), which is argued to have its roots in childhood (Gottfried et al. 2011; Popper and Mayseless 2007). Motivation towards leadership includes several aspects (Chan and Drasgow 2001), and empirical research has indicated that only the intrinsic motivation to lead-namely, the enjoyment of leadership per se instead of external considerations-is a predictor of taking up leadership later in life (Gottfried et al. 2011).

How do we understand the above baseline characteristics in relation to leader development? Extraversion, confidence, and proactiveness put a person into a central, visible position, and their openness to experience, as well as the tendency to act with much energy and zeal as part of being extraverted, contributes to their expansion and asserting influence. Care for others, while considered a much more delicate quality, is also a form of moving outward and making a difference in the outer domain. All these qualities combine to fit the prototypical image of a leader-that is, as discussed above, a person who is inclined to stand out against the crowd and expand themself. Other than this, the intrinsic motivation implies that a person is not thrown into this situation accidentally; they instead actively make it happen and relish the experience of leading.

Learning Experiences

While baseline characteristics provide the foundation, learning experiences are what trigger them into action. Both vicarious learning and experiential learning are crucial in terms of leadership development (Popper and Mayseless 2007).

Vicarious Learning

Vicarious learning (that is, social learning) refers to the learning that originates from the observation and imitation of a role model (Bandura 1977). It is argued that leaders or leadership behaviours that we encounter earlier in life shape our leadership-related practices later (Adler 2011; Popper and Mayseless 2007). Also, it is important to note that vicarious learning is not limited to observing people in real life (Kazdin 1976); symbolic models, such as the figures in books, also count (Decker 1986), and even fairy tales or animated characters can help children understand leadership-related concepts (Murphy 2011). One of the implications of developing leadership through vicarious experience is that serious consideration should be given to what the role models are like, as well as to the modelling processes (Popper and Mayseless 2007).

Experiential Learning

The experiential learning of leadership refers to the learning that occurs in real-world leadership experiences. This does not only happen in formal workplaces or in adulthood; school settings as well as family, peer groups, and communities usually offer young children good opportunities to try out leadership (Brungardt 1996; Popper and Mayseless 2007). Experiential learning is highly relevant to the development of leaders because it gives feedback, the accumulation of which has much to do with one's leadership self-efficacy (Popper and Mayseless 2007). In terms of this, it is proposed that attention should be paid to the leadership intervention programmes provided for children and adolescents (Murphy 2011).

 

Educated to Retreat: How Educational Settings Hinder Females' Leadership Development

In educational settings, both the baseline characteristics that girls tend to develop and the learning experiences (vicarious and experiential) girls usually have contribute to girls' eventual withdrawal from leadership roles.

The Dark Side of Privilege: Living Behind a Protective Shield Discourages the Development of Leadership Qualities

It is proposed that, in school settings, children are generally expected to establish themselves not as boys and girls, but overwhelmingly in the institutionally guided role of students (Paechter 2007). This applies perfectly to the Chinese classroom setting, where academic achievements and discipline are paramount. This means that, within the school system, girls will not be degraded as long as they prove themselves to be qualified students. In fact, similar to the West, Chinese scholars have begun to argue that the nature of present-day educational systems works to girls' advantages (Li 2010; Zhao and Sun 2010). However, it is imperative to note that girls gain advantages because they happen to be the students the system prefers, not because they are girls. Gender itself is not a privilege, nor does it inherently imply any; either through the willingness to conform, or through the capability to earn higher grades, girls have earned, instead of having simply received, their privileges.

If there is any gender-based privilege, it is that girls are well cared for and protected. A variety of studies point to the fact that teachers take girls' feelings much more into account compared to boys' feelings (Chen 2004; Huang-fu 2014; Kong 2012; Li 2013; Lv 2013). In one study, teachers reported that when arranging seats, they are fully conscious of the need to be considerate of girls' needs, while with boys this does not matter much (Kong 2012). In another study, teachers admitted that they avoid criticising girls if possible, since they are not deemed as tough as boys are; also, the researcher observed that in classroom settings, if girls fail to answer a question correctly, teachers are more likely to give feedback in a gentle and reassuring way (Huang-fu 2014).

While there is no denying that the awareness of the need to protect students is, in itself, a beautiful thing, the fact remains that the protection enjoyed by girls alone functions as a kind of differentiation mechanism and has certain unpleasant implications (Chen 2004; Huang-fu 2014; Kong 2012; Li 2013; Liu 2005; Lv 2013). One of these is that girls tend to grow more fragile in character (Kong 2012); another less examined but equally noteworthy effect is that teachers may develop a preference towards boys because they are viewed as able to be criticised and easier to deal with (Huang-fu 2014). In accordance with this, it is claimed that in the teaching practice teachers tend to be polite and avoidant towards girls, whereas with boys the interaction is much more natural (Shi 2004). Following this line of thinking, the worldwide well-documented phenomenon that boys receive more attention than girls is perhaps not only about boys needing the attention while girls do not-it may well be that, in an effort to avoid hurtful interactions, teachers withhold negative attention or attention that has the potential to be interpreted as negative by girls.

But even negative attention is, in essence, a kind of attention, which is at times preferable to no attention at all. Any form of attention positions the person who receives it in a central state, thus highlighting and rendering marked their existence. It conveys the message that one is important, while offering the chance of practising being visible, of being seen. Living behind this protective shield, girls end up losing quality opportunities to observe and evaluate the experiences of being the focus of attention.

Furthermore, in real-life circumstances, it is hard to tell whether "negative attention" is in fact a double-edged sword or a downright favour. An "ethnographic study" (Chen 2004) recorded an episode that took place in a Chinese primary school classroom in which the teacher needed a "negative example" to highlight a point. It was an example of a mathematics question that contained pitfalls, and it was expected that the unfortunate "negative example" would hopefully make all the typical mistakes in front of the whole class and render the teacher's subsequent teaching more impressive. The teacher looked around the classroom, thinking it was better not to embarrass a girl, and picked a boy. The boy played the role perfectly, with the teacher jokingly scoffing at him, and the whole class kindly laughing at him. The researcher maintained that this process greatly enhanced the bonds between the teacher and the boy, and thus the protection imposed upon girls is not necessarily a privilege, but rather a deprivation of more diversified interaction with teachers. To take this a step further, for girls it is not only bonding opportunities with teachers that are being taken away; it is also the chance of getting out of a comfort zone and being fully exposed-the chance of putting oneself out there to be seen, as well as to observe what will happen next, be it good or bad.

The "protective mindset" towards girls also displays itself in less obvious forms, with equally disturbing implications. One is that, when instructing a boy, teachers are much more likely to withhold the correct answer and let the boy struggle on his own, whereas with a girl, the correct answer may be offered directly or in advance (Li 2013; Lv 2013). Girls are blessed with a sense of security during this process, but also receive implicit encouragement to simply sit still and wait for help. For the boys, a spirit of exploration is cultivated, albeit only through less direct ways, such as solving problems in textbooks, whereas for girls, such chances rarely exist. And in terms of building a spirit of exploration, an episode in a Chinese primary school recorded by an ethnographic study shows that teachers believe Robinson Crusoe is a must-read for boys because they are supposed to be daring enough to take risks (Meng 2009). When the researcher suggested that girls should also be daring and tough, one of the teachers replied, "of course girls can read it too, it's just, for boys, it is a must-read" (Meng 2009, 72).

Boys, in educators' perceptions, should grow up to be Crusoe, with the spirit to conquer a desolate island and the charisma to be a public hero. Girls, on the other hand, are better off living sheltered lives. Female students are, of course, not excluded from reading Crusoe's story, but it does not really belong to them. They are in nature the witnesses, not a potential part of the great deeds. Taking a less metaphorical perspective, it can be argued that although every student is encouraged to pursue outstanding performance due to the great intensity of competition in the educational sphere, girls are still educated to do this in a less "adventurous" and more "introverted" manner than are boys. Even when boys and girls compete within the same system, it is implied that girls should stay demurely in their inner world while boys go out into the field and leave a mark on others.

Protection is, by its nature, a restriction. Some older female students are more conscious of this and clearly equate being a girl in school with being restricted (Jiao 2007). Others may be less aware of this, but phenomena such as girls behaving much more passively than boys (Liu 2015) and girls refraining more from answering questions in fear of making mistakes (Chen 2004) indicate that the privilege of being protected has turned against them. Even in the intellectual domain, female students tend to act "narrowly", often not because they are genuinely narrow-minded but because they deem it the right persona to take on (Jiao 2007). However, this does not mean that these approaches towards girls do not nurture preferred behaviour. An episode recorded in a primary school (Chen 2004) depicts a scene from a competition in which, when boys answered questions, the girls observed quietly, and when it was the girls' turn, the boys went out of their way to interrupt them. The girls demonstrated good manners and, in this case, we certainly want the boys to learn from the girls; however, the boys who were ill-behaved nevertheless demonstrated the inclination to fight for the central stage, seeking to alter the setting through their own actions. This mode of acting will not make decent leaders; yet it nevertheless fits the prototype and exhibits certain potential. The girls, on the contrary, stayed within the confines of the rules and probably counted on the teachers to stop the boys-it is difficult to imagine that a future leader will grow out of this type of behaviour.

The Disempowering Messages from Textbooks: Female Figures Are Not Prone to Leadership

The phenomenon that women are under-represented in textbooks is frequently discussed in China (Chen 2009; Feng 2008; Hu 2005; Li 2011; Li 2012). In terms of leadership-related issues, females are put in a disadvantageous position in a variety of ways.

One of the most frequently mentioned issues is that women appear less often in textbooks than do men. For example, one study shows that the percentage of female figures in senior-school Chinese-language textbooks ranges from 25.8% to 34.3% (Li 2011). Superficially, these facts are irrelevant to leadership issues. However, all the chosen images, negative ones included, emphasise the subjects' genders. Even an evil character possesses the virtue of having done something that renders himself noteworthy, not to mention that the majority of images in textbooks display people with admirable qualities. People tend to identify with and compare themselves to people of the same gender (see Miller 1982 and Wood 1989 cited in Lockwood 2006), which means that boys are very likely to sense their own presence through textbooks, while girls are reduced to being the witnesses of other people's actions. If girls do not have enough chances to recognise themselves in the great deeds of role models, they will not be reminded that they, too, are meant to get out of their comfort zone and achieve something.

Furthermore, there is the more directly relevant issue that leader figures in textbooks tend to work against females. First, in both history and Chinese-language textbooks, the number of female leaders is significantly smaller than that of male leaders (Hu 2005; Li 2011). This is somewhat understandable considering that the material in textbooks is limited by real-world situations (Hu 2005); historically, women indeed constitute a much smaller proportion of leaders, and quality articles depicting female leadership may not exist in abundance. However, the fact that it is understandable does not deny the unfavourable consequences it causes. Second, even in the rare cases where women are leaders, the ways they are portrayed tend to be less than pleasant. Females' leadership practices are typically narrated in a negative tone, with derogatory phrases and depictions of adverse consequences (Feng 2008; Hu 2005). Due to a lack of available evidence, it cannot be decided whether this is more a reflection of reality or a result of bias; yet, in either case, the fact remains that female learners are not likely to feel inspired by the texts.

Apart from leader figures, those who excel in other fields or in other ways can also trigger a desire to make a difference in the world, and they are related to leadership development. In terms of this aspect, females are again, and perhaps more overwhelmingly, put in a disadvantaged position. Not only are there far fewer outstanding female figures in textbooks, but also, when females are glorified, they receive their glory not as fighters or professionals-as males do-but as mothers, wives, and daughters (Li 2011). Moreover, it is interesting to note that when the great female scientist, Madame Curie, makes her way into Chinese textbooks, her role as a mother and wife, rather than that of a professional, becomes the focus of the narrative (Li 2012). While men are depicted as busy conquering the outer world, it is implied that females' way of self-realisation is through household affairs. Of course, as an individual choice, the latter mode of living is equally applaudable, yet the fact remains that concentrating only on the family domain is hardly what we should instil in people if we are to cultivate future leaders.

Occasionally, there are female figures who take part in revolutions. However, in one case, it is obvious that the text portrays female characters as in need of males' guidance and persuasion to participate, and their love for their country is more of an extension of their love for their husbands than a broader concern for public welfare (Li 2011). In another case, although the female fighter's image is by itself intense, she is nevertheless commemorated, and therefore represented, by a male writer. ² In reaction to these examples, it is lamentable that when male and female figures appear in the text, the male is virtually always the dominant party (Chen 2009).

And what about the general image of female figures? It is noted that females are overwhelmingly portrayed as victims, either victimised by men or by the social order (Li 2011). This is good in the sense that females' subordinated position is highlighted and will hopefully trigger some thoughts from learners; but the tearful, vulnerable images still give out the wrong impression in terms of fostering leadership qualities. Also, there is the interesting phenomenon that, in one case where the female victim has the courage to articulate the injustice she has suffered, she is only able to pinpoint her mother-in-law as the perpetrator (Li 2011), implying that even when females try to defy current orders and effect change, they are only doing it in a narrower way-by going against a (female) family member.

With the above being said, it is incorrect to assume that females are not at all appreciated in textbooks. On the contrary, females are frequently celebrated as innocent, pure, and authentic (Li 2011; Li 2012). While these features are sincerely worshipped by men and may have a more general aesthetic value to learners, the downside is that they create the myth that the attractiveness of females comes from their inclination to stay out of worldly affairs. How, then, will girls begin to want to assume leadership when they believe they are admired for not having a care in the world?

The Counter-Effectiveness of Leadership Experiences: More Training Does Not Equal Better Future Chances

As for leadership practices in classrooms, it is not uncommon to see girls outshining boys in terms of possessing stronger motivation and earning a larger number of leadership roles (Wang 2003). However, this does not necessarily mean that girls have gained any leadership-related advantages.

When teachers "employ" girls to be peer supervisors, they mainly take the perspective of "functionality"-that is, they expect girls to substantially contribute to maintaining classroom order. On the contrary, when dealing with boys, the educative value of leadership often becomes the focus. In one study (Wang 2003), teachers generally deemed girls to be better class monitors because they are able to discipline themselves, indicating the expectation that girls as small leaders should play a real part; however, when girls were not present and there were only boys, the teacher tried to give out the leadership opportunity as a kind of reward-the one with the best behaviour could be the class monitor. In another study (Liu 2015), when girls were no longer regarded as competent, teachers turned to the boys as a matter of course. The implication of this is that girls may see leadership as a service-oriented activity, while boys may be inclined to consider it a temptation, a form of hard-won respect.

Following this line of thinking, it is perhaps not hard to understand that girls will easily give up leadership opportunities. A senior-high-school teacher (Cai 2006) recorded an interesting episode that took place in her class. Upon entering the twelfth grade, the female peer supervisors handed in resignation letters almost simultaneously. The teacher talked to them, and it turned out that the reason they decided to quit was that they wanted to focus more on their studies. A similar mentality appeared in another study (Gong 2012), with a girl who declined the class-monitor post claiming that she worried more activities would distract her, and that even if she was not class monitor, she would still like to help others. For girls, leadership roles seem to mean nothing other than selfless dedication, with no inherent pleasure, no benefits per se. Without an intrinsic motivation, a mere sense of commitment is not enough to keep things going, especially when schoolwork grows more demanding over time.

Moreover, the fact that girls are somewhat "over-represented" in lower classes may not mean anything substantial because the whole "classroom leadership system" is, by its nature, unhealthy. It is ultimately the preferences of teachers, rather than democratic systems, that determine the leader; accordingly, to become a leader, the willingness to conform outweighs other aspects (Du 2013). Also, because in some cases the class monitors are directly assigned by teachers, those who cherish the ambition will have to continually discipline themselves and wait to be discovered (Li 2016). Rather than striving to be active, confident, and charismatic, the potential leaders learn to restrict themselves, please others, and wait for recognition. In one study, the long-time class monitor (a female) was exactly portrayed as rule-abiding and lacking in verve (Li 2016). Under the current dynamic of classroom settings, girls may receive leadership roles because they are tractable and well-behaved. Yet what about years later, when the dynamic and atmosphere begin to change? It is hard, after all, to imagine an adult nominated as a leader simply due to their well-behaved nature. That is to say, superficially girls are blessed with more leadership-related experiences than boys in early-year school settings, but upon closer scrutiny, those experiences do not really lead to real-life leadership opportunities in the future.

 

Conclusion and Implications

The study investigated how, in ways that are not intended, female students are held back from becoming leaders. In terms of baseline characteristics, the protective mode that educators adopt towards girls deprives these students of their chances to develop attributes such as extraversion and openness. In terms of vicarious learning experiences, the role models illustrated by textbook analyses not only convey the message that females seldom become leaders, but also that females in general are less visible, less accomplished, and are better off retreating into a reserved and limited mode of being. As for experiential learning processes, while girls enjoy more leadership experiences, what they learn from these activities is that leadership is wholly about self-sacrifice without a trace of intrinsic pleasure, and that the right way to earn a leadership role is to stay compliant and passive. All these observations suggest that girls are educated to be reserved, passive, and unmotivated, which is basically the opposite of the stand-out-and-assert-influence image that is typical of leaders.

The most obvious and self-evident implication of this is that educational leaders and teachers should be aware of these mechanisms and try to modify their behaviour accordingly. Instead of being particularly protective towards girls, they should encourage them to step out of their comfort zone and influence others. Instead of simply choosing the most compliant girl to be the class monitor so that she can be of some help, teachers should recognise the educative value of this issue and turn it into an opportunity for students of each gender to develop a proper understanding of leadership. Textbooks, of course, need to be revised, and if this takes too much time, teachers should at least make explicit to pupils the biased nature of the teaching materials.

But it goes further than that. While girls are educated to be lacking in extraversion and openness, which are crucial to the "great man" image, the way they are treated may at the same time endow them with certain advantages. For instance, living behind a protective shield, despite its harmful effects, promotes inner security and reduced aggression, which may prove beneficial or even vital in the course of exercising power. Other than this, girls' tendency to view leadership as a selfless dedication instead of a self-serving opportunity, although increasing their chances of quitting, once addressed properly can turn into a powerfully humanistic force. Advantages such as these, though not the main focus here, need to be recognised in relation to leadership. As stated previously, while the willingness and capability to stand out and actively exert influence are fundamental, leadership is not necessarily limited to that. The need for an improved form of leadership calls for new elements, and females' characteristics may contribute to our ideas of what those new elements can be. One broader implication of this is that, to train more female leaders, it may well be our whole construction of leadership, rather than merely the characteristics of females, that should be changed (Levitt 2010; Lips 2000). Another implication, which is more relevant to the educational field, is that not only should girls be treated equally so that they have equal access to the "great man" mode, but also how the current treatment of girls can help update the "great man" image should be explored and taken advantage of for the benefit of all people, as well as for the advancement of the leadership field. If the protective approach contains certain merits, rather than totally withdrawing it from girls so that they can be tougher and more leader-like, we should apply parts of it to both genders and see whether this cultivates improved, more empathetic leaders. It is hoped that education will produce "great women" as well as "great men". It is also hoped that the "great woman" is not merely a replica of the "great man", and by cultivating "great women", something new can be integrated into the concept and practice of leadership.

 

References

Adler, N. J. 2011. "I Am My Mother's Daughter: Early Developmental Influences on Leadership". In Early Development and Leadership: Building the Next Generation of Leaders, edited by S. E. Murphy and R. J. Reichard, 226-44. London: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Antonakis, J. E., A. T. Cianciolo, and R. J. Sternberg, eds. 2004. The Nature of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.         [ Links ]

Avolio, B. J., and G. R. Vogelgesang. 2011. "Beginnings Matter in Genuine Leadership Development". In Early Development and Leadership: Building the Next Generation of Leaders, edited by S. E. Murphy and R. J. Reichard, 245-76. London: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Baker, C. 2014. "Stereotyping and Women's Roles in Leadership Positions". Industrial and Commercial Training 46 (6): 332-37. https://doi.org/10.1108/ICT-04-2014-0020.         [ Links ]

Bandura, A. 1977. "Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioural Change". Psychological Review 84 (2): 191-215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191.         [ Links ]

Blackmore, J. 1989. "Educational Leadership: A Feminist Critique and Reconstruction". In Critical Perspectives on Educational Leadership, edited by J. Smyth, 93-130. London: The Falmer Press.         [ Links ]

Bourdieu, P., and J.-C. Passeron. 1990. Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture. London: Sage Publications.         [ Links ]

Braun, V., and V. Clarke. 2006. "Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology". Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 (2): 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.         [ Links ]

Brungardt, C. 1996. "The Making of Leaders: A Review of the Research in Leadership Development and Education". Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies 3 (3): 81-95. https://doi.org/10.1177/107179199700300309.         [ Links ]

Butler, J. 1988. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory". Theatre Journal 40 (4): 519-31. https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893.         [ Links ]

Cai, X. 2006. "Why Do They Refuse the Class Supervisor Posts in Senior Years?" [In Chinese.] Guangdong Education (Volume of Teaching and Research) 1 (4): 8-9.         [ Links ]

Carlyle, T., D. R. Sorensen, B. E. Kinser, and S. Atwood. (1841) 2013. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.         [ Links ]

Chan, K. Y., and F. Drasgow. 2001. "Toward a Theory of Individual Differences and Leadership: Understanding the Motivation to Lead". Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (3): 481-98. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.481.         [ Links ]

Chen, P. 2004. "Action Research on Gender Issues in Teacher-Student Interaction-Based on Mathematics Classes in Primary Schools". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Beijing Normal University.         [ Links ]

Chen, Y. 2009. "Research on Gender Bias Issues in Textbooks for Primary and Secondary Schools Based on Gender Socialization Theory". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Shandong Normal University.         [ Links ]

Coleman, J. S., E. Q. Campbell, C. J. Hobson, J. McPartland, A. M. Mood, F. D. Weinfeld, and R. L. York. 1966. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.         [ Links ]

Croll, E. J. 2013. Feminism and Socialism in China. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203123140.         [ Links ]

Decker, P. J. 1986. "Social Learning: Theory and Leadership". Journal of Management Development 5 (3): 46-58. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb051615.         [ Links ]

Dewey, B. J. 1916. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York, NY: Macmillan.         [ Links ]

Du, F. 2017. "Feminist Leadership: Theory and Practice in the Context of China". [In Chinese.] Journal of Shandong Women's University 131 (1): 27-34.         [ Links ]

Du, M. 2013. "An Ethnographic Study on the Power of Classroom Leaders". [In Chinese.] MA diss., East China Normal University.         [ Links ]

Dong, M. 2016. "On Developing Women's Political Leadership". [In Chinese.] Journal of Shandong Women's University 125 (1): 12-17.         [ Links ]

Feng. Y. 2008. "Analysis of the Female Images in Current Middle School History Textbooks". [In Chinese.] MA diss., East China Normal University.         [ Links ]

Giraldo, E., and J. Colyar. 2012. "Dealing with Gender in the Classroom: A Portrayed Case Study of Four Teachers". International Journal of Inclusive Education 16 (1): 25-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603110903518216.         [ Links ]

Gong, Q. 2012. "The Generation of Students' Consciousness of Power in Classroom Life". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Capital Normal University.         [ Links ]

Gottfried, A. E., A. W. Gottfried, R. J. Reichard, D. W. Guerin, P. H. Oliver, and R. E. Riggio. 2011. "Motivational Roots of Leadership: A Longitudinal Study from Childhood through Adulthood". The Leadership Quarterly 22 (3): 510-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.04.008.         [ Links ]

Guerin, D. W., P. H. Oliver, A. W. Gottfried, A.E. Gottfried, R. J. Reichard, and R. E. Riggio. 2011. "Childhood and Adolescent Antecedents of Social Skills and Leadership Potential in Adulthood: Temperamental Approach/Withdrawal and Extraversion". The Leadership Quarterly 22 (3): 482-94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.04.006.         [ Links ]

Hoyt, C. L., and S. K. Johnson. 2011. "Gender and Leadership Development: A Case of Female Leaders". In Early Development and Leadership: Building the Next Generation of Leaders, edited by S. E. Murphy and R. J. Reichard, 277-301. London: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Hu, C. 2005. "Study on Gender Issues in History Textbooks for Middle Schools-Based on the PEP Version". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Zhejiang Normal University.         [ Links ]

Huang-fu, Y. 2014. "Gender Issues in Primary-School Classroom Interaction from the Perspective of Educational Equity-A Primary School from Shandong as an Example". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Nanjing Normal University.         [ Links ]

Ilies, R., M. W. Gerhardt, and H. Le. 2004. "Individual Differences in Leadership Emergence: Integrating Meta-Analytic Findings and Behavioral Genetics Estimates". International Journal of Selection and Assessment 12 (3): 207-19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0965-075X.2004.00275.x.         [ Links ]

Irwin, S. 2019. "Qualitative Secondary Analysis: Working Across Datasets". In Qualitative Secondary Analysis, edited by K. Hughes and A. Tarrant, 19-36. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.         [ Links ]

Jiao, J. 2007. "The Gendered World Articulated by Girls in Senior High Schools". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Beijing Normal University.         [ Links ]

Judge, T. A., J. E. Bono, R. Ilies, and M. W. Gerhardt. 2002. "Personality and Leadership: A Qualitative and Quantitative Review". Journal of Applied Psychology 87 (4): 765-80. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87A765.         [ Links ]

Jung, C. G. (1921) 2009. Psychological Types: The Collected Works of Carl Jung. [In Chinese.] Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing Press.         [ Links ]

Kazdin, A. E. 1976. "Effects of Covert Modeling, Multiple Models, and Model Reinforcement on Assertive Behavior". Behavior Therapy 7 (2): 211-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7894(76)80278-X.         [ Links ]

Kong, H. 2012. "Gender Difference in Rural Middle School Classrooms-A Case Study Based on F Middle School, Yulin, Shanbei". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Xibei Normal University.         [ Links ]

Levitt, D. H. 2010. "Women and Leadership: A Developmental Paradox?" Adultspan Journal 9 (2): 66-75. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0029.2010.tb00072.x.         [ Links ]

Li, H. 2013. "A Study on Gender Bias in Middle School Classrooms". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Central China University.         [ Links ]

Li, J. 2016. "I Am the Monitor: Case Study on a Class Monitor in School G in Nanjing". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Nanjing Normal University.         [ Links ]

Li, S. 2010. "'Boy Crisis' from Boys' Perspective". [In Chinese.] Research in Educational Development 30 (Z2): 48-52.         [ Links ]

Li, X. 2012. "Analysis of the Gender Ideology of the Eight Sets of Primary Chinese Textbooks Published by PEP". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Zhejiang Normal University.         [ Links ]

Li, Y. 2011. "Analysis of Gender Culture of the Textbook: A Study of Gender Differences in the Textbook for Chinese Students in Senior Middle School". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Central China University.         [ Links ]

Li, Y., R. C. Anderson, K. Nguyen-Jahiel, T. Dong, A. Archodidou, I.-H. Kim, L.-J. Kuo, A. Clark, X. Wu, M. Jadallah, and B. Miller. 2007. "Emergent Leadership in Children's Discussion Groups". Cognition and Instruction 25 (1): 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370000709336703.         [ Links ]

Lips, H. M. 2000. "College Students' Visions of Power and Possibility as Moderated by Gender". Psychology of Women Quarterly 24 (1): 39-43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2000.tb01020.x.         [ Links ]

Liu, S. 2005. "Gender Equality in School Education". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Beijing Normal University.         [ Links ]

Liu, Y. 2015. "Gender-Related Educational Practice in Classroom Teaching". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Shaanxi Normal University.         [ Links ]

Lockwood, P. 2006. "'Someone Like Me Can Be Successful': Do College Students Need Same-Gender Role Models?" Psychology of Women Quarterly 30 (1): 36-46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2006.00260.x.         [ Links ]

Lv, J. 2013. "Bridging the Gender Gap: Research of Gender Difference Problem Classrooms from the Perspective of Feminism". [In Chinese.] MA diss., Jiang Nan University.         [ Links ]

McCleskey, J. A. 2014. "Situational, Transformational, and Transactional Leadership and Leadership Development". Journal of Business Quarterly 5 (4): 117-30.         [ Links ]

Meng, W. 2009. "The Maladapted Boy". [In Chinese.] Youth Studies 28 (4): 71-82.         [ Links ]

Murphy, S. E. 2011. "Providing a Foundation for Leadership Development". In Early Development and Leadership: Building the Next Generation of Leaders, edited by S. E. Murphy and R. J. Reichard, 1 -35. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203818343.         [ Links ]

Nkomo, S. M. and H. Ngambi. 2009. "African Women in Leadership: Current Knowledge and a Framework for Future Studies". International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 4 (1): 49-68. https://doi.org/10.1080/18186870903102014.         [ Links ]

Paechter, C. F. 2007. Being Boys, Being Girls: Learning Masculinities and Femininities. Maidenhead: Open University Press.         [ Links ]

Perreault, G. 2001. "Rethinking Leadership: Feminist Care Ethics-Spotlight on Gerri Perreault". Journal of College and Character 2 (3): 1-5. https://doi.org/10.2202/1940-1639.1288.         [ Links ]

Popper, M., and O. Mayseless. 2007. "The Building Blocks of Leader Development: A Psychological Conceptual Framework". Leadership and Organization Development Journal 28 (7): 664-84. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730710823905.         [ Links ]

Reichard, R. J., R. E. Riggio, D. W. Guerin, P. H. Oliver, A. W. Gottfried, and A. E. Gottfried. 2011. "A Longitudinal Analysis of Relationships Between Adolescent Personality and Intelligence with Adult Leader Emergence and Transformational Leadership". The Leadership Quarterly 22 (3): 471-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.04.005.         [ Links ]

Shi, J. 2004. The Gendered World of Teaching Materials and Classroom Teaching. [In Chinese.] Beijing: Educational Science Press.         [ Links ]

Shin, M. S., S. L. Recchia, S. Y. Lee, Y. J. Lee, and L. S. Mullarkey. 2004. "Understanding Early Childhood Leadership: Emerging Competencies in the Context of Relationships". Journal of Early Childhood Research 2 (3): 301-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718X04046649.         [ Links ]

Silva, A. 2016. "What Is Leadership?" Journal of Business Studies Quarterly 8 (1): 1-5.         [ Links ]

Stogdill, R. M. 1950. "Leadership, Membership, and Organization". Psychological Bulletin 47 (1): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0053857.         [ Links ]

Sun, J., R. C. Anderson, M. Perry, and T.-J. Lin. 2017. "Emergent Leadership in Children's Cooperative Problem-Solving Groups". Cognition and Instruction 35 (3): 212-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2017.1313615.         [ Links ]

Tannenbaum, R., I. Weschler, and F. Massarik. (1961) 2013. Leadership and Organization: A Behavioral Science Approach. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203529614.         [ Links ]

The State Council of China. 2001. National Programme of Action for Children's Development in China (2001-2010). [In Chinese.] Beijing: People's Publishing House.         [ Links ]

Wang. H. 2003. "'I Want to Be the Class Monitor'-Study on the 'Little Class Monitor' Phenomenon in Kindergarten". [In Chinese.] Journal of Shanghai Educational Research 22 (7): 71-74.         [ Links ]

Willis, P. 1977. Learning to Labour: How Working-Class Kids Get Working-Class Jobs. Farnborough: Saxon House.         [ Links ]

Yamaguchi, R., and M. L. Maehr. 2004. "Children's Emergent Leadership: The Relationships with Group Characteristics and Outcomes". Small Group Research 35 (4): 388-406. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496404263272.         [ Links ]

Zaleznik, A. 1977. "Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?" Harvard Business Review 55 (3): 67-76.         [ Links ]

Zhang, L., X. Zheng, and X. Guo. 2013. "Female Leadership Action Research: The Path and Practice of Localization". [In Chinese.] China Agricultural University Journal of Social Sciences Edition 30 (3): 123-32.         [ Links ]

Zhao, X., and X. Sun. 2010. "The Analysis of 'Boy Crisis' and Possible Coping Strategies". [In Chinese.] Children's Study 27 (2): 4-9.         [ Links ]

 

 

1 In 2001, the Chinese government first announced through formal documents that awareness of gender equality should be included in school curricula (The State Council of China 2001).
2 This refers to the article, "In Memoriam of Miss Liu Hezhen", by the Chinese male writer Lu Xun. It is included in several versions of Chinese-language textbooks.

^rND^sAdler^nN. J.^rND^sAvolio^nB. J.^rND^nG. R.^sVogelgesang^rND^sBaker^nC.^rND^sBandura^nA.^rND^sBlackmore^nJ.^rND^sBraun^nV.^rND^nV.^sClarke^rND^sBrungardt^nC.^rND^sButler^nJ.^rND^sCai^nX^rND^sChan^nK. Y.^rND^nF.^sDrasgow^rND^sDecker^nP. J.^rND^sDu^nF.^rND^sDong^nM.^rND^sGiraldo^nE.^rND^nJ.^sColyar^rND^sGottfried^nA. E.^rND^nA. W.^sGottfried^rND^nR. J.^sReichard^rND^nD. W.^sGuerin^rND^nP. H.^sOliver^rND^nR. E.^sRiggio^rND^sGuerin^nD. W.^rND^nP. H.^sOliver^rND^nA. W.^sGottfried^rND^nA.E.^sGottfried^rND^nR. J.^sReichard^rND^nR. E.^sRiggio^rND^sHoyt^nC. L.^rND^nS. K.^sJohnson^rND^sIlies^nR.^rND^nM. W.^sGerhardt^rND^nH.^sLe^rND^sIrwin^nS.^rND^sJudge^nT. A.^rND^nJ. E.^sBono^rND^nR.^sIlies^rND^nM. W.^sGerhardt^rND^sKazdin^nA. E.^rND^sLevitt^nD. H.^rND^sLi^nS.^rND^sLi^nY^rND^nR. C.^sAnderson^rND^nK.^sNguyen-Jahiel^rND^nT.^sDong^rND^nA.^sArchodidou^rND^nI.-H.^sKim^rND^nL.-J.^sKuo^rND^nA.^sClark^rND^nX.^sWu^rND^nM.^sJadallah^rND^nB.^sMiller^rND^sLips^nH. M.^rND^sLockwood^nP.^rND^sMcCleskey^nJ. A.^rND^sMeng^nW.^rND^sMurphy^nS. E.^rND^sNkomo^nS. M.^rND^nH.^sNgambi^rND^sPerreault^nG.^rND^sPopper^nM.^rND^nO.^sMayseless^rND^sReichard^nR. J.^rND^nR. E.^sRiggio^rND^nD. W.^sGuerin^rND^nP. H.^sOliver^rND^nA. W.^sGottfried^rND^nA. E.^sGottfried^rND^sShin^nM. S.^rND^nS. L.^sRecchia^rND^nS. Y.^sLee^rND^nY. J.^sLee^rND^nL. S.^sMullarkey^rND^sSilva^nA.^rND^sStogdill^nR. M.^rND^sSun^nJ.^rND^nR. C.^sAnderson^rND^nM.^sPerry^rND^nT.-J.^sLin^rND^sWang.^nH.^rND^sYamaguchi^nR.^rND^nM. L.^sMaehr^rND^sZaleznik^nA.^rND^sZhang^nL.^rND^nX.^sZheng^rND^nX.^sGuo^rND^sZhao^nX.^rND^nX.^sSun^rND^1A01^nPam^sChristie^rND^1A01^nPam^sChristie^rND^1A01^nPam^sChristie

ARTICLE

 

The Pandemic as a Portal for Change: Pushing against the Limits of "Normal Schooling" in South Africa

 

 

Pam Christie

University of Cape Town, South Africa Pam.Christie@uct.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7894-3733

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

Starting from the position that inequalities in schooling in South Africa are well known, this article suggests pausing the impulse to "return to normal" in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and instead questioning the operations, assumptions and effects of what is considered "normal". It uses Michel Foucault's concepts of governmentality and dispositif to argue that the pandemic not only exposes the structural inequalities in schooling; it also exposes the confusing enmeshment of governmental processes and logics that produce and normalise these. Given the complex social and economic inequalities in South Africa, the article questions the limits of governmental capacity to meet its own stated aims of equal provisioning of schooling for all, using the provision of water to schools as an illustrative case. The article concludes by arguing for the importance of pressing against the assumptions of "normal schooling" with its embedded inequalities, and it sets out the ethical challenge for working for change.

Keywords: inequality in schooling; South African schooling; COVID-19; Foucault; governmentality; normalisation; school infrastructure provision; ethics of care

---

 

 

As the COVID-19 pandemic took its grip across the world, Arundathi Roy (2020) set out a challenging invitation: that the pandemic be viewed as a "portal", a place of rupture between the past and an uncertain future, where different choices might be made, and different possibilities imagined. In this article, I take up Roy's challenge by seeking to pause and reconsider the call to "return to normal" in schooling in South Africa, and to propose a different ethical approach to meet the challenges of current times.

Across the world, the ravages of COVID-19 have exposed existing inequalities in societies and their education systems. In Roy' s (2020) metaphor, the pandemic has shown these inequalities in the penetrating way that an x-ray would show bones beneath the skin. In the case of South Africa, special visual technologies such as x-rays are not necessary to detect inequalities, since they are all too evident on the social surface. It is well documented that South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with very high unemployment and poverty levels even before the impact of COVID-19, and it has a poorly performing education system. I take Roy' s image of an x-ray as an invitation to examine more closely what is less visible on the social surface. Focusing on a single thread of provisioning, namely the provisioning of water to schools during 2020, my intention is to illustrate how inequalities in schooling are systemically embedded in the micro processes and logics of government and how failure is normalised.

With regard to COVID-19, this article begins by exploring what a "return to normal" would mean in schooling in South Africa. It uses Foucault's notions of governmentality and dispositif to illustrate governmental processes and ways of thinking at the micro level of school provisioning that produce and rationalise inequalities alongside the more visible macro levels of policy activity. Then, taking up Roy's activist challenge for the pandemic to serve as a portal to imagine different possibilities, I consider Foucault's (1994) notion of "limit thinking", which argues for the importance of pressing against the limits of what seems to be necessary and obligatory, to find the places where change is possible and desirable. I then suggest an ethics of care to inform changes in schooling.

 

"Returning to Normal" as a Response to the Pandemic

By now, much has been written about the impact of COVID-19 on Western schooling systems, which is not necessary to repeat in detail here. At the time of writing in 2020, there are special issues of journals such as Education Philosophy and Theory and Southern African Review of Education, responses from international organisations such as the OECD, UNESCO, UNICEF and World Bank (2020), and the published research of RESEP at Stellenbosch University showing the disruptions to South African schools in terms of numbers and plans. These publications raise issues about the broader social consequences of school closures, pointing also to the differential impact this has across different contexts. As I shall expand on later, South Africa's current Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Basic Education (PCBE) clearly states that existing inequalities are likely to be exacerbated:

[I]f performance challenges and uneven access to school infrastructure and other educational inputs are not addressed, the wide disparities in educational outcomes between rural and urban provinces and between less affluent and more affluent schools will persist. Covid-19 has served to further highlight these existing inequalities in access to quality education where we saw learners from private schools able to continue learning under lockdown through online classes whereas learners from poorer schools were not able to do so. (PCBE 2020c)

It is important to note here that these "wide disparities" in schooling existed well before COVID-19. Arguably, "returning to normal" pre-COVID-19 conditions would mean returning to these familiar-even if undesirable-disparities. This article aims to show, through the period of the pandemic, how inequalities in schooling have taken on the status of "normal".

Foucault's notions of governmentality and dispositif provide useful tools to illuminate the workings of government. Foucault is concerned with the "how" of power-the processes and logics by which we allow ourselves to be governed. In an often-quoted phrase, he refers to the exercise of power as "the conduct of conduct" (1982, 22-21), or "actions on the actions of others" (1994, 341). The notion of governmentality has two dimensions: both the practices by which modern governments exercise control over their populations, and the rationalities by which these practices appear "normal". The focus of governmentality is not so much on larger institutions of the state, but on the minor processes by which the conduct of populations is shaped and the rules of knowledge by which this is understood. This focus includes

the institutions, procedures, analyses, and reflections, the calculations and tactics that make possible the exercise of this power that has as its principal target the population, as its major savoir [knowledge] political economy, and its essential technical instrument the dispositifs of security. (Foucault 2009, 111)

Foucault (1980) uses the term dispositif to refer to a shifting and fluid assemblage of discourses, institutions, regulations, as well as the relationships between these, said and unsaid. Through the shifts and modifications of these elements of the dispositif, problems are identified and solutions sought. The assemblage of the dispositif forms a background common sense of how things work, and the "normal" that must be "returned to" at times of challenge.

Important in Foucault' s work is his insistence that power be understood as relational, not static. He states that "there is no power without potential refusal or revolt" (1988, 84). Change is always possible. As he notes, institutions are full of "cracks, silent shocks, malfunctionings" (1988, 56), and the challenge is always to work against seeming inevitabilities and monolithic manifestations, as points of departure for alternative action, and as places for reworking matrices and strategies of power.

In using the tools of governmentality and dispositif to explore how inequalities are normalised in South African schooling, it is necessary to begin with several caveats. First, Foucault's work on governmentality is part of bigger projects on power, knowledge and subjectivity, and as I have argued elsewhere (Christie 2006), governmentality provides a set of tools rather than a fully fledged theory. It is also work that is deeply grounded in Western knowledge and experience, and recognising this is important, particularly in current South Africa where theories of coloniality are questioning the universalism of the Western episteme. Foucault's concern is with the how of government, how conduct is shaped, how governing happens, and how it is thought in the modern state (see Foucault 1994; Sokhi-Bulley 2014). Governmentality does not provide a theory of the state, nor does it replace the historical analyses of political economy. It cannot be used, particularly as a "grand narrative", to explain education policy settlements and practices, or the role of civil society in educational change. Such matters are addressed by other conceptual frameworks, and there is a substantial existing literature on South Africa's education policies. Rather, what governmentality offers is a particular analysis that probes the strategies of governmental power in its micro forms rather than obvious manifestations, together with the accompanying rationalities that normalise these acts of power. It provides a different way of seeing-a different lens-to magnify the complex and entangled elements and processes of government, and how problems are constituted and addressed in micro enactments of power.

 

Government and Governmentality in South Africa

Using the tools of governmentality, I argue that the negotiated settlement of 1994 brought a discernibly modernist dispositif to governmental processes and rationalities in South Africa. The shift from liberation movement to government required that the African National Congress (ANC) thinks and acts like a (Western) government, and embraces the institutions and rationalities of modernist governmentality as symbolic evidence of its legitimacy to rule. The new government was structured as a constitutional democracy, with guidelines for "the conduct of conduct" provided by the Constitution of 1996. There is a formal separation of powers (legislative, executive and judiciary); a parliament, which displays the traditions of democratic government in ritual forms, with its "honourable members" engaging in formal debates in particular format; an executive formed by the state president and inner and outer ministries, also in particular format; and a judiciary that blends old and new laws to give effect to the Constitution in legal protocols.

On a more granular level, the work of government is carried out through a plethora of institutions and regulations, with their specialist knowledges and rationalities-a complex network of practices and rationalities where the micro powers of governmentality are exercised. These include, for example, the different departmental bureaucracies with their allocated functions and detailed regulations, officials with their key performance indicators and targets, advisors and consultants who are used for expertise and knowledge gathering, and particular practices for budgeting, financial allocations and auditing. There are special committees of various sorts including parliamentary portfolio committees; commissions of enquiry, White Papers, laws, gazettes and regulations; the drafting and award of tenders with specifications and reporting procedures. There is a list of conventions and procedures, regulations and monitoring measures, allocations and resource shifting, that make up the micro processes of government and how it is understood to operate. These multiple micro processes give an appearance of conformity, but within and between them are gaps and fissures, omissions and mistakes, discretionary judgements and calculations, resistances and neglect, malfunctioning and corruption-as well as compliance. It is these micro practices that are magnified by the focus of governmentality.

Government in South Africa faces complex social and economic inequalities that must be managed even in "normal" times. The negotiated settlement was not a "state takeover", and resulted in a hybrid bureaucracy with apartheid-era officials (who knew the rules of the game) alongside new political appointees (who often had little experience in government). The divisions of power between different levels of government (national, provincial, and local) and a multiple array of implementing agencies have brought complexities of their own, as have limited capacity and expertise at all levels. Though the negotiated settlement brought equal rights and constitutional democracy, political changes were not matched by economic and social shifts on the same scale (see Christie 2020). Indeed, the inequalities of apartheid's legacy have been amplified rather than remediated by the global ascendancy of neoliberalism, which the South African government endorsed through its Growth, Employment and Reconstruction (GEAR) policies (see Maistry 2021). It is sobering to recognise that before the ravages of COVID-19, inequality in South Africa was growing; poverty displayed structural features of "race", gender and locality; and the labour market could not absorb school-leavers in the necessary numbers to reduce high levels of unemployment (see Alvaredo et al. 2018; Sulla and Zikhali 2018). Indeed, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world, as measured by its Gini coefficient; poverty is widespread, and the unemployment level in 2021 was 36.2%, with youth unemployment at 63.6%. The introduction of pro-poor grants and subsidies has ameliorated conditions to some extent for the very poor, but these do not provide a means for wealth to shift, and the same is true for Black Economic Empowerment measures, which do not fundamentally shift the allocation regime.

The structural tensions between political freedoms on the one hand and economic limits on the other have presented considerable challenges for governments to manage, as have the complex operations of governing. These conditions have generated various forms of social and economic instability. At local government level, where schools are physically located, resources and capacity are often stretched beyond their limits, with the majority of municipalities struggling to fulfil their developmental mandates or receive unqualified audits. As a result, there is considerable instability at the local level, where grassroots struggles and service delivery protests are often joined by black elites seeking corrupt access to state institutions and resources for personal gain, as is shown in the work of Ivor Chipkin (2003) and Karl von Holdt (2013). These conditions frame the resourcing of schools in rural areas where local governments are often weak or dysfunctional and provincial departments are not always aligned with national departments.

In overall terms, I argue that the governmental assemblage in South Africa operates in conditions of structural inequality, which it cannot remediate and must accommodate (Christie 2020). Though problems are framed and addressed in terms of the discourses, institutions and logics of a modern state, there are limits to what can be achieved to bring improvements or change, given the current economic and political arrangements and capacity limits. In the logics of the current dispositif, corruption and dysfunction- which are rife-are identified as problems to be solved, but they continue apace and seemingly cannot be easily remedied. It is as if the identification of these as problems or threats to the social order, accompanied by expressions of outrage at particularly egregious conduct or malfunction, are the most that can be achieved under the current governmental arrangements. It could be argued, ironically, that these responses become a recursive way-a process that can be repeated indefinitely-of accommodating the continuing presence of what is unwanted and unacceptable within conditions of "normality" in South Africa. The same applies to the poor performance of the schooling system with its differentiated provisioning and predictable patterns of performance, which I turn to in the next section.

 

"Normal Schooling" in South Africa

In schooling, the dispositif of a modernist state is clearly evident in the way policies to change the apartheid system were designed and put in place. Instead of drawing on the civil society participation that had driven the anti-apartheid struggle (see Chisholm and Fuller 1996; De Clercq 1997), new policies were developed through a range of governmental instruments. New departmental structures and bureaucracies were responsible for drawing up White Papers, establishing commissions of enquiry, appointing consultants, and producing regulations. New legislation was drawn up through formal parliamentary processes, with parliamentary portfolio committees established to receive reports from departments. For example, for policies on school governance and funding, a committee was first established to set out alternatives, international experts were appointed as advisors, and parliamentary debates were held as the basis for the detailed legislation of the South African Schools Act (DBE 1996). A different process was followed for the new curriculum, Curriculum 2005, which was developed under the aegis of the Department of Education and Training and was later changed through review committees. Language policy was developed in a separate process again, even though it was of central concern to curriculum. As discourses, "a single system of education for all", "sameness" and "education of equal quality" are part of the assemblage, and targets and performance indicators are presented as drivers of change. Much has been written about this policy settlement and the challenges of change (see De Clercq 2020, for a valuable overview), and this literature is taken as read.

Despite the activities of this governmental assemblage, it has not been possible to iron out apartheid's legacy of differential provision or to equalise schooling achievements (see Allais, Cooper, and Shalem 2019; Black, Vally, and Spreen 2020; Christie 2020; Visagie, Black, and Guzula 2020). Not only does the South African schooling system perform poorly, it is also the case that performance patterns are bimodal, with distinctively different results for students attending different schools. Significantly, these bimodal results reflect the poverty quintiles of schools and their former apartheid departments. In the bimodal results, nearly 80% of students attend the poorly functioning part of the system, with a small minority (8%) attending the fee-paying schools (mostly desegregated) that achieve good results (see Amnesty International 2020; Mlachila and Moeletsi 2019). Almost all the poorly performing schools are black schools in rural areas and townships. In the pattern of their distribution, it is easy to see the palimpsest of the former apartheid Bantustans. Suffice it to say the new policies have better suited adequately resourced and former white schools, rather than the schools serving the majority of the population. No matter how the elements of the dispositif are arranged and rearranged, deep inequalities in schooling remain; they are remarked upon, lamented, but not significantly shifted (see Christie 2020). This raises a key question: how does the assemblage of governmental processes and logics work across these known inequalities to render them as the "normal" to which schooling should "return" after COVID-19?

In addressing this question, I narrow the focus to the provisioning of infrastructure, where differences between schools are clear and apartheid inequalities are still evident. In 2013, under pressure from civil society groups such as Equal Education and Section27, and in the face of public outcry over deaths in pit latrines and the (non) supply of textbooks, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) committed itself to a set of Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure. To date, eight years later, the government has not met its own targets. The following extract from Amnesty International's (2020) report, Broken and Unequal, provides a snapshot of the infrastructural shortfalls in South Africa's schools-a snapshot of the inequalities that are so entrenched over time as to be part of what is "normal" in the schooling system:

According to the government's own statistics for 2018, out of 23,471 public schools 19% only had illegal pit latrines for sanitation with another 37 schools having no sanitation facilities at all; 86% had no laboratory; 77% had no library; 72% had no internet access and 42% had no sports facilities. 239 schools lacked any electricity. 56% of South African head teachers report that a shortage of physical infrastructure (compared to an OECD average of 26%) is hindering their school's capacity to provide quality instruction. 70% report a shortage of library materials compared to an OECD average of 16%.

Many of the shortcomings are in breach of not just the government's international human rights obligations but its own Minimum Norms and Standards for educational facilities. In 2013 the government enacted these binding regulations requiring the government to ensure that by November 2016 all schools have access to water, sanitation and electricity; all plain (unimproved and unventilated) pit latrines are replaced with safe and adequate sanitation; and schools built from inappropriate materials, such as mud and asbestos, are to be replaced. Yet as the government's own statistics show it has not met these targets. (Amnesty International 2020, 4)

As background information on this, further details are useful. School infrastructure is funded in two ways: through Treasury grants to provinces, and through two conditional grants given by Treasury to the DBE to allocate to provinces. Of these, the Education Infrastructure Grant (EIG) is intended to supplement provincial funding for accelerating the construction, maintenance, upgrading and rehabilitation of infrastructure. The Accelerated School Infrastructure Development Initiative (ASIDI)-previously the Schools Infrastructure Backlog Grant-was introduced in 2011 as a high impact intervention to eliminate backlogs and upgrade schools to meet the 2013 Norms and Standards for Provisioning. At the time of COVID-19, these funding measures had not been sufficient for the government to meet its own 2013 requirements for the Norms and Standards of infrastructure (as shown by the extract above from Amnesty International's report).

Recorded debates of parliament's Portfolio Committee on Basic Education show that in the 2019/2020 budget period-before the crisis of COVID-19-the infrastructure service delivery for both of the DBE-administered grants was running behind schedule. ASIDI had spent only 70% of its allocated funding in 2019/2020, and in terms of water supply, only 89 schools had been supplied out of a target of 225 quarterly. The EIG had made only 62% progress towards its targets (PCBE 2020c). Moreover, the DBE began 2020 on the back foot financially. The January 2020/2021 Medium Term Expenditure Framework cut nearly R135 billion from education, including a cut of R1.9 billion from the EIG, and in June, Treasury redirected a further R2 billion from the EIG to meet the requirements of COVID-19 relief-cuts that are estimated to have affected nearly 2000 other projects (Mthethwa 2020). In effect, any measures taken for COVID-19 relief would be provided at the expense of other necessary infrastructure improvement, without additional funds being provided.

In the next section, I trace the issue of water supply to schools to illustrate the processes and rationalities of governmentality, as addressed in the detailed minutes of the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education. This is a committee of parliament chaired by the ruling party and made up of representatives of other parties, to which the Department of Basic Education submits reports on a regular schedule through the year. During the course of 2020, these reports addressed the COVID-19 crisis in schooling. By taking a narrow focus on PCBE meetings for 2020, and within this a focus on the theme of water supply, I aim to provide a snapshot of governmentality in operation and the recursive moves of the dispositif as it confronts problems it cannot resolve. In taking this single example, my aim is not only to illustrate how inequalities are normalised, but also to illustrate the complex, enmeshed, and multi-agency processes that government entails. In this, I deliberately do not address the corruption and malfeasance that have come to light.

In presenting this picture, it is not my intention to minimise the enormous disruptions and suffering that COVID-19 has brought, particularly to poorer communities; nor is it my intention to diminish the concerns of governments and education departments attempting to meet the new circumstances of the crisis as best they can; nor do I set aside the worries of teachers, parents and students themselves facing the uncertainties of the pandemic and its impact on their futures. Rather, my intention is to show the immense difficulties-if not impossibility-of addressing inequalities through current structures and processes, as well as the entangled and messy arrangements governments must make for the provisioning of schools across different departments and entities. My aim is to pause the impulse to "return to normal" in schooling and provide a space to question the operations, assumptions and effects of what is considered "normal" with a view to pressing for change.

 

Meeting the Challenges of COVID-19?

In early March 2020, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a State of Disaster due to COVID-19, and strict lockdown requirements were imposed across the country. Schools were closed from 18 March and in the following months, the DBE issued numerous regulations relating to closures and conditions for re-opening. It also submitted a number of reports to the PCBE for consideration and debate. In what follows, I use excerpts from minutes of a selection of three COVID meetings held by the DBE to show the recursive processes through which problems were framed but not resolved.

PCBE Meeting, 29 April 2020: COVID-19 Plan

At the end of April, the Director General (DG) of the DBE presented the COVID-19 Basic Education Sector Plan to the PCBE. The presentation began with a brief survey of international responses to the pandemic, discursively locating South Africa's response alongside those of other governments. This was followed by the presentation of a set of statistics on South Africa's schools (more than 12 million students and 400,000 teachers in 23,076 public schools), discursively providing evidence to convey knowledge of the scale of the problem on which the plan was based. The Plan confidently outlined the issues to be addressed before schools would be safe to reopen, with the implication being that the requirements could be met across all the country's differently resourced schools. These included instructions on hygiene and guidelines for risk reduction, an amended school calendar and curriculum recovery programme, implications for examinations, the importance of "ICT as the New Normal", procedures for the procurement of PPE (personal protective equipment), and a set of non-negotiable preconditions to be in place for each school before reopening. The non-negotiables are set out as follows:

Non-Negotiables (Preconditions) for the Re-opening of Schools

1. COVID 19 essentials (Basic Sanitation and Hygiene Package [including cleaning and disinfection materials, PPE, sanitisers, handwashing soap, gloves, cloth masks and thermometers])

2. Water and Sanitation (Mobile facilities to replace pit latrines)

3. Cleaners (Extended Public Works Programme)

4. Screeners (Extended Public Works Programme) [parents are encouraged to screen their children at home using a thermometer]

5. Additional teaching posts to deal with overcrowding (No class should have more than 40 learners)

6. Additional substitute posts to replace staff due to long illness

7. Provision of mobile classrooms to deal with overcrowding as temporary measure

8. Incubation Camps for progressed and weaker learners (Grade 12) to succeed academically. (PCBE 2020a)

In other words, to open safely, schools would need, among other things, to make provision for wearing of cloth masks, hand washing with soap and water, hand sanitisers of a stipulated quality, and social distancing of at least 1.5 metres per person with no more than two students per desk. Clearly, hand washing would require water supply, and the DBE noted that it would be taking emergency measures to ensure sufficient water and sanitation for all schools. It committed itself to providing two cloth masks to each learner in school quintiles 1 to 3, with provincial education departments responsible for other PPE provisioning.

The Plan presented the situation in schools as a crisis that would be brought under control by a set of co-ordinated measures, aligned with international experience. In the official discourse of the presentation and accompanying regulations and gazettes, the implicit assumption was that all provincial departments and schools would have the capacity and necessary budget to meet a set of standardised requirements. Couched in the procedures and rationalities of modern governmentality, the presentation conveyed the impression that the crisis was under control. Yet, when the well-known deep inequalities of the system are taken into consideration, the feasibility and sufficiency of these measures do not hold up. Given the backlogs in meeting its own targets for Minimum Norms and Standards for educational facilities, how would the department fund these COVID-19 non-negotiables and how would they be put in place in different provinces and schools where there were already infrastructural backlogs? And following the theme of water supply, how would the DBE ensure that the infrastructure would be in place in all schools for handwashing with soap and water?

The DBE's gazetted Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure (2013) stipulate in some detail the requirements for water supply at schools. Among these details, Section 11(1) clearly states:

All schools must have a sufficient water supply which complies with all relevant laws and which is available at all times for drinking, personal hygiene and, where appropriate, for food preparation. (DBE 2013)

Remarkably, at the same time as including "water and sanitation" in the list of "non-negotiables for school re-opening", the DBE's presentation to the PCBE provided information about the number and location of schools in need of emergency water, with an accompanying map as illustration. The Director General noted that 3,475 schools needed emergency water support-this, more than seven years after gazetting the Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure (2013) and 25 years after the official end of apartheid. That the government was able to breach its own regulations as well as constitutional rights without comment or explanation illustrates the extent to which inequalities in infrastructure had been normalised within the governmental dispositif. With reference to Figure 1 below, what is visually striking is not only the numbers of schools without adequate water supply, but also their dispersal in a very similar (if not identical) pattern to the former apartheid Bantustans.

 

Figure 1 - Click to enlarge

 

The DBE's plan to provide emergency water supply to these schools was ambitious and ultimately unrealistic: it involved working with the Department of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation (DHSWS) to deliver over 7,000 tanks in a period of two weeks, with Rand Water as the implementing agent. A comment at the meeting by Deputy Minister of Basic Education, Reginah Mhaule, expanded on this as follows:

On water and sanitation: Both are a big challenge for the Department, because "most of the rural schools do not have water, especially in the Eastern Cape where there is literally no water". Water is also a challenge in other rural provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and Limpopo. DBE is working with the Department of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation. DHSWS is making use of existing boreholes; where there are no boreholes, then it puts in boreholes. In some instances, there is a borehole, but there is no water. In that case, water tankers will be used. DHSWS will provide water, and DBE is working with DHSWS to provide water. DHSWS knows the needs of each school per province and per district. DBE submits the needs of the schools to DHSWS, so that when the latter works on its budget, it knows the schools that must be catered for. The Deputy Minister said that we believe that on the 18 May when learners come to school, every school will have water. (PCBE 2020a)

In other words, the DBE put forward a set of proposals around hand washing and water supply that clearly could not be enacted. It proposed that the crisis be solved through shifting and reassembling elements in the dispositif, when this assemblage was already behind schedule in its ordinary operations and was facing budget cuts. Under the oversight of the PCBE, the DBE sidestepped known underperformance by simply ignoring it-a remarkable instance of normalisation.

PCBE Meeting, 30 June: Progress Report

Two months later, in June 2020, the DBE presented its Progress Report to the PCBE on the State of Readiness for the Reopening of Schools. The record of the meeting includes a vigorous discussion on a range of topics, among them emergency water supply. The Deputy Minister reported that although 95% of schools had been ready to open in early June, some were not able to because of vandalism and COVID-19 essentials not being in place-an acknowledgement that the ambitious goals set out in the April plan were already slipping.

With regard to emergency water supply, the DG reported on supply to 3,350 schools (excluding Gauteng, Northern Cape and Western Cape which had indicated they had sufficient capacity) and noted that R400 million had been set aside for this from the EIG allocation. Rand Water was undertaking temporary installation of at least one tank to all schools on the list. The DG noted:

There were challenges with water and sanitation in Limpopo, where water tankers on the way to delivering water to schools were stopped because communities said that they needed it more than schools. In other instances, communities went to schools and used the water that was provided to schools. DBE has seen such things happening in Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal. (PCBE 2020b)

The DG also noted that longer-term solutions needed to be addressed and proposed an "operational level" team including various local government bodies to ensure that municipalities as water authorities would take over the responsibility of providing water from the DBE (again, demonstrating a reassembling of elements in the dispositif to find a solution to the crisis, and the multiple agencies involved). At the same time, however, the DBE noted that some municipalities had collapsed due to revenue from communities not coming in, and it "had encouraged its schools to pay for municipal services and bills, so that schools get a regular supply of water" (PCBE 2020b). Clearly, emergency water supply was much more complex than the DBE had anticipated, a realisation that also indicates the DBE was far from actually addressing this problem in normal times, in spite of its Norms and Standards commitments. The following comment from the minutes gives an even more revealing statement of this:

On the capacity of municipalities: The DG did not know the magnitude of the water and sanitation problem. He had "woken up to that reality" and his view was that it was a serious problem. (PCBE 2020b)

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that ASIDI and the EIG were not meeting their targets, and that there were schools without water supply prior to COVID-19. Such slippages were normalised as the dispositif was adapted as if it would be possible to overlook the deep inequalities in school provisioning and their unequal contexts.

The following somewhat lengthy extract provides interesting details on the actual measures and associated costs that emergency water supply had entailed:

Mr Dawid van der Westhuijzen, DBE Deputy Director-General, replied [to member enquiries] about the water tanks. The 3 335 schools consist of 711 schools with existing tanks and 2 624 schools need new tanks. Under the Rand Water contract, DBE had to supply those tanks. To supply the 5 000-litre tanks to the 2 624 schools, Rand Water procured these tanks from 40 different suppliers. The average price DBE paid for those tanks was R519.72. That adds up to approximately R13 million. Those tanks are then available at the supplier depot and one needs to transport the tanks via truck. Some tanks travel hundreds of kilometres from the depot. DBE then spent a further R8 million on transporting tanks to schools. That takes the cost to about R21 million. Initially DBE planned to have proper tank stands but it ran out of time. The agreement was that DBE split this into phases, where the rest is a temporary stand at ground level, which is very basic. A tank with a basic stand costs about R3 300. That brings the cost to about R30 million for the whole installation, including transport.

The missing part of the calculation by the Member [who queried the costs] is the cost of the water and its delivery. The 3 335 schools represent about 1.5 million learners. If one works on 5 litres per person per day that is bought from municipalities at about R20 per kilolitre, that adds another R6 million to the cost over a two-month period. The delivery of the water is "the big bucks". Putting water on a truck and driving it to a destination instead of delivering water through a pipeline is very expensive. R96 million allocated to water delivery. That gives a total of R131 million. Rand Water is paid an implementing agent fee of 5%. Rand Water appointed service providers for local content, local economic development and local labour. These social facilitators get paid a fee of 3.5% and then DBE made allowance for disbursements of 1.5%. That brings the total to R145 million. On top of that, due to uncertainties about data accuracy, access routes, and availability of materials, DBE allowed a 20% contingency but that contingency remains under DBE control. There is a R29 million contingency, which takes the total to R174 million. If one puts VAT [value-added tax] on top of that, one comes to R200 million. It is the only money that is currently being dealt with. The R400 million is untouched; it has not been transferred to anybody. DBE will wrap up phase 1 before it implements phase 2. (PCBE 2020b; emphasis added)

In this context, the question about sustainability raised by one of the PCBE members from Limpopo is particularly pressing:

Will water still be supplied to those schools post-COVID-19? COVID-19 will pass but the challenges at schools will remain. Who will continue putting water into those JoJo tanks? The answer is questionable; it is a problem. (PCBE 2020b)

The back story to this-mentioned briefly in the meeting and touched on earlier in this article-is the absence of infrastructure and the collapse of many local government structures, where poverty and general lack of revenue are compounded by corruption and weak administration. All schools are "local", grounded in specific places, and when they fall within dysfunctional municipalities and/or have histories of inadequate provisioning from township and Bantustan legacies, then remedying their conditions lies beyond the reach of education departments' "normal" arrangements. It is at this level-where the processes and logics of government are exposed-that it appears as if the "normality" of the modernist dispositif cannot hold. And yet it does.

PCBE Meeting, 3 November: Presentations from FFC and AGSA

Four months later, in November 2020, the PCBE (including the DBE and ministry representatives) was briefed by the Financial and Fiscal Commission (FFC) on expenditure patterns of conditional grants and equity in education, and by the office of the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) on audit outcomes. What emerges strongly in both the FFC and AGSA reports is the slow progress in infrastructure improvement across the provinces, as well as underspending by poorer provinces on the minimum Norms and Standards and gazetted levels of equity funding levels for quintiles, with the Eastern Cape and Limpopo "disproportionately and consistently disadvantaged" (PCBE 2020c). The meeting records the following:

The FFC noted that the status quo for delivering most provincial infrastructure projects separated the planning, budgeting and implementation functions between sector departments and implementing agents, thus distorting incentives and weakening the accountability chain, e.g., projects were often over budget and time overruns were frequent because public works and other implementing agents appointed consultants to design and oversee infrastructure projects, but were not incentivized to properly manage them as the Auditor General does not hold implementing agents accountable for infrastructure spending. (PCBE 2020e)

In particular, the FFC identified problems with the long and complex supply chain management for projects, which increased the risk of irregularities. Using an example from ASIDI, it noted that the DBE appointed the Development Bank of South Africa and Eskom as implementing agents for ASIDI, and the "DBSA in turn utilises subcontractors who in turn rely on numerous small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) to roll out the school building project-this arrangement complicates and weakens the accountability chain-strong oversight required" (2020e). The FFC was particularly critical of implementing agents appointing consultants to design and oversee infrastructure projects-people who are "not incentivized to properly manage them" and are not held "accountable for infrastructure spending" (2020e).

In the words of the FFC report, "it is time to reconsider this delivery model which relies heavily on implementing agents" (PCBE 2020e).

Other setbacks identified by the FFC included the 1557 schools that were vandalised during the lockdown period, with items such as ICT equipment, kitchen supplies and school furniture stolen.

PCBE, 10 November: DBE 2019/2020 Annual Report and Quarter 1 Performance 2020/2021

The following two extracts from the PCBE minutes require no further comment:

The Department reported an underperformance in the building and completion of new schools through the Accelerate School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI). ... Gross underperformance was acknowledged concerning water and sanitation in schools. Further underperformance was identified in monitoring underperforming schools. The DBE recommended that internal controls be strengthened through evidence and monitoring in 2020/21.

The Department acknowledged the weaknesses in financial controls where irregular expenditure almost doubled. This occurred in supply chains carried out by implementing agents without considering the relevant instructions from National Treasury, which occurred in many forms of expenses. The DBE is following a matter of R500 million in irregular expenditure which is under review and to be regained through remedial action. (PCBE 2020d)

Thus, as 2020 ended, the underperformance of the DBE and instances of lack of accountability were noted and in effect absorbed into the normal operations of government. Remedies would be found through existing processes and, if necessary, a realignment of existing elements in the dispositif. No fundamental changes were envisaged.

 

Pausing the "Normal" and Pushing against Its Limits

My purpose in this article has been to pause the impulse to "return to normal" as a response to the pandemic and, using Arundhati Roy's (2020) metaphor of an x-ray, to illustrate how the systematic inequalities and failures in South African schooling are normalised in governmental processes. The article traces a single thread of provisioning-sustainable water supply to schools-to illustrate the "how" of government, and how the shifting assemblage of the dispositif absorbs and normalises the government' s inability to meet the requirements it sets for itself. This is not to elevate the importance of water supply over other dimensions of schooling and in particular the classroom practices where teaching and learning are crucial activities.

Rather, it is to use an available example to illustrate the entangled micro-level processes and logics within governmental activities and how these normalise existing inequalities.

The crisis of COVID-19 raises serious questions about the viability of "normal schooling" in South Africa and the limits to the processes and logics that the system pivots upon. Schooling in its current form is one of the most rigid institutions of modernity (and colonialism) and it is very difficult to change. The South African schooling system presents two faces: one functional and the other dysfunctional. Much as these might appear as if they are two separate systems, it needs to be recognised that they are one system, and I would go so far as to suggest that the two parts are co-constitutive. They are manifestations of a policy settlement that has not adequately remediated apartheid inequalities, but operates as if it has. The assemblages of governmentality present inequalities as either short-term problems to be solved in the future within the limits of the existing system, or as unfortunate but inevitable features that have no alternatives. In whatever ways the dispositif addresses these inequalities, they are somehow accommodated as the "normal" to which we should "return" after a major disruption.

Arundhati Roy' s (2020) invitation is to view the pandemic as a place of rupture between the known past and an uncertain future, an invitation to make different choices and imagine different possibilities about the "normal". I interpret this as a call to challenge the embedded inequalities that are taken for granted in common sense thinking about South African schooling, expressed in terms such as "there is no alternative" and "we are improving, even if slowly".

A possible response to Roy's challenge might be to approach the current situation with what Foucault calls an ethos of "limit-attitude" in his 1994 analysis of the Enlightenment and humanism. Rather than seeking an ambitious rupture of what exists, Foucault proposes a form of criticism that goes beyond a simple "gesture of rejection", and instead, presses against the limits of what is possible. The work of critical analysis, he suggests, is to separate what is contingent and arbitrary from what appears to be necessary and obligatory. "The point, in brief, is to transform the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible crossing-over" (Foucault 1994, 315). The purpose of undertaking careful critical analysis with an ethos of limit-attitude is "to give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work of freedom" (316). For Foucault, freedom is never a completed achievement.

Proceeding along Foucault' s suggested lines, the task required is a careful analysis of what is necessary and what is contingent in current schooling arrangements, so as to press against the limits of what exists, to define what is acceptable, and to push against what is not. Foucault does not favour what he calls "empty dreaming", and instead calls for careful analysis of conditions of existence and the forms of thinking that sustain them, towards finding more "admissible and acceptable forms of existence" (Foucault 1996, 433).

As mentioned earlier in this article, Foucault's work on power, knowledge and subjectivity, which includes governmentality, is firmly grounded in the Western episteme to which he has made major contributions. Highly significant though his work is, it is important also to recognise its location in a particular geopolitics of knowledge and its assumed universalism of "Enlightenment Man". As coloniality theorist Walter Mignolo (2011) wryly notes, "what Foucault did not have was the colonial experience and political interest propelled by the colonial wound" (2011, 133). Debates have opened in South Africa on what delinking from the coloniality of this episteme in education would entail (see Christie and McKinney 2017). Though these debates lie beyond the scope of this article, I raise them here in order to press against the seeming inevitability of the Western episteme, and to recognise that "limit-thinking" may have its own limits. While governmentality enables an analysis of power as exercised and rationalised in modern state formations (the form that South Africa has adopted), it remains a set of tools rather than a theory of change, and its telos-its ultimate aim- does not address conditions outside Western governmental forms.

Arundhati Roy' s invitation to explore the space of rupture invites us to imagine different possibilities beyond what currently exists. It invites ethical reconsideration of how we as equal human beings might best live with others in our daily sociality, in the economies by which we secure our livelihoods, in the social institutions by which we shape and give meaning to our shared lives, in our schools with their central mandates of passing valued knowledge on to young people, building social cohesion and promoting forms of human flourishing. With what telos or ethical framework would we push against what exists towards something different?

Beyond issues of COVID-19 and schooling, there is a pressing need to build a stronger ethical concern for how we might best live with greater consciousness of, and care for, all other beings, and the earth itself. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fact that we as human beings are biological entities susceptible to disease, frailty, and mortality, just like other living entities, and our survival on the earth is vulnerable and interdependent. Shifts taking place in the earth's climate and ecosystem challenge us to acknowledge the powers of the earth-geopower-and also the damage done by the current extractive and exploitative economic system, which renders enormous distortions in wealth distribution and erodes the conditions of life for humans and other living beings. The ethical task of care means accepting our responsibilities as conscious, embodied beings who have emotions and aspirations and finite lives on an earth we share and must take care of.

Taking up Roy's invitation, I suggest that a pressing ethical and analytical task for us as educators is to shift our gaze from the privileged centre with its well-resourced schools and students, to the marginal spaces and places where the majority of South Africa's people live. The scars of history, not least apartheid history, need to be acknowledged (rather than set aside as they currently are) in the serious work of reparation and repair. Then, pushing against seeming inevitabilities and limits with an ethics and politics of engagement, the task is to explore what else we might do, or what we might do differently, to build shared public institutions that provide acceptable conditions for all in the name of justice and equal dignity.

 

References

Allais, S., A. Cooper, and Y. Shalem. 2019. "Rupturing or Reinforcing Inequality? The Role of Education in South Africa Today". Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 101: 105-26. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/15098.         [ Links ]

Alvaredo, F., L. Chancel, T. Piketty, E. Saez, and G. Zucman. 2018. World Inequality Report. World Inequality Lab. Accessed August 12, 2021. https://wir2018.wid.world/files/download/wir2018-summary-english.pdf.

Amnesty International. 2020. Broken and Unequal: The State of Education in South Africa. AFR 53/1705/2020. London: Amnesty International. Accessed August 12, 2021. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr53/1705/2020/en/.         [ Links ]

Black, S., S. Vally, and C.-A. Spreen. 2020. "Education, Covid-19 and Care: Social Inequality and Social Relations of Value in South Africa and the United States". Southern African Review of Education 26 (1): 40-61.         [ Links ]

Chipkin, I. 2003. "'Functional' and 'Dysfunctional' Communities: The Making of National Citizens". Journal of Southern African Studies 29 (1): 63-82. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305707032000060520.         [ Links ]

Chisholm, L., and B. Fuller. 1996. "Remember People's Education? Shifting Alliances, State-Building and South Africa's Narrowing Policy Agenda". Journal of Education Policy 11 (6): 693-716. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093960110604.         [ Links ]

Christie, P. 2006. "Changing Regimes: Governmentality and Education Policy in PostApartheid South Africa". International Journal of Educational Development 26: 373-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2005.09.006.         [ Links ]

Christie, P. 2020. Decolonising Schools in South Africa: The Impossible Dream? London: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Christie, P., and C. McKinney. 2017. "Decoloniality and 'Model C' Schools: Ethos, Language and the Protests of 2016". Education as Change 21 (3): 1-21. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/2332.         [ Links ]

DBE (Department of Basic Education). 2013. South African Schools Act, 1996 (Act No. 84 of 1996) Regulations Relating to Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure. Government Gazette Vol. 581, No. 37081, No. R. 920. Pretoria: Government Printers.         [ Links ]

De Clercq, F. 1997. "Policy Intervention and Power Shifts: An Evaluation of South Africa's Education Restructuring Policies". Journal of Education Policy 12 (3): 127-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093970120302.         [ Links ]

De Clercq, F. 2020. "The Persistence of South African Educational Inequalities: The Need for Understanding and Relying on Analytical Frameworks". Education as Change 24: 1 -22. http://doi.org/10.25159/1947-9417/7234.         [ Links ]

Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Edited by C. Gordon. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.         [ Links ]

Foucault, M. 1982. "The Subject and Power". In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, edited by H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, 220-26. Brighton: Harvester Press.         [ Links ]

Foucault, M. 1988. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings. Edited by L. D. Kritzman. New York, NY: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Foucault, M. 1996. Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984). Edited by S. Lotringer. New York, NY: Semiotext(e).         [ Links ]

Foucault, M. 1994. Power: Essential Works of Foucault. Vol. 3. Edited by P. Rabinow. London: Penguin Books.         [ Links ]

Foucault, M. 2009. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College De France, 197778. Edited by M. Senellart, F. Ewald and A. Fontana. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245075.         [ Links ]

Maistry, S. 2021. "South Africa's Comorbidity: A Chronic Affliction of Intersecting Education, Economic and Health Inequalities". Education as Change 25: 1-25. https://doi.org/10.25159/1947-9417/8677.         [ Links ]

Mignolo, W. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.         [ Links ]

Mlachila, M., and T. Moeletsi. 2019. "Struggling to Make the Grade: A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Weak Outcomes of South Africa's Education System". IMF Working Paper WP/19/47. Accessed August 13, 2021. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/03/01/Struggling-to-Make-the-Grade-A-Review-of-the-Causes-and-Consequences-of-the-Weak-Outcomes-of-46644.

Mthethwa, A. 2020. "Schools Feel the Covid-19 Economic Crunch". Daily Maverick, July 22, 2020. Accessed August 13, 2021. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-07-22-schools-feel-the-covid-19-economic-crunch/.

PCBE (Portfolio Committee on Basic Education). 2020a. "Schooling During COVID-19 Lockdown: Update with Deputy Minister". Parliamentary Monitoring Group, April 29, 2020. https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/30116/.

PCBE (Portfolio Committee on Basic Education). 2020b. "Reopening of Schools Progress Report, with Deputy Minister". Parliamentary Monitoring Group, June 30, 2020. https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/30560/.

PCBE (Portfolio Committee on Basic Education). 2020c. "2019/20 DBE Audit Outcomes and Expenditure Patterns in Respect of ASIDI, Conditional Grants and Equity in Education: FFC Briefing". Parliamentary Monitoring Group, November 3, 2020. https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/31355/.

PCBE (Portfolio Committee on Basic Education). 2020d. "DBE 2019/20 Annual Report and 2020/21 Quarter 1 Performance, with Minister". Parliamentary Monitoring Group, November 10, 2020. https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/31355/.

PCBE (Portfolio Committee on Basic Education). 2020e. "Budgetary Review and Recommendation Report (BRRR) of the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education on the Performance of the Department of Basic Education for the 2019/20 Financial Year". Parliamentary Monitoring Group, November 24, 2020. https://pmg.org.za/tabled-committee-report/4418/.

Roy, A. 2020. "The Pandemic Is a Portal". Financial Times, April 3, 2020. Accessed November 1, 2020. https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca.

Sokhi-Bulley, B. 2014. "Governmentality: Notes on the Thought of Michel Foucault". Critical Legal Thinking, December 2, 2014. Accessed November 1, 2020. https://criticallegalthinking.com/2014/12/02/governmentality-notes-thought-michel-foucault/.

Sulla, V., and P. Zikhali. 2018. Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: An Assessment of Drivers, Constraints and Opportunities. Washington, DC: World Bank Group. Accessed August 13, 2021. https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities.         [ Links ]

UNESCO, UNICEF, and World Bank. 2020. What Have We Learnt? Overview of Findings from a Survey of Ministries of Education on National Responses to COVID-19. Paris, New York, Washington, DC: UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34700.         [ Links ]

Visagie, A., S. Black, and X. Guzula. 2020. "Public Schools Are Under Siege: It's Time to Drastically Revise Their Funding Model". Daily Maverick, July 15, 2020. Accessed August 13, 2021. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-07-15-public-schools-are-under-siege-its-time-to-drastically-revise-their-funding-model/.

Von Holdt, K. 2013. "South Africa: The Transition to Violent Democracy". Review of African Political Economy 40 (138): 589-604. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2013.854040.         [ Links ]

^rND^sAllais^nS.^rND^nA.^sCooper^rND^nY.^sShalem^rND^sBlack^nS.^rND^nS.^sVally^rND^nC.-A.^sSpreen^rND^sChipkin^nI.^rND^sChisholm^nL.^rND^nB.^sFuller^rND^sChristie^nP.^rND^sChristie^nP.^rND^nC.^sMcKinney^rND^sDe Clercq^nF.^rND^sDe Clercq^nF.^rND^sFoucault^nM.^rND^sMaistry^nS.^rND^sVon Holdt^nK.^rND^1A01^nNa-iem^sDollie^rND^1A01^nNa-iem^sDollie^rND^1A01^nNa-iem^sDollie

INTRODUCTORY AND EDITORIAL NOTE

 

Introductory and Editorial Note - Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP)

 

 

Education as Change's new practice is to continuously publish articles earmarked for Themed Sections. This decision to publish continuously is in response to requests from academics to have their articles appearing timeously in the public domain after submission. We have noted these requests and we have decided to follow the practice of continuous publication in our section covering general articles, namely, to publish once the articles are ready and have been through peer reviews, copy-editing, proofreading and final approval.

Themed Section 2 is an evolving collection of articles written under the theme, "Promoting Scholarship in the Extended Curriculum Programme". Guest editors Vivienne Bozalek (from the University of the Western Cape and Rhodes University) and Aditi Hunma (from the University of Cape Town) explain, in their Call for Papers, that the need for promoting scholarship in this area of higher educational work is because ECP is "often located on the margins of academia". The guest editors will write an Editorial once all the approved articles are published for this section.

Dr. Na-iem Dollie

Chief Editor Education as Change University of Johannesburg, South Africa dollienaiem@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4252-6978

^rND^1A01^nAmanda^sMorris^rND^1A01^nAmanda^sMorris^rND^1A01^nAmanda^sMorris

ARTICLE

 

Knock Knock: An Exploration of Diverse Student Identities in a South African Design Classroom

 

 

Amanda Morris

Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa morrisa@cput.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7729-5041

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

Incorporating socially just concepts into classrooms means students' needs are considered and pedagogic activities recognise everyone and make sure that student voices are heard, acknowledged and affirmed. Art has historically provided alternative ways of making sense of our worlds, commenting on them, questioning practices and structures, and voicing our feelings and experiences. In the context of the volatile South African higher education landscape, diverse student populations, widespread calls for decolonisation and social justice, arts-based enquiry as a method provides a view into the ineffable experiences of students. This article explores collage as a conduit for design students to engage with their designer identities, experiences of higher education and personal narratives. The research documents students' liminal experiences at the start of their journey as extended curriculum design students and uses collage as a form of elicitation, a reflective process and a way of conceptualising ideas as an attempt at restoring justice in an African (design) classroom.

Keywords: arts-based enquiry; diversity; social justice; design education

---

 

 

Introduction

To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin. (hooks 1994, 13)

Historically, the didactic nature of design education in South Africa meant that the design classroom often neglected to acknowledge the voices of its students (Menon 2003). Design education and its inherent practices privileged those with knowledge of the accepted (largely European) conventions and excluded students who did not come with any "classical" (Menon 2003) art or design background. Garuba's article (2015) in the Mail & Guardian asserts that "curriculum assigns value to its objects of study and determines academic formation". This means that the curriculum impresses "particular ways of thinking about particular subjects" (Garuba 2015). This particular framing of the power of curriculum is what makes it a good place to plant seeds of transformation.

With a view to the Africanisation of education in South Africa and the call to take the African reality seriously (Louw 2010), Garuba (2015) recommends that in addition to the physical liberty that South Africans received at the abolishment of apartheid, we should also embrace contrapuntal pedagogies and thinking in higher education in order to effectively transform our curricula. Contrapuntal pedagogies encourage comparison and juxtaposition of curricular content and allow students to form their own critical views on topics. Contrapuntal pedagogies recognise that these views may be influenced by students' culture, history, life experiences and positionality, a key tenet of humanising pedagogies. Design studies should embrace a humanising pedagogy to create inclusive learning environments and help design students develop critical "academic and social resiliency" (Salazar 2013, 124), which they may not have had the opportunity to do at school level. Academic resilience in South Africa is often linked to the socio-economic backgrounds of students (Wills and Hofmeyr 2019), and the legacy of apartheid basic education is one of the main contributors to the difference in the academic performance of students in South Africa (Shepherd 2016).

Extended Curriculum Programmes (ECPs) are an initiative by the National Department of Higher Education in South Africa that aims to address the academic inequalities of South Africa's apartheid past and constitute anywhere between 15-30% of South African universities' first-year intake. ECPs offer previously marginalised South African students transitional spaces in which they may establish academic foundations that assist in reaching equality of outcomes as they progress through their academic journeys. ECPs invite students to find their way, agency and voice in higher education and to acquire ways and means to cope with the demands tertiary study places on them. There is a very clear social justice agenda in ECPs, and this is supported by special government funding and resources. I work in and have conducted my study in an ECP in design. It is an ideal environment for humanising pedagogies to be employed contrapuntally, as humanising pedagogies are not imposed or imparted (as is design education's largely didactic tradition); rather they engage the "oppressed" in their own "transformation" and "liberation" (Salazar 2013, 126).

As a humanising pedagogic response to the Africanisation of design education, in this study I explore the use of collage portraits in my design ECP classroom to create an inclusive and socially just learning environment that invites students to explore their identities as individuals who are at university studying design. I provide a visual analysis of the collages created by students about their identities as individuals, as students in higher education, and as designers to establish whether the perceived individual identities of students are inflected in their seeing of themselves at university and as designers.

 

Key Concepts

Art and Design Education: Traditions, Norms and Challenges

Art and design as a field of practice and education has historically been very exclusive (Menon 2003), and the standard of what is considered "art" has been subject to artists and designers alike conforming to "classic", largely Western traditions and norms (Menon 2003, 200). The norms in art and design privilege the "artistic genius" (Biscombe et al. 2017, 6) that has been accredited to the West. Using the "accepted Western norms" as the standard in art and design education and as evaluative tools (Biscombe et al. 2017, 15), art and design education has "othered" and cultivated an inferior view of anything different from the Western norm.

This has meant the privileging of a particular aesthetic and a judgement of the aesthetic of the "inferior" (Menon 2003, 199). The challenge exists for those of us in art and design education to challenge ourselves, as "colonisers" of sorts, to shift our gaze to the art less observed.

Africanisation

In South Africa, with its diversity of cultures, languages and histories, the call for the decolonisation and Africanisation of the curriculum, especially in higher education, has urged universities to do introspection. This attempt at introspection at an institutional level in South African universities has led to the formation of structures such as transformation committees and task teams to effect change (Garuba 2015). However, what this "committee"-driven approach risks is the "slow and deliberative death" (Garuba 2015) of discussions and action around the change that is needed in the curriculum and pedagogies of those involved in the academic project at South African universities. Affective change is urgently needed and yet is slow at ground zero.

The Africanisation of the curriculum, according to Garuba (2015), recognises the knowledge of previously devalued groups of people and recognises their cultural and scientific production. It is the process of liberating those who have been oppressed by colonial domination through a "continuous demand for freedom for Africans to experience the true humanity found in an African conceptualisation of Ubuntu" (Garuba 2015).

Humanising Pedagogies

Students of colour at higher education institutions have been intentionally and unintentionally inundated with messages of inferiority through a hidden curriculum (Salazar 2013, 122) that coerces students to assimilate into Western academic culture. This hidden coercion presents to them a choice between assimilation for the sake of feeling less "othered" (Biscombe et al. 2017, 5) or remaining on the periphery of learning environments while maintaining their "peculiarities" (Salazar 2013, 141).

Humanising pedagogies have at their heart Freire's notion that humans are motivated by a need to reason and engage in the process of becoming (Salazar 2013). Humanisation, according to Freire (2000 cited in Salazar 2013, 126), is the process of "becoming more fully human as social, historical, thinking, communicating, transformative, creative persons who participate in and with the world". Salazar (2013) suggests that a pedagogy for the oppressed is created "with" students and not for students to regain their "humanity".

In a similar vein, Salazar (2013, 128) lists five key tenets that are "requisite for the pursuit of one's full humanity through a humanizing pedagogy":

1. The full development of the person is essential for humanization.

2. To deny someone else's humanization is also to deny one's own.

3. The journey for humanisation is an individual and collective endeavor toward critical consciousness.

4. Critical reflection and action can transform structures that impede our own and others' humanness, thus facilitating liberation for all.

5. Educators are responsible for promoting a more fully human world through their pedagogical principles and practices.

Social Justice in Higher Education

All of us in the academy and in the culture as a whole are called to renew our minds if we are to transform educational institutions-and society-so that the way we live, teach, and work can reflect our joy in cultural diversity, our passion for justice, and our love of freedom. (hooks 1994, 34)

"Education can change lives" (Rowan 2019, 2), but education is not a "neutral act" (Rowan 2019). It can bring about conformity and make students invisible or it can be the practice of freedom (Freire 2000, 34). hooks (1994, 14) claims that in order for education to be liberatory, it should incite "mutual labour" in knowledge generation. This means that students should form part of knowledge building and creation instead of using a "banking system" (Freire 2000, 138; hooks 1994, 5) where knowledge building is a one-way street and only imparted by the knowledgeable other. Students should be presented with and challenged to pursue contrapuntal, critical activities that help them make meaning.

Zembylas (2017) discusses the concept of higher education as a public good and questions what this public good looks like in societies where gross inequalities exist/have existed. He uses the idea of curricular justice (Connell 1994), which emphasises not only the development of knowledge through the recognition of the interests of the least advantaged but also how this knowledge may be critical and useful to the communities of people that higher education institutions (HEI) seek to address. For social justice to be realised in higher education, it is vital to become critically aware (Sensoy and DiAngelo 2012) of who the real communities of people that higher education serves are and to make sure that their voices are heard, acknowledged and affirmed in their classrooms. This does not equate to equality but rather equity of access to systems and structures that are inherently unjust (Furlong and Cartmel 2009). These unjust systems exercise unequal social power at both micro (individual) and macro (structural) levels (Sensoy and DiAngelo 2012), and for any person to engage in social justice they have to recognise this. It is imperative at a macro level that universities implement policies and systems that promote equity (Furlong and Cartmel 2009) rather than equality, and at a micro level that pedagogy and curriculum facilitate equitable participation in knowledge formation.

ECP as Research Site

South Africa's apartheid education system, its associated pedagogies and the constraints these imposed on black South Africans pre-1994 are the antithesis of how Freire (2000) conceptualises a humanising process or pedagogy. The racially segregated school system of apartheid denied black South Africans the opportunity to participate "in and with the world" (Freire 2000, 43) by giving them inferior basic education and denying them access to higher education. Post 1994 saw freedom of physical movement and residence in addition to many other liberations of black South Africans. However, the legacy of "gutter education" (Bigelow 1987, 120) is still very apparent in higher education. Extended Curriculum Programmes (ECPs) are an attempt to address and redress these legacy inequalities by providing specially funded programmes that are well-resourced, and that give extended time to complete qualifications and provide curricular support in order to allow participants to participate, as Freire (2000) puts it, in and with the world of higher education.

hooks (1994) suggests that we respect and care for the souls of our students and in so doing provide conditions where learning starts deeply and intimately. Our Extended Curriculum Programme in Design, which is the site of this research, is a space where deep intimate learning can take place because the programme is guided by the national imperative of social justice, additional curricular support and extended time on tasks. Students in this programme typically do not have a "classical" (Menon 2003, 200) art and design background. They come largely from rural and public schools, and because of South Africa's history, and more poignantly its educationally segregated history, they do not have "adequate background knowledge" (Furlong and Cartmel 2009, 110) to engage in mainstream studies yet. These students, who often are English second- or third-language speakers, are offered an additional year of study (before starting their mainstream diploma) and are to be prepared for engagement with the established mainstream design curriculum.

Biscombe et al. (2017) reference language as a way in which supremacy and symbolic racism are upheld in universities. When students are not able to confidently participate in the discussions that form part of the knowledge-building activities, particularly because of a language difference, they are "othered" (Biscombe et al. 2017, 5), and the environment becomes unjust for them. In the design ECP the language of instruction is English even though roughly 80% of the students are not English first-language speakers. It would seem, then, that finding a "language" that transcends language would be key in establishing communication and relational justice (Zembylas 2017, 39). As Eisner asserts,

it has become increasingly clear since the latter half of the 20th century that knowledge or understanding is not always reducible to language. ... Thus not only does knowledge come in different forms, the forms of its creation differ. The idea of ineffable knowledge is not an oxymoron. (Eisner 2008, 5)

Collage as Arts-Based Enquiry

Collage is a means to include/hear marginalised voices and encourage language-based, visual/textural and non-verbal representations. Collages provide an alternative way to articulate authentic lived experiences (Gerstenblatt 2013). They also present a method of enquiry and analysis (Gerstenblatt 2013).

The term "collage" originates from the French word collé, which means glued. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque used collage as a cubist technique and in so doing disrupted the notion that a painting represents a "uniform reality" (Gerstenblatt 2013). Collage "fragments space and repurposes objects to contextualise multiple realities" (Gerstenblatt 2013, 295), and because of this it is a good way to create inclusive ways to communicate, learn about or elicit the different experiences of different people who find themselves in the same context. Collage, because of its non-linguistic nature, often allows for narratives that are silenced by "textual and linguistic data collection" (Gerstenblatt 2013, 295) to emerge.

In arts-based research/enquiry, the researcher can be actively involved in creating the artwork that will become part of the data, or the researcher can act as observer in the art-making process, with the artworks then being the data. In the case of my research, the latter is the case.

 

Methodology

Collage as an enquiry method provides a socially just tool for the humanising of ECP practices and pedagogy and can provide valuable information that can help with the development of a pedagogic response to Africanisation in our classrooms.

The research was done in an ECP design classroom in a university of technology in South Africa. There were approximately 40 graphic design students involved, of whom 21 signed consent forms and their work has been included in this article. Ethics clearance for this project was obtained as part of a larger project, the Research and Innovation in Teaching and Learning (RITAL) initiative at the university.

In the second semester of their ECP foundation year and as a prologue to a photography project where the students would be working with portraiture, they were asked to assemble three collages. They were each given:

• a collection of random magazines from which they could cut and paste images;

• markers, pens and pencils they could use to draw on the collage;

• a template of a body on A3 paper (Figure 1) on which they were to create their collages.

 

 

Based on the notion that transitions are socially structured (Breeze, Johnson, and Uytman 2020) and irreducible to individual-level phenomena, I wanted to understand the positionality of the students. If I am to be human in my approach to learning and develop strategies and curricula that are inclusive, I need to be aware of what they bring with them to the transition into higher and design education. Using collage as a way for students to explore or express their positionality as it pertains to the questions posed to them helps them situate themselves in the university and the design classroom. An awareness of what students bring with them and making their narratives explicit in a non-verbal way connect their worlds with that of the university and design studies.

Breeze, Johnson, and Uytman (2020) note that students who are part of widening participation initiatives in the United Kingdom, similar to ECPs in South Africa, find it difficult to adjust and find their place in universities where "a middle-class student body has existed as the unmarked norm for generations" (2020, 20). So in order to "listen visually" (Butler-Kisber 2008) and to conceptualise students' experiences of their transition into higher education and design studies, I asked my students to create three collages, exploring:

1. How they see themselves (the individual), including things they like to do and how they often feel;

2. How they see themselves as university students, including their life since they have been at university; and

3. How they see themselves as designers.

These three collage portraits were specifically chosen as illustrative of a student's transition from the periphery of their studies at higher education to the centre of the community of practice, which in this case would be being a designer. It is premised on the idea that when students present themselves at university, they bring all of themselves (the individual) with them. Their individual identity includes culture, family relationships and embodied knowledge acquired in their life thus far. Once they are at university, students have to adapt to the "culture" (Breeze, Johnson, and Uytman 2020, 21) of the university (seeing themselves as higher education students). In addition to finding ways to navigate university systems, students also have to engage the disciplinary culture in their design studies. The complexity of the landscape that students have to navigate when they get to higher education necessitates the investigation of tools that can provide lecturers with equitable insight into the experiences of students. In this study I wanted to establish whether, through the use of collage, which "enables meaning to travel in ways words cannot" (Butler-Kisber 2008, 270), students would visually conceptualise their identity(ies) and values and whether they inflected their perception of their embodied identities as individuals on their "newly acquired" identities as higher education participants and design students. Do students see themselves and who they are as part of their university/design student identities, or are they feeling like "fish out of water" (Breeze, Johnson, and Uytman 2020)?

Mullen (1999, 150) says "identity is like a cultural collage, variously arranged and glued together". The three collages students were asked to make are a visual deconstruction of the forged identity students are expected to have once they are at university. This forged university identity ignores the complexity of students' identities and is an "impossible harmony" (Freire 2000, 145) preached by those who want to maintain the status quo of assimilation and erasure of individual identity in order to "save themselves" (Freire 2000, 145).

Creating the three separate collages makes the aspects of their identity that students have to navigate while studying at university explicit to the lecturer and also creates an opportunity for the student, who may not necessarily be prepared for university, to conceptualise where the disparity between their identity(ies) (if any) lies.

Students were given 20 minutes to create each of the collages in class and once they had finished all three collages, they were asked to write a short paragraph about what they had done in their collages. This article only focuses on a visual analysis of the collages.

 

Analysis

Semiology (Rose 2016, 119), which is a critical visual methodology, was employed in the analysis of the collages. Semiology, also known as semiotics (Figure 2), is the reading or analysis of "signs" in order to make meaning. First introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure in the 20th century (Krampen 1987), semiology uses at its first level analysis "iconic" signs (Rose 2016) to make meaning of images. This means interpreting the image used at face value. At its second level semiology looks at the "indexical" (Rose 2016, 120) signs in an image to find inherent meaning by looking at what the objects/images used in the work are generally associated with. At the third level, connotative signs have "higher level" (Rose 2016, 145) meaning and are often used to elicit the (un)intended, "hidden" (Butler-Kisber 2008, 9) messages in images. Semiology "provides a precise and rich vocabulary for understanding how the structure of images produces cultural meaning" (Rose 2016, 145). In my research, it helped me to identify key themes in the collages and to make meaning of these themes as they pertain to students' perceptions of their identities in my classroom. It is worth mentioning that the relationship between viewer, image and meaning is complex and that the meaning we find in images is often influenced by culture and society (Curtin 2006, 54), but it is also worth noting that "we can gain information about the signified by looking at the sign".

Sadly, the analytical tools used for this study stem from the white patriarchy and it must be mentioned that the semiotic lens in the viewing/analysis of the collages is that of a female of colour. As a black female graphic designer in academia, I acknowledge that I am influenced by the profession in which I practise as well as my life experiences as a person of colour moving through academia in a plural manner. It is widely accepted in semiotics that you cannot divorce meaning-making from the viewer, their culture and history, and all interpretation of visual data is subjective. Generally accepted signifiers have been established globally over time, but even these are based on a largely Eurocentric view of the world and privilege this way of seeing.

In my analysis of the collages created by students I attempt to answer three questions linked to what Butler-Kisber and Poldma (2010) identify as the three contributions of collage to qualitative research:

1. Collage as a form of elicitation for writing-what are students' collages saying about their identities?

2. Collage as a reflective process-what are the similarities, recurring themes or links (if any) between individuals' collages and what do they mean?

3. Collage as a way of conceptualising ideas-what are students' aspirations around their deconstructed identities and how can this feed into curriculum and pedagogy?

Butler-Kisber (2008) suggests an iterative analysis process of viewing, discussing and writing in order to distil similarities and differences across collages to reveal a "kaleidoscopic representation". The process of viewing, discussing and writing should help to reveal meaning that would not emerge otherwise.

Students who participated were anonymised; the 21 students were named S1-S21, that is, student one to student 21. Each student's three collages were grouped together on one page. An initial analysis of the 21 sets of collages was performed, looking for signifiers that occurred multiple times throughout all the collages. Figure 3 shows a screenshot of this process. Four signifiers were identified using this method:

1. Food

2. The colour red

3. Personification of the template (specifically giving it a face)

4. Body parts

Using the web created by joining up all the signifiers (which were circled), the collage sets with the highest frequency of the range of signifiers were selected for analysis in this article. Figure 4 is a screenshot of this process. The black stars mark the pages with the highest frequency of the identified signifiers. They were S9, S11, S15 and S20.

These four sets of collages were examined in further detail (Figure 5).

 

Figure 6

 

Findings S9

From left to right is the university, individual and then the designer identity collages. At an iconic level, the signifiers in the university collage show that S9 has ideas and a keen knowledge of the world and history that enables him to do things. This is based on the linking of the globe and lightbulb directly to his hands. In addition to these iconic signifiers, S9 has symbolically used exclamation marks around his head, which is another signifier for ideas/thinking. At a connotative level, the pen in the leg seems to refer to being mobilised by university studies.

In S9's individual identity collage, the most striking iconic signifier is the colour red. Its iconic link is to danger, blood and emergency, and its placement on the wrists confirms possible dark tendencies. The signifier receives anchorage from the text "Dark Angel" arranged around a scattering of red rectangles that surround the body. The drawings of the game controller, scarf and glasses in different colours are symbolic signifiers of hope-things that keep the danger and darkness at bay.

The designer identity collage's iconic signifiers are the regal epaulettes, headdress and belt. They are signifiers of a distinguished nature and S9 seems empowered as a designer. Symbolic signifiers in his hands show empowerment and ability, and the earth in the bottom right-hand corner by his feet assumes a connotative signifier, which shows dominance. The exclamation mark appears again, however this time there is only one and it is in a thought bubble, showing clarity of thought and ideas.

The hands are significant in all three collages and the exclamation mark signifier is featured in both the university and designer collages. A clear link exists between these two collages and even the cut paper used on these two are the same. It is striking how much red was used in the individual collage and yet no red was used in the university or designer collage. S9 did not include any of the signifiers of his individual collage in the other two, and it seems this exclusion of the dark self from university and life as a design student can be seen as a paradigmatic sign of his liberation.

S11

In Figure 7, from left to right appear S11's individual, university and designer identity collages. S11 is one of the students who have all the signifiers present in their collages. Iconic signifiers in the individual collage are the praying hands signifying spirituality.

The location is symbolic in its position at the centre of the figure and signifies the centrality of her faith. The words "art" and "games" are placed at the centre of both arms and "shopping" and "music" on the legs as if to signify activities she often engages in. The word "food" is placed on her head and it seems to be central to her well-being. The use of the peace dove combined with the South African flag, the word "good" and the word "meaningful" create a syntagmatic sign that she is patriotic and loves her country. The colour blue is in the dove, the word good, the expressive cartoon-like drawings as well as in the marks she has drawn on her legs. Again, syntagmatically these signifiers point to the good she sees in herself as a person and her peaceful nature. The individual collage's face, unlike the other two, is not personified but is adjacent to the face of a white woman. On a symbolic level, the white woman seems to present an aspiration but at the same time seemingly erases the person of S11.

In her university collage, the red books are an iconic signifier of the importance of her studies. The fact that they reside at her feet gives anchorage to this signifier. S11 uses many words in her collage, with "Discovery" at the centre of her being. Above her head, as if to symbolically signify exclusion, she has placed the words "guess everything". She has personalised the face on this figure, and it is shouting, giving anchorage to the idea that university has not been an easy environment to navigate. This is confirmed by the image of a man using a loud hailer.

In S11's designer collage, she draws what seems to be a hybrid of the individual and university collages, with characteristics of the markings in her legs as well as the blue of the individual collage and the red of the previous two collages being mixed. These symbolic signifiers indicate a coming together of the two individual and university identities and how it strengthens her in the journey to becoming a designer. The curvy red lines on the legs continue into the hands, signifying that she is able to use her previous learning experiences (the red specifically referring to the university identity) and apply them to her journey as a designer. S11 has her "dream" at her feet and this is a symbolic signifier of her confidence in her design abilities and studies. She personifies her designer identity, but this time uses a black man, which signifies the connotative transformation from the individual aspirations to a renewed thinking and seeing of the self.

S15 is another student who presents all four signifiers in his collages. Figure 8 shows, from left to right, his individual collage, designer collage and then the university student collage. S15 worked extensively with his own drawings, and this in itself is a signifier of confidence in his ability to communicate visually. S15 works with found pictures richly in his individual collage. A significant signifier in his individual collage is the word "power" above his head, which signals the importance of power as it is placed above everything in the collage. Oversized sunglasses on his comically drawn-in face signify a sense of humour or playfulness in his personal character. There is transference of meaning in the individual collage with red moving between the face, cars, food pot and S15's leg, which has a significant amount of red covering it. There is picture of a spray can as an iconic signifier linked to S15's love for and practice of graffiti. The spray can appears in all three collages. In the designer collage, the spray can is in hand whereas in the university collage the signifier is next to the figure, larger than all the others and also in red. The size and placement signify at a connotative level that graffiti is a big part of S15's life, but does not fit into the university environment.

In the designer collage, S15 has a pen as a signifier of his design work. Pictures of pens are placed on his legs and represent being grounded in design. The designer's face is personified in a comical manner and again shows the playfulness of S15. The lightbulb next to the head of the designer collage signifies conceptual ability. The designer collage is different from the other two collages in that it has not been worked on as extensively as the university or individual collages. As a paradigmatic sign, this shows less confidence and that S15 has not yet established what his identity as a designer is.

S15 has grappled extensively with the university identity in the third collage. The red spray, although on the periphery of the university identity, gives anchorage to S15's love of graffiti, which is also evident in the abundant images of markers and pens both in the right leg and as a thought in a bubble above the head. The diegesis of these pens and exaggerated spray can and the love and attention given to them is in contrast to the Zs that appear above the head. Some punctuation marks in the right speech bubble are used as iconic signifiers of expletives, which symbolically indicate frustration with higher education. The signifier on the left arm using the words "away from home" is a syntagmatic sign of the disconnect between S15's home life and life at university. This is given anchorage by the image of a man in a suit on the torso of the body, which is in contrast to the comical personifications on all the collages' faces.

S20

Figure 9 shows, from left to right, S20's designer collage, individual collage, and university collage. A striking signifier that can be read as iconic but also connotative is the word "mom" that appears on all three collages in red at the physiological position of the heart, which is noted as a special place. This red signifier is transferred to the lady on the left of the individual collage. She is a signifier of the perfect woman, which gives anchorage to S20's special place for his mother. The designer and the individual collages have facial features, whereas the university collage's personification only has hair but no facial features. This signifier shows a loss of identity at university and is given anchorage by the skateboard, which again is present in all the collages, being at an angle away from the body.

The skateboard in the designer collage is also removed from the body, but rather than angled away, it is parallel to the body. In the individual collage the body is riding the skateboard, and this gives anchorage to the iconic sign, showing skater culture as part of S20's identity.

Dollar symbols and stacks of money drawn onto the collages signify the aspiration for financial stability in the future, which is given anchorage by the use of words such a "kaching!" and "win$" and the dollar signs as eyes for the designer body. There are many connections between the designer and individual identities, but fewer in the university identity collage. The individual collage is the only one where the body is clothed. This signifies the secureness of S20 in his personal identity and serves as a paradigmatic sign of the nakedness he feels as a designer and university student. There is a link made between the designer and individual identity in the iconic radio tattooed on the right forearm. This is paradigmatically contrasted with the thought bubble on the left of the university collage, which contains earphones and music playing from a phone. These signifiers have similar meaning to the radio, but are not shown as an integral part of the body; rather, they are depicted as a thought external to the university body. On the university collage, very little is shown as part of the body except for "mom". This is also the case in the designer collage, where the signifiers are around the body rather than part of or on it.

 

General Findings

In their collage portraits of themselves as individuals, students portray the diversity I often observe in my classroom. Their depictions of themselves are detailed and sketch a very vivid portrait of whom they are as individuals. Here, they are dealing with the familiar and known and confidently portray themselves in their individual collages. For three of the four discussed collage sets, the portrait of themselves as individuals is the most detailed out of the three. S11 is the only one who has put the same amount of detail and visual expression into all three collages.

What is most striking in their portrayals of themselves as university students are the similarities in the iconic symbols they use. The lightbulb, exclamation and thought bubbles are present in some way or another in all the collages where they had to depict themselves as university students and seem to allude to the idea of the university as a place of thought, conscious decision-making and conceptualisation. Students seem to be grappling with the connection between head (thinking) and hands (doing) in their university collages, as they all have worked extensively around the head and shoulders of their figures.

In the designer collages, similar to the individual identity collages, there seems to be more engagement. There is a definite move away from the less detailed university collages to a more engaged and integrated way of seeing the self. Many of the students inflected some aspects of their individual collages in their designer collage, but S11 is the only one who seems to have fully merged the different aspects of her individual and university collages in the designer collage.

It is worth noting that the personification of the template, especially in terms of adding facial features (hair etc.), could be an allusion to students' need to regain their humanness at university and in design studies, advocating that the university and its curricula and participants are not faceless and without identity, but human with histories, cultures and stories to tell.

 

Discussion

The data in the four collages that have been examined confirm Breeze, Johnson, and Uytman' s (2020) call for the need for socially structured transitions that do not happen individually but are linked to interactions with spaces, people and things. The four students' collage sets show a richness of data that I believe would not be achievable within the limitations of the text and language used in interviews and questionnaires. Both the intended and unintended meanings that students create by repurposing images, texts and drawings make for rich portraits of student transitions into university and design studies and have the potential to help educators understand the complexities that students experience in transitioning into both the university and design studies.

In the analysis of the four sets of collages it becomes clear that collage portraits can be used as a pedagogic response to the Africanisation of design education as it allows for an expression of identity that is inclusive and brings the whole identity of a student into the classroom. This type of pedagogic response, however, is not limited to the design classroom. It can assist many other fields of study in understanding the journeys students are on and to make space for the practice of transformational learning and deep intimate interactions with the people and the spaces we find ourselves in.

To work towards the restoration of social justice in the South African design classroom, educators have to recognise the diversity in the classroom in a way that transcends language. Collage provides a rich listening opportunity that transcends the language barrier that many of my ECP students experience when they reach higher education and the medium of instruction is English only. Providing opportunities for engaging students on a level where they feel they are being heard and seen makes it easier for students to engage and value their own voice in an environment that would otherwise seem extremely unsafe, threatening and unwelcoming.

 

Conclusion

Collage as a tool for conceptualising, eliciting information and reflection created opportunities for my students to contribute to my awareness of what their experiences in the liminal spaces in the extended curriculum programme and higher education are. I often wonder how I can help my students transition into university and design studies without losing their individuality and a sense of the value of their identity and pride in their history. Instead of them adopting a forged identity I am always looking for ways in which I can encourage them to include their individuality in their journey of knowledge building and meaning-making. Many times, in this pursuit I experienced communication challenges and language constraints. Collage allowed students to express themselves in a way that transcended these language and verbal constraints and to visualise this transitional time in their higher education journey.

When we try to create inclusive curricula, practise socially just pedagogies and design inclusive teaching and learning we often use language-based methods only. In this study we see a glimpse of the potential of arts-based enquiry, and particularly collage, to give much greater insight into "who" is in the classroom. Collage has the potential to provide a talking point to discuss the transitions and the challenges that ECP students experience. Both the intended and unintended meaning created in a collage makes for rich data that can help us design higher education curricula for the public good and where the voices of the historically inferior are heard and affirmed.

Going forward this study would have to be replicated in order to establish its reliability in showing the true experiences of students transitioning into higher education and in this case design studies. It would be useful to investigate the availability of an African semiotic lens that allows for a more local view of the symbolism used in the students' collages. It would also be worthwhile to do a further detailed analysis of the text students wrote after creating their collages and juxtaposing it with the visual representations in the collages.

 

References

Bigelow, W. 1987. "Challenging 'Gutter Education'". Social Education 51 (2): 120-23.         [ Links ]

Biscombe, M., E. Costandius, S. Conradie, and N. Alexander. 2017. "Investigating 'Othering' in Visual Arts Spaces of Learning". Education as Change 21 (1): 137-54. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/1070.         [ Links ]

Breeze, M., K. Johnson, and C. Uytman. 2020. "What (and Who) Works in Widening Participation? Supporting Direct Entrant Student Transitions to Higher Education". Teaching in Higher Education 25 (1): 18-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2018.1536042.         [ Links ]

Butler-Kisber, L. 2008. "Collage as Inquiry". In Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues, edited by J. Knowles and A. L. Cole, 265-77. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452226545.n22.         [ Links ]

Butler-Kisber, L., and T. Poldma. 2010. "The Power of Visual Approaches in Qualitative Inquiry: The Use of Collage Making and Concept Mapping in Experiential Research". Journal of Research Practice 6 (2): 1 -16.         [ Links ]

Connell, R. W. 1994. "Poverty and Education". Harvard Educational Review 64 (2): 125-50. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.64.2.m14947g30k1x5781.         [ Links ]

Curtin, B. 2009. "Semiotics and Visual Representation". Accessed September 7, 2021. www.arch.chula.ac.th/journal/files/article/lJjpgMx2iiSun103202.pdf.

Eisner, E. 2008. "Art and Knowledge". In Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues, edited by J. G. Knowles and A. L. Cole, 3-13. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452226545.         [ Links ]

Freire, P. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.         [ Links ]

Furlong, A., and F. Cartmel. 2009. Higher Education and Social Justice. Maidenhead: Open University Press.         [ Links ]

Garuba, H. 2015. "What Is an African Curriculum?" The Mail & Guardian, April 17, 2015. Accessed September 6, 2021. https://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/.

Gerstenblatt, P. 2013. "Collage Portraits as a Method of Analysis in Qualitative Research". International Journal of Qualitative Methods 12 (1): 294-309. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691301200114.         [ Links ]

hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Krampen, M. 1987. "Ferdinand de Saussure and the Development of Semiology". In Classics of Semiotics, edited by M. Krampen, K. Oehler, R. Posner, T. A. Sebeok and T. von Uexküll, 59-88. Boston, MA: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9700-8_3.         [ Links ]

Louw, W. 2010. "Africanisation: A Rich Environment for Active Learning on a Global Platform". Progressio 32 (1): 42-54.         [ Links ]

Menon, R. 2003. "ALIENATION: The Body and Color in Question". Integrative Explorations: Journal of Culture and Consciousness 7-8: 197-215.         [ Links ]

Mullen, C. 1999. "Whiteness, Cracks, and Ink-Stains: Making Cultural Identity with Euro-American Preservice Teachers". In The Postmodern Educator: Arts-Based Inquiries and Teacher Development, edited by C. T. P. Diamond and C. A. Mullen, 147-90. Vol. 89 of Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education, edited by J. L. Kincheloe and S. R. Steinberg. New York, NY: Peter Lang.         [ Links ]

Rose, G. 2016. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. 4th ed. London: Sage Publications.         [ Links ]

Rowan, L. 2019. Higher Education and Social Justice: The Transformative Potential of University Teaching and the Power of Educational Paradox. Cham: Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05246-1.         [ Links ]

Salazar, M. C. 2013. "A Humanizing Pedagogy: Reinventing the Principles and Practice of Education as a Journey toward Liberation". Review of Research in Education 37 (1): 121-48. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X12464032.         [ Links ]

Sensoy, Ö., and R. DiAngelo. 2012. Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.         [ Links ]

Shepherd, D. L. 2016. "The Open Door of Learning-Access Restricted: School Effectiveness and Efficiency across the South African Education System". PhD diss., Stellenbosch University.         [ Links ]

Wills, G., and H. Hofmeyr. 2019. "Academic Resilience in Challenging Contexts: Evidence from Township and Rural Primary Schools in South Africa". International Journal of Educational Research 98: 192-205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2019.08.001.         [ Links ]

Zembylas, M. 2017. "Higher Education for the Public Good in Post-Conflict Societies- Curricular Justice and Pedagogical Demands: A Response from Cyprus and South Africa". Higher Education Research and Development 36 (1): 36-42. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1249071.         [ Links ]

^rND^sBigelow^nW.^rND^sBiscombe^nM.^rND^nE.^sCostandius^rND^nS.^sConradie^rND^nN.^sAlexander^rND^sBreeze^nM.^rND^nK.^sJohnson^rND^nC.^sUytman^rND^sButler-Kisber^nL.^rND^sButler-Kisber^nL^rND^nT.^sPoldma^rND^sConnell^nR. W.^rND^sEisner^nE.^rND^sGerstenblatt^nP.^rND^sKrampen^nM.^rND^sLouw^nW.^rND^sMenon^nR.^rND^sMullen^nC.^rND^sSalazar^nM. C.^rND^sWills^nG.^rND^nH.^sHofmeyr^rND^sZembylas^nM.^rND^1A01^nNike^sRomano^rND^1A01^nNike^sRomano^rND^1A01^nNike^sRomano

ARTICLE

 

Writing and Drawing with Venus: Spectral Re-turns to a Haunted Art History Curriculum

 

 

Nike Romano

Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa romanon@cput.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2480-3524

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

This article explores some of the complexities of teaching art and design history to students in a Design Extended Curriculum Programme at a university of technology in the context of post-1994 South African society-a society troubled by the ghosts of colonial and apartheid histories that agitate the present/future. Tracking a series of diffractive pedagogical encounters, the article makes visible how, as a discipline, art history haunts the curriculum by reinforcing Western cultural superiority. The article argues that speaking-with and drawing-with dis/appeared ghosts offer new possibilities for reconfiguring art history curriculum studies that both valorise historicity and in turn open us towards different futures. The case study centres around the construction of the "Venus figure" as an embodiment of humanist Western cultural ideologies and practices that reduce the female body to an object of capture for man. Students intra-act with various representations of the Venus figure across art history through the story of Sarah Baartman, the so-called "Hottentot Venus", whose haunting presence continues to contour, colour and texture discourses around decolonising the curriculum in South African higher education.

Keywords: animate literacies; pedagogies of hauntology; art history; affect; writing-with; drawing-with

---

 

 

Introduction

Post-1994 South African society is haunted by colonial and apartheid ghosts that continue to agitate the present/future. In the field of South African higher education (SAHE), instances of such troublings manifested during the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall student protests (2015-2018) and challenged, among other things, the ongoing dominance of Eurocentric pedagogical and curricula discourses and practices, and called for the decolonisation of the academy. It is within this context that this article explores a hauntological pedagogical approach to the teaching and learning of art and design history within an Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) at a university of technology. The inquiry makes visible the complexities of teaching art and design history in general, and in ECP in particular. The intention is to show how injustices, practices, structures and operations that underpinned the colonial and imperial projects are embedded in the discipline of art history and how the ramifications of these continue to impact the present and the future. The study will focus on a series of pedagogical encounters that critically engage the construction of the "Venus figure" as an embodiment of humanist Western cultural ideologies and practices that, in the name of "love" and "beauty", reduce the female body to an object of capture for Man (Wynter 2003).¹

Drawing on Michalinos Zembylas's (2013) pedagogies of hauntology, the article proposes strategies of working with art histories in ways that reach towards new futures rather than seeking to "fi[x] the past" (2013, 70). What follows is an inquiry into how encounters with ghosts from the past might trouble dominant discourses and generate different ways of thinking/being/becoming with the past, present, and future. This will be done by writing and drawing with the ghostly figure of Sara Baartman²-the so-called "Hottentot Venus",³ who both haunts and is haunted by normative iterations of the figure of Venus-goddess of love and beauty. In addition to decolonising the discipline, the intention is to show how these hauntings also agitate and impact contemporary concerns such as the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo campaigns.

To begin, the article contextualises the Design Foundation ECP course and outlines some of the complexities associated with teaching and learning art history in South African higher education. The article then discusses the concept of hauntology (Derrida 1994), pedagogies of hauntology (Zembylas 2013) and agential realism Barad (2007, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2019). This is followed by a brief account of Sara Baartman's life and death before moving on to the case study itself.

 

Design Foundation ECP

The Design Foundation Programme is a one-year multi-disciplinary course that introduces students to the basics of design and the specificities of the disciplines⁴ they have chosen to study when they progress to the mainstream programmes the following year. The 2020 cohort comprised approximately 80 students of colour, the majority of whom are South African. Even though they are part of the so-called "born-free" generation,⁵ the students' lives are differentially affected by the ghosts of the past. Given that the majority of them matriculated from schools that do not offer art and design as subjects, it is crucial that we identify and prioritise what will be most useful to becoming designers in their first year of study. In addition to the aforementioned content specific to design education, the course foregrounds the relationship between ethics, epistemology and ontology in educational encounters.

In keeping with the aforementioned strategy, the aims of the design theory component of the course include the following: to support and reinforce studio practice, familiarise students with art and design history, and foreground the ethics and responsibilities of design processes, principles and practices. Moreover, guided by the call to decolonise the academy and informed by the graduate attributes-including critical thinking, resilience and empathy-that our institution strives to instil, emphasis is placed on multilayered complexity and finding new knowledges other than representational modes of knowledge that reproduce the status quo.⁶ In this regard, the following questions help define what the priorities of art history should be: How can art history be taught in ways that matter, in ways that resonate with students' lives? How can art history be put to work within the decolonisation movement? How can art history help students to become critical thinkers? How might art history activate issues of ethics and response-ability⁷ in young designers who will be shaping the future? What can art history offer young South African design students as they begin their journey of becoming designers in an increasingly violent society in which gender-based violence, poverty and unemployment are among the highest in the world. Thinking with Zembylas's (2013) pedagogies of hauntology,⁸ how might writing and drawing with the ghosts of a haunted art history curriculum open up new possibilities for addressing the ambivalence of memory, justice, and (re)conciliation in education?

 

Between the Spectacle to the Spectral

Jacques Derrida's theory of hauntology, which is a homophone of the French ontology, sheds light on the spectrality of the ghost as a figure that is "neither living nor dead, present nor absent" (1994, 63). Importantly, ghosts transgress ontological fixity such as dead/alive, absent/present and past/present. Thinking with Derrida, Zembylas conceptualises pedagogies of hauntology as both metaphor and pedagogical methodology for deconstructing the orthodoxies of academic history thinking and learning. He argues that as metaphor, hauntology evokes the figure of the ghost that both troubles the hegemonic status of representational modes of knowledge in remembrance practices and undermines their ontological frames and ideological histories. As pedagogical methodology, hauntology reframes histories of loss and absence, and uses them as points of departure that acknowledge the complexities and contradictions emerging from haunting. In so doing, Zembylas expands history learning beyond the limitations of simply studying the past in order to uncover and master unknown facts by interrogating how "the spectral constitutes an object of analysis that enables us to see history education as a promise for radical openness in the future rather than as a remembrance practice that ontologizes the ghosts of the past" (2013, 71). For this to work, he eschews the exorcising of ghosts of the past and proposes instead a welcoming "living with ghosts" in order to activate critical learning practices that open towards "a still unformulated future that extends normative notions of identity, memory, and justice" (2013, 70).

In like manner, Avery Gordon argues it is impossible to do away with the ghosts of abusive systems of power-such as slavery and colonialism-because their hauntings continue to make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life. For her, the meeting of the living and the lived is a "forking of the future and the past ... that alters the experience of being in time, the way we separate the past, the present, and the future" (2008, xvi). Gordon's words can be put in conversation with Karen Barad's theory of agential realism that is generated by a diffractive reading of quantum physics through contemporary theories of social justice (2017, G110). Agential realism reworks classical concepts of space, time, matter and the void, and undoes Newtonian assumptions of separability and metaphysical individualism (Barad 2017, G110). In her conceptualisation of loss as "a marking that troubles the divide between absence and presence" (2017, G106), Barad illuminates how, far from being immaterial, "hauntings are an ineliminable feature of material conditions" (2017, G107), and in so doing foregrounds the hauntological relationship within ethics, ontology and epistemology, and by implication, new possibilities for pedagogical practices and curricula design.

As a forewarning against spectacle pedagogies that reinforce representational figurations of ghosts "in a sensationalized and ideological manner", Zembylas encourages entering into conversation with ghosts in order to trouble the relationship between spectator and the observed (2013, 69). The shift from the spectacle to the spectral gaze not only shatters binaries of the observer and the observed and breaks down distinctions between now and then, it also affects our relationality, and by implication our ethical response-ability with others across space and time. It is to these diffractive insights that we now turn.

Sylvia Wynter's interrogation of the Western construction of Man as white European against which all else is measured-and fails to meet the standards-provides a useful starting point in understanding the machinations and repercussions of the heteronormative Western gaze (2003). Wynter focuses on two effects that are relevant to this inquiry. The first deals with the Western gaze's denigration of difference that obliterates that which does not fit into a normative frame. Grounded in difference as other, the second effect positions the figure as fixed and trapped forever in the past. Unlike the aforementioned, a diffractive gaze interferes with the "white washing" effects of the Western gaze by opening up radical possibilities for looking and seeing that reveal multiple patterns of difference within the spectrum of white light. Significantly, these differences are not set apart from each other, rather they are read through each other. In other words, in shifting the spotlight away from the spectacle-that shines light on that which is separate-the diffractive gaze sheds light on the differences within the spectral-thereby illuminating that which would have remained unseen or foreclosed. Rather than emphasising epistemological fixity, diffractive pedagogies open towards indeterminate futures in which together with the ghost, we are all implicated.

As an alternative to returning that reflects back on and reinforces separations between subject/object, observer/observed, past/present, Barad proposes diffractive re-turning as a multiplicity of processes that "turn it over and over again-iteratively intra-acting, re-diffracting, diffracting anew, in the making of new temporalities (spacetimematterings), new diffraction patterns" (2014, 168). In light of the above, the adoption of a thematic approach to art history lends itself to uncovering intra-active⁹ diffractive patterns that are generated through and across time. It is within this posthumanist spatio-temporality that time is disjointed and together with multiple ghosts we re-turn to events, turning them over and over in order to conjure depth, nuance, percolation and sedimentation. In like manner, and linked to the aforementioned, is Barad's proposition of memory as the "pattern of sedimented enfoldings of iterative intra-activity" that refute the "erasure of memory and the restoration of a present past" (2010, 261). Understood in this way, the world comprises ongoing re-membering as a bodily activity of re-turning to enfolded materialisations of all traces of memory that are neither held nor fixed in human subjectivity. Instead, re-membering enacts an ongoing "reconfiguring/re-articulating (of) the world" (Barad and Gandorfer 2021, 17).

 

Sara, Sarah, Saartje, Saartjie Baartman

McKittrick argues that Baartman's life story not only embodies "the biased racial-sexual discourses of her day [but] also demonstrates how our present system of knowledge (the tables, the ranks, the statistics, the measurements) continue to be informed by such discourses" (2010, 115). What follows is an overview of the life and death of Sara Baartman, the construction of "Hottentot Venus" performance, and how her ghost/s continues to contour contemporary South African society.

Baartman's birth name is not known.¹⁰ Born in the mid 1770s in the Eastern Cape, she lived the first decade of her life working on a farm¹¹ before travelling to the Cape where she worked as a wet nurse and washer woman in the Cesar household.¹² The 15 years that she spent in the Cape coincided with the transfer from Dutch to British rule in 1806. Despite the Cape's legislation that forbade enslavement of Khoisan people, while not officially identified as a slave, for all intents and purposes, Baartman was treated as one (Scully and Crais 2008, 309). Records reveal that Baartman lived in the Cape 10 years longer than was previously thought. During this time, she gave birth to three children, all of whom died within days of being born. She also had a relationship with a Batavian drummer, Hendrik De Jongh,¹³ with whom she would live for periods of time.

In their analysis of the complex relationship between Sara Baartman and the "Hottentot Venus" performance, Scully and Crais argue that learning to act the part credibly necessitated an erasure of Baartman's situated subjectivity (2008, 304). Furthermore, in presenting a more complex rendering of her life, they caution against "the trope of Sara Baartman as innocent indigenous woman" (2008, 306). As a port city, the Cape was inundated with itinerant sailors whose desire for entertainment and the sale of women's bodies became fundamental to the local economy (2008, 309). So much so that Berg Street was renamed Venus Street due to the proliferation of brothels that sprang up (Picard 1968, 91-93).¹⁴ In response to this demand, Alexander Dunlop, a military medical doctor, began to organise events at the Slave Lodge where Baartman would perform for visiting seamen. Scully and Crais speculate that it was during these encounters that Dunlop and Hendrik Cesar realised the economic potential of Baartman's performances and began to hatch their plan of taking her to England to perform the "Hottentot Venus". In 1810, together with Hendrik Cesar and the recently retired Dunlop, Baartman set sail for England where, for the next five years, she was displayed first to British and then French publics as both pornographic spectacle and scientific specimen-as the "Hottentot Venus" and "Venus Noir", respectively (Jackson 2020, 8). The move to France coincided with a shift in how Baartman was perceived. Whereas in England her performance was billed as a titillating and novel freak show, in Paris she attracted attention from scientists at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle who alleged that her supposed abnormal genitalia were proof that the black human being was more closely related to orangutans than Man (Buikema 2017). In the year before her death, Baartman spent three days at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle where she was observed as a specimen of curiosity. It was during this time that the notorious illustrations portraying Baartman in a manner characteristic of zoological mammalian specimens were created. Appearing first in Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Frédéric Cuvier's Histoire naturelle des mammifères, Baartman's anterior and lateral profiles are depicted. In her analysis of these images, Sadiah Qureshi suggests that Baartman's pose is indicative of her dehumanised position because rather than being portrayed in a classical pose as was the norm at the time, Baartman's figure "appears rigid with the air of a stuffed specimen rather than a live model" (Qureshi 2004, 241). The scientists had also hoped to perform physical examinations on Baartman, but their plans were thwarted when Baartman refused to oblige them. However, after her death the following year, what she had refused in life was ignored and, with permission from the powers that be, her body was delivered to the museum where naturalist Georges Cuvier performed the dissection. He made a plaster cast of her body before removing her brain and genitals, which were placed as specimens in glass jars. For the next 150 years, Baartman's skeleton and cast of her body were exhibited on public display for all to see.

The campaign to return Baartman's remains to her ancestral home was catalysed by two South African artists, Diana Ferrus and Willie Bester. In 1978, Ferrus, a writer who has Khoisan and slave ancestry, composed a poem for Baartman titled "I Have Come to Take You Home".¹⁵ Inspired by Ferrus's poem, Bester created the sculpture Saartjie Baartman that the University of Cape Town (UCT) acquired in 2001. After years of fraught negotiation, in 2002 Baartman's remains were finally returned to South Africa for a ceremonial burial at Hankey in the Eastern Cape.

Some scholars have cautioned against working with Sara Baartman's story. For example, Dunton (2015), who is concerned with ethics of representation, interrogates the unequal power relations embedded in research practices. By asking "who has the power to represent-power both in the sense of status (endowed by class position, gender, race) and in the sense of access to resources" (2015, 35), Dunton alerts us to the risk that researchers might be "treating Baartman as capital" and through this process re-inscribing Baartman as an object of scientific dissection (2005, 44). While I am mindful of these concerns, as an art history instructor, I argue that it would be remiss to ignore ongoing agitations and learnings activated by iterations of Baartman's ghost that materialise within the context of South African higher education. While I am in a quandary as to whether working with Baartman's figure might further traumatise her legacy, I feel it would be irresponse-able not to tell her story because it exposes how hegemonic Western cultural normative thinking and practices both perpetuated and propped up the colonial project that continues to reinforce racial and gender stereotypes today. I also feel conflicted because I want to protect her legacy and leave her to rest, yet her story embodies violent colonial histories that have relevance today both in terms of the decolonisation of knowledge and practice but also with regard to gender-based violence in contemporary South African society.¹⁶ Given their relevance, it felt imperative to find ways in which students could become-with Baartman and the ghost of the "Hottentot Venus" in order to gain a better understanding of our haunted past and its relationship to art history.

The figure of Baartman has captured the imagination of students and artists alike. This is evident, for example, in the controversy about Bester's aforementioned piece, Saartjie Baartman, that was displayed in UCT's Engineering and Sciences library.¹⁷ On the anniversary of the removal of Cecil Rhodes' s statue from campus, students covered Bester's sculpture arguing that "the violent objectification and sexualisation of the black body is a system, which feeds into the stereotype of racial superiority" (Naidoo 2015, 7). Seeking a respectful recontextualisation of Saartjie Baartman's spirit and legacy, protesters exposed how "violences inflicted on the black body and psychology still continue, and we will not stop until we decolonise the black body and mind!" (2015, 7). While the constraints of this article limit an elaboration of the furore arising from the "cover up", it is worth mentioning that the debates and learning opportunities "revealed the centrality of art in the project of articulating a decolonial consciousness, decolonial sensibilities and the possibilities for institutional change" (Kessi 2019, 84), as is evidenced in the renaming of Jameson Memorial Hall, which previously embodied imperial and colonial authority as typified in its neoclassical design, to the Sarah Baartman Hall, a reconfigured space in which Baartman's ghost now presides.¹⁸

 

Writing and Drawing with Venus

The case study presented here is an account of a series of lessons that ran at the beginning of Term 1 of the 2020 academic year. As part of a larger module, the programme was interrupted by an eruption of student protests culminating in a two-week closure of our campus that also coincided with the outbreak of Covid-19 and subsequent lockdown¹⁹ in South Africa, which brought face-to-face teaching to an abrupt halt for the remainder of the year. As a result, initial plans to develop the module with students were curtailed as we transitioned to remote learning.

Design ECP focuses on setting the scene for academic life, both in terms of content and pedagogical relations. Given that students are transitioning to higher education, and in many cases navigating a new city for the first time, attention is paid to putting them at ease and alleviating feelings of alienation, anxiety and overwhelmedness. With this in mind, the theory course introduces students to art history in a relatable fashion by drawing links between art history and their lived experience with a view to positioning students as central to their learning.

Given contemporary culture's emphasis on the spectacle, beauty and desire and its impact on young people's lives, the course prioritises young designers' response-ability and accountability in challenging stereotypes of beauty and desire. Considering their import, it is crucial that these concerns are foregrounded from the outset in order to track how notions of beauty, love and desire have been constructed over time. The Venus figure became the agent through which stereotypes and hegemonic discourses could be addressed, through and across space and time. It ushered forth important learnings about the performativity of the female body-and as will be shown in this inquiry, the black female body in particular.

 

Lesson One: Venus,²⁰ Goddess of Love and Beauty

The lesson introduces students to art history by using a diffractive methodology that reads iterations of Venus figures across time in order to show how unequal hegemonic forces embedded within Western culture continue to haunt us on a daily basis. The intention is to set the scene for the course by showing how the female body is represented in art history and to trouble this gaze. To begin, students learn about the so-called Venus of Willendorf figurine (28 000-25 000 BCE), one of the earliest known palaeolithic limestone artefacts depicting the human figure. Discovered in 1908 (93 years after Baartman's death) in Willendorf, an Austrian town, it was named Venus of Willendorf because of the sexual connotations associated with the enlarged breasts and buttocks. Continuing within a Western frame, we then look at various representations of Venus figures over time, such as the Venus de Milo (100 BCE), Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (1486-1486), Édouard Manet's Olympia (1863), and Titian's Venus of Urbino (1543), in order to understand the subjugating operative mechanism of the scopic male spectator gaze as a consuming and objectifying gaze that positions women as passive beings who are looked at (Berger 1972).

 

Assignment 1

As written homework, students identify their understanding of love, beauty and desire, and critique stereotypes that dominate contemporary culture. Through this exercise, they trouble Western constructions of Venus as the Goddess of Love and Beauty, and make explicit the numerous nuanced and pejorative forces that continue to texture their lives.

 

Lesson 2: Sara Baartman and the "Hottentot Venus"

Following McKittrick's proclamation that Baartman is a pivotal figure through which black femininity is founded because "she serves as a unitary scientific spectacle of alterity, as well as an almost seamless past-present-past theoretical avenue through which to think about contemporary narratives of the body, race, and representation" (2010, 119), this lesson focuses on Baartman's life story and the construction of the "Hottentot Venus". To begin, students watch a video clip of Ferrus reciting "I've Come to Take You Home".²¹ This is followed by an account of Baartman's life story. Students also view some of the cartoons and caricatures of the "Hottentot Venus" that were circulated in 18th century English and French society. The aim of this lesson is to make explicit and trouble art history's implicated role in producing and propagating colonial ideologies. Saartjie Baartman's story embodies the violence of the male spectator gaze (Berger 1972) and the racialised colonial gaze (McKittrick 2006) that is underpinned by racism and reinforces hierarchies that position white men as superior, civilised and the norm against which all else is measured.

 

Concerned with reclaiming black femininity, McKittrick encourages artists to find a present-day avenue through which Baartman might finally "talk back" (2010, 121).

With this in mind, Baartman is read through the lens of art history in order to disrupt Western hegemonic discourses and generate different narratives in which she might finally "talk back" (2010, 121). The intention is to redress past wrongs by addressing pejorative racial and gender stereotyping in the hope of uncovering future imaginaries free from deficit models that position black female bodies as subjugated and primitive. McKittrick argues that Baartman's life story not only embodies "the biased racial-sexual discourses of her day [but] also demonstrates how our present system of knowledge (the tables, the ranks, the statistics, the measurements) continue to be informed by such discourses" (2010, 115). The diffraction of the white and black Venus figures through each other makes visible more nuanced patterns of difference that expose the complexities of the construction of gender, "race" and identity.

 

Assignment 2: Writing with Baartman's Ghost

After the lecture, students perform a freewriting exercise structured in two parts. Adopting practices of "speaking with" was an attempt to disrupt the risk of reinscribing othering by "speaking for" Baartman. Students addressed her ghost in the form of written letters in which they disclosed how their encounter with her had affected them. The second part of the exercise gave Baartman an opportunity to write back to them. From the outset it was made clear that their writing was private, and would not be assessed in any way. I too performed this exercise. As a person who comes from a white settler community, I too am haunted. Acutely aware of my privileged position as a white South African who has benefitted from both the colonial and apartheid systems, I grapple with the challenges of teaching a subject that was born to reinforce white supremacy and foreground particular power relations expressed and maintained by European aesthetics. The intention is not to clear the slate and thereby reinscribe past violences, but to make visible how layers of history are sedimented in contemporary life.

 

Assignment 3: Drawing with Baartman's Ghost

Following the writing activity, students are invited to creatively re-dress the ghost of Baartman as a move away from the spectre of the "Hottentot Venus". Thinking with McKittrick who, following Wynter, proposes a different approach to questions of biological determinism and "scientific racism" that explore how creative works might "intervene in, and nourish, our understandings of science" (2010, 114), students are invited to work with the images from Histoire naturelle des mammifères. I hoped that by drawing with Baartman's ghost, she might be repositioned as "a figure that generates and enables a commensurately scientific and relationally creative space" (McKittrick 2010, 115). It must be noted that students were not obliged to work with these specific images, nor were they obliged to show her body. Some students opted to incorporate their freewriting into their artworks; others composed poems and narratives; a few opted not to show her body at all.

Thinking with Wynter, Nathan Snaza is concerned with how humanist practices produce one "specific genre of the human (Man) ... as if it were the only permissible way to perform being human" (2020, 132). Snaza proposes reframing the humanities as "an assemblage that articulates energies across a wide variety of actants, and (or most) of whom are not human" (2019, 2). To this end, he conceptualises animate literacies as an animate practice that offers a posthumanist critique of educational institutions by calling for an enlarged sense of affective participation in events of literacy in order to understand how literacy practices are implicated in a "particular conception of the human (Man) and in relation to imperialist states during the period of modernity" (Snaza 2019, 3). Arguing that animate literacies cannot be reduced to a particular form or methodology, Snaza conceptualises them as actants for thinking, becoming and making anew. Understood in this way, animate literacies are helpful for reconfiguring response-able pedagogies and curricula that encourage specific and situated responses rather than prescribed forms or methods. More than the standard academic literacies that many institutions foreground, animate literacies breathe life into the interstices of what literacies are and can be, by working transversally across and between the boundaries of visual, written, and spoken literacies.

In Figure 1, for example, the text performs a complex role that both covers the body and simultaneously surfaces and inscribes troubling emotions on the skin. In thinking through her artwork, the student explains that "COVER ME UP!" is written in red because "the colour screams" and "makes the mood more emotional". She continues:

 

 

I covered her body up with her words, her emotions and feelings, I did not give her a rag or clothing because she was naked, no one sympathized with her, no one cared, she had no one but herself, not even through her own will she could help herself. The only person that even spoke to her was herself, the only person that saw her as human was herself.

I enjoyed the exercise of writing to Sarah and having her writing back. It was a liberating feeling and it was almost as if we were a vessel for her to express what she needed to. It was almost as if she was moving through us when we were writing to her and vice versa and it was a personal moment that I enjoyed.

In "The Emotional Box" (see Figure 2), the artist foregrounds "the emotions that Sarah Baartman went through while she was in a foreign country mistreated" in order to "let the emotions out". Unlike the image above (Figure 1), where Sara's body was protected by words, the student chose not to cover her "because I feel we can be more closer to her history". She adds that the assignment affected her positively because "it makes me to be proud for being a woman with colour and that I am worth more than anything. To love my body."

Some students sought to free Baartman from essentialising gazes that reduce her to genitalia and buttocks that "serve [d] as the central image for the black female throughout the nineteenth century" (Gilman 1985, 216) by working solely with her face. For the maker of Figure 3, for example, the exclusion of Baartman's body, which "is no longer symbolic of who she is", was a powerful act. In addition to the visual artwork, he also composed a poem that is written in the first person by Baartman who, like her portrait, addresses the audience directly as an act of "finally claiming what is hers, and that is her exposed body". His poem reads:

I am not what you make me to be

My body does not

define me

I can finally rest

knowing I am no longer

an object or some animal

you compare me to

I know freedom now

Unlike you

- Sarah Baartman

 

 

In reconfiguring possibilities for the humanities, Snaza, as I have argued before, foregrounds the imbricatedness of academic disciplines and their disciplining effects and explores different ways of working within the humanities in order to decolonise them. For example, he cautions against critiquing "the human-Man ... without offering anything substantially different in relation to the operative model of Man" (2019, 3). In other words, by eschewing the limitations of critique alone, which reproduces the very system that it is troubling, Snaza considers how various discourses might "coalesce in their capacity not for critique but for spurring experimental forms of thinking and being ... or, still better, becoming [and] moving together" (2019, 3). These insights resonate with the concerns of the writing and drawing-with Venus assignment that set out to activate transformative co-affective encounters with Venus figures that continue to haunt the curriculum. In Figure 4 below, we see how another student also works exclusively with the face, using both clay and charcoal. She elaborates on her decision as follows:

I tried as best I could to remind people of where human discrimination and more specifically where female discrimination began, which is why I used Sarah's face. I wanted to display her in my work but I didn't want to show her body since she has been on display most of her life.

 

 

Sensitised to the co-affective encounter through making, she comments that charcoal's soft materiality "can create very dark and emotional lines" and describes how "upon drawing her face my hand felt light and an ocean of emotions went through my body. It was as though Sarah wrote her story through me."

In Becoming Human (2020), Zakiyyah Jackson contends that black studies' interrogation of humanism challenges liberal humanism's basic unit of analysis, "Man", and simultaneously sets apart "the human" versus "the animal", while positioning the black(ened) female as abjectly animalised. Following Gilman (1985, 83-85), Jackson contends Baartman's posterior and genitals were used to reinforce categories of "female" and "woman" by positioning an idealised Western European bourgeois femininity as the normative embodiment of womanhood against the perceived abject African "female" who is paradoxically placed under the sign of lack (2020, 8).

Writing and drawing with Venus also laid bare the destructive effects of "humanising" education in the name of love and beauty-as framed within Western humanist aesthetics and ideology-and also alerted students to how "[h]umanizing education cannot proceed without simultaneously dehumanizing" (Snaza 2019, 13). The intention was to alert students to how the "Hottentot Venus" construct and simultaneous dislocation of Baartman from her homeland served to reinforce the human in Europe as contrasted with the dehumanised "Hottentot Venus". The excerpt below reveals a student's empathetic response that draws links between her contemporary lived experience as a person of colour and Baartman's treatment by 18th century Europe.

People of colour are still experiencing struggles when it comes to representation and racism. Having experienced this on a minor level, I cannot imagine how Sarah dealt with it all alone feeling isolated in a strange country, it has given me a lot of respect for Sarah and what she went through.

Figures 5a and 5b present a student's multifaceted response to Baartman's ghost. In Figure 5a Baartman materialises as a brittle puppet, precariously held together by split pins in an enactment of how her body was broken apart by the spectator gaze in life and through dissection after her death. In dismembering and re-membering the Histoire naturelle des mammifères images, the artist activates a literal and figurative re-enactment of how Baartman was broken apart both in life and death. In Figure 5b we see Sarah as an "African Goddess", cocooned in a womb-like sack constructed with handwritten repetitions of the phrase "African Goddess". The overall effect is one of comfort and cosseting; her figure becomes an embryo, waiting to be born. Signalling an act of redemption, the student writes "we [are] all women of different races and we should always appreciate our bodies and curves".

Magubane alerts us to the inherent contradiction that Gilman (1985) makes by conflating how Baartman's colour and sexual difference mark her as different while simultaneously rendering her "fundamentally the same as all other black people" (2001, 822). At the same time, she identifies the need to think through the complexities of what constitutes blackness and how it is differently construed. In other words, she argues that while it is important to critique racism and biological essentialism, it is crucial that we do not reinscribe essentialist views of what constitutes blackness. The students' spectral drawings-with Baartman's ghost reveal a myriad of manifestations of the black female body. In Figure 6 Baartman is in a bikini that, as the artist explains, covers her body "so that she can also be respected and not be taken advantage of ... [and] ... raise her self confidence ... [and] ... remind her that she is a black woman who deserves respect". She writes:

I have learnt so much. That most of black women were being abused back then, and is still happening now but not that much. And that we as women should stand together and support each other through thick and thin. And make sure no one control [sic] us. I learnt a lot about the women who were very brave, very proud of their bodies. But had no one that believed in them and their dreams. I'm talking about those women who died because of not being a [sic] straight women.

We as women will always be treated as useless people, that we will never be strong enough like men. Or do anything without men being included in our lives. Of which that is not true, women are the strongest people in the world.

In Figure 7, unlike an ephemeral spectre that hovers in ambiguous space, Baartman's ghost is grounded firmly in the continent, as an angelic figure of Mother Africa. The artist explains:

 

 

I made it black and white because I wanted to show its true colour and it didn't need any colour because it's beautiful on its own and it tells enough information about the picture. And I used the symbols like the angel symbol over her head showing that she's an angel now and she's standing on the continent of Africa showing that she's the mother of Africa.

Redressing is a powerful act that both addresses the past pains and injustices and pursues a justice-to-come.²² In describing his creative process, a student explains how he was "inspired by the pain that Sarah had experienced back then" and how he believed that had she remained in South Africa, she would have become a queen (see Figure 8). He places Baartman in different worlds, both modern and traditional, and choses to depict her in ways most familiar to him, as a queen and in "modern day" traditional dress. In doing so, he wanted to show "Sarah was a very strong person [who] actually deserves to be praised and honored in all manners". Mulling over Baartman's written response to him, he notes the following:

I have learnt Sarah wished us to all just to see and learn from her story, she wished us to learn and apply all the perseverance she had. She wants us to hold fast our ground though things change against us but we should endure and strive. She wishes all of us to be strong and humble. I had a privilege to be a vessel to express her suffering to the world. I will utilise this story to motivate others who might find themselves overwhelmed by life.

Figure 9 shows Baartman wearing traditional Xhosa attire as is evidenced by the headdress and the skirt. The artist explains that in traditional Xhosa culture, a young woman dresses in a "respectable way to show she has dignity". For her it was important to re-dress Sarah respectfully because she had been "displayed in a non respectable manner in Europe". She continues:

It challenged me about the positions that woman [sic] have in the world. It also made me question how other woman [sic] look at other woman [sic]. How people treated her so badly and not feel a fraction of shame.

Given that the narrative of the "Hottentot Venus" is instrumental in the construction of Man as white European against which all else that is measured fails dismally, the assignment sought to elicit different stories that not only trouble the notion of Man but encourage students to think, make and do anew. Put differently, rather than simply replicate the non-critical known views on Man, the assignment elicited nuanced ongoing iterative re-memberings of the Venus figure that expanded understandings of Baartman, the construction of the "Hottentot Venus" performance, and how they their ghosts continue to inform contemporary culture and society. This resonates with Gordon who argues that in order to transform society "we must identify hauntings and reckon with ghosts ... [and] ... learn how to make contact with what is without doubt painful, difficult, unsettling" (2008, 23). The challenge was to find ways of "making contact", and to this end the assignment turned towards drawing, writing, making, poetry, and freewriting in order to accommodate different learning proclivities as well as orient students towards art historical approaches that foreground their knowledges and response-abilities to current debates. For example, as one student explains, the assignment exposed that the exploitation of women has been happening for years. He writes:

The assignment affected me in terms of learning how she was mistreated and what she was put through just because of her body. It hit close to home especially due to [the] climate we are living in now in South Africa and across the world with gender based violence being a serious conversation and it was a sore reminder that woman have always been mistreated and in her case, in some terrible gruesome ways.

 

Conclusion

Inspired by Snaza's animate literacies and Jackson's becoming human (2020), the case study activated inquiry-focused learning that foregrounded particular forms of personhood and politics (Snaza 2019, 4-6) that do not rely on animal abjection to define being (human) and do not re-establish "human recognition" within liberal humanism as an antidote to racialisation (Snaza 2019, 1). Put differently, the lessons and associated assignments encouraged working with art history in ways that "don't presume Man and which enable creative, experimental practices of performing the human differently" (Snaza 2019, 4). The act of writing-with and drawing-with the ghosts of Baartman and the "Hottentot Venus" activated art history's performative role in the present. In order to do this, it was necessary to shift from a representational reading of artefacts and art history towards a diffractive reading through artefacts and art history. Writing-with and drawing-with ghosts made knowledge more accessible in the Extended Curriculum Programme by challenging both dominant representational modes of knowledge and their "ontological frames and ideological histories" (Zembylas 2013, 69), and in doing so, contributed to socially just pedagogies. In addition to circumventing barriers to language, the multimodal also encouraged students to explore and develop an affinity with forms of expression that are key to the discipline of design.

Diffractive pedagogies of hauntology exposed the differential between the "Hottentot Venus" spectacle and Sarah Baartman's ghost. The patterns of difference emanating from these ghostly entanglements shone light on the ambiguous manifestations of observation and obliteration because in order to become the "Hottentot Venus", Baartman had to "erase aspects of her personal history, experience, and identity in order to make her performance of the Venus credible to the audience that was staring at her"

(Scully and Crais 2008, 304).

Students' diffractive encounter with art history foregrounded some of the complexities the course deals with in ways that matter to students' lives. For example, by responding to Venus figures from "here and now" and "then and there" (Barad 2013, 16), the case study afforded students an opportunity to think through issues of justice in the present and understand the ambiguous challenges posed by the spectacle that simultaneously captures attention and lures us away from real life (Debord 2004, 117). This is crucial for becoming-designers as they grapple with ethical dilemmas brought about by contemporary culture's promotion of the spectacle gaze that reinforces inequality and othering. Understood in this way, the intra-active encounter with Baartman offered transformative potential within contemporary society as students threaded her story through issues such as gender-based violence, racism and decoloniality that continue to contour their lives today. The adoption of this approach contributed to ECP students becoming producers rather than receivers of knowledge. As one student reflects:

I learnt from this assignment that art history is a great way of showing us how we got to where we are and what has influenced our culture today [and] that even though it can affect us in negative ways, it is important to know what has happened in history so that we can learn from it and so that we can understand why things happened and how those things affect us in our day to day lives.

The act of re-membering Saartjie Baartman also touched on a number of ethical challenges arising out of the representation of the black female body. These include the risk of perpetuating additional trauma to the ghost of Saartjie Baartman as well as the potential risk of triggering students' own trauma, both past and present. The intention was not to cause further violences. To the contrary, together with students, it explored whether speaking-with and drawing-with the ghosts that dis/appeared throughout art history might reconfigure curriculum studies to "reclaim a sense of historicity" and open us to the "not yet formulated possibilities of the future" (Zembylas 2013, 85). As students and I re-turned to the iterative visual and conceptual representations of Venus throughout art history, we encountered iterative haunting presences of Venus that contour, colour and texture the discourses around decolonising the curriculum in South African higher education and Extended Curriculum Programmes in particular. Moreover, as was shown, the act of drawing-with and writing-with the ghost of Sara Baartman and the "Hottentot Venus" activated entangled personal narratives and collective memories. Living in the ruins of colonialism, imperialism and apartheid, while Baartman's bare bones have been laid to rest in the Eastern Cape, the re-turnings of the "Hottentot Venus" and Baartman's ghosts materialise "mourning as promise for a different future" (Zembylas 2013, 83).

 

Acknowledgements

I thank the 2020 ECP students who shared their artworks and insights that gave life to this article. Thanks too to the anonymous reviewers whose incisive and insightful comments I have incorporated into the article.

To my supervisors, Vivienne Bozalek and Kathrin Thiele, thank you for your ongoing guidance in my PhD project.

Finally I would like to acknowledge Sara, Sarah, Saartjie Baartman whose legacy is a constant reminder of the need to decolonise the academy and do academia differently.

This work is based on the research supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Number: 120845).

 

References

Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv12101zq.         [ Links ]

Barad, K. 2010. "Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, Spacetime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come". Derrida Today 3 (2): 24068. https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2010.0206.         [ Links ]

Barad, K. 2013. "Ma(r)king Time: Material Entanglements and Re-memberings: Cutting Together-Apart". In How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts, and Materiality in Organization Studies, edited by P. R. Carlile, D. Nicolini, A. Lanagley and H. Tsoukas, 16-31. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199671533.003.0002.         [ Links ]

Barad, K. 2014. "Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together Apart". Parallax 20 (3): 168-87. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927623.         [ Links ]

Barad, K. 2017. "No Small Matter: Mushroom Clouds, Ecologies of Nothingness, and Strange Topologies of Spacetimemattering". In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, edited by A. Lowenhaupt Tsing, H. A. Swanson, E. Gan and N. Bubandt, G103-G120. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Ebook.         [ Links ]

Barad, K. 2019. "After the End of the World: Entangled Nuclear Colonialisms, Matters of Force, and the Material Force of Justice". Theory and Event 22 (3): 524-50.         [ Links ]

Barad, K., and D. Gandorfer. 2021 "Political Desirings: Yearnings for Mattering (,) Differently". Theory and Event 24 (1): 14-66. https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2021.0002.         [ Links ]

Berger, J. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Company and Penguin Books.         [ Links ]

Bozalek, V., and M. Zembylas. 2017. "Towards a Response-Able Pedagogy across Higher Education Institutions in Post-Apartheid South Africa: An Ethico-Political Analysis". Education as Change 21 (2): 62-85. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/2017.         [ Links ]

Buikema, R. 2017. "The Arena of Imaginings: Sarah Bartmann and the Ethics of Representation". In Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture: A Comprehensive Guide to Gender Studies, edited by R. Buikema, L. Plate and K. Thiele, 82-96. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315268026.         [ Links ]

Debord, G. 2004. The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by K. Knabb. London: Rebel Press.         [ Links ]

Derrida, J. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Translated by P. Kamuf. New York, NY: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Dunton, C. 2015. "Sara Baartman and the Ethics of Representation". Research in African Literatures 46 (2): 32-51. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.46.2.32.         [ Links ]

Garraway, J., S. Sabata, and M. Ralarala. 2016. "Strategic Developments: Graduate Attributes and Decolonisation". In Teaching and Learning Report: Waves of Change in Teaching and Learning in Africa, 61-69. Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Accessed September 4, 2021. https://www.cput.ac.za/storage/services/fundani/CPUT_TEACHING__LEARNING_REPORT_2016-17_web.pdf.

Gilman, S. L. 1985. "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine and Literature". Critical Inquiry 12 (1): 204-42. https://doi.org/10.1086/448327.         [ Links ]

Gordon, A. F. 2008. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.         [ Links ]

Haraway, D. J. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium: FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York, NY: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Jackson, Z. I. 2020. Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World. New York, NY: New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479890040.001.0001.         [ Links ]

Kessi, S. 2019. "Towards a Decolonial Psychology: Defining and Confining Symbols of the Past". In "The Backbone of Museums", edited by J. Sandahl, special issue, Museum International 71 (1-2): 80-87. https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2019.1638032.

Magubane, Z. 2001. "Which Bodies Matter? Feminism, Poststructuralism, Race and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the 'Hottentot Venus'". Gender and Society 15 (6): 816-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124301015006003.         [ Links ]

McKittrick, K. 2006. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.         [ Links ]

McKittrick, K. 2010. "Science Quarrels Sculpture: The Politics of Reading Sarah Baartman". Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 43 (2): 113-30.         [ Links ]

Naidoo, L.-A. 2015. "Needing to Learn: #RhodesMustFall and the Decolonisation of the University". In Independent Thinking. 2nd ed. Pretoria: Department of Higher Education and Training. Accessed September 7, 2021. https://www.dhet.gov.za/SiteAssets/Latest%20News/Independent%20Thinking%20Secon d%20Edition/dhetpage7.pdf.         [ Links ]

Picard, H. 1968. Gentleman's Walk: the Romantic Story of Cape Town's Oldest Streets. Cape Town: Struik.         [ Links ]

Pityana, S. M., and M. Phakeng. 2018. "Renaming Memorial Hall Sarah Baartman Hall". UCT News, December 13, 2018. Accessed September 3, 2021. https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2018-12-13-renaming-memorial-hall-sarah-baartman-hall.

Qureshi, S. 2004. "Displaying Sara Baartman, the 'Hottentot Venus'". History of Science 42 (2): 233-57. https://doi.org/10.1177/007327530404200204.         [ Links ]

Scully, P., and C. Crais. 2008. "Race and Erasure: Sara Baartman and Hendrik Cesars in Cape Town and London". Journal of British Studies 47 (2): 301-23. https://doi.org/10.1086/526552.         [ Links ]

Snaza, N. 2019. Animate Literacies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.         [ Links ]

Snaza, N. 2020. "Asexuality and Erotic Biopolitics". Feminist Formations 32 (3): 121-44. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2020.0043.         [ Links ]

Stats SA. 2018. Crime against Women in South Africa. Report No. 03-40-05. Pretoria: Stats SA. Accessed September 4, 2021. https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/Report-03-40-05/Report-03-40-05June2018.pdf.         [ Links ]

Wynter, S. 2003. "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation-An Argument". CR: The New Centennial Review 3 (3): 257-337. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015.         [ Links ]

Zembylas, M. 2013. "Pedagogies of Hauntology in History Education: Learning to Live with the Ghosts of Disappeared Victims of War and Dictatorship". Educational Theory 6 (31): 69-86. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12010.         [ Links ]

 

 

1 In critiquing humanism, Wynter exposes how the construction of the figure of Man is founded on Western bourgeois tenets that position the white, Christian male as human against which all others are marginalised.
2 Also known as Sarah and Saartjie.
3 According to Scully and Crais (2008), "Hottentot" is a pejorative term invented by the Dutch during the 17th century. Stemming from Huttentut, "to stammer", Hottentot refers to Khoekhoe pastoralist communities who spoke complex click languages. It implies that because the Khoekhoe were presumed to be without language they were of inferior intellect and culture (2008, 307).
4 These include Jewellery Design, Fashion Design, Product Design or Visual Communication Design.
5 The term "born-free" refers to the generation of South Africans born after the birth of the new democracy in 1994.
6 See Garraway, Sabata, and Ralarala's "Strategic Developments: Graduate Attributes and Decolonisation" (2016) in Teaching and Learning Report: Waves of Change in Teaching and Learning in Africa.
7 For more on response-able pedagogies, see Bozalek and Zembylas's (2017) article titled "Towards a Response-Able Pedagogy across Higher Education Institutions in Post-Apartheid South Africa: An Ethico-Political Analysis" that draws on Barad's (2007) conceptualisation of response-ability as a yearning for social justice and Haraway's (1997) moving towards possible worlds.
9 Barad's neologism "intra-action" signifies the mutual constitution of entangled agencies. She writes, intra-action is "in contrast to the usual 'interaction', which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action" (Barad 2007, 33).
8 Although Zembylas proposes pedagogies of hauntology in history education as a way of learning about the disappeared victims in history education, his findings resonate with concerns specific to art history (Zembylas 2013).
10 The first known record of Baartman is from the Cape when she is identified as Saartje, a Dutch diminutive of Sara (Scully and Crais 2008, 307). Significantly, the diminutive signifies servitude.
11 Her people, the Gonaqua Khoekhoe, were pastoralists who were forced into agricultural labour after the land was stolen by the Dutch (Scully and Crais 2008, 307).
12 She initially worked in Pieter Cesar's household before moving to his brother, Hendrik Cesar, and his wife Katharina Staal's home. It was with Hendrik that Baartman travelled to London in 1810.
13 De Jongh returned to the Netherlands after the British assumed control of the colony.
14 Initially named Eerste Berg Dwars Straat (First Mountain Cross Street) and then shortened to Berg Street, during the 1780s it was known as Venus Street. In 1791 it reverted to Berg Street at the insistence of Dominee Johannes Serrurier (see Picard 1968).
15 I witnessed Ferrus perform this poem at the University of the Western Cape in 2015. At this event she described the evening when, as a postgraduate student at Utrecht University and feeling isolated and homesick, she heard the plaintiff cries of Baartman's ghost calling her from Paris. Her response was to write the poem. Ferrus was part of the delegation that escorted Baartman's remains back to South Africa.
16 The Crime Against Women in South Africa report released by Stats SA in 2018 shows that the South African murder rate of women was more than five times the global average.
17 For a detailed analysis of Bester's sculpture see Rosemarie Buikema's article titled "The Arena of Imaginings: Sarah Bartmann and the Ethics of Representation" (2017).
18 A statement released by the Chair of Council, Sipho M. Pityana and UCT Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, reads: "We hope to honour her memory and restore to her name the dignity that was so brutally stolen from her in the 19th century. ... While we cannot undo the wrongs she suffered, we can lift her up as a potent symbol of the new campus community we are building" (Pityana and Phakeng 2018).
19 In 2021 I will adapt the assignment for the remote teaching and learning space. This will have implications for how group discussions are facilitated and not being able to "read" the room.
20 Originally the ancient Greek Olympian goddess, Aphrodite, she was later assimilated into Roman culture and renamed Venus.
21 Follow the link to view the poet's performance of "I've Come to Take You Home": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pCmu4uyj5c&t=3s&ab_channel=LiefvirSuidAfrika.
22 Barad conceptualises justice-to-come as an ongoing ethical practice that is understood as "a material set of im/possibilities with-in (of!) the world, what the world calls out for is an embodied practice of tracing the entanglements of violent histories" (2019, 539).

^rND^sBarad^nK.^rND^sBarad^nK.^rND^sBarad^nK.^rND^sBarad^nK.^rND^sBarad^nK.^rND^sBarad^nK.^rND^nD.^sGandorfer^rND^sBozalek^nV.^rND^nM.^sZembylas^rND^sBuikema^nR.^rND^sDunton^nC.^rND^sGilman^nS. L.^rND^sMagubane^nZ.^rND^sMcKittrick^nK^rND^sNaidoo^nL.-A.^rND^sQureshi^nS.^rND^sScully^nP.^rND^nC.^sCrais^rND^sSnaza^nN.^rND^sWynter^nS.^rND^sZembylas^nM.^rND^1A01^nAnita^sJonker^rND^1A01^nAnita^sJonker^rND^1A01^nAnita^sJonker

ARTICLE

 

Multilingualism: A Resource for Meaning-Making and Creating Ontological Access

 

 

Anita Jonker

Stellenbosch University, South Africa axjonker@sun.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7858-0023

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

This article explores first-year Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) students' multilingual practices in a university course where students have access to professionally translated technical terminology of the subject field. The study examines whether multilingual technical terminology-embedded in a dialogic teaching model-can contribute to students' epistemological and ontological access to the disciplinary content, and whether it can contribute to knowledge construction in a discipline by incorporating students' oral contributions of their lived experiences into the curriculum content. In order to answer the research questions, qualitative data were collected by transcribing, analysing and interpreting students' multilingual oral contributions on key political science topics. The findings of the study confirm that students' vernacular literacies can play an important role in providing epistemological and ontological access for students at university, and can contribute to authentic transformation and decolonisation of higher education.

Keywords: epistemological access; ontological access; extended curriculum programmes; multilingual education; decolonisation; meaning-making; teaching political science

---

 

 

Introduction

There is a common perception that students must meet specific academic literacy requirements before they can enter higher education (Russell et al. 2009, 395). Educational institutions that are socially powerful tend to support dominant discourse practices, each with its own type of literacy. In contrast, vernacular literacies, found in people's everyday lives, are less "visible" and are generally regarded as "inappropriate" in educational institutions. What is important for meaning-making, however, is that students should be able to use their range of literacies in different educational contexts to achieve their academic potential (Barton and Tusting 2005, 8). This issue relates to the difference between formal access to higher education on the one hand, and epistemological and ontological access on the other hand. While epistemological access has been the focus in extended curriculum scholarship, an engagement with ontological access has been negligible. It is hard to imagine the decolonisation of the curriculum and the incorporation of indigenous knowledges into the curriculum without taking students' everyday realities, lived experiences and worldviews into consideration, that is, the ontological dimension of teaching and learning.

This article explores first-year Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP)¹ students' multilingual practices in a university course where they had access to professionally translated technical terminology of the subject field. It examines whether technical terminology embedded in a dialogic teaching model can contribute to students' epistemological and ontological access to the disciplinary content, and how this teaching model can contribute to knowledge construction in a discipline by incorporating students' oral contributions into the curriculum content.

 

Formal, Epistemological and Ontological Access: The Need for Conceptual Clarity

In the promotion of scholarship in Extended Curriculum Programmes (ECPs), it is important to acknowledge that there are several factors affecting ECP students' academic and social adjustment at university.

It is well known that ECPs have been established in South Africa to create access for students who come from environments that have been disadvantaged by apartheid and are still facing the consequences of an unequal school system. Ndebele et al. (2013) presented evidence to show to what extent ECPs have contributed to enhancing student success in higher education. They recommended that the innovative teaching and learning practices of ECP lecturers should be emulated by mainstream lecturers.

Yet, when ECP students gain formal access to the university, they often encounter institutional cultures with entrenched administrative and academic practices that marginalise and stigmatise them from the outset. This institutional culture is reflected, inter alia, by exclusive welcoming practices, the drinking culture in residences, offensive names of buildings and symbols of oppression, unaffordable food, campus accommodation and prescribed textbooks. The bursaries that are supposed to cover these expenses are often paid out weeks after the academic year has commenced. The issue of the dominant institutional language can also lead to further marginalisation and alienation among students who have to adjust to the new university culture. Several studies have indicated that the effect of these "non-academic" factors on students' academic adjustment, retention and eventual graduation at university, should not be underestimated (Lea and Street 2006, 370; Nkhoma 2020).

While ECPs have been used by South African universities to reach their "transformation targets", that is, to give students from disadvantaged communities formal access to higher education, we seldom see the cultural and linguistic diversity of students reflected in curriculum renewal, teaching philosophies, and research practices. There are, however, multiple studies that have explored the use of multilingualism in teaching and learning in higher education (for example, Kaschula, Maseko, and Wolff 2017; Madiba 2010; Makalela 2019; Ramani 2007).

Wally Morrow's (2009, 77) concept of "epistemological access" has been influential in ECP scholarship and transformation debates. He makes the valid point that formal access to the university should not be confused with epistemological access. Creating epistemological access requires institutions to address the realities of students' different educational circumstances to compensate for the disparities in educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. It also has major implications for innovative curriculum design, teaching and learning, in that lecturers must learn to guide students into a particular subject field without taking a certain academic standard for granted. Students must be taught how to become successful participants in an academic community of practice. Formal access therefore has epistemological implications.

As Lea and Street (2006, 368) point out, the basic assumption of the so-called "academic socialisation" approaches is that students need to be inducted into the disciplinary conventions of a subject field so that they can learn to think like that academic community. The argument is that students who familiarise themselves with the basic building blocks of a particular academic discipline will be able to reproduce its discourse. The development of writing then typically involves either implicit or explicit induction into the disciplinary conventions. The assumption is that through this induction process students will eventually assimilate or acculturate into the disciplinary and subject-based discourses and genres.

The problem with this dominant practice in creating epistemological access is that there is little acknowledgment of students' cultural and linguistic diversity. There is also no room for students' questioning the basic assumptions, key scholars and canon of the discipline, which is a key component of decolonisation of the curriculum in the South African historical context. Walker (2020) points out that ECP scholarship on epistemological access has focused too strongly on the induction of students into existing disciplinary knowledge and has not made adequate provision for their contribution to knowledge construction in a discipline.

While it may be helpful that students learn reading and writing skills, academic English, and the academic conventions of the various disciplines, critical scholars must be prepared to examine the unequal power relationships in dominant pedagogical practices that undermine students' meaning-making, social identity, agency and authority in the learning process. This relates to the ontological dimension that has been neglected in ECP scholarship thus far.

In conventional approaches to teaching and learning in higher education programmes, ontology has tended to be subordinated to epistemological concerns. Barnett (2005, 795) acknowledges the importance of epistemology, but calls for an "ontological turn" in teaching within higher education where being-in-the-world takes its rightful place next to knowing the world. Dall'Alba and Barnacle (2007) agree that knowing has traditionally been limited to an ideal realm of thoughts, ideas and concepts, but they argue "that knowing is always situated within a personal, social, historical and cultural setting, and thus transforms from the merely intellectual to something inhabited and enacted: a way of thinking, making and acting. Indeed, a way of being" (2007, 683). The implication of the "ontological turn" for teaching in higher education is that the focus is no longer only on knowledge transfer or acquisition, or what students know, but also on who they are becoming.

Long before the "ontological turn" in higher education, the ontological dimension was an integral part of Paulo Freire's notion of critical pedagogy, which envisions the personal transformation of the student as an active and participating member in the learning process. According to Giroux, the critical pedagogy movement was "an educational movement, guided by passion and principle to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action" (2010, B15). Freire's notion of "conscientisation", that is, the coming to personal critical consciousness, is a key component of his conceptualisation of critical pedagogy. Freire uses the term to refer to "learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality" (Freire 1970, 19). According to Freire, engaging in dialogue must be understood as part of the historical progress in becoming human beings, a moment where humans come together to reflect on their reality and to exchange ideas as to how to act critically to transform their reality. Freire points out that, while lecturers have academic knowledge of their subject area, in dialogic pedagogy the lecturer rediscovers the subject material by studying it along with the students (Shor 2012, 15). He contends that dialogue as a way of learning is ultimately a debate about epistemology, that is, what counts as knowledge. Critical pedagogy is thus a means of creating epistemological and ontological access for students who might otherwise be forced to uncritically assimilate into the various academic disciplines.

Education for critical consciousness is the main tenet of Freire's revolutionary pedagogy. Its starting point is the student's lived experiences (the ontological dimension), with the aim of raising consciousness and overcoming obstacles.

According to Freire, university teaching "tends to form us at a distance from reality" (Shor and Freire 1987, 19); the concepts that we study at university can likewise "amputate us from the concrete reality" (1987, 19) to which they are supposed to refer. When concepts are abstracted from reality, they bear no relation to the concreteness of society. In situated pedagogy, the lecturer starts with the everyday, real-life experiences of the students; following this concrete starting point, the student then proceeds to critical consciousness. Freire claims that by listening to students' portrayals of their understanding of the world, it is epistemologically possible to guide them in the direction of a critical, scientific understanding of the world, noting that "science is super-imposing critical thought on what we observe in reality, after the starting point of common sense" (Shor and Freire 1987, 19-20). In short, in the dialogic classroom where students participate in discussions of the problems that they have raised themselves, the lecturer and students transform learning into a collaborative process that is in touch with reality (Shor and Freire 1987, 11).

 

Ontology and Epistemology in Teaching Political Science

Since this study reports on an introductory ECP module on contemporary South African politics, it is important to consider views on the role of ontology and epistemology in teaching Political Science. Bates and Jenkins (2007, 56) believe teaching and learning ontology and epistemology are important in Political Science for developing students' ability to inquire. This can be achieved by raising ontological questions about the nature of social and political realities, as well as epistemological questions about knowledge and knowledge claims. They further note that the main aim of teaching and learning within Political Science should not be about reproducing ideas or facts without understanding them (the so-called "regurgitation of knowledge"), but it should make students aware of different ways of thinking and engaging with the subject content. Students should learn to reflexively engage with the content in order to discover relationships, linkages and key patterns in order to participate in critical analysis. Critical analysis refers to the ability to engage with, question and challenge alternative perspectives. It helps students to identify contradictions and inconsistencies in conventional knowledge, to critique conceptual claims, and to defend independent arguments.

An integral part of developing students' ability to inquire in Political Science is to create epistemological and ontological access to the key terminology of the discipline. Heywood (2000, 7) makes the following remarks about the role of key concepts in Political Science:

[C]oncept formation is an essential step in the process of reasoning. Concepts are the "tools" with which we think, criticise, argue, explain and analyse. Merely perceiving the external world does not in itself give us knowledge about it. In order to make sense of the world we must in a sense impose meaning upon it, and we do this through the construction of concepts. Concepts, in that sense, are the building blocks of human knowledge.

The notion of concept formation opens up meaning-making possibilities for lecturers as well as students. This can expand the dominant linguistic conventions in that it enables alternative voices to participate in the process of concept formation, if provision is made for this possibility in the curriculum, learning material and teaching. In the case of a textbook glossary, students should be able to add relevant concepts from their cultural, political and linguistic communities. Through the knowledge production practices of the subject field, new terms can then be coined, and their definitions can be proposed and discussed. Ultimately, this can contribute to the process of building human knowledge.

This is the educational rationale behind the development of multilingual technical terminology in the broader "Introduction to the Humanities" EDP² support subject in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University.

 

The Extended Degree Programme in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

In 1997, the South African government released the White Paper for the Transformation of Higher Education, which outlined a comprehensive set of initiatives for the transformation of higher education (DoE 1997). The White Paper noted the central role of higher education in the social, cultural and economic development of modern societies. The specific challenge in South Africa was to redress past inequalities and to transform the higher education system to respond to new realities and opportunities. In recognition of the central role of academic development in the transformation of higher education, Extended Curriculum Programmes (ECPs) were established as a mechanism to deal with systemic obstacles to equity and student success.

The EDP in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences aims to provide extensive academic support to educationally and historically disadvantaged students who are still under-represented in higher education. The majority of students in the EDP are first-generation students whose families are still dealing with the emotional and socio-economic consequences of apartheid. EDP students come from diverse linguistic, cultural and religious backgrounds. They do their first academic year over two years, and follow certain compulsory support modules that are intended to prepare them better for their graduate studies. In their first EDP year, students take two subjects from the mainstream first-year offering of their particular degree programme, as well as the three compulsory academic development subjects, "Texts in the Humanities", "Information Skills", and "Introduction to the Humanities". In their second EDP year, students take the rest of their mainstream subjects (mostly three) and continue with one EDP support subject, "Texts in the Humanities".

In the first-year EDP support subject, "Introduction to the Humanities", students are introduced to a variety of disciplines that are not only limited to the Humanities and Social Sciences. Since the module aims to broaden students' worldview by exposing them to a wide variety of theories and thinkers (relating once again to the ontological dimension), guest lecturers from other faculties, such as Theology, Education and Natural Sciences, are purposefully invited to conscientise students that all knowledge is interrelated and that we cannot find solutions to society's challenges if we operate in intellectual silos. The curriculum is designed with the explicit goal of including the intellectual contributions of cultural, religious and language groups that were excluded in the past. Students' diversity and unequal educational backgrounds are also taken into account in the curriculum design, and in the teaching and learning practices.

 

The 2017 Module on Contemporary South African Politics

The curriculum design in this module was informed by prior research (Jonker 2016) that was prompted by EDP students' constant lower pass rates in their mainstream subjects. The prior research was conducted from 2012 to 2016 to establish scientifically if multilingual technical terminology can play any role in EDP students' success and in their sense of belonging. Since I started teaching in the EDP in 2009, I had been using multilingual terminology intuitively since the majority of EDP students came from diverse linguistic, cultural and religious backgrounds. It became a priority to me to research and justify my own pedagogical practice to ensure that my multilingual teaching model was scientifically sound and that it was worthwhile to invest in developing multilingual educational resources. In the research project that was concluded in 2016, the research findings confirmed that multilingual technical terminology-when integrated into the course content-played a key role in EDP students' pass rates and in their sense of belonging.

The present study moves beyond the initial research, and focuses on the fourth-term module of 2017, titled "Contemporary South African Politics", which forms part of the broader "Introduction to the Humanities" EDP support subject that students do in their first EDP year. The purpose of the present study is to establish the value of multilingual concepts in deepening understanding and encouraging engagement among EDP students from diverse cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds. The research questions seek to establish how EDP students used the multilingual concepts at their disposal for meaning-making in the module, and secondly, how their multilingual oral tutorials contributed to knowledge construction and enriching the curriculum content. With this approach, the aim was to establish whether these teaching practices contribute in any way to their ontological access.

Before the 2017 module could be presented, the multilingual technical terminology on contemporary South African politics that would serve as a research tool in this study had to be developed in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa, the three official languages of the province within which the university is situated. When a new textbook was published specifically aimed at South African Political Science students, I checked with the Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences to confirm if they would be prescribing the textbook for all first-year students in Political Science in future. Subsequently, I contacted the publisher to inquire if I could have the English glossary translated into Afrikaans and isiXhosa at my own cost. The publishers not only undertook to do the translations at their cost, but they also added a Zulu translation of the English glossary. So, when the module started in the fourth term of 2017, the key terminology of all the textbook chapters was available to EDP students in four South African languages.

Great care was taken not to portray the EDP as a deficit or remedial programme, but to acknowledge the cultural, linguistic and historical background of these students, their agency, as well as their potential intellectual contribution (which also relates to the ontological dimension). To build their agency, provision was made for students to research the subject matter and then to incorporate their own, very basic research into the inquiry-based curriculum.

Students had their first opportunity to inform the curriculum when they received a reading and questionnaire at the end of the third term that they had to complete before the module started in the fourth term. The title of the English reading was "The TRC and CODESA³ Failed South Africa: It's Time We Reflect on This" (Meintjies 2013). The holiday homework expected students to interview any family member on their experiences of apartheid and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings from 1996 to 1998. The family members were also asked whether their families thought that South Africa has dealt adequately with its apartheid past, why the author of the prescribed article felt that the government had failed people who suffered under apartheid, and whether it would have made a difference if "hearings were held on land issues, on the education system, on the migrant labour system and on the role of companies that collaborated with, and made money from, the apartheid security system", as the author of the article suggested.

When the module on contemporary South African politics started officially in the fourth term of 2017, students knew that the module valued real-life experiences and that their practical contributions would be relevant and meaningful to complement the theory. They also experienced practically that one of the module aims was to conscientise them about South Africa's apartheid history and how that history still informs contemporary South African politics. In the first week of the module, the questionnaires were discussed and students encountered all the key elements of the critical analysis to which Bates and Jenkins (2007) referred (see discussion above) that are so important in teaching Political Science. Students engaged with, questioned and challenged alternative perspectives with their fellow students in the small-group tutorials in their mother languages. Since the two tutors understood isiXhosa, English and different varieties of Afrikaans, they were able to translate students' contributions when other students could not understand.

 

The Multilingual Teaching Model Designed for the "Introduction to the Humanities"

The multilingual interactive teaching model that was used in the 2017 module had specifically been developed for the "Introduction to the Humanities" EDP support module to encourage students to develop their own voices and to apply the theory that they learn in the classroom to their own lived realities.

In the teaching model that is still used, students are expected to read at least one in-depth academic article or textbook chapter per week, over and above contemporary readings for enrichment that shed light on the topic under discussion. The trilingual technical terminology and definitions that appear in the textbook glossary are integrated into the PowerPoint slides for the lectures that are based on the textbook. This terminology is available before the module starts and is explicitly taught and tested in the first language support period every week by means of active learning activities.

In terms of Bloom's taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956), the multilayered model of classifying thinking according to cognitive levels of complexity, the educational objective with the technical terminology is that students must remember and understand the concepts so well that they can apply them intuitively in new, more complex settings, such as lectures, tutorials and outside the classroom.

To achieve the educational objective with the technical terminology, a dialogic teaching model is used during two 50-minute lectures per week. Students are encouraged to do the weekly prescribed reading before they attend their first lecture of the week and to make oral contributions in English or their mother tongue. In contrast to the traditional transmission mode of teaching, dialogic teaching encourages students' active participation in class discussions of issues that are raised during the engagement between the lecturer and the students. Learning is thus transformed into a collaborative process that is in touch with students' realities (Shor and Freire 1987, 11). The active learning strategies aim to develop students' higher-order thinking skills and help them to apply the concepts that they learn during the language period.

During the one weekly small-group tutorial students actively engage with two postgraduate tutors who also attend the two weekly content lectures. Since multilingualism is used as a resource for meaning-making, tutors are appointed to accommodate the linguistic diversity in the tutorials. In general, one tutor can understand English and isiXhosa while the other can understand English and the different varieties of Afrikaans. Students are encouraged to use their mother tongues during these discussions, and they are allowed to code-switch to make themselves understood. When students use isiXhosa during group discussions, the tutor or an isiXhosa group member reports the results of their discussion in English to the bigger tutorial group so that the whole tutorial group can benefit from their interpretation of the topic or from their real-life experiences. The main aim of the tutorials is to help students to apply the terminology in new situations, to discuss the pertinent issues that they encountered in the weekly readings and lectures and to see how different issues are interrelated.

Students are encouraged to send the lecturer and tutors any multilingual educational material or media articles that they consider relevant and valuable for the course content. This gives students multiple opportunities to inform the curriculum content in significant ways.

 

Implementing the Multilingual Teaching Model in the 2017 Module

Before the first week's lectures in the 2017 module commenced, students were expected to do their first prescribed reading from a textbook chapter on transitional justice. During the first two lectures, they were introduced to six key multilingual concepts that were essential to understand or participate in a deeper discussion of the TRC process, its strengths and shortcomings. These included concepts such as transitional justice, retributive justice, restorative justice, truth commission, Ubuntu and reconciliation. Since all terms were available in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa, it was easy to include them in the lecture slides so that all three language groups could see them during the lecture, as this trilingual slide (Figure 1) illustrates:

 

 

Where the definitions of terms were too long, the Afrikaans or isiXhosa translations were added to the English slide and these slides were then alternated during lectures so that all three language groups could benefit from the translations (Figure 2).

Given the increasing dominance of English in South African and international higher education, one might rightly ask why it makes sense to encourage EDP students to use their mother tongue to access and contribute to knowledge construction. But this issue is inextricably linked to the decolonisation of the university and how it finds expression in the curriculum, learning material and teaching, as the following discussion will illustrate.

It was pertinent that a concept such as "Ubuntu" emerged so soon in the module, creating the educational space where "being-in-the-world" could take its rightful place next to "knowing the world" (Barnett 2005, 795). The focus in the classroom could then move from what students should know, to what they are becoming in the process of knowing. This is what the "ontological turn" for teaching means in higher education.

One can read volumes about the atrocities that were committed during apartheid and gain much theoretical knowledge about this period in South African history. But that will never give a rational explanation of South Africans' choice for "restorative justice" instead of the "retributive justice" that characterised the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War.

The inclusion of the concept of Ubuntu in the TRC glossary (Figure 3) gave students from African traditional communities the opportunity to explain during the interactive lecture discussions how this worldview finds expression in their everyday lives, in their spirituality, human dignity, but also in their perspective on reconciliation and forgiveness. They were able to explain why their parents and community members would have chosen "restorative justice", even though it would not make sense to people with a Western worldview.

 

 

It was interesting to observe how one module built on the next within the broader "Introduction to the Humanities" curriculum. All students were exposed to the second term module on "Religious Diversity in Society", which was presented by a guest lecturer of the Faculty of Theology, Xolile Simon, whose research and teaching focus on the sociology of religion. Simon, an isiXhosa mother-tongue speaker who speaks a variety of African languages, is also fluent in Afrikaans and English. He introduced students, inter alia, to African cosmology as a meaning system and the unique perspective on the concept of time in African Traditional Religion (Mbiti 1990, 14-28). As a multicultural scholar, he was able to engage actively with students from Christian, Muslim and African traditional religious backgrounds to "rediscover the course content" with them, embodying ontological access in the process. Students expressed appreciation for his preparedness to share his own experiences of vulnerability and inner contradictions of settling in an urban area while he still had to face the traditional expectations of his family living in a rural area. Many students from African traditional backgrounds identified with those contradictions during the class discussions.

As mentioned earlier, Dall'Alba and Barnacle note, "knowing is always situated within a personal, social, historical and cultural setting, and thus transforms from the merely intellectual to something inhabited and enacted: a way of thinking, making and acting. Indeed, a way of being" (2007, 683). Instead of teaching students facts and decontextualised content, this multicultural guest lecturer taught them a way of being in the world simply by being his authentic self.

Another opportunity was created for students to see the practical implications of the theoretical concepts that they learned in the textbook, and to deepen the discussion on the TRC and how the past still affects the present. As part of their engagement with older South Africans' experiences of living under apartheid, the technical assistant on the floor-where students attended lectures every day-was invited to share his experiences with them. It was moving to hear this staff member's life story and how his parents could not afford to let him study, even though he passed matric. It was also unsettling to hear about his earlier experiences of racism in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences where this module was presented. Students actively engaged with him during the class discussion and were interested to know how he dealt with his own disadvantage of the past, since there is still so much inequality in society today that has not been addressed in the new political dispensation. The staff member acknowledged this fact, but said that he focused on creating opportunities for this own children and family, and that he is not bitter about the past. In fact, he noticed that there are people who were disadvantaged in the past but are now in positions of power and who discriminate against him. He encouraged students to work for social justice in a constructive way. Students valued his preparedness to engage with them on such a sensitive topic. This brought a further dimension into the class discussion that was not covered by the formal curriculum.

In the next phase of the module, students had to identify their communities' most pertinent socio-economic issues in tutorial discussions and essays, after which they had to evaluate whether these socio-economic issues were still consequences of the past. Subsequently, they were introduced to two different definitions of democracy (Figure 4) that would form the basis of their tutorial videos later in the module:

 

Educational Rationale for Tutorial Videos

As mentioned earlier, the research questions in this study seek to establish how EDP students used the multilingual concepts at their disposal for meaning-making in the 2017 module, and secondly, how their multilingual oral discussions during lectures and in tutorials contributed to knowledge construction and enriching the curriculum content. To answer the research questions, it was important to collect qualitative data that could be closely examined to identify common themes for the data analysis.

For their second last tutorial assessment of the fourth term, students could choose either a written or an oral assessment. This flexibility was built into the assessment schedule to make provision for students' individual assessment preferences and unique talents.

Much prior preparation went into the tutorial videos that were developed by the Division for Telematic Services at Stellenbosch University. Funding had to be secured to pay for the project months before the fourth term started. It was also quite cumbersome to arrange video timeslots around the specific topics the 55 student participants chose for oral assessment.

The tutorial topics included the TRC, the different definitions of democracy, attitudes of the community, the value of the mother tongue to empower students, and racism.⁴ In their written and oral tutorial assessments, students were encouraged to make a link between their communities' socio-economic issues and the different definitions of democracy.

In the first tutorial video (the only case study that will be discussed in more detail below), it was noteworthy that students were able to use the multilingual technical terminology about the TRC effortlessly. They responded to the following questions that arose in the weekly lectures and tutorial discussions:

• Do you feel that we have done enough in our country to work for national reconciliation after the TRC?

• What have been our biggest achievements that can still inspire us today and what must we still work on?

• Are politicians using the past as an excuse for bad service delivery and poor governance or are most of our problems today still consequences of the past?

• Have we managed to get rid of racism, sexism and xenophobia? If not, what should be done to deal effectively with the consequences of the past?

The following is an approximate transcription of students' spontaneous oral contributions in this specific video. The original 20-minute video can also be accessed on request.

Tutorial Video Topic: Dealing with the Consequences of the Past Today

• Student 1 (E): We expect too much from government. The TRC has achieved a lot, but it did not address economic inequality, education and crime.

• Student 2 (A): Die doel van die WVK was om skending van menseregte reg te stel sodat mense 'n gemeenskap kon vorm. Maar dit was geforseer. Mense kan nie geforseer word om te vergewe nie. (The purpose of the TRC was to redress human rights violations so that people could form a community. But it was forced upon people. People cannot be forced to forgive.)

• Student 3 (E): The focus of the TRC was on crimes against humanity and gross violations of human rights, not on socio-economic justice. I think ordinary citizens should have continued the unfinished work of the TRC, such as the unequal education system, the land issue, poor infrastructure, etc. We now know about substantive democracy, so we can insist on greater socio-economic equality. Uneducated people in my coloured suburb do not know about the TRC anymore. They just see the inequality and poor infrastructure.

• Student 1 (E): Some people have the attitude that if the government does nothing, we shall also not do anything. People now expect the government to solve all their problems, but the TRC dealt with injustices that had been there for decades. So it is not fair to expect the government to solve all the problems in such a short time.

• Student 3 (E): Ordinary people were in favour of retributive justice. They wanted perpetrators to be punished. They were not in favour of restorative justice. But it was as if it was expected of us. We did not have a reconciliation within ourselves. But the TRC and the government had the final say.

• Student 4 (E): I agree that restorative justice was forced onto ordinary people, which makes it difficult for them to reconcile with themselves and with others. Ordinary people do not feel that justice was done.

• Student 5 (E): The government chose restorative justice to enable a peaceful transition. We must remember that the country was very unstable at the time.

• Student 2 (A): Vergeldende geregtigheid sou beter wees vir Suid-Afrika. Lande soos Duitsland het vergeldende geregtigheid gebruik en nou is rassisme in die samelewing taboe. Dit het 'n grondige fondasie gelê. Ons sou baie beter af gewees het met vergeldende geregtigheid as dit kom by rassisme en seksisme. (Retributive justice would have been better for South Africa. Countries like Germany used retributive justice and now racism is taboo in that society. It laid a solid foundation. We would have been much better off with retributive justice when it comes to racism and sexism.)

• Student 6 (E): Most of our problems today are the consequences of the past. Some people are so negatively influenced by the past that they are not prepared to trust new political parties.

• Student 2 (A): Politici moenie die verlede gebruik om swak regering te regverdig nie. Ons moet leer uit die verlede en nie dieselfde foute herhaal nie. Daar moet beleid in plek gestel word om 'n herhaling van die foute te voorkom. (Politicians should not use the past to justify poor governance. We must learn from the past so that we do not repeat the same mistakes. To make sure that we do not repeat the same mistakes today, we need to adopt policies.)

• Student 7 (E): It is bad when people have a mentality of fear. SA has unrealistic expectations from government. Ordinary citizens can still make a difference today. Political and economic issues of the past can be resolved today.

• Student 1 (E): Perhaps it is greed that motivates politicians now, since they never had access to power and money in the past.

• Student 2 (A): Mense is van nature gierig. (People are greedy by nature.)

• Student 8 (E): There is anger that has remained about apartheid and that anger is transferred from generation to generation, so that people will not find reconciliation within themselves until the inequality is addressed.

• Student 2 (A): Dis 'n bose kringloop. Mense glo die waardes wat hul ouers aan hul oordra. So as jou ouers negatief is, gaan hulle jou negatief maak. (It is a vicious circle. People believe in the values that their parents inculcate in them. So, if your parents are negative, they will make you negative.)

• Student 5 (E): I know it was not the TRC's role to solve all our problems, but because we were placed in different categories in the past, we are still struggling to deal with that today.

• Student 9 (E): Although there are still parents who raise their children to discriminate, we have made a lot of progress in addressing racism, sexism and xenophobia.

• Student 3 (E): We are too sensitive about racism, sexism and xenophobia in social media. Sometimes comments are light-hearted and should not be taken seriously.

• Student 2 (A): Ek het 'n ander standpunt. Ons moet fyngevoelig wees oor kwetsende aanmerkings al neem ons nie self aanstoot nie. Anders gee mens die persoon wat die aanmerkings maak, die indruk dat dit in orde is. (I have a different opinion here. We need to be sensitive about offensive remarks even if we do not personally take offence. Otherwise one gives the person making the remarks the impression that it is okay).

• Student 10 (E): People are ignorant and must be conscientised, educated and punished for racism, sexism and xenophobia.

• Student 4 (E): Just as you spread hate, you can spread love. As university students, we can play a positive role to say positive things about other races, sexes and foreigners. We do not have to spread hate.

 

Discussion and Findings

Thematic analysis was used to identify common themes in the transcripts of students' oral contributions. The qualitative data yielded themes and ideas that came up repeatedly.

While a few of the students had appreciation for what the TRC did, the majority felt that retributive justice would have been better for the country. It was clear that students had more confidence to express their true feelings about the TRC and to what extent it dealt with the past when they engaged with one another in the small-group tutorials without the physical presence of a lecturer. One explanation for this observation can be that some might still feel (as one student mentioned) that they have to be grateful for the TRC since the older generation expects it of them. Furthermore, South Africans who witnessed the TRC process and the transition to democracy have tended to glorify the TRC, Nelson Mandela and the struggle stalwarts whose negotiations at CODESA paved the way for the TRC process. The choice for restorative justice has rarely been criticised by witnesses of the TRC and the transition to democracy. However, the dialogue in the tutorials based on students' real-life experiences illustrated that there are serious questions in their communities about the extent to which restorative justice has managed to reconcile South Africans. Students also had their doubts about the extent to which restorative justice has helped victims of apartheid to reconcile with themselves.

The research questions in this study sought to establish how EDP students used the multilingual concepts at their disposal for meaning-making in the module, and secondly, how their multilingual oral engagement in the course contributed to knowledge construction and enriching the curriculum content. What emerged from the qualitative data in the oral tutorial videos discussed above is that students managed to apply the theoretical concepts of the textbook glossary practically in the tutorial discussions. They were able to use the multilingual concepts for meaning-making and to validate their real-life experiences in their communities. In their engagement with their fellow students, the lecturer and the tutors, they were able to make unique contributions to knowledge construction based on their authentic experiences in their communities.

This study illustrated that the vernacular literacies of EDP students can play a constructive and innovative role in creating epistemological and ontological access in higher education. Epistemological access is created by developing multilingual technical terminology in a subject field. By acquiring multilingual concept literacy, students are empowered to contribute to knowledge construction in the subject field from their own life experiences and worldviews, that is, the ontological dimension of teaching and learning. While many transformation efforts in higher education have focused narrowly on formal access, for the authentic transformation and decolonisation of higher education environments, it is vital that both epistemological and ontological access are created. This study found that a dialogic mode of teaching in which multilingualism plays a central role and that takes students' vernacular literacies seriously could make some contribution to achieve this goal.

 

References

Anderson, L. W., and D. R. Krathwohl, eds. 2001. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York, NY: Longman.         [ Links ]

Barnett, R. 2005. "Recapturing the Universal in the University". Educational Philosophy and Theory 37 (6): 785-97. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2005.00158.x.         [ Links ]

Barton, D., and K. Tusting, eds. 2005. Beyond Communities of Practice: Language, Power and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511610554.         [ Links ]

Bates, S. R., and L. Jenkins. 2007. "Teaching and Learning Ontology and Epistemology in Political Science". Politics 27 (1): 55-63. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9256.2007.00279.x.         [ Links ]

Bloom, B. S., M. D. Engelhart, E. J. Furst, W. H. Hill, and D. R. Krathwohl. 1956. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals; Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York, NY: Longmans.         [ Links ]

Dall'Alba, G., and R. Barnacle. 2007. "An Ontological Turn for Higher Education". Studies in Higher Education 32 (6): 679-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070701685130.         [ Links ]

DoE (Department of Education). 1997. Education White Paper 3: A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education. Pretoria: DoE. Accessed October 22, 2020. https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/18207gen11960.pdf.         [ Links ]

Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by M. Bergman Ramos. New York, NY: Continuum.         [ Links ]

Giroux, H. A. 2010. "Lessons from Paulo Freire". The Chronicle of Higher Education 57 (9): B15-B16.         [ Links ]

Heywood, A. 2000. Key Concepts in Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.         [ Links ]

Jonker, A. 2016. "The Use of Multilingual Glossaries in Enhancing the Academic Achievement of Extended Degree Programme Students in a Mainstream Subject". PhD diss., Stellenbosch University. http://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/100130.         [ Links ]

Jonker, A. 2020. "Unlearning Race: The 'Introduction to the Humanities' Curriculum at Stellenbosch University". In Fault Lines: A Primer on Race, Science and Society, edited by J. Jansen and C. Walters, 237-49. Stellenbosch: African Sun Media. https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928480495/15.         [ Links ]

Hibbert, L., and C. van der Walt, eds. 2014. Multilingual Universities in South Africa: Reflecting Society in Higher Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783091669.         [ Links ]

Kaschula, R. H., P. Maseko, and H. E. Wolff, eds. 2017. Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication: A South African Perspective. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. https://doi.org/10.18772/22017050268.         [ Links ]

Lea, M. R., and B. V. Street. 2006. "The 'Academic Literacies' Model: Theory and Applications". Theory into Practice 45 (4): 368-77. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4504_11.         [ Links ]

Madiba, M. 2010. "Fast-Tracking Concept Learning to English as an Additional Language (EAL) Students through Corpus-Based Multilingual Glossaries". Alternation 17 (1): 225-48.         [ Links ]

Makalela, L. 2019. "Uncovering the Universals of Ubuntu Translanguaging in Classroom Discourses". Classroom Discourse 10 (3-4): 237-51. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2019.1631198.         [ Links ]

Mbiti, J. S. 1990. African Religions and Philosophy. Oxford: Heinemann.         [ Links ]

Meintjies, F. 2013. "The TRC and CODESA Failed South Africa: It's Time We Reflected on This". The South African Civil Society Information Service, September 12, 2013. Accessed August 30, 2021. https://sacsis.org.za/site/article/1783.

Morrow, W. 2009. Bounds of Democracy: Epistemological Access in Higher Education. Cape Town: HSRC Press.         [ Links ]

Ndebele, N., N. Badsha, B. Figaji, W. Gevers, and B. Pityana, eds. 2013. A Proposal for Undergraduate Curriculum Reform in South Africa: The Case for a Flexible Curriculum Structure. Report of the Task Team on Undergraduate Curriculum Structure. Pretoria: Council on Higher Education.         [ Links ]

Nkhoma, N. M. 2020. "Functions of an Institutional Culture of Access: Student Choices and Transitions in South Africa". International Review of Education 66: 509-30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-020-09832-3.         [ Links ]

Ramani, E., T. Kekana, M. Modiba, and M. Joseph. 2007. "Terminology Development versus Concept Development through Discourse: Insights from a Dual-Medium BA Degree". Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 25 (2): 207-23. https://doi.org/10.2989/16073610709486457.         [ Links ]

Russell, D. R., M. Lea, J. Parker, B. Street, and T. Donahue. 2009. "Exploring Notions of Genre in 'Academic Literacies' and 'Writing across the Curriculum': Approaches across Countries and Contexts". In Genre in a Changing World, edited by C. Bazerman, A. Bonini and D. Figueiredo, 399-429. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2009.2324.2.20.         [ Links ]

Shor, I. 2012. Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.         [ Links ]

Shor, I., and P. Freire. 1987. "What Is the 'Dialogical Method' of Teaching?" Journal of Education 169 (3): 11-31. https://doi.org/10.1177/002205748716900303.         [ Links ]

Walker, M. 2020. "Failures and Possibilities of Epistemic Justice, with Some Implications for Higher Education". Critical Studies in Education 61 (3): 263-78. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2018.1474774.         [ Links ]

 

 

1 Also called "Extended Programmes" or "Extended Degree Programmes" at some universities.
2 Extended Curriculum Programmes (ECPs) are known as Extended Degree Programmes (EDPs) at Stellenbosch University, and in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences where this study was done.
3 The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) was a negotiating forum that existed from 1991 to 1992 that was supposed to work out the constitutional details of democratic South Africa.
4 For a discussion of how the tutorial topic of racism was handled in the module, see Jonker (2020, 237-49).

^rND^sBarnett^nR^rND^sBates^nS. R.^rND^nL.^sJenkins^rND^sDall'Alba^nG.^rND^nR.^sBarnacle^rND^sGiroux^nH. A.^rND^sJonker^nA.^rND^sLea^nM. R.^rND^nB. V.^sStreet^rND^sMadiba^nM.^rND^sMakalela^nL.^rND^sNkhoma^nN. M.^rND^sRamani^nE.^rND^nT.^sKekana^rND^nM.^sModiba^rND^nM.^sJoseph^rND^sRussell^nD. R.^rND^nM.^sLea^rND^nJ.^sParker^rND^nB.^sStreet^rND^nT.^sDonahue^rND^sShor^nI.^rND^nP.^sFreire^rND^sWalker^nM.^rND^1A01^nPragashni^sPadayachee^rND^1A02^nPrecious^sMudavanhu^rND^1A03^nAnita^sCampbell^rND^1A01^nPragashni^sPadayachee^rND^1A02^nPrecious^sMudavanhu^rND^1A03^nAnita^sCampbell^rND^1A01^nPragashni^sPadayachee^rND^1A02^nPrecious^sMudavanhu^rND^1A03^nAnita^sCampbell

ARTICLE

 

Profile, Performance and Language in Engineering Mathematics

 

 

Pragashni Padayachee^I; Precious Mudavanhu^II; Anita Campbell^III

^IUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa pragashni.padayachee@uct.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9966-8171
^IIUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa precious.mudavanhu@uct.ac.za
^IIIUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa anita.campbell@uct.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4782-7323

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

There is a global concern for retention and success of students in higher education engineering programmes, in particular for students from under-represented communities. Low success in engineering programmes can be partly attributed to students failing mathematics or being unable to articulate mathematics in other engineering courses. This research explores how understanding the academic preparedness of engineering students in relation to their performance in university mathematics can direct curriculum changes to improve student success, driven by the research question: "How can the analysis of student data contribute to understanding student performance in calculus?" Data from engineering students in an extended curriculum programme at the University of Cape Town (UCT) were analysed to generate profiles from variables including gender, home language and performance in university admissions tests. Profiles were related to performance in three consecutive engineering mathematics courses. To determine which variables had the greatest explanatory power on engineering mathematics scores, relative importance analysis was applied. There was no evidence that weaknesses in terms of pre-university mathematics performance held students back from succeeding in the first two engineering mathematics courses at UCT, at least within the support context of the extended curriculum programme. When analysing according to engineering mathematics performance levels (e.g., fail versus first-class pass), academic literacy and, to a lesser extent, quantitative literacy emerged as having greater relative importance than pre-university mathematics in explaining the variance in engineering mathematics scores. The findings imply that interventions to improve the success of engineering students should include developing academic literacy practices, potentially in first- and second-year mathematics courses. We reflect on how the relative importance analysis of student data strengthens similar findings from other research on the importance of language in mathematics by highlighting the most important variables explaining students' mathematics performance.

Keywords: curriculum change; profile; mathematics; vector calculus; academic literacy; diagnostic assessment; engineering students; relative importance analysis; student success; language in mathematics

---

 

 

Introduction

In line with economic and political incentives to diversify the engineering workforce, the goals of organisations such as the Council for the Built Environment in South Africa (2019) include increasing the number of engineers from under-represented population groups. The benefits of greater diversity in engineering classes include improved efficiency and effectiveness in problem-solving (Pinto and Teixeira 2020) and developing robust graduate attributes in engineering students who are likely to work in a culturally diverse workplace. However, simply increasing student numbers in engineering programmes is not enough. There is a need to consider who drops out, why, and how they could be supported. The South African context is further hampered by the legacy of racial discrimination, injustices, inequalities and unequal socio-economic and educational structures that continue to favour middle-class students (De Clercq 2020).

As higher education expands to accommodate more students, it is imperative to understand our current students and what their journeys thus far have entailed for us to tailor an educational experience that best suits them. In this way we can provide "a foundation for continuous improvement" (Maller et al. 2007, 3). A knowledge of the profiles of our students will allow us to examine and adjust our strategies and pedagogies to serve the diverse learning and engagement needs of all our students through the development of directed interventions. Reflecting on teaching in a scholarly and directed way will lead to a refinement of the learning activities to meet the actual rather than perceived academic needs of students and go some way towards addressing the diversity in classes. Resulting curriculum changes to enhance the provision of mathematics support have the potential to improve retention and graduation rates by providing education that caters for all students.

The study of mathematics is vital to engineering courses and has an important bearing on the success of engineering students. However, many concerns have been raised by researchers about the transition from studying mathematics at high school to university (Kouvela 2017; Solomon and Croft 2016). In addition, large classes and diversity in earlier academic experience make the teaching and learning of mathematics in higher education a difficult terrain to navigate (Lithner 2011), particularly for students who are second-language English speakers as they must "fight two enemies" (Brock-Utne 2000, 185): the language and the disciplinary content. We agree with Martin (2006, 202) that "teaching and curriculum design can contribute to ... racialized experiences and ... disparate achievement and persistence", and that good teaching and reforming the curriculum will not alone overcome "the murkiness and complexity of socio-contextual forces".

Engineering programmes at many South African institutions are competitive, accepting only students with the best school results. Yet retention of engineering students is an ongoing concern in South Africa (Mouchou Tchamdjeu, Steenkamp, and Nel 2018). This study examines data from the University of Cape Town (UCT). Despite being the top ranked university in Africa (CWUR 2020), the UCT graduation rates for undergraduate engineering degrees have remained below the National Plan for Higher Education goal of 20% of incoming students graduating in minimum time (UCT 2018, 187). Progress statistics show that 15% of engineering students who started at UCT between 2010 and 2014 left within five years due to slow academic progress; 8% left in good academic standing, and five-year completion rates are skewed in favour of white students (83%) compared to Indian (69%), coloured (63%) and African (49%) students (UCT 2018, 206-10). Various forms of government-funded extended curriculum programmes exist at South African universities to increase access and success, recognising that the "need to overcome our apartheid past ... is an on-going battle" (Garraway 2017, 112).

This research is situated in the Academic Support Programme for Engineering (ASPECT) at UCT. ASPECT is a structured extended curriculum programme that allows students to choose to complete a four-year engineering degree in five years, by spreading the load for the first two years over three years, based on their performance in their first six weeks at university. Students take mathematics and physics in smaller classes where the pedagogy subscribed to is one of active learning. Mathematics and physics lectures and tutorials are rooted in social constructivist theories of learning, are interactive, involve regular and immediate feedback, and centre on cooperative learning groups. Further opportunities for learning are created by enabling study groups to form and by appropriately using technology. A supportive environment is created through scaffolding provided by patient and caring lecturers and tutors with strong discipline and pedagogical expertise.

Having passed two semester courses in engineering mathematics (Calculus 1 on differential calculus and Calculus 2 on integral calculus), the third course, Calculus 3, on vector calculus, remained an obstacle, with failure rates ranging from a modest 17% to a high of 48% in the years 2015 to 2019. Calculus is central to engineering studies and vector calculus is a difficult course in undergraduate mathematics studies (Othman et al. 2015). We have observed that many students struggle with the concepts in this course. There are various issues attributed to this struggle, as suggested by Padayachee and Craig (2020), that include difficulty with visualising and sketching in three dimensions, a lack of problem-solving skills, students' beliefs, and that the course demands mastering complex and new ideas in a limited time.

As mathematics lecturers in this support programme, we reflected on the question, "How can the analysis of student data contribute to understanding student performance in calculus?" In this research article we seek to identify the key factors influencing calculus results. To achieve this end, we apply statistical methods, focusing on the relative importance analysis using university admission data from National Benchmark Tests in mathematics, quantitative literacy, and academic literacy. Data was analysed from students whose first attempt of Calculus 3 was in one of the 10 semesters in the five years from 2015 to 2019.

The variables highlighted as having the highest bearing on students' performance in Calculus 3 were academic literacy subdomains, irrespective of home language spoken. The unexpected findings led to purposeful reflections on how the analysis of student data can contribute to our scholarship of teaching and learning and how important it is to avoid subconscious assumptions about students' backgrounds and their impact on student success. The findings will be interpreted using Moschkovich's (2013, 2015) framework of academic literacy in mathematics, which is discussed in relation to broader academic literacy theory after the next section on the value of statistical methods to answering our research question.

 

Finding the Most Important Factors that Explain Calculus Results

Relative importance analysis (RIA) is used as a supplement of a statistical method called multiple regression, which measures how changes in one variable affect another variable (Tonidandel and LeBreton 2011). The goal of RIA is to better understand the extent to which each predictor variable in a regression model contributes towards explaining variance (R-squared) in the predicted variable. The predicted variable in this study is Calculus 3 scores. This understanding is achieved by breaking down the R-squared into parts such that the value of each part is the contribution of each predictor variable towards R-squared. The method to partition the model's R-squared is not straightforward in data where the predictor variables (for example, scores in three admission tests) are correlated (Stadler, Cooper-Thomas, and Greiff 2017). Two RIA methods to determine the importance of variables have emerged in the literature: dominance analysis and relative weight analysis (Tonidandel and LeBreton 2011). The main purpose of a dominance analysis is to examine patterns of importance of variables, giving a list of the main variables that influence variation. Relative weight analysis provides information on how much a predictor variable contributes towards the predicted variable either by itself or in combination with the other predictor variables. The RIA method used for this article is relative weight analysis. The analysis provides insights about the contribution made by each predictor variable towards the predicted variable that aids in building theory around the relationship between Calculus 3 performance and performance in admission tests. Even though the method has faced a few criticisms, relative weight analysis helps to better understand the relationship between several predictors in a regression model and the predicted variable. The results from the analysis could be used to strengthen or challenge existing theories about a specific subject area and aid theory building on the subject area under investigation (Tonidandel and LeBreton 2011), which in this research is student performance in engineering mathematics.

 

Academic Literacies in the Engineering Curriculum

Academic literacy is the ability to use language to meet the demands of tertiary education across different fields of study (Weideman 2018). A disciplinary literacy pertains to reading, writing and communicating within a specific discipline (Srivastava 2017), and is defined as knowledge that supports students' understanding of concepts related to a field of study, such as mathematics (Stoffelsma and Spooren 2019). Weideman (2018) contends that academic literacy, seen as the ability to use language for cognition and analysis, is fundamental in the progression of a student's education, which is negotiated through language. Cognition and analysis play a significant role in a student' s mathematics education. Accuracy of meaning in mathematics is requisite and therefore understanding mathematics texts, which usually have "a dense presentation style" (Shanahan, Shanahan, and Misischia 2011, 422), is paramount. Students also need to be "inducted" into mathematical discourse and allowed to develop their accuracy of mathematical language use. Navigating the symbols and diagrammatic representations in mathematical texts requires students to manoeuvre between academic mathematical language, school language and home language. Special attention should be given to academic literacy in mathematics for many reasons: the texts are complex and difficult and require extra effort to process, concepts are dense and abstract, terminology used is likely to be unfamiliar to students and not encountered in everyday language use, the specialised vocabulary, symbols and diagrams place high demands on students, and there is a need to recognise and understand patterns, infer main ideas and use both inductive and deductive reasoning (Stoffelsma and Spooren 2019). In their research on understanding approaches to student writing, Lea and Street (1998) present three theories: a "study skills" perspective, an "academic socialisation" perspective and an "academic literacies" perspective. Focusing on grammar, syntax, punctuation, and spelling, the study skills perspective views writing as a set of learnt skills transferable across disciplines. The academic socialisation perspective was initially thought of as inducting students into academic culture, but has been critiqued for the assumption that the university has one culture and for ignoring diversity. Academic socialisation is now viewed as the induction of students into disciplinary or subject-based cultures and norms (Lea and Street 2006).

Embracing the evolving nature of disciplinary cultures and norms and encompassing both the study skills and academic socialisation perspectives, an academic literacies perspective views literacies as social practice where the different ways of knowing and identity are valued as influencing student learning. Importantly, the academic literacies perspective acknowledges that students must negotiate different academic literacies within the university and "the requirement to switch practices between one setting and another, to deploy a repertoire of linguistic practices appropriate to each setting, and to handle the social meanings and identities that each evokes" (Lea and Street 1998, 159).

Moschkovich (2015, 44) adopts a sociocultural approach to academic literacy in mathematics (ALM) by assuming that mathematical activity is mediated by language, signs and social activity, by focusing on the potential for progress rather than learner deficiencies or misconceptions, and by extending the ALM framework beyond simply "language as words" and "mathematics as numbers". We align with Moschkovich's (2015) definition of academic literacy in mathematics as three-stranded and intertwined, encompassing mathematical proficiency, mathematical practices, and mathematical discourse. Mathematical proficiency (Kilpatrick, Swafford, and Findell 2001) is described as the combination of five interdependent strands: (1) conceptual understanding, which involves understanding concepts, operations, relations and comprehending connections and similarities between interrelated facts; (2) procedural fluency, which is flexibility, accuracy and efficiency in implementing appropriate procedures and includes when and how to use procedures; (3) strategic competence, which is the ability to formulate and solve mathematical problems; (4) adaptive reasoning, which is the capacity to think logically about concepts and conceptual relationships required to navigate through various procedures and concepts to solutions; and (5) a productive disposition, which includes the positive self-perceptions that develop as students gain more mathematical understanding and capacity to do mathematics. Moschkovich's interpretation of mathematical proficiency is proficiency in the content of mathematics, which can be summed up as understanding, representing and reasoning in mathematics. Mathematical practices are sociocultural interactions in a community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991) that involve mathematical thinking and the use of signs (Moschkovich and Zahner 2018), and include problem-solving, generalising, sense-making, reasoning, abstracting, using, connecting and looking for patterns in structure or regularity, modelling and imagining (Moschkovich 2015). Mathematical discourse connects mathematical cognition to sociocultural practices and allows for participation in mathematical practices. More than just the use of language, mathematical discourse involves being able to use valued mathematical tools such as abstracting, generalising, and using arguments that are precise, brief and well-defined (Moschkovich 2015), and it is where students actively transform learning through joint activity. Discourse is the essential element to their participation in mathematical activity and "involves not only oral and written text, but also multiple modes, representations (gestures, objects, drawings, tables, graphs, symbols, etc.), and registers (school mathematical language, home languages and the everyday register)" (Moschkovich and Zahner 2018, 1000).

 

Methods

A quantitative analysis was used to explore the mathematical proficiencies of engineering students at a residential South African university, focusing on the academic preparedness of students and to identify groups of students to target for follow-up qualitative research. Diagnostic information from the National Benchmark Tests (NBT) was used to explore students' entry level mathematical proficiency. Engineering students' mathematics performance in the three calculus courses was analysed.

The research participants were 10 cohorts of engineering students (731 in total) in an extended curriculum programme whose first attempt at the 12-week engineering mathematics course, Calculus 3, was in one of the semesters in the period 2015-2019. A minimum score of 50% allows enrolment in the next calculus course, with failed courses repeated in the following semester. First-attempt scores from the two prerequisite engineering mathematics courses, Calculus 1 and Calculus 2, and for Calculus 3, were gathered for analysis.

Students self-identified their "race" as defined under the previous apartheid system and home language. Gender options were limited to male and female (which is no longer the case). The research cohort was 86% South African. The language groups were represented as English (44%) and other languages (56%). There were 66% male students and 34% female students. The "race" differentiation was 48% black African, 17% coloured, 10% white, 12% Indian/Asian, and 13% unknown due to students choosing not to identify a "race" category.

To assess the difference in the performance of Calculus 3, performance groups were created from both Calculus 1 and Calculus 2 based on the standard university performance grouping: Fail (0-49%); 3 (50-59%); 2- (60-69%); 2+ (70-74%); 1 (75100%). The "Fail" group includes students who did not take the final examination due to achieving less than the minimum score.

One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), chi-square tests and relative importance analysis were used within the different performance groups to assess the differences in Calculus 3 performance. An ANOVA was used to assess whether the differences between the means of the Calculus 3 performance groups were statistically significant.

 

Results

The analysis shows that there were statistically significant differences within the performance groups with each of the demographic variables. The ANOVA showed that there was a significant difference (p = 0.0024) between the mean of the male students (54.8%) and the female students (58.6%), with a standard deviation of 15.8% and 15.5%, respectively, in Calculus 3.

A statistically significant (p = 0.0155) difference was found between the Calculus 3 scores of English home-language (EHL) students (54.5%) and English second-language (ESL) students (57.4%), with standard deviations of 16.5% and 15.1%, respectively. Citizenship and population groupings showed no statistically significant differences in Calculus 3 scores.

First-attempt performance in Calculus 1 had an effect on Calculus 3 performance. As might be expected, the high performers in Calculus 1 were the high performers in Calculus 3, and high performers in Calculus 2 were also high performers in Calculus 3.

Further to the analysis by demographic variables, ANOVA showed that the performance in Calculus 3 was significantly influenced by the Calculus 1 performance. Participants in the top performance group (based on Calculus 1 scores) had the highest mean score of 67% in Calculus 3, with mean scores dropping to 61%, 56%, 52% and 51% in the 2+, 2-, 3 and Fail categories in Calculus 3, respectively.

The pattern was similar when repeating the analysis using Calculus 2 performance groups. Participants in the top performance group of Calculus 2 had the highest mean score of 68% in Calculus 3; the 2+ performance group had a mean score of 57%; the 2-category had a mean score of 55%, and participants who were in the 3 or Fail performance groups each had the lowest mean score of 47% in Calculus 3.

 

Tracking Progress with Relative Importance Graphs

Extending our focus to explore the possible influence of pre-university diagnostic data on performance in Calculus 3, we analysed results from the National Benchmark Tests (NBT), which cover 20 subdomains across tests in mathematics (5 subdomains), quantitative literacy (6 subdomains) and academic literacy (9 subdomains, see Appendix). Using the same performance groups (1, 2+, 2-, 3, Fail), a multiple regression analysis was used to determine the independent variables that appear to be more important in explaining the performance in each Calculus 3 performance group. The NBT subdomains were used in the multiple regression analysis as independent variables and each of the Calculus 3 performance groups as the dependent variable. First, the relative importance analysis was done on the whole group and then on the Calculus 3 results grouped according to performance in Calculus 1 and Calculus 2. The graphs and the discussion below relate to the results of each analysis.

When analysing ungrouped Calculus 3 scores for all 10 cohorts, the NBT variables that explained most of the variability in Calculus 3 were the mathematics subdomains of trigonometric functions and graphs and geometric reasoning, and the quantitative literacy subdomain of relationships, pattern and permutations, as shown in Figure 1. The importance of prior mathematics for further mathematics is in line with expectations for a discipline with a hierarchical structure, where new concepts build on earlier concepts. Interestingly, the academic literacy subdomain discourse accounts for a greater explanation of variance of all Calculus 3 students than do the mathematics subdomains of algebraic processing and number sense, which are important prerequisites for the study of calculus. However, the pattern does not hold when the analysis is repeated for subgroups according to performance in Calculus 3.

When the analysis is repeated with both Calculus 1 and Calculus 2 subgroups, it is revealed that academic literacy subdomains account for the largest percentage in explaining the variance in Calculus 3 performance in the highest achieving category (group 1). Grammar, text genre, vocabulary and inference are the highest appearing subdomains.

Similarly, looking at the highest performing group in Calculus 3 based on only Calculus 1 performance, we note that the top explanatory variables are the academic literacy variables of grammar, text genre, and vocabulary, as shown in Figure 2.

A similar pattern emerges when analysing the Calculus 3 results of the highest performers in Calculus 2. The factors with greatest relative importance are not from mathematics subdomains but from academic literacy (grammar and inference) and quantitative literacy (change and rates, and quantity, number and operations). In summary, the Calculus 3 scores of high-achieving students are explained more by academic literacy variables than other NBT variables.

Contrastingly, the most important variables that explain the Calculus 3 performance of students in the Fail category are in the mathematical and quantitative literacy subdomains, followed by academic literacy subdomains, as shown in Figure 3.

 

Comparing Academic Literacy Subdomains for Five Performance Groups

In seeking to understand better the relative importance analysis correlation patterns of the performance groups, we investigated the box and whisker plots for these groups for each academic literacy subdomain. Since the subdomains of cohesion, communicative function and discourse are important elements in mathematical procedure (Sango and Steyn 2020), we expected these subdomains to have the greatest relative importance in explaining Calculus 3 marks.

As seen in Figure 4, the performance of the whole group in all the academic literacy subdomains was relatively high. Notably, in the Fail category there were several outliers below 50% and the score ranges were smaller than for other groups.

Text genre and vocabulary were the subdomains in which students performed the worst across all the performance groups, with more than 75% of high achievers attaining scores below 65%. Surprisingly, there was little difference in performance in the text genre and vocabulary subdomains between students in the Fail or top performing categories of Calculus 3 scores. In addition, the short box plots indicate a strong agreement in scores for these subdomains between students.

The grammar subdomain showed more variation between the Fail and 1 performance groups. Although both groups showed three quarters of the students scoring above 60%, the high performers had half of the students concentrated between scores of 60% and 80%. Surprisingly, the Fail and 3 categories showed half of the students scoring above 80% while the other categories had only a quarter of the students scoring above 80%. The Fail group had the tallest box plot for grammar, an indication of the large variation in grammar scores for that group.

Cohesion displayed a similar pattern across all performance groups, except for group 1 where a quarter of the students scored below 50%. The performance of the other groups appeared to be better, where a quarter of the students scored below 65%.

Communicative function showed almost identical trends across all groups. The subdomain metaphor showed tall box plots, which is an indication of a wide variation of scores, except for the Fail group where the box plots were short and there were many outliers. The discourse subdomain shows similar trends for all categories except, again, for the Fail group where there were many outliers.

 

Discussion

We reflect on the data analysis using the definitions of the NBT academic literacy subdomains and the three categories in Moschkovich's (2015) framework for academic literacy in mathematics-mathematical proficiency, mathematical practices, and mathematical discourse-to address our research question.

Mathematical Proficiency Progression

In this section, the focus is on students' performance in Calculus 1 and Calculus 2, and the impact of their performance in Calculus 3. Those with Calculus 2 scores below 60% were more likely to fail than to achieve the passing score (50%) for Calculus 3. Students who pass Calculus 2 but fail Calculus 3 would not have met all the strands of mathematical proficiency that are needed for mathematical understanding, reasoning and representing and therefore their capacity to succeed in further mathematics would be compromised. Students can pass a course by achieving high marks in one section and low marks in another, potentially creating gaps for courses that build on the neglected topics. Students in transition from Calculus 2 to Calculus 3, especially those with results of 50-59%, may be helped by interventions that address the issue of uneven engagement with course content by requiring sub-minimum achievement in all topics in a course. A more modular approach would signal the importance of proficiency in each topic for effective engagement in mathematical practice and mathematical discourse.

Strengthening Conceptual Understanding in Mathematical Practice

Based on the Calculus 2 and Calculus 3 performance data, low-performing students in Calculus 2 are more likely to have inadequately developed mathematical proficiency and may be less able to articulate this in the required mathematical practice or to engage in mathematical discourse and communication in Calculus 3.

Mathematics is considered a challenging discipline and the challenge is often exacerbated by excessive workloads and time pressures to cover the concepts prescribed by a particular course. Teaching, assessment and learning are often linked to traditional, non-interactive, teacher-centred approaches, with the student positioned more as a receiver of teacher-directed knowledge than an active participant (Helstad, Solbrekke, and Wittek 2017). Such traditional teaching typically presents fewer opportunities for students to engage in mathematical practices. Moschkovich (2013, 49) suggests that "[i]nstruction should provide opportunities for students to engage in mathematical practices such as solving problems, making connections, understanding multiple representations of mathematical concepts, communicating their thinking, justifying their reasoning, and critiquing arguments". These practices are especially important for the development of a conceptual understanding of mathematics (Dunnigan and Halcrow 2021), but the fast-paced curriculum followed in Calculus 1 and 2 does not lend itself to ideal mathematical practices. Similarly, in Calculus 3 students are expected to master complex concepts in a short time in a busy engineering schedule with a full workload and little time to revisit any gaps that may have resulted from previous courses.

Moschkovich (2015) calls for a balance between conceptual understanding and procedural knowledge in the quest to connect and integrate these two types of knowledge. It may be argued that Calculus 1 and Calculus 2 place more emphasis on procedural fluency and less on conceptual understanding. In many cases, the emphasis on procedures caters to other disciplines such as physics and chemistry that need these procedures for the teaching of their concepts. Unfortunately, this is done to the detriment of engaging in the mathematical practices necessary for deep conceptual understanding. This imbalance plays itself out negatively when students encounter Calculus 3, where conceptual understanding of new and cognitively more demanding concepts is central to their success in the course. Moreover, instruction should encourage opportunities for students' active communication and meaning-making using mathematical language, such as mathematical practices involving reasoning, constructing arguments, expressing structure and regularity and solving problems (Moschkovich 2013).

Mathematical Discourse and Success in Calculus 3

It is interesting to note that ESL students' performance in Calculus 3 (mean = 57%) was better than that of the EHL students (mean = 55%) and is statistically significant (p = 0.0155). At first glance, this result may be unexpected, but it fits with the definition of mathematical discourse as more than only the use of "technical words with precise meanings, but rather the communicative competence necessary and sufficient for competent participation in mathematical discourse practices" (Moschkovich 2013, 46). Separate from general language proficiency, which typically favours home-language students, mathematical discourse also includes using "valued mathematics tools such as abstracting, generalising and using arguments that are brief, precise and well defined" (Moschkovich 1999, 12) that are not likely to be developed outside a mathematics class.

There are distinct differences in the relative importance analysis of the highest performing and lowest performing groups in Calculus 3. We infer from the relative importance analysis that, for the highest performing Calculus 3 students, high achievement in the NBT academic literacy subdomains of grammar, text genre and vocabulary may play a prominent role in their navigation of mathematical text when initially engaging with concepts and when answering new questions. For the lowest performing students, we note that, in addition to having to decode the language, weaknesses in other domains play a more prominent role. As a result, the lower performing students are most likely to have issues with other fundamental concepts in mathematics and quantitative literacy in addition to academic literacy.

We take note that ESL students are at a disadvantage, having to contend with academic literacy conventions in a language they may not be proficient in (Sibomana 2016). However, our findings show that academic literacy proficiency is important for academic success in Calculus 3 for all students, both EHL students and ESL students.

The compelling case made by the data analysis of this quantitative research study alerted us to the significant role that academic literacy plays in the success of engineering mathematics students in a support context. We acknowledge that, although illuminating, this is only an initial view and that future qualitative research will reveal further nuances. This quantitative study is an exemplification of the potential of data to influence pedagogy and to impact student learning.

The relative importance of academic literacy in explaining mathematics results is much stronger in Calculus 3 than anticipated. We suggest that the level of difficulty of the mathematics in Calculus 3 is greater than in the preceding two engineering mathematics courses and speculate that when the mathematics is less cognitively challenging and more formulaic weaknesses in academic literacy do not prevent students from achieving course requirements and progressing to the next level of their degree. The compounding effect of a higher level of difficulty of the mathematics (Pearce et al. 2015) together with weak academic literacy may explain why some students who pass the first two calculus courses are less successful in Calculus 3.

Traditional mathematics curricula and pedagogies are often adhered to, citing "It has always been done that way" as a justification. Consequently, steering away from traditional norms to innovative ways of teaching and learning is infrequent. As educators of mathematics, we realise that we must continuously strive to engage in pedagogies that move away from simply requiring our students to reproduce knowledge and instead engage them in activities that support critical thinking, reading, writing and discussion of mathematical concepts.

 

Conclusion

Students who enter tertiary studies with less developed academic literacy may need more directed instruction to develop their academic literacy that the current system offers, where they are expected to "pick up" skills through the variety of course materials and tasks required in each of their courses. The findings of this quantitative analysis confirm to us what other research studies have reported-that we should be more targeted in developing students' academic literacy, particularly in first-year mathematics courses, so that students are more likely to succeed with more cognitively demanding courses such as Vector Calculus as their education progresses. Furthermore, this research highlighted the method of relative importance analysis used to drill down deeper to show the weighted importance of each variable on Calculus 3 performance.

This article supports a simultaneous focus on the three components of academic literacy in mathematics (Moschkovich 2013), especially for extended curriculum programme students. The next steps in our research will be to explore how to implement changes to our teaching of mathematics in ways that support academic literacy development from within our discipline. We will draw from studies that favour discipline-based academic literacy curriculum interventions, such as Carstens (2016) and Goodier and Parkinson's (2005) argument that language use developed in context is likely to be more effective than a generic language development course.

Future research should assess the effectiveness of our curriculum interventions informed by the relative importance analysis with regard to academic literacy development. We suggest that such an assessment should adapt Ally and Christiansen's (2013) rubric for teachers to assess the opportunities for students to develop each of the mathematical proficiency strands and include Moschkovich's (2015) two further strands of mathematical practices and mathematical discourse. By assessing our provision of opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency, mathematical practice and mathematical discourse (Moschkovich 2015), rather than only assessing how students take up the opportunities, we can avoid simply blaming students for not developing.

The emphasis of support programmes in engineering often does not include academic literacy development within disciplines. This research provides evidence that the success of students in engineering mathematics is dependent on their proficiency in academic literacy and argues that this component be integrated within the discipline in the support environment. We concur with Kelly-Laubscher and Van der Merwe (2014, 1) that without interventions, many students are "unlikely to gain access to disciplinary ways of learning and writing, which ultimately may lead to their exclusion from university". We echo the sentiment of Sibomana (2016) that the time has come for all institutions of learning to empower their students with academic literacy within their disciplines so that they may succeed.

 

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of our colleagues Kalpana Ramesh Kanjee, Robert Prince and Tatiana Sango for working with us in the initial stages of this research, and Sanet Steyn for discussions on academic literacies. Our collaborative writing was greatly helped by our attendance at a writing retreat arranged by Vivienne Bozalek and Aditi Hunma. We are grateful to the DMISRS project run by Robert Prince for funding Precious Mudavanhu to attend the retreat.

 

References

Ally, N., and I. M. Christiansen. 2013. "Opportunities to Develop Mathematical Proficiency in Grade 6 Mathematics Classrooms in KwaZulu-Natal". Perspectives in Education 31 (3): 106-21. Accessed August 2, 2021. https://openscholar.dut.ac.za/bitstream/10321/1357/1/Pages%20from%20Perspectives%20in%20Education%2031(3)-1-2.pdf.         [ Links ]

Brock-Utne, B. 2000. Whose Education for All? The Recolonization of the African Mind. New York, NY: Falmer Press.         [ Links ]

Carstens, A. 2016. "Designing Linguistically Flexible Scaffolding for Subject-Specific Academic Literacy Interventions". Per Linguam: A Journal of Language Learning 32 (3): 1-12. https://doi.org/10.5785/32-3-690.         [ Links ]

CWUR (Centre for World University Rankings). 2020. "World University Rankings 2020-21". Accessed August 2, 2021. https://cwur.org/2020-21.php.

Council for the Built Environment. 2019. "Council for the Built Environment and the Councils for the Built Environment Professions Implementation of Skills Pipeline". Accessed August 2, 2021. https://pmg.org.za/files/191023CBE_Narrative_Report.docx.

De Clercq, F. 2020. "The Persistence of South African Educational Inequalities: The Need for Understanding and Relying on Analytical Frameworks". Education as Change 24: 1-22. https://doi.org/10.25159/1947-9417/7234.         [ Links ]

Dunnigan, G., and C. Halcrow. 2021. "If You Don't Build It, They Will Leave: Reforming an Applied Calculus Course by Eliminating Large Lectures and Incorporating Active Learning". PRIMUS: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies 3 (3-5): 413-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511970.2020.1769234.         [ Links ]

Garraway, J. W. 2017. "Participatory Parity and Epistemological Access in the Extended Curriculum Programmes". Education as Change 21 (2): 109-25. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/2008.         [ Links ]

Goodier, C., and J. Parkinson. 2005. "Discipline-Based Academic Literacy in Two Contexts". Journal for Language Teaching 39 (1): 66-79. https://doi.org/10.4314/jlt.v39i1.6050.         [ Links ]

Helstad, K., T. D. Solbrekke, and A. L. Wittek. 2017. "Exploring Teaching Academic Literacy in Mathematics in Teacher Education". Education Inquiry 8 (4): 318-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004508.2017.1389225.         [ Links ]

Kelly-Laubscher, R. F., and M. Van der Merwe. 2014. "An Intervention to Improve Academic Literacies in a First Year University Biology Course". Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning 2 (2): 1-23. https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v2i2.23.         [ Links ]

Kilpatrick, J., J. Swafford, and B. Findell, eds. 2001. Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.         [ Links ]

Kouvela, E. 2017. "A Socio-Cultural Analysis of the Transition from School to University Mathematics". PhD diss., Loughborough University. https://hdl.handle.net/2134/32508.         [ Links ]

Lave, J., and E. Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355.         [ Links ]

Lea, M. R., and B. V. Street. 1998. "Student Writing in Higher Education: An Academic Literacies Approach". Studies in Higher Education 23 (2): 157-72. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079812331380364.         [ Links ]

Lea, M. R., and B. V. Street. 2006. "The 'Academic Literacies' Model: Theory and Applications". Theory into Practice 45 (4): 368-77. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4504_11.         [ Links ]

Lithner, J. 2011. "University Mathematics Students' Learning Difficulties". Education Inquiry 2 (2): 289-303. https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v2i2.21981.         [ Links ]

Maller, S., T. Hong, W. Oakes, C. Zoltowski, and P. McDermott. 2007. "Normative Typologies of Epics Students on ABET EC Criterion 3: A Multistage Cluster Analysis". Paper presented at 2007 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. https://peer.asee.org/2903.

Martin, D. B. 2006. "Mathematics Learning and Participation as Racialized Forms of Experience: African American Parents Speak on the Struggle for Mathematics Literacy". Mathematical Thinking and Learning 8 (3): 197-229. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327833mtl0803_2.         [ Links ]

Moschkovich, J. N. 1999. "Supporting the Participation of English Language Learners in Mathematical Discussions". For the Learning of Mathematics 19 (1): 11-19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40248284?origin=JSTOR-pdf.         [ Links ]

Moschkovich, J. N. 2013. "Principles and Guidelines for Equitable Mathematics Teaching Practices and Materials for English Language Learners". Journal of Urban Mathematics Education 6 (1): 45-57. https://doi.org/10.21423/jume-v6i1a204.         [ Links ]

Moschkovich, J. N. 2015. "Academic Literacy in Mathematics for English Learners". The Journal of Mathematical Behavior 40: 43-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2015.01.005.         [ Links ]

Moschkovich, J. N., and W. Zahner. 2018. "Using the Academic Literacy in Mathematics Framework to Uncover Multiple Aspects of Activity During Peer Mathematical Discussions". ZDM 50 (6): 999-1011. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-018-0982-9.         [ Links ]

Mouchou Tchamdjeu, R., H. Steenkamp, and A. L. Nel. 2018. "Retention Based on Graduation Rate of Male and Female Industrial Engineering Students". In EDUCON 2018 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, edited by C. Gonzalez, M. Castro and M. Llamas, 738-45. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8363304.         [ Links ]

Othman, H., N. A. Ismail, I. Asshaari, F. M. Hamzah, and Z. M. Nopiah. 2015. "Application of Rasch Measurement Model for Reliability Measurement Instrument in Vector Calculus Course". Journal of Engineering Science and Technology 10 (2): 77-83.         [ Links ]

Padayachee, P., and T. S. Craig. 2020. "Students' Mental Constructions of Concepts in Vector Calculus: Insights from Two Universities". In 2020 European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) Conference: Engaging Engineering Education, edited by J. van der Veen, N. van Hattum-Janssen, H.-M. Järvinen, T. de Laet, and I. ten Dam, 1022-32. Enschede: University of Twente.         [ Links ]

Pearce, H., A. Campbell, T. S. Craig, P. Le Roux, K. Nathoo, and E. Vicatos. 2015. "The Articulation between the Mainstream and Extended Degree Programmes in Engineering at the University of Cape Town: Reflections and Possibilities". South African Journal of Higher Education 29 (1): 151-64. https://doi.org/10.20853/29-1-451.         [ Links ]

Pinto, T., and A. A. Teixeira. 2020. "The Impact of Research Output on Economic Growth by Fields of Science: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis, 1980-2016". Scientometrics 123: 94578. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03419-3.         [ Links ]

Sango, T., and S. Steyn. 2020. "Interpreting Rate of Change in Applied Context: Reflecting on Students' Reasoning". Virtual presentation adapted for DMISRS Webinar, November 3, 2020. Accessed August 3, 2021. http://dmisrs.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Sango-and-Steyn-Interpreting-rate-of-change-in-applied-context-Reflecting-on-students-reasoning.pdf.

Shanahan, C., T. Shanahan, and C. Misischia. 2011. "Analysis of Expert Readers in Three Disciplines: History, Mathematics, and Chemistry". Journal of Literacy Research 43 (4): 393-429. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X11424071.         [ Links ]

Sibomana, E. 2016. "'We Know What to Say, We Know What to Write, But We Don't Know How': The Challenges of Becoming Academically Literate in a New Linguistic and Socio-Cultural Space". Education as Change 20 (2): 123-44. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2016/747.         [ Links ]

Solomon, Y., and T. Croft. 2016. "Understanding Undergraduate Disengagement from Mathematics: Addressing Alienation". International Journal of Educational Research 79: 267-76. https://doi.org/10.1016/jijer.2015.10.006.         [ Links ]

Srivastava, N. 2017. "Literacy in Mathematics". Medium, June 12, 2017. Accessed August 2, 2021. https://medium.com/literate-schools/literacy-in-mathematics-aac1611197e2.

Stadler, M., H. D. Cooper-Thomas, and S. Greiff. 2017. "A Primer on Relative Importance Analysis: Illustrations of Its Utility for Psychological Research". Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling 59 (4): 381-403. http://hdl.handle.net/10993/35643.         [ Links ]

Stoffelsma, L., and W. Spooren. 2019. "The Relationship between English Reading Proficiency and Academic Achievement of First-Year Science and Mathematics Students in a Multilingual Context". International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education 17: 905-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-018-9905-z.         [ Links ]

Tonidandel, S., and J. M. LeBreton. 2011. "Relative Importance Analysis: A Useful Supplement to Regression Analysis". Journal of Business and Psychology 26 (1): 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9204-3.         [ Links ]

UCT (University of Cape Town). 2018. 2018 Teaching and Learning Report. Cape Town: University of Cape Town. Accessed August 2, 2021. http://www.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_tool/images/328/teaching/UCT_ Teaching%26LearningReport_2018.pdf.         [ Links ]

Weideman, A. 2018. Academic Literacy: Five New Tests. Bloemfontein: Geronimo Distribution.         [ Links ]

 

 

Appendix

The National Benchmark Test Academic Literacy Construct (Sango and Steyn 2020)

 

Click to enlarge

^rND^sAlly^nN.^rND^nI. M.^sChristiansen^rND^sCarstens^nA.^rND^sDe Clercq^nF.^rND^sDunnigan^nG.^rND^nC.^sHalcrow^rND^sGarraway^nJ. W.^rND^sGoodier^nC.^rND^nJ.^sParkinson^rND^sHelstad^nK.^rND^nT. D.^sSolbrekke^rND^nA. L.^sWittek^rND^sKelly-Laubscher^nR. F.^rND^nM.^sVan der Merwe^rND^sLea^nM. R.^rND^nB. V.^sStreet^rND^sLea^nM. R.^rND^nB. V.^sStreet^rND^sLithner^nJ.^rND^sMartin^nD. B.^rND^sMoschkovich^nJ. N.^rND^sMoschkovich^nJ. N.^rND^sMoschkovich^nJ. N.^rND^sMoschkovich^nJ. N.^rND^nW.^sZahner^rND^sMouchou Tchamdjeu^nR.^rND^nH.^sSteenkamp^rND^nA. L.^sNel^rND^sOthman^nH.^rND^nN. A.^sIsmail^rND^nI.^sAsshaari^rND^nF. M.^sHamzah^rND^nZ. M.^sNopiah^rND^sPadayachee^nP.^rND^nT. S.^sCraig^rND^sPearce^nH.^rND^nA.^sCampbell^rND^nT. S.^sCraig^rND^nP.^sLe Roux^rND^nK.^sNathoo^rND^nE.^sVicatos^rND^sPinto^nT.^rND^nA. A.^sTeixeira^rND^sShanahan^nC^rND^nT.^sShanahan^rND^nC.^sMisischia^rND^sSibomana^nE.^rND^sSolomon^nY.^rND^nT.^sCroft^rND^sStadler^nM^rND^nH. D.^sCooper-Thomas^rND^nS.^sGreiff^rND^sStoffelsma^nL.^rND^nW.^sSpooren^rND^sTonidandel^nS.^rND^nJ. M.^sLeBreton^rND^1A01^nGideon^sNomdo^rND^1A02^nSean^sSamson^rND^1A03^nAditi^sHunma^rND^1A01^nGideon^sNomdo^rND^1A02^nSean^sSamson^rND^1A03^nAditi^sHunma^rND^1A01^nGideon^sNomdo^rND^1A02^nSean^sSamson^rND^1A03^nAditi^sHunma

ARTICLE

 

Becoming Knowledge Makers: Critical Reflections on Enquiry-Based Learning

 

 

Gideon Nomdo^I; Sean Samson^II; Aditi Hunma^III

^IUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa Gideon.Nomdo@uct.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4878-9349
^IIUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa Sp.Samson@uct.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5496-8672
^IIIUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa Aditi.Hunma@uct.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7714-2996

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

The scholarship of teaching and learning recognises the important interrelationship between teaching and learning, and it values critical dialogues on teaching-learning praxis beyond local contexts. This focus shifts attention from research outputs drawing on student behaviour to a broader focus on teacher-learner mutuality, disciplinary practices, and institutional landscapes. Rapid changes in higher education require the fostering of critical citizenship as a core graduate attribute. The massification of education, however, has emphasised throughput at the expense of nurturing students' sense of "becoming" as they navigate transformations in selfhood. This represents a stumbling block for meaningful participation in their own learning. Our article explores the incorporation of enquiry-based learning within a flipped blended classroom setting that seeks to engage teachers and learners more reflectively as co-producers of knowledge. We show how this approach can nurture an awareness of the self through the process of "becoming". We employ a qualitative case-study methodology to interrogate data taken from student writings, interviews, and course evaluations. Our analysis traces the progression of developmental insights present in students' reflective thinking and writing about their learning. We conclude that the process of "becoming" is possible within an educational context focused on measurable outcomes, where "becoming" is intricately linked to pedagogical imperatives seeking to empower, transform and enrich learning.

Keywords: knowledge producers; agency; being; becoming; enquiry-based learning; reflective practice, assemblage; intra-action

---

 

 

Introduction

In a South African higher education (HE) context fraught with inequalities, the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) invites educators to reflect on how their teaching impacts social change. The South African student-led Fallist movement of 2015 with its calls to decolonise higher education (see Ahmed 2019; Lishivha 2019) highlighted how funding, dominant knowledge systems and institutional culture represent barriers to access and success. The Fallist movement provided much impetus for reflection on curricula, in our opinion, yet may have downplayed the view of curriculum as dynamic and realised through pedagogy (see Mkhize 2015).

Since the Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP)¹ specifically addresses social inequalities through education, ECP lecturers are often described as teachers rather than researchers, creating an artificial divide between the two roles. However, the process of introspection and scholarship is even more necessary to continue refining our offerings for widening access and promoting student success in terms of epistemology, belonging, and social consciousness.

Our philosophy draws on an enriched pedagogy that moves away from a deficit approach (possibly mistranslated from policy) that describes ECP students as "beneficiaries", and instead shifts focus to teaching practices that serve all students and highlights the affordances and constraints of our working contexts. The digital turn has invited us as ECP lecturers to explore the potential of scaling up our offerings through courses we design and teach.² The shift in focus to a critical reflection on pedagogy and context aims to develop teaching practice more broadly and is in line with the focus of evolving scholarship. Simultaneously, it is also a reconfiguring of ECP scholarship, informing the field of HE through supporting all students. Our ethos is very much aligned with Boyer (1990, 16):

We believe the time has come to move beyond the tired old "teaching versus research" debate and give the familiar and honourable term "scholarship" a broader, more capacious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of academic work. ... [T]he work of the scholar also means stepping back from one's investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one's knowledge effectively to students.

This article is one moment in a longer process of reflection on our teaching practices and research journey in SoTL. We have examined how our approach fosters deeper learning engagement by holding students in what we have called the "analytical mode" (see Arend et al. 2017). In this mode, messiness is welcomed, and students grapple with ideas without being held accountable for them, enabling a deep, invested process of meaning-making. Our most recent ECP enquiries include adopting an ethics of care approach (Samson et al. 2018) and discovering "the envisioned self, which relates to students' sense of becoming (Hunma et al. 2019).

Our article traces the design and implementation of an evidence-based learning (EBL) approach (see Healey 2005) in a first-year level African Studies (AXL) course, Writing Across Borders, offered by ECP staff to Humanities students at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Here, ECP students are not isolated from the other students, and the classroom comprises a diverse cohort of first to third year local and international students from mainstream and extended degrees. We believe that exposure to students in other streams contributes to enriching the learning experience. In fact, the divide is not productive, since ECP students do study with students in other streams, write the same essays, and at times, outperform those students. But we are mindful that ECP students are not a homogeneous group, and that ECP programmes are not uniform in terms of design and structure across faculties and institutions. The glue that holds all ECPs together, though, is the common goal of improving access and equity for historically disadvantaged students and the overall commitment to the decolonising project.

Our position as ECP staff is that all students have a repertoire of discourses and experiences they carry into the university, but that they require the space to grapple with ways of negotiating these brought-along and newly encountered epistemologies and discourses. This negotiation enables them to meet the requirements for achieving milestones in their academic journeys. A significant milestone is the transition from first to second year, where students are expected to develop researcher identities. This was confirmed through qualitative research we conducted in 2018 across 10 Humanities departments with second-year students, course convenors and tutors, where participants reported that second-year students struggled predominantly with the skills of critical reading and research. We adopted a less bounded view of ECP by dissolving the boundaries that separated mainstream and extended programmes and strove to "extend" the reach of our offerings to all students. Offering our course as an elective in the African Studies Department made access to ECP and mainstream students in one course possible. We applied a transformative approach to language and academic literacy (Lillis and Scott 2007) with the aim of widening social and epistemic access to address the educational needs of all students, including the historically disadvantaged. This approach moves from the reflex that gaps in knowledge or "skills" can simply be solved through the "development" of students, which in fact reinforces a deficit view of students.

Our course forms part of a "Curriculum Reform" project, and its design pays attention to issues of decolonisation at a curricular level in terms of transforming the teaching and learning space to equip students with the research skills required for second year. In the long run this could enable the university to increase its throughput and nurture requisite graduate attributes. It also speaks to UCT's strategic goals of being a "research intensive university" and creating "social impact through engaged scholarship". By opening the AXL course to mainstream and ECP students, we distance ourselves from the idea that students need to first assimilate knowledge to fit into the university community, and rather embrace the view that all students can be contributors of knowledge on the course.

The course's location in African Studies influences what and how we teach so that we are in alignment with other courses in the discipline. Prominence is given to readings and case studies from the African continent. The content revolves around the themes of identity and migration and the question posed is: What happens to the identity of individuals as they cross borders? This is a question that students explore by stepping into the field and interviewing a refugee.³ Later they write up a report on their findings. The mode of enquiry undertaken by students is "research-based" (Healey 2005, 70).

The course pedagogy is driven by an evidence-based learning approach, which Spronken-Smith et al. (2008 quoted in Healey 2005, 70) define as "a pedagogy which best enables students to experience the processes of knowledge creation". The fact that the lecturers are not privy to the research field, in that they do not set up, interact, or participate in the student interview process with the migrant interviewee, may give students more autonomy to construct meaning and take ownership of the knowledge produced.

Additionally, the content is structured in a "flipped classroom" blended mode that requires students to first engage with the material online, and then enter the physical classroom (which we have termed "Writers' Circles" following the model of an organic postgraduate writing space) for discussion. While we offer anchor points, this model gives students more agency within the flexible course structure, where our role is that of nurturing and offering guidance and prompts. We adopt the role of critical observers of these students' process of becoming, aware that this enquiry could also influence our own learning journey.

Drawing on data from student blogs, essays, research projects, interviews, and course evaluations, we explored through a qualitative case-study methodology how the EBL model allowed students to build their own knowledge base and offered them a space to initiate their process of becoming. We ask: What does it mean to be a producer of knowledge? Do students see themselves as producers or reporters or receivers of knowledge? Who owns the knowledge? How can we use EBL for enabling students to take responsibility and ownership of their own learning? How can we draw on scholarship of teaching and learning debates to interrogate the binaries between producer/receiver, ECP and mainstream, and develop more nuanced understandings of "becoming"?

The sense of "becoming" employed here is borrowed mainly from Deleuze and Guattari (1987), and Massumi (2002) where the process of "becoming" involves a subject who is acted upon but who can also act and transform. In this respect, Bayat and Mitchell's (2020) recent study on "affect" has been useful for visualising and thinking about what is entailed in the process of "becoming". We argue that the process of "becoming" takes on new meanings for students driven by an enquiry process, and that alongside the dominant narrative of measurable outcomes, there is a slow and sustained form of student scholarship that endures beyond the temporal boundaries of the course and the spatial boundaries of the university. Such scholarship continues to inform students' process of knowledge production and their "envisioned selves" as socially conscious beings. The uncertainty and relational trajectory characterising "becoming" find energy in enquiry-based approaches, which help to focus learning through the lens the student constructs (using material within and outside of the course boundaries).

This focus on the student's sense of self and being has also pushed us to consider the processes of "becoming" at an individual level in the Heideggerian sense, to establish a more informed basis of how the boundaries that constitute different selves shift outwards, become porous and disappear altogether on the path to creating a more inclusive, equitable and harmonious state of existence within the world. Our proposition here is not to expose the dissonance in the ontological stances between Heidegger's ([1927] 1962) and Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) frameworks (for more insight, see Allen 2015). Rather, we draw inspiration from Natanasabapathy and Maathuis-Smith's (2019) study showing how intertwined the philosophical concepts of Heiddeger's (1927) notion of "being" and Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) notion of "becoming" are in transformative learning models (in our case, EBL). In line with such thinking, we wish to draw on and merge some of the insights and concepts arising out of Heideggarian and Deleuzian philosophical stances, to create new possibilities for a more informed understanding of the interrelatedness of the complexity in meaning that underlines the process of becoming. We deem this to be a more productive and collaborative stance in that our adoption of an EBL approach has resulted in our students oscillating between boundedness and fluidity. This process view is perhaps more valuable than an image of an end state or outcome. The outcome or future self is carried with students as they engage with their contexts, offering them "the potential capacity to bring such futures about" (Carlin and Wallin 2014, xxii). Ultimately, students' EBL journeys also inform our teaching approaches and curriculum design, such that students become partners with staff in contributing to the ongoing scholarship of teaching and learning.

 

Literature Review

The EBL model is instrumental to the ordering of teaching and learning moments or "literacy events" on the course. We discuss some of the key literature in EBL, as well as the processes of being and becoming.

Enquiry-Based Learning (EBL)

Spronken-Smith et al. (2008 quoted in Healey and Jenkins 2009, 25) describe evidence-based learning as "a pedagogy which best enables students to experience the processes of knowledge creation". The AXL course is in line with such thinking about learning as an exploratory process and contains all the ingredients of EBL:

- learning stimulated by enquiry and based on a process of seeking knowledge and new understanding;

- a student-centred approach to teaching where teachers act as facilitators;

- a move to self-directed learning with students taking responsibility for their learning; and

- the development of skills in self-reflection.

In terms of the nature of the enquiry, the authors distinguish between three modes, namely, structured, guided, and open. Our course opted for a guided mode of enquiry that is "question driven" (see Roy, Kustra, and Borin 2003), and where students engage in a "self-directed" exploration to seek answers. Students were given the broad question of "What happens to identity as individuals move across borders?" During their group interviews with a refugee, students planned and posed questions relating to the main question, but also used the interview to identify and sharpen an angle that they wished to pursue on identity and migration. Some chose to shine a light on the themes of solidarity, others on survival and yet others on discrimination, othering, and identity crises.

EBL offers greater autonomy in the learning process and is linked to research. The research process can be set up by lecturers in different ways; it can adopt research-led, research-orientated, research-based, and research-tutored approaches (Healey 2005, 70). While the research-led and research-oriented approaches are often theoretical, the research-based and research-tutored approaches require students to be active participants in the research process. On the AXL course, these four components were utilised, starting from orienting students to existing research on migration and identity, to offering guidelines on research methods and ethical considerations, to opening opportunities to conduct and write up research.

Our approach to EBL is also informed by Levy and Petrulis (2012, 97-98) who conclude that learning contexts where the tasks are "tightly structured" and where students are offered a level of "bounded independence" are more effective than those that are open-ended. In addition, Perkins (2010, 25) suggests letting students "play the whole game" rather than revealing aspects of the research process in a sequential or linear manner. The effects of this approach, we argue, may be felt during the course, but may also contribute to University of Cape Town's (UCT's) policies on cultivating critical minds and graduate attributes, including researcher identities. We argue that the process of becoming is not confined to the course, though we can explore key trends in students' process of becoming as they reflect on their evolving sense of being through acts of knowledge-building.

Being

Heidegger ([1927] 1962)⁴ acknowledges that part of being human or Dasein (understood as a state of "Being" in the world-with a capitalised "B") means having to live with angst and an awareness of one's own mortality. Ontologically, "Dasein (Dasein: there-being)" indicates "the distinctive mode of Being realized by human beings" (Heidegger 1927 quoted in Wheeler 2013). Heidegger's focus here is on the unique ability of humans to have an awareness of "Being" while maintaining the ability to reflect on the nature of that state of "Being" in terms of distinguishing between an authentic and inauthentic self. The authentic self is a self that is "my own", it "is mine ... owned by me". In contrast, the inauthentic self is "the fallen self, the self lost to the 'they'" (Wheeler 2013), as in when an individual unquestioningly becomes a mere follower. Heidegger argues that by living in uncritical imitation of the "they", the "inauthentic Dasein avoids owning its own life". To be authentic means acting out a "resoluteness" whereby an individual chooses one of the "possible ways of being" made available in society (Wheeler 2013). Wheeler (2013) concludes that "authenticity is not about being isolated from others, but rather about finding a different way of relating to others" such that one does not follow blindly. Authenticity concerns a constant recreation of an openness to different types of relationships, and this generates change in which new possibilities for becoming with others emerge.

Becoming

Dasein can be seen as a constant presence interacting with the process of becoming. Here "becoming" is dynamic and organic, constituted in and through inter- and intra-action. Stated otherwise, "being itself signifies a particular ontological presence at a particular point in time, whereas becoming is a continuous moving presence of the ontological ... self (Natanasabapathy and Maathuis-Smith 2019, 371). Through the process of "becoming-with others" (Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 72), new ways of being-in-the-world are actualised. Bayat and Mitchell (2020) provide insights into the affective dimensions of pedagogy. The authors (Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 63) foreground the Deleuzian understanding of "affect" defined as "a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another", where "[a]ffect includes emotions and feelings but is not reduced to them". The authors show how "an attunement to the affective forces circulating in pedagogical practices" represents a shift away from conventional teaching towards socially just practices that foreground "dialogic interactions between students and educators" (2020, 57) so that the social dimensions and contestations surrounding knowledge production are made visible. Within this dialogical setting, students cultivate "agential" qualities (more will be said about this later) (see Freire 2000) by developing critical awareness of the connections between theory and their lived realities. This dialogical process brings together students and educators in an ecosystem or an assemblage consisting of heterogeneous elements, which change and can also be changed (Massumi 2002). In this dialogical process, learning becomes a collaboration between lecturers and students that disturbs and flattens hierarchies of power embedded within normative pedagogies (Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 58), paving the way for the liberatory praxis inherent in socially just pedagogies and transformative curricula (see Bozalek and Zembylas 2017; Moletsane 2015).

Bayat and Mitchell (2020, 58; 60) assert that "pedagogies for social justice bring opportunities to engage with an awareness and sensitivity to the affective flows which facilitate students' learning" and "open up multidirectional spaces for students to enter into new relations with different knowledges". Instances of such "new relations" can be seen when our AXL students begin to reflect on the "single stories" (Adichie 2009) of the refugee/migrant that they hold. These constructions are placed alongside other (often competing) representations of migrants/refugees encountered on the AXL course, forming sites of interrogation, where meaning is negotiated. As lecturers we simply facilitate this unfolding process of interrogation: we work collaboratively with their ideas, questions, challenges, perceptions, reflections and silences, as a way of sharing and also co-producing new ideas that resonate with their (and our own) personal experiences of "Being" and "becoming". We echo Barad's (2007 quoted in Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 61) comment that:

As educators, we examined our teaching assemblages ... acknowledging that we were not in a neutral or innocent position to "enact what matters and what is excluded from mattering".

In terms of making better sense of "what" matters in an assemblage, Bayat and Mitchell (2020, 62) argue that affective forces are also constituted in the relationships that humans develop with material objects (such as chairs, chalkboards, computers, fieldnotes, voice recorders), which form part of the assemblage. These "heterogeneous" parts represent a dynamic system through the relations that are formed in the in-between spaces (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 35). These relational components produce a state of "agentic attunement", which, according to Despret (2013 quoted in Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 64), "is never fixed once and for all" and makes power available to effect change in the assemblage.

Drawing on Barad's (2007 cited in Bayat and Mitchell 2020) employment of "agential realism", Bayat and Mitchell assert that objects also possess "agentic" qualities, and it is only their interaction with humans that enables the concept of agency to be meaningfully assessed. Individuals on their own have no "pre-existing" sense of agency to produce effects. Rather, such effects are the results of agentic qualities of "multiple bodies" interacting with one another, as in the case of an assemblage. Agency and affect are therefore socially constituted within and through these relationships, in other words "through the event of intra-action" (Barad quoted in Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 63). This is where learning takes place, where students are engaged in the "process of becoming-with other bodies that include space, time and matter". Emerging from this dynamic of intra-action is the idea of "entanglements where ethics, ontology and knowledge are inseparable in our teaching and learning practices", allowing for "alternative pedagogical opportunities of becoming that are constituted along a continuum of unthought possibilities with many different learning outcomes" (Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 63) to emerge. This sense of emergence is crucial since it signals movement from one state to another. Semetsky (2007 quoted in Natanasabapathy and Maathuis-Smith 2019, 373) captures this idea by drawing on Deleuzian philosophy to foreground transformative changes that occur in students' thinking processes and points to "a shift in the rhizomatic paths between the 'start of a course' and the 'end of a course'". These shifts signify the intertwined nature of being and becoming:

[D]uring the course, the learner moves from one state of being to a state of becoming, which then becomes the present state of being from which the learner moves forward to become the next desired state of being. ... Transformative learning therefore is a cyclical process of being and becoming. ... [B]eing evolves continuously and eternally achieving various milestones in its journey. (Natanasabapathy and Maathuis-Smith 2019, 373)

 

Methodology

The study employs a qualitative case-study methodology, which enables researchers to "retain the holistic and meaningful characteristics of real-life events" (Yin 2009, 4) and relies on detailed interpretations of bounded phenomena (Dyson and Genishi 2005). However, according to Gallagher (2019, 1), conducting case studies online comes with its own challenges, since the "boundaries around what might constitute a case are murky and often 'leaky'". Students are operating across various contexts: the classroom, the online platform with its own subdivisions of conversational blogs and formal essays, and the research field where they interview a refugee. At the outset, the course offered theoretical tools and perspectives through the readings to orient students to the focus on identity and mobility. It also gave students the opportunity to discuss, problematise and blog about their own identity, how they perceived themselves, how others perceived them, and the role of context in shaping their sense of being, before going into the field. These preliminary exercises served as a rehearsal space, a moment of anchoring before students set out to encounter the unknown terrain of research, what Levy and Petrulis (2012, 97-98) refer to as "bounded independence". There was a co-ownership of the knowledge produced through the interview process, since students took responsibility for the dialogue that unfolded: they prepared and posed interview questions, made the necessary connections between responses, recorded, transcribed and analysed interview data and wrote it up as a research project. As lecturers we facilitated the analysis towards a consolidation of the knowledge gained. This process also destabilised the idea of lecturers as purveyors of knowledge, and instead rendered them as knowledge-receivers, as they had to rely on what students reported from the field. Here the interview and classroom spaces represented transformative learning sites and signalled the affective dimension of pedagogy in which the student narratives, presented below, underwent a "passage from one experiential state of the body to another" (Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 63).

Access to migrants/refugees was organised by the lecturers,⁵ and students were given a broad question to investigate, namely, "What happens to the identity of individuals as they move across borders?" The question was open-ended while still offering direction. The cases in this research were four students from the 2019 student cohort, purposively selected for diverse representation in terms of year of study and nationality. The data set included student blogs, research essays, the course evaluation, and a focus group interview. The data was analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis as defined by Fairclough (1995), focusing on the text, the interpersonal and social dimensions of meaning to bring out moments when students assume agency in the process of knowledge making. The comparison of findings across those moments brought out impressions about students' journeys of becoming. The concepts that informed the analytical framework are "being", "becoming" and "knowing", which are configured in different ways to produce different types of knowledge makers. At this point, the extent to which students viewed themselves as knowledge makers still needed to be ascertained.

 

Data Analysis

Sinazo⁶ and Bronwyn

Sinazo is a black South African⁷ citizen and second-year student majoring in Politics, Media and Writing. While doing the AXL course in 2019, she traced the shifts in her views on refugees and herself.

In her Week 9 blog, she imagined the prospect of interviewing a refugee and the power relations between them. She realised that her South African citizenship marked her as being different to the refugee, and might influence how she is viewed by refugees, particularly in light of the recent xenophobic attacks in the country. In the process, she inverted the gaze that often portrays refugees as "threats" to view herself as a "threat" from the gaze of the "other". Aware of her positionality as a researcher, she resolved to make the interview "as comfortable and fair as possible". This was an important moment in Sinazo's process of becoming, where there was a conscious attempt at fostering familiarity with one who may have been ostracised in his homeland and then in the host country. Here, she exhibits a capacity for "assemblage thinking" (Bayat and Mitchell 2020), the understanding that she needs to strike a degree of "agentic attunement" and calibrate the unequal relations between her and the refugee, due to the refugee's own precarious political identity and the researcher-researched expectations around data collection and representation.

In the Week 10 blog, Sinazo underwent a conceptual shift regarding refugees. Using the storytelling prompts we offered, she wrote, "Once upon a time, I thought that all refugees came to SA because they couldn't afford to live in their home countries due to high inflation or corrupt leaders". Here she admitted to constructing refugees' identities in terms of the dominant narrative of victimhood. She then noted that her encounter with Hall's concept of "push and pull factors" allowed her to escape the single story about refugees' motivation to cross borders. Sinazo asserted that the contestation of the single story needs to happen through sensitising locals about the harm inflicted on refugees.

Her realisation resonated with Bronwyn's⁸ admission about preconceived notions concerning migrants:

I created a single story about this migrant before I even met Mr J.L. ... Going into the interview I had preconceived ideas about ... my migrant. I imagined him to be a person who was illiterate and with no formal schooling . a scared person who spoke little to no English. . Upon entering the interview and meeting my migrant and hearing him speak I realised that my single story that I've created was wrong. ... He was not illiterate. In fact, he was brilliant. He had a Master' s degree in Law. This links up with what Adichie said about single stories creating stereotypes and . makes one story. . There cannot only be one story because identity is multiple. . I realised that I have . generalised. . I created a single story about the migrant. It implicated my mind because I was expecting him to be a certain way ... made assumptions of the types of answers I would get in my interview. (Bronwyn)

The actual interaction with the refugee is where students' agentic qualities surfaced as a product of the relationships between the interviewee, the student interviewers, and the inanimate objects (such as the positioning of tables and chairs, the use of pens, voice recorders and so forth), which made up part of the interview space. Agency here is produced within and through the interactions between the agentic qualities of the group. We find that new academic knowledge catalysed Sinazo's and Bronwyn's process of becoming, breaking the cycle that reinforced a single, negative narrative of migrants. The students encountered a refugee face to face, and a dynamic was created whereby the power hierarchy between students as privileged observers and recorders of knowledge versus refugees as marginal figures who are "acted" upon was disrupted. Here the refugees were the expert source of knowledge who invited students into sharing their lived experiences. Within this dialogical moment, students were learning first-hand what it means to be a refugee in South Africa. As an intra-action, the interview process illustrated a particular mode of learning that involved the "entanglements" of "ethics, ontology and knowledges" (Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 63). Students were exposed, without filter, to the anger, frustration, fear, and hope of refugee interviewees. The realness of it all literally stared them in the face and forced them to recognise and confront the discomfort of being a refugee, and this intersected with their own feelings of discomfort in response to what they encountered. It is this "coming together" of various agencies "which generates a subjective or emotional interpretation" (Hickey-Moody and Malins 2007 quoted in Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 63). By acknowledging the diversity in refugees'/migrants' narratives, Sinazo and Bronwyn opened the space for dialogue and the resonance of views and experiences. Upon their return from the field, the familiar space of the classroom took on a new form by way of writers' circles. These circles privilege dialogue about what happened in the field and presented an opportunity to reconfigure the assemblage through the discussion of new ideas, which then took shape as insightful pieces of knowledge. The writers' circles built a community of enquirers that comprised students and lecturers who collaborated, rehearsed and co-constructed meaning out of fieldnotes. The students' realisations operated at a theoretical and affective level, where a process of "becoming-with others" (Bayat and Mitchell 2020) unfolded through new ways of knowing and attempts at rediscovering the self and the other.

In Sinazo's research essay she made a conscious effort to emphasise her participant's ingenuity and prowess to survive amid daily struggles to be accepted on one hand and attempts to escape persecution in the host country on the other. She states:

These attitudes and actions that are exhibited by South African citizens, in response to refugees and migrants, have forced black African foreign nationals to devise strategic ways in which they can ensure their own survival. (Sinazo)

Her essay went on to depict the refugee as a mentor: "they come together once a week. ... [T]hey share their experiences and they learn together, and they heal together." This realisation challenged the victimhood discourse that she once held. Here, the refugee's generosity had a ripple effect on others, and challenged the view that refugees are opportunistic. We note that Sinazo's process of becoming crystalised through concrete examples in the data about her research participant's resilience and his willingness to create a sense of community among refugees. This denotes a "relational dynamic" (Bayat and Mitchell 2020), where Sinazo's becoming is linked to her increased awareness of the being and becoming of her participant.

In Bronwyn's research essay, she classified herself as part of the "Afropolitan" group, which signalled a connection beyond the borders of South Africa. Her "Afropolitan" identity came about because of intra-action within the assemblage, bearing in mind that various assemblages (like the classroom space and the interview space) also intersect and relate to each other. Bronwyn has emerged here as someone who has "power to act and to be acted upon" (Massumi 2015 quoted in Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 62). Like Sinazo, she has opened herself to the consideration, interrogation and acceptance of new knowledge.

In a focus group interview at the end of the course, Sinazo reflected on her growth as a researcher, realising that knowledge production requires listening and giving voice to participants, which involves letting go of one's desire to control the narrative that is developing. She stated, "I thought that this would be a great chance for them to spe ak up for themselves and hear what they have to say."

She also reflected on how the course enabled her to articulate her voice as a researcher:

The most important thing the course does is to be inclusive. . We see that in how it allows students to voice out the thoughts in the blogs. ... It's very easy for me to write down my thoughts. . It creates a space for me to thrive. (Sinazo)

Here Sinazo touches on the evidence-based learning model of the course as that which foregrounded students' reflections and favoured "bounded independence" (Levy and Petrulis 2012, 97-98) to offer students more freedom within a partly structured process of enquiry. In this instance, EBL shows that the journey from enquiry to knowledge making is one of articulating voice through questioning and revisiting assumptions, and about internalising how the making of new knowledge inflects one's process of becoming and sense of authenticity.

Do Sinazo and Bronwyn see themselves as knowledge makers? While not explicitly stated, each sought their own answers instead of being a "receiver" of pre-given answers. Here, EBL not only flips the classroom to privilege learners' agency in the knowledge acquisition process, but also disturbs the set teacher-student hierarchies and the assumption that research is the prerogative of postgraduate students and academics.

Angel

Angel is a white international senior undergraduate female student. The choice of excerpts from Angel's writing stems from moments where fluidity between Angel's personal experiences and theoretical engagement can be inferred. These texts are approached with the concept of becoming in mind, a means of suturing diverse reflections spanning theory and practice. The analysis illustrates that students are inmotion, becoming-researchers/knowledge makers rather than limiting themselves to fixed roles for their future selves (Carlin and Wallin 2014).

The start of the course saw Angel's description of her opposition to the ways her identity was constructed officially through identity documents that mark her origins. She chose instead to embrace an identity of a world citizen. This choice is not without tension. In addition, her status as a global citizen is seen through a critical lens (perhaps an additional layer of tension) where subjects who "live in transition" are also acknowledged (Braidotti 1994, 33). She reflects:

I am a German citizen on my documents but through my interest in languages, cultures, and the people I engage with I cannot identify with this expression. I am more actively practising and holding contact with South African culture and people. I also have a huge community in Italy and speak, read, and practise the culture regularly, therefore I would rather adopt the term "world citizen" through the journey I went through rather than holding onto the past. Another thought on these documentations of identity are the politics that lies behind it . where certain identities have more freedom to decide about their mobility than others. (Angel)

Angel's emerging sense of her multiple identities materialises through her literacy practices. Through reading, writing, and speaking, she inhabits a nomadic self (we can observe here that even though her movement has a different privilege of choice, her status does signal potential overlaps with the experiences of a refugee). This is a subject who resists being too anchored to place, embracing a locale strategically but open to movement (Braidotti 1994). The nomad turns the brought-along ideas (e.g., about the meaning of "home") into resources, catalysed by the learning encounter in the classroom and the research field. During the course, reflections became a means of sharing biography and capturing a moment in the processing of becoming. The way Angel embraced linguistic diversity signalled her status as a "nomadic polyglot" working with fluid linguistic and temporal boundaries (Braidotti 1994, 15). For Angel, writing was a means to construct a self at rest or in motion. The complexity of self came from her use of language as a resource, where she stretched the reach of the English language through metaphors to express novel ideas based on her experiences.

One assertion forwarded in the abstract of this article is the nurturing of a critical citizen-not explicitly stated in the course outline, but welcomed through its pedagogy. In Angel's case, the self that is constructed in this form of engagement is not the individual who relates to context, but a construction underpinned by sociality or community. The social construction of identity also explains its fluidity, and the potential tensions it may trigger when one's identity departs from a socially acceptable script. When Angel wrote about instances of xenophobia, she signalled that the "fixing of identity leads to violence and mis-categorisations and does not recognise the true character of identity which is ever-changing". Rather than a distant knowledge maker, this perspective on xenophobia informed her reframing of a researcher identity characterised by facets of her personal identity. For Angel, research needed to be conducted ethically to legitimate the knowledge maker, and this allowed such considerations as "limiting harm" to form milestones in the journey of becoming. Resisting epistemic violence formed part of Angel's present, and her feeling of being "split all over the globe" became a resource and a means of knowing and understanding in her writing on ethical considerations. She reframed her "outsider" status to create a relationship and to establish mutuality with participants, creating the potential for affective bonds (Massumi 2002). These bonds draw on emotion and other encounters that often escape recognition or are backgrounded in positivist approaches favouring ideas of rationality. She notes,

I think the fact that I am a foreigner in SA as well will build some communality between the participant and me, therefore we share an outsider position ... but my foreignness is perceived and experienced differently than the one of the refugee. (Angel)

Here Angel also displayed a degree of self-awareness that recognised her privileged access to resources and her divergent experiences. These tensions were important to work with the multiplicity and fragmented notion of identity Angel came to claim. The excerpt below signals a critical engagement with identity theory where she aligned herself with Woodward's (2002) position on multiple identities. While the excerpt does not mention specific moments, it draws on ideas of sociality and relations through which individuals negotiate their changing contexts. The self is made and remade in this dynamic relationship, thereby possessing the capacity to affect its environment. The relationship, as Angel explains, was not without discomfort and characterised her sense of becoming.

Identity is the way one sees oneself and how others see one. It results from reflection, positioning, and interaction. According to Woodward, identities are fluid, changeable and multiple. However, through the organisation of the social, identities become fixed and limited in their liberty and these contradictions create tension within the individual. (Angel)

Anthony

Anthony is a so-called coloured final year Drama student. He states in one of his first reflections upon joining the course: "I have yet to find myself outside of the university space, as I have immersed myself into UCT culture, for the last three years, and I do not know what I would be without UCT." Anthony does not subscribe to gender binaries: "I have chosen to identify as a non-binary body, and a body who cross-dresses." His sense of comfort and security is thus tied in with his UCT identity. The above statement about his UCT identity indicates that Anthony's sense of who he is beyond UCT is an uncertainty, a constraint which places his Dasein in distress.

Later, Anthony's reflections delve deeper into issues of descendancy and history in relation to his sense of being as someone classified as "coloured", an imposed identity he struggled to define and internalise. He says:

When I think and read of the Bushmen, I think of the Khoisan people. Tracking the genealogy of the Khoisan ... a thought comes to mind that coloured bodies in particular face a challenge in determining what their coloured identity is, how inadequate many coloured people feel, and how they question whether they have a place in present-day SA.

There is a sense here that the security offered within UCT to a "coloured" queer body may not be extended to the outside world. Anthony's insecurity about his sense of belonging outside of UCT was symptomatic of how he felt about his classification as "coloured" within a democratic South Africa. He has not yet come to terms with what it means to be and feel "coloured" in the new political dispensation. In the Heideggerian sense, Anthony's "authentic self" is therefore limited to UCT at this stage.

Anthony grapples with the identity theory of the course to interrogate and locate a richer, deeper understanding of his sense of becoming beyond UCT. His ability to realise and enact an identity in the public space signalled a transition from a space of familiarity to a space that no longer holds a sense of foreboding and uncertainty, but which instead now represents potential and promise, since correct action, as Anthony discovered, leads to change. He states:

Upon starting this course, I found that there are actually theories that attempt to explain identity. Woodward's and Hall's views allowed me to fully understand my position within the confines of the university space, and to an extent, helped me to solidify my identity across the UCT border. (Anthony)

Anthony's sense of becoming is also intricately linked to a renewed understanding of migrants and refugees, and his written reflections reveal a critique of the stereotypical judgements and subsequent injustices levelled against these marginal groups, something he feels should be publicly challenged. This is in strong contrast to Anthony's earlier views on migrants:

I thought that protesting against something was wrong. I thought that the ... government had a grip on things like xenophobia. I also had an attitude of "it doesn't affect me, so I won't worry about it." (Anthony)

Here Anthony exhibits aspects of Heidegger's notion of inauthenticity: "the self lost to the 'they'" (Wheeler 2013). He goes through the motions of daily life in an uncritical fashion, oblivious to and insulated from the realities around him. His participation within the AXL flipped classroom assemblage grounded in an EBL pedagogy led Anthony to shift his stance on migrants. He states that as South Africans "we do not know their stories" and should be mindful of "how we engage with them". The origins of this growing awareness came about because of Anthony's group interview session with a refugee participant where "agential qualities" were unearthed through dialogue. The outcome was that Anthony developed an enriched understanding of what it feels like to be a refugee. This resonates with his own predicament of finding a broader sense of belonging as a coloured "non-binary body ... who cross-dresses". The realisation of a common sense of humanity that went beyond difference came to fruition in the dialogical encounter with the refugee, which allowed Anthony to really see who the refugee is. Anthony experienced drastic shifts in his attitude and in the way he viewed other people's locations in the world. He had developed an authentic sense of being, which he owned beyond the university space. He says, "We are global citizens, and we have no place to reject the identities that they [refugees/migrants] are trying to construct now that they are inside the South African border." Anthony internalised that, like him, people who are different seek acceptance wherever they find themselves. This fusion of horizons ushers in a more tolerable, more socially conscious, and a more equitable orientation towards how the world should operate. This knowledge-production process is informed by a critical and emotional orientation: it is a collaborative, personal and social dynamic framed by, within and between assemblages, while at the same time informing, the changing meanings and transformations that come to define those assemblages.

 

Conclusion

It is noteworthy that students' researcher identities were not separate from their ontological position and experiences in the nascent democracy, where refugees are sometimes marginalised. There was an added layer of complexity that ensured the importance of "listening" as a core responsibility of the researcher so that participants' voices were not silenced in the rendition of fieldnotes. This ethical sensibility marked a milestone in our student participants' process of becoming knowledge producers and signalled an awareness of "becoming-with others ... through relations of tolerance", which offered students "the potential capacity" to realise their researcher selves (Bayat and Mitchell 2020, 50; 60; 63).

In this instance, EBL pedagogy challenges the undergraduate-postgraduate divide in terms of knowledge production. Throughout the research process, the ownership of ideas shifts hands from the participant to the researcher to the community in the writers' circles. The ownership of ideas was at times individual and at times communal, and the power flowing between participants dislodged the idea of a fixed or single knowledge producer.

The distinctive quality of the course, then, is that it validates interim moments of sense-making in the present continuous, allowing for a shuttling between being and becoming. The course can be roughly divided into four phases, namely the phase of anchoring, the phase of encountering the other, the phase of reconciling theory with data, and the phase of assessment, in this case with a focus on reflective essays. While we seek to conclude here, the article opens new questions for future inquiry. For us as lecturers undergoing our own process of becoming, these ideas have once again challenged us to consider important questions: How open are we to celebrating students' sense of becoming? To what extent are we anchoring the learning experience to a particular rubric? What does having a fixed end point do to ideas of success, since success cannot be isolated from one's performance during the semester? The traditional notion of success strictly in terms of academic prowess ought to be problematised to encompass a more enduring and ongoing process of becoming. While academic institutions foreground academic achievement, this article shows that the ability to cope socially and "feel at home" is as influential in promoting success in the wider sense of the term, and also foregrounds an appreciation of the precarious and liminal spaces students occupy in the knowledge-making project.

 

References

Adichie, C. 2009. "The Danger of a Single Story". Filmed July 2009 in Oxford. TED video, 18:05. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/tran script?language=en#t-4505.

Ahmed, A. K. 2019. "The Rise of Fallism: #RhodesMustFall and the Movement to Decolonize the University". PhD diss., Columbia University. Accessed December 4, 2020. https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8-n7n3-e372.         [ Links ]

Allen, D. J. 2015. "Ontology in Heidegger and Deleuze: A Comparative Analysis". International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (1): 141-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2014.996991.         [ Links ]

Arend, M., A. Hunma, C. Hutchings, and G. Nomdo. 2017. "The Messiness of Meaning Making: Examining the Affordances of the Digital Space as a Mentoring and Tutoring Space for the Acquisition of Academic Literacy". Journal of Student Affairs in Africa 5 (2): 89-111. https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v5i2.2704.         [ Links ]

Bayat, A., and V. Mitchell. 2020. "Affective Assemblages Matter in Socially Just Pedagogies". CriSTaL: Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning 8 (1): 57-80. https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v8i1.219.         [ Links ]

Boyer, E. L. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Lawrenceville, NJ: Princeton University Press.         [ Links ]

Bozalek, V., and M. Zembylas. 2017. "Towards a Response-Able Pedagogy across Higher Education Institutions in Post-Apartheid South Africa: An Ethico-Political Analysis". Education as Change 21 (2): 62-85. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/2017.         [ Links ]

Braidotti, R. 1994. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.         [ Links ]

Carlin, M., and J. Wallin. 2014. Deleuze and Guattari, Politics and Education: For a People Yet to Come. London: Bloomsbury Press.         [ Links ]

Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated with a Foreword by B. Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.         [ Links ]

Dyson, A. H., and C. Genishi. 2005. On the Case: Approaches to Language and Literacy Research. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.         [ Links ]

Fairclough, N. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Longman.         [ Links ]

Finkelde, D. 2013. "Post-Structuralism". In New Catholic Encyclopedia: Supplement 20122013: Ethics and Philosophy, edited by R. Fastiggi, J. Koterski and T. Lipscombe, 1245248. Detroit, MI: Gale.         [ Links ]

Freire, P. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by M. B. Ramos. New York, NY: Continuum.         [ Links ]

Gallagher, J. R. 2019. "A Framework for Internet Case Study Methodology in Writing Studies". Computers and Composition 54: 102509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2019.102509.         [ Links ]

Healey, M. 2005. "Linking Research and Teaching to Benefit Student Learning". Journal of Geography in Higher Education 29 (2): 183-201. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098260500130387.         [ Links ]

Healey, M., and A. Jenkins. 2009. Developing Undergraduate Research and Inquiry. New York, NY: Higher Education Academy.         [ Links ]

Heidegger, M. (1927) 1962. Being and Time. Translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. London: SCM Press.         [ Links ]

Hunma, A., M. Arend, G. Nomdo, C. Hutchings, and S. Samson. 2019. "Revisiting Writer Identities in Discomforting Spaces: The Envisioned Self in Writing". Alternation 26 (2): 89-116. https://doi.org/10.29086/2519-5476/2019/v26n2a5.         [ Links ]

Levy, P., and R. Petrulis. 2012. "How Do First-Year University Students Experience Inquiry and Research, and What Are the Implications for the Practice of Inquiry-Based Learning?" Studies in Higher Education 37 (1): 85-101. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2010.499166.         [ Links ]

Lillis, T., and M. Scott. 2007. "Defining Academic Literacies Research: Issues of Epistemology, Ideology and Strategy". Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice 4 (1): 5-32. https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v4iL5.         [ Links ]

Lishivha, W. 2019. "The Fallist Movement and the Changes It Has Made". Mail & Guardian, May 3, 2019. Accessed July 2, 2021. https://mg.co.za/article/2019-05-03-00-the-fallist-movement-and-the-changes-it-has-made/.

Massumi, B. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smvr0.         [ Links ]

Mkhize, N. 2015. "Tenacious Belief in the Ideal of the University". Business Day, May 5, 2015. Accessed June 21, 2018. https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2015-05-05-tenacious-belief-in-the-ideal-of-the-university/.

Moletsane, R. 2015. "Whose Knowledge Is It? Towards Reordering Knowledge Production and Dissemination in the Global South". Educational Research for Social Change (ERSC) 4 (2): 35-47. Accessed December 12, 2019. http://ersc.nmmu.ac.za/articles/Vol_4_No_2_Moletsane_pp_35-48_October_2015.pdf.         [ Links ]

Natanasabapathy, P., and S. Maathuis-Smith. 2019. "Philosophy of Being and Becoming: A Transformative Learning Approach Using Threshold Concepts". Educational Philosophy and Theory 51 (4): 369-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1464439.         [ Links ]

Nomdo, G., and A. Hunma. 2017. Writing Your World: Finding Yourself in the Academic Space. Accessed July 10, 2021. https://www.coursera.org/learn/writing-your-world.

Perkins, D. 2010. Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons.         [ Links ]

Roy, D., E. Kustra, and P. Borin. 2003. "What Is Unique About Inquiry-Based Courses?" Centre for Leadership and Learning (CLL). Accessed November 11, 2020. http://cll.mcmaster.ca/resources/misc/whats_unique_about_inquiry.html.

Samson, S., M. Arend, A. Hunma, C. Hutchings, and G. Nomdo. 2018. "Constructing the ECP Lecturer as Care Giver and Receiver of Care through an Analysis of Student's Reflective Essays". In Teaching in Extended Programmes in South Africa: Classroom Contexts, Lecturer Identities and Teaching Practices, edited by L. Coleman, 57-66. Cape Town: Cape Peninsula University of Technology.         [ Links ]

Wheeler, M. 2013. "Martin Heidegger". In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring ed., edited by E. Zalta. Accessed July 7, 2021. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/heidegger/.

Yin, R. K. 2009. "How To Do Better Case Studies". In The Sage Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods, edited by L. Bickman and D. J. Rog, 254-82. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. https://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781483348858.n8.         [ Links ]

 

 

1 This is a four-year programme offering additional support to students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds identified as having potential to succeed at university. Though tied by a common history, the student cohort is heterogeneous, given differences in schooling and socio-economic standing. The state-funded programme operates under the banner of social transformation to redress the wrongs of apartheid's Bantu education system. It may share some similarities with the United Kingdom's "Widening access" programme.
2 Our Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), called Writing Your World: Finding Yourself in the Academic Space, is one such offering to students globally, and is currently taken by about 13,000 learners of all ages, professions and nationalities.
3 Students used the terms "refugee" and "migrant" interchangeably, and for the purposes of this article these terms will have the same meaning in terms of the issues of mobility, displacement and marginality.
4 Wheeler's (2013) analysis of Heidegger's 1927 publication, Being and Time, which we draw on here, offers a good starting point for unpacking the meaning of Dasein. Also see Finkelde's (2013) location of Heidegger in post-structuralism.
5 We liaised with UCT's Refugee Law Clinic to gain access to participants.
6 Participants in this study were given pseudonyms to protect their identities. This also formed part of the ethical considerations that informed this research.
7 The impact of apartheid ideology on the reconstructions of post-apartheid identities in South Africa means that the term "black" is used inclusively to signal African, coloured and Indian groups. The inclusive use of the term "black", however, needs to be problematised since it continues to have different socio-political and economic connotations among previously designated apartheid "race" groups. In this article, we use the labels of "African" and "coloured" as designations of being "black" to indicate varied experiences of blackness in a democratic SA. We also use the term "white" to further differentiate students' lived experiences. Under apartheid, "white" referred to those with European heritage; "African" signalled indigenous black African groupings; while the term "coloured" is popularly regarded as denoting those of "mixed race" and refers to a broad and culturally diverse social group descendent from Cape slaves, indigenous Khoisan and European settlers.
8 Bronwyn is a "coloured" ECP student, in her first year in 2019. The "racial diversity" among our research participants was coincidental, but we did aim for diversity in terms of levels of study and nationality. Our data shows that the traditional apartheid labels of "race" still tend to inform experiences of "being" and possibilities for "becoming" in South Africa, with a yearning now for something that is more inclusive. The sense of "becoming" that we note in the data is transcending the boundaries of racial categories towards some sense of common experience of humanity in relation to equity and social justice.

^rND^sAllen^nD. J.^rND^sArend^nM.^rND^nA.^sHunma^rND^nC.^sHutchings^rND^nG.^sNomdo^rND^sBayat^nA.^rND^nV.^sMitchell^rND^sBozalek^nV.^rND^nM.^sZembylas^rND^sFinkelde^nD^rND^sGallagher^nJ. R.^rND^sHealey^nM.^rND^sHunma^nA.^rND^nM.^sArend^rND^nG.^sNomdo^rND^nC.^sHutchings^rND^nS.^sSamson^rND^sLevy^nP.^rND^nR.^sPetrulis^rND^sLillis^nT.^rND^nM.^sScott^rND^sMoletsane^nR.^rND^sNatanasabapathy^nP.^rND^nS.^sMaathuis-Smith^rND^sSamson^nS.^rND^nM.^sArend^rND^nA.^sHunma^rND^nC.^sHutchings^rND^nG.^sNomdo^rND^sYin^nR. K.^rND^1A01^nSalim^sVally^rND^1A02^nEnver^sMotala^rND^1A01^nSalim^sVally^rND^1A02^nEnver^sMotala^rND^1A01^nSalim^sVally^rND^1A02^nEnver^sMotala

COMMENTARY

 

Neville Alexander's Warning

 

 

Salim Vally^I; Enver Motala^II

^IUniversity of Johannesburg, South Africa svally@uj.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9156-1775
^IIUniversity of Johannesburg, South Africa emotala1@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7999-9720

 

 

Things can fall apart very quickly. Our entire socio-historical fabric can unravel within a few weeks: it took less than a hundred days in Rwanda! ... in the words of the unforgettable lines in one of Dennis Brutus's poems, "from the shanties creaking iron-sheets / violence like a bug-infested rag is tossed / and fear is immanent". Once this happens, we will be faced with the phenomenon of the "failed state" and, as we all know, the road from there to some kind of sanity is a very long one. (Alexander 2013, 182)

In his life's work and struggles against racial capitalism both before and after apartheid, Neville Alexander warned against the spectre of racist, caste and religion-based genocide-not unlike that which was unleashed against the people of Bosnia or Rwanda and which now also haunts countries elsewhere, including in the treatment of those seeking refuge in Europe. Alexander argued persistently and even imploringly that the failure to resolve the national question and address the fault lines of class and spatial inequality, racism and patriarchy would lead to exactly the situation we now face in parts of South Africa. It is ever-present not only because of the underlying failure to address its origins in the racist forms of greed and capital accumulation that are so deep in our history, but also in the unthinking racist language and ideas used by politicians, sections of the uncritical media and others who ought to know better.

Prejudice and even racist attitudes remain prevalent in many parts of our society because of their deep and socially caustic roots and the continued ambivalence and cowardice of those in power who have failed to confront them head on; this is evidenced through the failure of our educational institutions where universities continue to describe their students and staff using the unmitigated categories of apartheid nomenclature without any reservation, and poorly trained media "analysts" and presenters who seem not to have a clue about what the effects of their continued use of the apartheid racial categories have meant and continue to mean. All of this is compounded by the profoundly ignorant tweets and posts that pervade social media as it continuously facilitates the manufacture of blinding ignorance and crass stupidity. The periodic xenophobic pogroms are a reminder to all of us that violent action against "the other" can be mobilised easily and rapidly through social media.

The present situation in South Africa has arisen from a combination of factors, both historical and current. These include the failure of a government, led by the African National Congress (ANC), to deal with those issues that affect the daily lives of the vast majority of the urban and rural population. Evidence of this failure can be drawn from the facts relating to stark and growing poverty and its consequences for hunger and food insecurity experienced by so many people, the rampant and increasing lack of jobs, especially for the young of our society, and the increasing insecurity of those who do have jobs, the chasm of wealth and income inequality that is widening especially since 1994, and the psychosocial effects of COVID-19-added to the trauma of pre-existing gender-based and other forms of violence that has sunk deep roots into the fabric of social life. Under these conditions, Neville Alexander was emphatic: "Suffice it to say that unless the Gini coefficient is tackled seriously, all talk of social cohesion and national unity is so much nonsense" (Alexander 2012, 36). The situation is exacerbated by the complete failure of the ANC-led state to intervene in and resolve its internal leadership struggles and compounded by elitist attitudes and aspirations to glamorous lifestyles amid the devastation of the townships and the former homelands, while the blight of corruption, fraud and outright theft continues to spread. These are hardly an example for unemployed and hungry citizens, who then resist and resort to violence against state institutions and mainly business interests often within their communities.

Perhaps the greatest underlying and historical factor in the build up to the present is the complicity of the ANC leadership and its allies in furthering apartheid's structural and deeply entrenched characteristics through the adoption of a raft of fiscal, monetary, social and economic policies that continue to deliberately and perniciously undermine the lives of the poor and socially marginalised majority of the population. These policies privilege a tiny social minority by pursuing objectives promoted in the interests of corporate capital and its agents through the furtherance of anti-poor, racist, gendered and class-based ideology and insistence on the continuation and elaboration of these dystopian policies. The present state of affairs would not exist in a society where social and economic resources are used for the good of the citizenry as a whole, where the political leadership is not itself engulfed in unconscionable looting of public resources. What we witness at this moment is unlikely to be prevalent in a society where the basic rights securing the conditions of life of the vast majority are respected and secured even if they are not met fully.

What has also re-emerged is race talk and with it the spectre of racist violence and conflict. This talk and its effects are fostered both by uncritical parts of the public media, which is hugely influential in shaping society's views and discussions about questions of "race" and "ethnicity", but also by what is going on in the social media, in government speak and regrettably even in institutions of education. What do we mean?

We do not doubt that "race consciousness" is deeply entrenched in our society and lies sometimes at the forefront of social interactions. There is no question that there is a deep and enduring reservoir of racist prejudices, ideas about hierarchy and other bigoted ideas that have struck deep roots in our society. In fact, the idea of "races" exists; it seems to be a "fact of life" despite all the knowledge we have about the nonsense of "biological race" as a scientific category of human difference. So, in effect it has been constructed.

The use of "race" as a concept is often associated with social hierarchy, prejudice, discriminatory practice and stereotypical depictions of members of society. Neville Alexander rejected the concept of "race" as a biological entity, not only because of its reliance on phenotypical attributes, but because of the dangers inherent in racial (and racist) descriptions, and because the concept is so "pregnant with confusion" and so given to opportunist usages in the political, economic and ideological domains. He sought a new vocabulary about the usage of "race", arguing especially that there is no logical reason for inferring the reality of "race" from the fact of racial prejudice (Alexander 2013, 116); so while racism and racial capitalism are real, "race", other than being a social construct, is not.

Liberal and neoliberal literature tells us that there are human races that are fundamentally (even biologically) different; that some people are better than or cleverer, more athletic or musical or "civilised" than others; that there are "us" and "them"; that there are many others who are "not like us"; that they have unrecognisably different "cultures", traditions and "habits"; and that there are vastly different "communities" based on their "ethnicities" and other such seemingly distinguishing characteristics. Entire communities have been painted with some or other negative characteristic; they have been stereotyped, and these stereotypes (ways of naming) have become common even though they are completely wrong. And these ways of naming are, as we have seen, carried over to ways of naming people who are not born in South Africa.

These prejudices and false ideas-because that's what they are-have etched deep and seemingly inerasable (immutable?) differences between human beings. Yet, we ask, is it really so difficult to understand the origin and source of all of these completely untenable and wrong ideas? Are we blind to the depth of the effects the social system of apartheid-built on the prior foundations of colonial segregation, slavery and conquest-has left in all societies that suffer from the blight of racist prejudice and violence? And can we not see also how little the post-apartheid government and the leading political parties in the state have understood the depth of this issue or chosen to avoid its complex nature, beyond the bland and hypocritical pronouncements about their alleged "non-racialism"?

For Alexander:

We have to see to it that the entrenched inherited racial identities that disfigured the popular consciousness of colonial and apartheid South Africa are changed and eventually eradicated. This is not an easy task, and we will not succeed completely in the next few generations. However, it must be the goal of all creative and thinking people in this country to ensure that labels such as "black", "white", "coloured" and "Indian" become irrelevant as a means of identifying groups of people in the new South Africa. (Alexander 2013, 187)

Most South Africans continue to believe in these racial categories, because they have been conditioned to accept them as real. They continue to see the world through glasses that are tinted by the outdated concept of "race". More than 60 years ago, "race" was called "man's most dangerous myth". After the transatlantic slave trade in an earlier period and in Nazi Germany, Yugoslavia, Rwanda and in so many other places during the last century, nobody can doubt that "race" is indeed one of the matches that can burn down all the most brilliant achievements of the human spirit.

We know, although we do not teach this systematically, if at all, in our education institutions, that human societies all over the world have been built on the ideas and practices of cooperation and community for thousands of years. Communities made up of a wide diversity of languages, religions, social habits, traditions and superficial characteristics such as colour, or human pigmentation, have come together to form cohesive nation states and lived in relative harmony for thousands of years; have developed collective and binding cultures respecting one another's differences, and showing how difference is not a barrier to social solidarity and harmony. That is how nearly every nation state that exists today was built since they did not exist as such always. Complex societies have been built not by focusing on their differences but on what is common to all human beings-the ability to co-exist respectfully and to share the common good of all.

This is not to deny the reality of occasional conflict almost entirely attributable to greed and the accumulation of property, the manipulation of social interests in ways that entrench social privilege and its accompanying systems of power-such as those accompanying the unconscionable practices of patriarchy, slavery, colonial plunder, dispossession, violence and the destruction of the planet. The imperialist wars of the 20th century and those unleashed on the global poor and their communities at present are examples of just such greed and power in which post-colonial elites and their regimes are directly complicit.

A long-awaited urgent task has to be accomplished in South Africa and other societies. It concerns a concerted effort to get rid of racist prejudice of all kinds and together with it patriarchal and gendered, status-bound and class-based attitudes. If that is not dealt with, the potential for continued social conflict will remain ever-present. Institutions of education (public and private), the media of every stripe, social movements and trade unions, religious-cultural and community organisations of every kind must deal with these issues because the government is simply unable to do what it must to foster the real possibilities for building the ideas, practices and covenants of nationhood. It has no idea of how to draw on the deep reservoirs of collaboration, collective knowledge, integrative ideas, respectfulness and the ethical precepts derived from the struggles against oppressive and exploitative systems-to reflect on and create a society of genuine and lasting humanity. On this too can be built the foundations of a truly democratic, caring, responsive and accountable political and social system here and elsewhere.

 

Note

A shortened version of this commentary appeared in the social justice publication, New Frame, on the 27th of July 2021.

 

References

Alexander, N. 2012. "South Africa Today: The Moral Responsibility of Intellectuals". In Enough Is a Feast: A Tribute to Neville Alexander, 22 October 1936-27August 2012, edited by H. Vally and M. Isaacson, 31-37. Johannesburg: Foundation for Human Rights.         [ Links ]

Alexander, N. 2013. "Afrophobia and the Racial Habitus in the New South Africa". In Thoughts on the New South, 172-88. Johannesburg: Jacana.         [ Links ]

^rND^sAlexander^nN.^rND^sAlexander^nN.^rND^1A01^nAmalia^sBeagle^rND^1A01^nAmalia^sBeagle^rND^1A01^nAmalia^sBeagle

ARTICLE

 

Creative Interventions: Integrating Arts-Based Approaches in a University Access Programme

 

 

Amalia Beagle

University of Johannesburg, South Africa amalia@beagle.org.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1822-0568

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

This article is based on my master's degree study at the University of Johannesburg that evaluates the impact of utilising arts-based approaches in the Workplace Preparation (WPP) module curriculum. The study demonstrates that when integrated into teaching and learning, arts-based approaches expand the capability of the curriculum to achieve more equitable and accessible participation. I use an action research approach in the study to investigate how creativity and arts-based practices might instil experiences of empowerment and agency in students in the classroom. I draw from literature to gain multiple critical perspectives in order to frame and demonstrate arts-based approaches to teaching and learning that embrace alternative ways of knowing, communicating and interacting. The findings suggest that culturally relevant arts-based approaches play a legitimate and vital role in expanding the pedagogic space in order to foster embodied learning opportunities that acknowledge and include non-linear, somatic, visceral, emotional and symbolic dimensions. Arts-based methods advance transformative agendas and support learning in the current higher education (extended programme) context. The study involves an actionable intervention that uses arts-based methods to present the Workplace Preparation module. Arts-based activities and lesson plans are devised for integration into the existing formal programme and can be used and adapted as a resource for lecturers in the Workplace Preparation Department.

Keywords: arts-based; culturally relevant education; multimodality; extended curriculum; critical pedagogy; capabilities

---

 

 

Introduction

This article explores how arts-based pedagogic approaches expand opportunities for inclusion and participation in the extended programme Workplace Preparation (WPP) classroom. It will give an account of the master's degree study I conducted integrating arts-based approaches that focus on creative interventions in teaching and learning into the extended curriculum Workplace Preparation (WPP) module.

To begin, I provide a background to the study, which is conducted within the contemporary higher education context in South Africa. This is followed by a discussion of challenges to access specific to extended curriculum programme (ECP) and at-risk students. Thereafter the study is located in a theoretical framework that seeks to address the aforementioned challenges and proposes an arts-based pedagogical methodology to promote inclusive curricula.

The objectives of this master's degree study were, first, to understand how arts-based methodologies, such as culturally relevant arts education (CRAE) (Stone Hanley et al. 2013), could be operationalised in the WPP classroom to promote a more democratic, affirming and relevant learning environment in which diverse students can engage and actively contribute to the collective knowledge shared in the learning environment. A second objective was to consider and apply the concepts and discourse of agency and empowerment through the framework of transformational theory (Freire 2005). The final objective was to analyse student experiences and feedback from the classes that are exposed to arts-based methods with the aim of developing an understanding of how the methods serve to expand opportunities for inclusion and participation in the classroom.

I draw from my own background in arts and education to adapt and design arts-based interventions in the WPP curriculum. The introduction of arts-based methods in the classroom enabled a shifting of traditional educational power relations in order to establish safer spaces in which learning occurs and foster opportunities for greater co-creation of knowledge in the classroom. The arts-based interventions encourage a more invested and engaged participation in the learning process and promote engagement with content so as to build capacities for agency and volitional learning. I found that creative opportunities in the classroom enable the voice and participation of the heterogeneous student cohort.

 

Access

Universities all over the world, and especially in South Africa, are grappling with "envisioning" the University of the twenty-first century (Walker 2005, 4). Cheryl Hendricks and Brenda Leibowitz (2016) identify the important role and purpose of universities in thinking through broader societal issues, and they argue for a focus on pedagogy as a vital aspect of this dialogue.

Yet Hendricks and Leibowitz (2016) note that rapidly increasing student numbers and the diversification of the student body have not been accompanied by equal increases in levels of student success (Van Zyl and De Kadt 2011, 1). Reflecting a shifting narrative from "under-prepared students" to "under-prepared institutions" (Manik 2015, 226), Hendricks and Leibowitz (2016) argue for the need to provide students with "access to alternative ways of envisioning the world and interpreting their experiences". This line of thinking has nudged contemporary paradigms towards a renewed focus on pedagogy, with implications recognising that subjective emancipation is an essential component of transformational education.

Wally Morrow (2007) and Heila Lotz-Sisitka (2009, 15) argue that effective transformation of the university learning environment cannot be achieved by focusing solely on formal access, but that concern for epistemological access is necessary too. Hendricks and Leibowitz (2016), Bozalek, Garraway and McKenna (2011), Du Plooy and Zilindile (2014), and Rusznyak et al. (2017) draw attention to the role of pedagogy by expanding the idea of epistemological access to shift the focus from institutional access to pedagogical access. These shifts aim to effect a meaningful and expanded understanding of what constitutes access for incoming students.

Increasingly educators are encouraged to construct curricula that are "ever respectful of the irreducible plurality of opinion" (Ballim 2018, 143) and that expose students to "as many ways of knowing as possible" (2018, 136).

Melanie Walker argues for an

alliance of the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen with ideas from critical pedagogy for undergraduate university education which develops student agency and well-being on the one hand, and social change towards greater justice on the other. (Walker 2010, 889)

The capability approach, as defined by Walker, is an instructive source for this study as it foregrounds the "basic heterogeneity of human beings as a fundamental aspect of educational equality" (Walker 2010, 9), and it identifies agency and empowerment as essential components of transformational pedagogy (Calitz 2015; Walker 2005, 2010). Calitz recentres the classroom as an opportunity to "create conditions that can enable participation and feelings of belonging" (2015, 192).

 

Students "at Risk"

The first year of university is identified as a critical year because students adapt to the new demands and rigours of higher education. It is a transitional year in which students grapple with a multitude of new challenges. Students need to adapt both academically and socially. These challenges are exacerbated by, sometimes extreme, financial constraints (Bawa 2014, v-vii; Bozalek, Garraway and McKenna 2011, 2; Manik 2015, 233-34; Van Zyl 2013, 1). Students in the extended programmes are considered at greater risk due to the "articulation gap" (CHE 2015, 2).¹ Many learners are from disadvantaged social and educational backgrounds and find it especially challenging to adapt to the new environment (Shandler 2014, 1533).²

The Heterogeneous Classroom: Personal Perspective and Observations

This research study is located in the WPP module of the Extended Curriculum Access Programme where I have been an educator since 2009.

In my experience, the average extended curriculum student cohort varies only slightly across the different faculties and different campuses where I teach. The gender and "race" distributions are mostly representative of South African demographics, and a percentage of international students (more so in the engineering departments), LGBTQ+, minority "races", religions and other minority groups are all represented in the room. Mixed into this diverse cohort are students from both urban and rural backgrounds. Given that English is the medium of instruction, most students are learning in their third or fourth language. In this multilingual learning environment, in addition to understanding the content being taught, many of the students also struggle with understanding one another. While the majority of students are aged between 19 and 25 years, there are typically a number of mature students in the classes too. The classroom reflects the "heterogeneous"³ nature of many contemporary South African classrooms. The University of Johannesburg (UJ) attracts students from all over South Africa as well as many international students. Many of the students are far from home. They have not yet established personal bonds and support structures. They are adapting to new social, language and cultural norms. This transition can be frightening and lonely for many.

The Workplace Preparation (WPP) classroom constitutes a diverse setting with students experiencing many new challenges. The WPP module has a strong socio-emotional component that seeks to support students through the transitions they face in their first year of higher education.

 

The Extended Curriculum Workplace Preparation Module

Workplace Preparation is a foundational module offered in the extended curriculum. It is a continuous assessment soft skills module that is credit bearing. All registered extended curriculum students from each faculty are required to pass this module. Students registered for this module attend five lecture sessions per week throughout the academic year.

The units covered in the syllabus are designed to teach students practical life skills (such as time management and study skills) as well as to address the psycho-social aspects of soft skills (such as values, emotional intelligence, stress management, leadership and team dynamics) and require personal introspection and critical reflection.

While the aim in the delivery of the WPP module is to create a relatively informal learning environment that is based on discussion and personal reflection, the modality in the classroom essentially remains traditional and transmittal, and formal learning is delivered through a passive and hierarchical structure and form. While this might be an efficient way to seat increasingly large student numbers in a lecture hall, I have found that few students excel in this environment. This "sage on the stage"⁴ format forces students into rigid sitting postures that restrict interactions to listening, reading/writing, and verbal discussions. Student feedback reveals that they find it hard to concentrate in these environments.

The traditional pedagogic space is "alienating" (Calitz 2015, 162, 171; Mann 2008, 58) and designed to reinforce the hegemonic power relations that place the learner in a passive position, thereby replicating unequal power relations through their insistence on hierarchical knowledge generation and transfer (Freire 2005, 71; Mann 2008, 6; McMahon and Portelli 2014, 6). In this context, educators are positioned as intimidating and powerful agents that students find particularly difficult to challenge or contradict (Mann 2008, 13). Traditional teaching practices cause learners to doubt the value of their contributions in the classroom and therefore restrict participation.

This traditional approach to pedagogy also does not take into account the diversity of learning styles⁵ and needs of the student cohort. Consequently, it disempowers students and does not engender experiences of ownership of learning or provide opportunities to develop personal strengths (Mann 2008, 129). These challenges constitute some of the barriers to access experienced in the room.

 

Literature

In presenting an argument for introducing arts-based methods into the WPP curriculum, I draw from relevant arts-based approaches and pedagogical strategies to motivate and inform my teaching practice. I use this framework to understand how creativity and the arts become significant agents of change in the classroom through the adoption of culturally relevant arts education (Stone Hanley et al. 2013) as a pedagogical model.

In addition, I refer to transformational theories and critical pedagogy (Freire 2000, 2005; Sen 2005) as the ideological bedrock of my work. I explore notions of disrupting traditional power relationships in pedagogical practices and propose the introduction of arts-based interventions to the curriculum to facilitate greater inclusion, participation and representation for all the students in the classroom.

This study takes a social emancipatory view of transformational pedagogy and draws on Paulo Freire's (2000, 2005) notions of embodied learning, curiosity, horizontal leadership and the co-creation of knowledge. I assess the applicability of this in enabling agency and empowerment through enhancing opportunities for voice and visibility, volition and empathy in the classroom.

Capacities for voice, volition and empathy constitute important and recurring aggregations of empowerment and agency in the discourse (Calitz 2015; Walker 2005, 2010; Walker and Unterhalter 2007) and are identified for this study as key measures for increased student agency in the classroom.

Critical transformative theory breaks the mould and is counter-hegemonic in that it disrupts dominant and normative educational practices that are oppressive and alienating (Freire 2005, 70). Its application recommends a shift in the power relations between teacher and student towards installing a more egalitarian and democratic value system in which participants are represented in and empowered to contribute to the interpretation and generation of knowledge.

 

Arts-Based Approaches

Practices dedicated to developing more flexible, inclusive and participatory classrooms that are responsive to the reality of the multi-diverse learning environment have shown how arts-based methods facilitate learning.

The term multimodal⁶ pedagogies signals a paradigm shift in relation to forms of representation and meaning-making in classrooms. In broad terms, it

reconceptualises communication in the contemporary classroom beyond the linguistic, locating language as one mode of communication amongst multiple semiotic modes, all of which function to communicate meanings in an integrated, multi-layered way. (Stein and Newfield 2007, 920)

The utilisation of arts-based approaches in multi-literate contexts has been explored extensively by David Andrew (2011, 2014), Arlene Archer (2014), Pippa Stein and Denise Newfield (2007) and Gunther Kress, Jon Ogborn, Carey Jewitt and Charalampos Tsatsarelis (2001). Multimodality is credited with expanding the resources available in the classroom for communication and articulation of complex ideas. A strong argument is made by Stein and Newfield (2007, 919) for a classroom constituted in multimodality where arts-based methods provide alternative resources for expanding linguistic modes.

These studies conducted in contemporary South African classrooms point to the valuable contribution arts can make to curricula (Andrew 2014, 2011; Berman 2014; Liamputtong and Rumbold 2008; Newfield 2011; Stein and Newfield 2007). This study seeks to contribute to the growing body of evidence of the efficacy of arts-based pedagogic approaches in supporting transformation, particularly in the Workplace Preparation module of the extended curriculum programme.

Newfield (2011), Stein and Newfield (2007), Andrew (2011, 2014), Archer (2014) and others have shown how diverse "classrooms become more participatory, agentive spaces" where learners can be productive and expressive (Stein and Newfield 2007, 919). Multimodal approaches offer a means to work against learner-deficit models.

No longer constrained by the limited forms of the past, these methods can promote inclusive and rich ways to "access experiential knowing" (Liamputtong and Rumbold 2008, 1). Arts-based methods are credited with deepening learning by providing opportunities for visceral, emotive and embodied experiences that enhance cognition. Learning with the whole body provides a more holistic view of learning that embraces a variety of modes of making meaning and representing knowledge (Andrew 2011, 2014; Berman 2018; Berman and Netshia 2018; Bozalek, Garraway, and McKenna 2011; Eisner 2002; Liamputtong and Rumbold 2008; Newfield 2011). In their multiple configurations, such pedagogies have the power to "unleash creativity, intelligence, and agency through the creation of symbolic identity objects and practices that lead to creative rapprochements" (Stein and Newfield 2007, 919).

As a form of education, the traditional lecture, with the lecturer on a podium, leads only to mechanical memorisation. Recent studies (Rusznyak et al. 2017, 208) conducted with first-year university students in South Africa have shown that after a traditional lecture most students were only able to recognise the content taught, but were unable to articulate these concepts. They argue that students need dedicated time and space in the curriculum to process content: they need to spend time in a process of "distanciation" (Ruznyak et al. 2017, 209) to be able to articulate their understandings.

Arts-based methods can provide the space in which these deep cognitive processes can occur. Bozalek, Garraway and McKenna (2011, 3) support the call for dedicated time and activities in a curriculum that can accommodate this process of cognition and "allow for connections and relations to become apparent". One of the findings in this study revealed that introducing arts-based activities at relevant points in the WPP curriculum can allow students the time and tools needed to unpack the theory offered in the units.

 

Culturally Relevant Arts Education-CRAE

Integrated arts-based methods, underpinned by the concepts of culturally relevant arts education, provided a useful model with which to respond to and accommodate the diversity in the classroom. Culturally relevant education is founded on a conceptual framework that argues all aspects of teaching and learning must involve students' cultural backgrounds, interests and lived experiences. Increasingly, meaningful and relevant education is viewed as instrumental in improving student engagement and achievement.

CRAE (Stone Hanley 2013) is a pedagogy that is best suited to a multicultural, critical, contextual teaching and learning paradigm. It is not prescriptive. Instead, it offers guiding principles with which to navigate a contemporary classroom. Originally emerging from American contexts and largely concerned with minority challenges, it nevertheless provides a philosophical framework that recognises the struggle for equitable learning that promotes affirmation of diversity. It is pertinent in the South African higher education context because universities are currently engaged in a process of democratisation to reflect the country's constitutional and social justice aims.

CRAE is a pedagogic model that is anchored in the use of the imagination. Creativity is valued for its inherent ability to empower students by instilling a sense of agency and also for its power to foster (generative) imagination as a means to "construct visions of self-determination" (Stone Hanley 2013, 2). Furthermore, according to Stone Hanley (2013, 7), the integration of creativity and arts production in contextual teaching and learning, within a multicultural and critical pedagogic paradigm, builds positive identity development and intrinsic motivation and ownership.

 

Research Design

Project Planning, Implementation and Observation

For the study, I used an action research (AR) approach to record and reflect on the implementation of culturally relevant arts education in my teaching of the Workplace Preparation (WPP) module. This action project embraced arts-based methods: first, as applied and integrated in pedagogical practice as a means of enquiry in classroom teaching and learning, and second, as a research tool to generate, collect and interpret data.

AR is a form of enquiry that is intended to have "both action and research outcomes" and is focused on achieving a real improvement or change in the context of practice (Gravett 2002, 2). It is also an "iterative process which converges towards a better understanding of what happens" (Patton 2011, 280). I keenly observed and reflected on the different aspects of the intervention, constructing ongoing formative evaluations through the cycles to help formulate a holistic picture of the project. As a practising educator, I am offered a broad methodological framework via AR that compels me to critically reflect on and improve my own pedagogical practice on a continual basis.

The AR project, implemented in three cycles from 2017-2019, enabled me to identify challenges experienced in my practice and initiate a change to address these concerns. I observed and reflected on the impact the intervention had in my classroom so as to gain knowledge and insights in order to continuously improve my practice. I used a range of qualitative tools to interpret and evaluate the impact of the intervention. The study utilised analysis methods from development arts and from educational fields. This reflects the objectives of this study, which conceptualised the integration of creativity in educational practice by embracing methods that bridge the boundaries between these fields and introduce creative methodologies to expand the educational space in order to include alternative ways of knowing.

Consent and Ethical Considerations

Ethical clearance for the study was granted by the Faculty of Education Research Committee. I have included some of the participants' feedback to amplify their role and contribution in reaching these findings. Participants consented to the use of their artworks and statements; however, all personal information remains anonymous to protect and maintain confidentiality.

Documenting the Intervention

I drew from a variety of data sources throughout the project, thereby resulting in a multilayered data set, which includes photograph and video recordings taken with my cell phone during classes, focus group interviews, photographs of artworks produced by students, my own journal entries, and both WhatsApp texts and paper-based student feedback solicited after arts-based lessons. The data was generated and collected over the first two project cycles in 2017 and 2018.

Focus Group

Volunteer-based focus group interviews were conducted with participants in each cycle of the study at the end of each academic year. In the first project cycle, the group interviews were conducted as informal discussions. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed for accuracy. For the second project cycle, the focus group participants completed a paper-based questionnaire. The issues that were identified in the first cycle were clarified and verified in the 2018 cycle of the project.

Limitations

Quantitative analysis was not a component of the study. While I have not quantified the subsequent achievements from the students participating in this study, anecdotal and qualitative evidence indicated improved end-of-year results.

Analysing and Interpreting the Data

I applied a variety of qualitative tools to examine and interpret the data. These qualitative methods of interpretation provided a textually nuanced analysis of the data set and helped me to identify important and/or sensitive aspects of the evidence and to articulate some of the hard-to-pin-down qualities of the data.

A visual analysis of the data revealed many interesting and rich observations, indicating positive responses. The approach was considered affirming as it included elements of play, creativity, and a departure from the orthodox hierarchical power structure of the classroom.

I used selected community development tools, such as principles of participatory research and most significant change (Davies 1998), to evaluate change and to identify sensitive issues. Through this ground-up approach, I identified key themes that were further conceptualised through a detailed grounded theory (GT) coding analysis of the focused feedback. These processes led to the distillation of the data into three discrete but interacting themes, which I present as the findings of the study.

Most Significant Change

I employed a technique often used in monitoring and evaluation in community development settings to clarify the challenges that initiated the intervention and to observe, reflect on and evaluate the efficacy of the intervention. The most significant change (MSC) technique was invented by Rick Davies as a tool used to gather, from the participants' perspectives, data on the impact and outcomes that can be used to assess the performance of a programme (Davies and Dart 2005, 72). I used participants' most significant change statements to inform the descriptions and categories for the grounded theory codes when analysing the data.

The Analytical Methods of Grounded Theory

Grounded theory was used as an analytical procedure to guide my analysis of the data I collected. Kathy Charmaz (2006) identifies two distinct coding phases. In the "initial phase", the researcher breaks up dense data into a manageable form. This leads to a "focused phase" that is more selective and looks for salient categories and their relationships (Charmaz 2006, 46). This process involves using multiple stages of data collection and the refinement of categories of information, as well as determining their interrelationships. In this regard, grounded theory served as a method of data analysis in which coding was used as a strategy to unpack and understand data in order to generate interpretations based on themes that emerged from the data. GT was employed in this study not to develop a robust theory grounded in data, but rather to present a rigorous and exhaustive analysis that is systematic and rooted in the data.

The GT approach to analysis was used to verify and triangulate interpretive findings. GT offered a procedural pathway for analysis through the systematic collection, organisation, and detailed analysis of a variety of data. This made it possible to conduct systematic checks during both the collection and analysis of the data, thus presenting a dependable and accurate method of analysis.

 

The Action Research Project

Integrating Culturally Relevant Arts-Based Methods in the WPP Classroom

I adapted the principles of cultural relevance to suit my context by interpreting the notion of "culturally relevant" to reflect a contemporary, intersecting view of identity in which "culture" and "identity" are fluid and dynamic and can only be subjectively identified and expressed. Broadly speaking, "intersecting identities" refer to the idea that a single person can be at "the intersection of multiple different social identities" (Crenshaw 1994, 95). Identity, like culture, is made up of a multitude of factors and an individual is both "subject to their circumstances" and an agent able to influence which parts of themselves they present to the world (YW Boston 2017). Agency and choice in self-representation and equality as a right are fundamental to this interpretation. These concepts inform the idea that "cultural" is not about defining "culture", but more about facilitating a space in which all the participants feel safe, accepted, respected, acknowledged, valued and enabled to self-identify and to articulate this in ways that are of their own choosing. This stance recognises the plurality of the classroom and enables the expression and representation of multiple perspectives.

In my study, and in my own practice as an educator in the WPP extended programme module, I use the agentive qualities of art-making in the classroom. I do not set out to teach art, nor the skills associated with art-making. Instead, I value the essential expressive physicality of art materials and the mediating force of the artwork. I draw on the embodied benefits of art-making and the utility of the resultant artwork. The art-based activities and visual methods used in the intervention derive their inspiration from the fields of costume, fashion and jewellery design, visual arts, drama, and dance.

Arts-Based Interventions

Six arts-based lessons were developed for the WPP programme and implemented over the 2017 and 2018 cycles of the project. These activities were designed to dovetail specific units and were intended to show students the multilayered and interconnected nature of the concepts presented through the syllabus. The activities were intended to provide a time and space for students to "dwell", that is, unpack, explore, consider, think about, and reflect on the topics in the unit. I focused on non-prescriptive themes such as body adornment (Figure 4) or free-standing sculptures (Figure 3) to enable students to exercise their creative agency to make art objects that reflected their unique and individual interpretations and perspectives about the topics in ways that were indirect and less threatening.

While some lessons aimed to contribute directly to the student's ability to complete the written self-reflective assessment exercises in a more considered and authentic way, other lessons focused on building relationships as opposed to formal assessment outcomes. The art activities set out to do the following: to make lessons more inspiring and relevant for the students in the room, to facilitate time and resources in order to allow for considering and reflecting on learning, and to provide indirect ways to participate in the classroom in order to build self-esteem and confidence and support positive social relationships.

I followed a similar format for each of the arts-based lessons. I begin by using arts-based methods such as storytelling, movement meditations or music to introduce the concepts or topics that we are addressing. Thereafter, I invite students to explore their ideas about the topic through their engagements with materials. Time was allocated to art-making, which was done either individually or collaboratively. The lesson activities were intentionally open ended enough for individuals in the class to enjoy complete autonomy in choosing how to interpret the topic or how to use the materials to articulate or express their ideas. The artwork was not prescriptive, and I did not provide visual examples. I motivated these briefs using words such as "consider" and "think about". Each lesson had a series of scaffolding parts that provided time, space, and materials to reflect on and interpret ideas and to visualise and communicate these ideas. I ensured that my art activity lessons were structured to include time for action and reflection. Time was allocated towards the end of each lesson (as well as at pause points throughout the activities) to share ideas and reflect on the outcomes of the lesson through group discussions.

Art Materials and Processes

I value the generative and expressive potential of art materials and non-verbal communication. Art materials provide the raw elements with which to express and communicate in non-verbal and indirect ways (see Figure 1).

Using a range of materials and processes in the classroom did not require specialised art supplies. I developed a basic art kit that included familiar art materials, such as paint, crayons, and glue, that are not specialised and not intimidating for students. For the most part, the materials used in the study were made up of collected found objects and recycled waste materials representing a range of colours, shapes, and textures. Materials and processes were introduced for their expressive potential and possibilities for metaphoric interpretation or re-interpretation as students create and attach personal meaning to their images. I also brought specific materials, such as balloons or rolls of large paper, based on the requirements of each activity and also for their expressive potential.

When I use arts-based methods in my classroom, I become less of a lecturer and more of a facilitator. I am concerned with creating an environment in which students feel safe to explore and express their own ideas. I facilitate the "container", which is a concept used in therapeutic fields to denote both attitudes and behaviours that promote a safe and structured context (Rabiger 1990, 23).

I am always mindful of how the expressive nature of art materials and art processes possesses the ability to activate emotional responses. The emotional affects that arts practice can activate are important attributes of this model and contribute to embodied learning. As a soft skills programme, WPP is concerned with promoting self-care and lecturers are attuned to identifying and supporting at-risk students. I routinely reminded students of and referred them to the Centre for Psychological Services and Career Development (PsyCad) and other support services on campus. In my practice I continually draw on my training in counselling in developing and modelling a non-judgmental attitude and a caring and responsive mindset to promote a safe space in the classroom.

 

Findings

The objectives of the series of learning action interventions in my study framed my interpretation of the data. I examine the impact of the intervention against the challenges that gave impetus to the study by asking questions around how the creative interventions impacted the relationships in the pedagogic space, as well as questions regarding how the methods impacted student capacities such as voice, volition and empathy in the classroom.

My interpretation of the findings reflects how making art was a significant agent of change in the WPP curriculum. These methods promoted pedagogic arrangements in class that dislodged the traditional power structures and enabled more democratic and supportive social relations. The methods also promoted learning abilities such as concentration, understanding and memory. Arts-based methods recognise and acknowledge students' resources and agency and help to build capacities that contribute to overcoming many of the challenges identified at the beginning of the study.

Freire (2000, 2005) rejects the autocratic nature of the traditional educational paradigm. This autocratic style of teaching and learning is increasingly untenable and out of sync with current pedagogical approaches. First-year students in particular feel intimidated and anxious in these environments. Anxiety creates a barrier to learning. It stultifies curiosity, which limits participation and forces learners to pursue marks rather than knowledge (Mann 2008, 129; Sen 2005, 12). Participants in this study reported how the arts-based class activities alleviated their fears and anxiety and made the learning more accessible and welcoming. A participant observed,

At first thought it was silly but then I saw everyone was smiling so I tried it and really enjoyed it.

Culturally relevant arts-based methods enabled a re-imagining of the roles of both the teacher and the learner by bringing them closer and dislodging the levels of power dynamics between them. These methods promoted affiliations between students and lecturers as well as between peers. My own practice as an educator has been enhanced through the inclusion of arts-based methods in the classroom. This is confirmed by a participant, who said:

It was fun, it was not in an environment that was tense or negotiated.

The approach encouraged students who were previously perceived as reserved and reluctant to participate in class to lose their inhibitions and emerge as valuable contributors to the group. One student, for example, stated:

Everyone is able to interact and become part of the lesson and also talk to people outside their circles.

Arts-based activities also affected teacher/learner relations. Students remarked that the process allowed them to experience me as less intimidating and more approachable. Many students requested that we engage in more classes with arts activities. My own observations were corroborated in the documented student feedback surveys and focus group interviews. The arts-based lessons were non-threatening, indirect and playful and participants felt safer expressing their views and engaging with me in the arts-based classroom. A participant confirmed, "When I am happy, I understand better."

Freire (2000, 2005) argues that the traditional transmission or "banking" methods tend to quash curiosity; this I interpreted as a stifling of the desire and motivation to learn in trust. This capacity is about a willingness to enter into a reciprocal teaching and learning relationship. When students experience negative feelings in the classroom-whether they are conscious of them or not-they tend to shut down or act out (Bozalek, Garraway, and McKenna 2011; Freire 2005; Mann 2008; Stone Hanley 2013). On the other hand, when motivated, students are open to giving and receiving and are therefore able to engage more fully. I observed earnest and joyful student participation and contributions in the arts-based lessons. One participant remarked, "I am inspired-I want to come to class now."

During these interventions, my role shifted to that of a facilitator and classes became more flexible and dynamic. Students were not confined to their desks and were able to arrange the room to suit their needs. I stepped away from the podium and moved freely among the students, resulting in more personalised teaching moments.

Even though I introduced the same arts-based brief to all my classes, each iteration played out differently, illustrating the horizontal co-creation and production of knowledge and demonstrating the generative nature of the methods. For example, one group combined their individual artworks to create a group image (Figure 2) and sang together while making it, while another used their artworks as props for a television show as a way to share. The arts-based methods facilitated student contributions and enabled greater student autonomy in shaping their classroom experiences. As one participant explained, "through art it is easier to express myself without having to explain verbally".

Eisner (2002) and many other authors (such as Dewey 1934; McNiff 2012; Newfield 2011) highlight the usefulness of the arts as a thinking and learning tool. Participants found it easier to access, think about and communicate their ideas as well as remember the relevant concepts. One participant revealed:

I can tell you that all those activities I remember them better and I remember everything clearly like more than if we only read about it. All those activities I still remember them clearly.

This study found that by representing their knowledge through multiple modes students could assert their unique identities and express their ideas in ways that were more fluid and less rigid or limited. Students enjoyed greater autonomy in how they represented themselves and were able to exercise greater voice and visibility in the classroom. These capacities can also be extended to foster, for students, "a sense of authoring through multimodal production" (Thibaut and Scott Curwood 2018, 48). Remarks by two participants are worth noting here:

You are learning everyday peoples' views, you come to class; people have different views and it is like, wow I actually never thought of it that way. So, you get different perspectives which makes you aware of everything.

... you "see" others ... who usually you don't see.

Integrating culturally relevant arts-based methods recognises and gives expression to student capabilities that promote participation in the classroom. The participants in this study found the arts-based activities enjoyable and engaging and were therefore motivated to participate. Participants who identify as shy found the activities less stressful than more traditional modes of learning. Stone Hanley (2013) contends that in an arts-based paradigm (CRAE), the art-making process enables the distillation of personal voice. It provides a platform for voice and creative choice and instils feelings of agency and empowerment. The artworks produced are a symbol of this. As one participant observed,

So, like with the art, it is like we are reflecting our life and applying what you are teaching. Then the artwork it is like a symbol of that.

The artwork carries personal meaning and significance for the maker, as a participant revealed: "Can you believe I still have mine? I keep it next to my bed."

 

Conclusion

This study initiated an action research process that investigated how culturally relevant arts-based methods might be utilised to transform traditional classroom dynamics by making knowledge more accessible and reducing some of the constraints that students experience in the extended curriculum WPP programme.

My research findings from this project support the notion of access to multiple ways of knowing and demonstrate how culturally relevant arts-based methods embrace "other ways of knowing". Moreover, they notably impacted the curriculum by influencing and promoting a more democratic and equitable pedagogy. Arts-based methods offer opportunities to renegotiate pedagogic relationships and to embrace more egalitarian modes of teaching and learning. The arts-based approaches helped students to clarify their own ideas and assert their identities in a safe and non-judgmental environment. In addition, arts-based methods introduced a more flexible and less threatening way to teach and learn, which can be especially useful in a heterogeneous context. These methods helped to integrate WPP learning content and contribute to other aspects of relational dynamics, such as group cohesion and increased motivation.

Arts-based methods have transformative potential to reduce some of the challenges of the contemporary classroom. These methods are well suited to the self-reflective aspect of the soft skills programme promoted in the WPP module. Students' artworks can offer a powerful personal symbol that activates and mediates many intrapersonal and interpersonal processes and act as key agents for building more democratic and reciprocal experiences of learning and teaching in higher education.

The integration of culturally relevant arts processes into the WPP module has initiated processes that address the need for re-imagining pedagogies that are aligned with contemporary contexts and reflect the diversity of the classroom. At the same time, these approaches to curricula offer novel ways for educators to transform teaching practices in keeping with social justice agendas by opening the space for more human relationships in education. This approach also facilitates flexible modes of communication that both accommodate and affirm a diverse student cohort.

This study contributes to the development of a transformative curriculum that enables more empowering learning experiences in the Workplace Preparation module. The introduction of arts-based approaches to teaching and learning allows students to connect subjectively with the material being taught and to assert their individual perspectives as part of the learning process.

Ultimately, the study assesses, within the context of the University of Johannesburg's Academic Development Access Programme, the impact of introducing arts-based methods in supporting student access and integration in the context of the WPP learning environment. The findings support pedagogical transformation using principles of agency and empowerment as central features of student-centred learning.

 

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the students who participated in the study, my supervisors Kim Berman and Graham Dampier, and the Departments of Visual Art, Access, and Workplace Preparation at the University of Johannesburg, whose invaluable contributions and support made this study possible.

 

References

Andrew, D. 2011. "The Artist's Sensibility and Multimodality-Classrooms as Works of Art". PhD diss., University of the Witwatersrand. Accessed October 7, 2021. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/39670120.pdf.         [ Links ]

Andrew, D. 2014. "An Aesthetic Language for Teaching and Learning: Multimodality and Contemporary Art Practice". In Multimodal Approaches to Research and Pedagogy: Recognition, Resources, and Access, edited by A. Archer and D. Newfield, 200-17. New York, NY: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Archer, A. 2014. "Multimodal Designs for Learning in Contexts of Diversity". Designs for Learning 7 (2): 8-28. https://doi.org/10.2478/dfl-2014-0061.         [ Links ]

Ballim, Y. 2018. "Ways of Knowing and the Possible Contributions of Curriculum to the Decolonising Project". Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South 2 (1): 136-44. https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v2i1.54.         [ Links ]

Bawa, A. 2014. Foreword to Perspectives on Student Affairs in South Africa, edited by M. Speckman and M. Mandew, v-vii. Cape Town: African Minds.         [ Links ]

Berman, K. 2014. "Arts for Social Change". In Arts Activism, Education, and Therapies: Transforming Communities across Africa, edited by H. Barnes, 3-15. New York, NY: Rodopi.         [ Links ]

Berman, K. 2018. "Evaluation". In Changing Our Worlds: Art as Transformative Practice, edited by M. LeBaron and J. Sarra, 87-126. Stellenbosch: Sun Press.         [ Links ]

Berman, K., and S. Netshia. 2018. "Enlivening Pedagogical Methods in the Classroom through Visual Arts". Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South 2 (1): 4-20. https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v2i1.26.         [ Links ]

Bozalek, V., J. Garraway, and S. McKenna. 2011. Case Studies of Epistemological Access in Foundation / Extended Curriculum Programme Studies in South Africa. Cape Town: Pearson. Accessed October 7, 2021. https://www.cput.ac.za/files/images_folder/units/fundani/Epistemological.pdf.         [ Links ]

Calitz, T. 2015. "A Capabilities Approach to Student Experiences of Pedagogy, Power and Well-Being at a South African University". PhD diss., University of the Free State.         [ Links ]

Charmaz, K. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis. London: Sage Publications.         [ Links ]

CHE (Council on Higher Education). 2015. "Annexure 6-Transformation in Higher Education". Discussion paper prepared for the second national Higher Education Transformation Summit, 2015. Accessed October 7, 2021. https://www.justice.gov.za/commissions/FeesHET/docs/2015-HESummit-Annexure06.pdf.

Crenshaw, K. 1994. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color". In The Public Nature of Private Violence, edited by M. Fineman and R. Mykitiuk, 93-118. New York, NY: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Davies, R 1998. "An Evolutionary Approach to Facilitating Organisational Learning: An Experiment by the Christian Commission for Development in Bangladesh". Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal 16 (3): 243-50. https://doi.org/10.1080/14615517.1998.10590213.         [ Links ]

Davies, R., and J. Dart. 2005. The "Most Significant Change" (MSC) Technique: A Guide to How to Use It. Accessed October 7, 2021. https://mande.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/MSCGuide.pdf.

Dewey, J. 1934. Art as Experience. New York, NY: Capricorn Books.         [ Links ]

DHET (Department of Higher Education and Training). 2013. White Paper for Post-School Education and Training: Building an Expanded, Effective and Integrated Post-School System. Pretoria: DHET. Accessed October 6, 2021. https://www.dhet.gov.za/SiteAssets/Latest%20News/White%20paper%20for%20post-school%20education%20and%20training.pdf.         [ Links ]

DoE (Department of Education). 1997. Education White Paper 3-A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education. DoE: Pretoria. Accessed October 7, 2021. http://www.che.ac.za/sites/default/files/publications/White_Paper3.pdf.

Du Plooy, L., and M. Zilindile. 2014. "Problematising the Concept Epistemological Access with Regard to Foundation Phase Education towards Quality Schooling". South African Journal of Childhood Education 4 (1): 187-201. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v4i1.51.         [ Links ]

Eisner, E. W. 2002. The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.         [ Links ]

February, C. A. 2016. "Re-imagining 'Non-Traditional' Student Constructs in Higher Education: A Case Study of One South African University". PhD diss., University of the Western Cape. http://etd.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/11394/5457.         [ Links ]

Freire, P. 2000. Pedagogy of the Heart. Translated by D. Macedo and A. Oliveira. New York, NY: Continuum.         [ Links ]

Freire, P. 2005. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum.         [ Links ]

Gravett, S. 2002. "Transformative Learning through Action Research: A Case Study from South Africa". Paper presented at the Adult Education Research Conference. Accessed October 7, 2021. https://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2002/papers/22.

Hendricks, C., and B. Leibowitz. 2016. "Decolonising Universities Isn't an Easy Process-But It Has to Happen". The Conversation, May 23, 2016. Accessed October 7, 2021. https://theconversation.com/decolonising-universities-isnt-an-easy-process-but-it-has-to-happen-59604.

King, A. 1993. "From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side". College Teaching 41 (1): 3035. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.1993.9926781.         [ Links ]

Kress, G., C. Jewit, J. Ogborn, and C. Tsatsarelis. 2001. "Rhetorics of the Science Classroom: A Multimodal Approach". In Multimodal Teaching and Learning: The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom, by G. Kress, C. Jewit, J. Ogborn and C. Tsatsarelis, 10-42. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.         [ Links ]

Liamputtong, P., and J. Rumbold. 2008. Knowing Differently: Arts-Based and Collaborative Research Methods. New York, NY: Nova Science Publishers.         [ Links ]

Lotz-Sisitka, H. 2009. "Epistemological Access as an Open Question in Education". Journal of Education 46: 57-79.         [ Links ]

Manik, S. 2015. "Calibrating the Barometer: Student Access and Success in South African Public Higher Education Institutions". Alternation 17: 226-44. Accessed October 8, 2021. http://alternation.ukzn.ac.za/Files/docs/Special%20Editions/SP17.pdf#page=230.         [ Links ]

Mann, S. J. 2008. Study, Power and the University: The Institution and Its Effects on Learning. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education.         [ Links ]

McMahon, B. J., and J. P. Portelli, eds. 2014. Student Engagement in Urban Schools: Beyond Neoliberal Discourses. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.         [ Links ]

McNiff, S. 2012. "Opportunities and Challenges in Art-Based Research". Journal of Applied Arts and Health 3 (1): 5-12. https://doi.org/10.1386/jaah3.L5_1.         [ Links ]

McNiff, J. 2013. Action Research: Principles and Practice. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203112755.         [ Links ]

Mills, G. E. 2000. Action Research: A Guide for the Teacher Researcher. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.         [ Links ]

MoE (Ministry of Education). 2001. National Plan for Higher Education. Pretoria: MoE. Accessed October 6, 2021. https://www.justice.gov.za/commissions/feeshet/docs/2001-NationalPlanForHigherEducation.pdf.         [ Links ]

Morrow, W. 2007. Learning to Teach in South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press.         [ Links ]

Newfield, D. 2011. "Multimodality and Children's Participation in Classrooms: Instances of Research". Perspectives in Education 29 (1): 27-35.         [ Links ]

Patton, M. Q. 2011. Development Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.         [ Links ]

Rabiger, S. 1990. "Art Therapy as Container". In Working with Children in Art Therapy, edited by C. Case and T. Dalley, 23-38. London: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Rusznyak, L., L. Dison, M. Moosa, and M. Poo. 2017. "Supporting the Academic Success of First-Year Students in South Africa: A Study of the Epistemological Access They Acquired through a Lecture and Text". South African Journal of Higher Education 31 (1): 207-26. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-1-1026.         [ Links ]

Sen, A. 2005. Development as Freedom. New York, NY: Anchor Books.         [ Links ]

Shandler, M. 2014. "Collaborative Partnerships to Facilitate Change in Higher Education". Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 5 (3): 1533-540. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p1533.         [ Links ]

Stein, P., and D. Newfield. 2007. "Multimodal Pedagogies, Representation and Identity: Perspectives from Post-Apartheid South Africa". In International Handbook of English Language Teaching, edited by J. Cummins and C. Davison, 919-30. Boston, MA: Springer.         [ Links ]

Stone Hanley, M. 2013. "Culturally Relevant Arts Education for Social Justice". In Culturally Relevant Arts Education for Social Justice: A Way Out of No Way, edited by M. Stone Hanley, G. W. Noblit, G. L. Sheppard and T. Barone, 1-10. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203077573.         [ Links ]

Stone Hanley, M., G. W. Noblit, G. L. Sheppard, and T. Barone, eds. 2013. Culturally Relevant Arts Education for Social Justice: A Way Out of No Way. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203077573.         [ Links ]

Thibaut, P., and J. Scott Curwood. 2018. "Multiliteracies in Practice: Integrating Multimodal Production across the Curriculum". Theory into Practice 57 (1): 48-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2017.1392202.         [ Links ]

Van Zyl, A. 2013. "Teaching the Students We Have: Two Perspectives on First Year Students at the University of Johannesburg and the UJ First Year Experience Initiative". In Proceedings of the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa (HELTASA) 2013 Conference, edited by N. Tisani and A. Hlengwa. Pretoria: HELTASA. Accessed October 7, 2021. http://heltasa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/HELTASA-2013-Teaching-the-Students.pdf.         [ Links ]

Van Zyl, A., and E. De Kadt. 2017. "Growing an FYE Initiative for the Diverse Student Population at the University of Johannesburg". University of Johannesburg. Accessed October 7, 2021. https://sc.edu/nrc/presentation/international/2011/files/CI-16.pdf.

Walker, M. 2005. Higher Education Pedagogies. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education.         [ Links ]

Walker, M. 2010. "Critical Capability Pedagogies and University Education". Educational Philosophy and Theory 42 (8): 898-917. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00379.x.         [ Links ]

Walker, M., and E. Unterhalter, eds. 2007. Amartya Sen's Capability Approach and Social Justice in Education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604810.         [ Links ]

YW Boston. 2017. "What Is Intersectionality, and What Does It Have to Do with Me?" YW Boston (blog), March 29, 2017. Accessed October 7, 2021. https://www.ywboston.org/2017/03/what-is-intersectionality-and-what-does-it-have-to-do-with-me/.

 

 

1 An "articulation gap" refers to the disparity between the learning requirements of higher education programmes and the knowledge and competencies of students entering university. For more information on the policy environment that governs foundation provision, see the Department of Higher Education and Training's White Paper for Post-School Education and Training: Building an Expanded, Effective and Integrated Post-School System (DHET 2013) and the Ministry of Education's National Plan for Higher Education (MoE 2001).
2 Colette February (2016, iii) points out that, especially in South Africa, the "non-traditional" student is under-researched and insufficiently articulated and warns that the term "non-traditional" does little to recognise and respond to a blended understanding of student identities/constructs and their corresponding needs.
3 February argues for the reimaging of the constructs of student identity, especially from that of a deficit model to one that recognises and embraces the multitude of nuances of the "non-traditional" learner (February 2016, 75).
4 "Sage on the stage" is a phrase that refers to a traditional, transmittal teaching approach and is in contrast to the more contemporary, constructivist teaching approaches that recognise the learner as having existing knowledge and prior learning that can be engaged in active learning (King 1993, 30).
5 Learning styles refer to a range of competing and contested theories that aim to account for an individual's learning and posit that people can be classified by their style of learning. These classifications include kinaesthetic, aural and visual sensory modalities (among others).
6 The term multimodal learning is increasingly associated with developments in electronic learning platforms.

^rND^sAndrew^nD.^rND^sArcher^nA.^rND^sBallim^nY.^rND^sBerman^nK^rND^sBerman^nK.^rND^sBerman^nK.^rND^nS.^sNetshia^rND^sCrenshaw^nK.^rND^sDavies^nR^rND^sDu Plooy^nL.^rND^nM.^sZilindile^rND^sKing^nA.^rND^sKress^nG.^rND^nC.^sJewit^rND^nJ.^sOgborn^rND^nC.^sTsatsarelis^rND^sLotz-Sisitka^nH.^rND^sManik^nS.^rND^sMcNiff^nS.^rND^sNewfield^nD^rND^sRabiger^nS.^rND^sRusznyak^nL.^rND^nL.^sDison^rND^nM.^sMoosa^rND^nM.^sPoo^rND^sShandler^nM.^rND^sStein^nP.^rND^nD.^sNewfield^rND^sStone Hanley^nM.^rND^sThibaut^nP.^rND^nJ.^sScott Curwood^rND^sVan Zyl^nA.^rND^sWalker^nM.^rND^1A01^nCorinne^sKnowles^rND^1A01^nCorinne^sKnowles^rND^1A01^nCorinne^sKnowles

ARTICLE

 

With Dreams in Our Hands: An African Feminist Framing of a Knowledge-Making Project with Former ESP Students

 

 

Corinne Knowles

Rhodes University, South Africa c.knowles@ru.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6165-2104

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

This article introduces a research project that works with former Extended Studies Programme students to make knowledge that emerges through online, multimodal collaborations. Knowledge-making is not politically neutral, and the project and article are responding in part to the calls of the 2015/2016 South African student protesters to decolonise and transform university curricula. The project draws on African feminist ideas, emphasising the intersectional oppressions of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy, which continue to influence theoretical choices in the knowledge hierarchies of South African and African universities. The "race", class and gender inequalities that drive success or failure at university and in society become some of the topics addressed in the project, where former students as co-researchers collaborate to devise the topics, responses, and kinds of dissemination. Ntseane's overlapping principles of a collective worldview, spirituality, a shared orientation to knowledge, and communal knowledge-making are motifs that influence how the project is imagined and run. My positionality as lead researcher and former lecturer of the co-researchers is navigated using African feminist guidance, which also informs the ethical principles of the project.

Keywords: African feminisms; decolonial knowledge-making; intersectionality; positionality

---

 

 

Introduction

Every year, students arrive in the Humanities Extended Studies Programme¹ (ESP) at the South African university where I lecture with dreams and hopes for a better life. The project I introduce is a collaboration with former ESP students to explore knowledge-making and produce knowledge that we believe provides new ideas in the field of higher education and promotes different ways of teaching, learning and doing research. The theoretical framing sets up a methodology that conspires to work with participants as co-researchers in the multimodal project, with collective agency over the questions asked, how they should be answered, and how they can be disseminated. This deliberate framing imagines a platform for knowledge-making that centres student voices to contribute insights into the kinds of teaching and research that would be decolonised and inclusive.

The 2015/2016 student protests in South Africa were an important moment that marked the public outcry from students who struggled with the costs and content of university education. They highlighted some of the challenges of poor black² students (Department of Higher Education and Training [DHET] 2017; Moloi, Makgoba, and Miruka 2017) concerning the unequal effects of colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and neoliberalism, which distribute their rewards filtered through socially constructed human attributes such as "race", class and gender. In part, this research project aims to honour the calls of student protesters (characterised in Twitter feeds #FeesMustFall, #RhodesSoWhite, #RUReferenceList) and pays attention to the inequalities that continue to shape the daily lives and the success rate of students based on these constructions.³ While university fees did fall for a while (DHET 2017) along with, increasingly, state support (McLaren and Struwig 2019), the more important call for pedagogic and curricula transformation has been unevenly realised between and within universities-and has now been complicated and exacerbated by a global pandemic. A number of ESP students were part of the protests at the university currently known as Rhodes (UCKAR),⁴ and some of them are part of this project. It is an opportunity for us to apply politically rigorous scholarship (Borras 2016) in response to the calls to change how we think about knowledge-making on the continent, to be representative, relevant, and transformational.

In line with this, this article argues for a Black/African⁵ feminist framing of the research question and project, the positionality of the lead researcher, and the analysis of the data in collaboration with co-researchers. The theories we use shape how we collect, produce, and analyse data in institutions that make certain kinds of knowledge-making feasible (Adomako Ampofo 2010; Appiah 2006; Moletsane 2015). African feminisms provide a lens that allows us to see not only how the knowledge economy in many South African universities is structured to limit the success of young black people and women (Linden 2017; Pather 2018; Skade 2016), but also how new possibilities to flourish can be opened for those who are marginalised in the current system by the intersectional and mutually constitutive oppressions of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.

African feminist principles, I will explain, direct how I as a researcher position myself in relation to the community that shapes the project. I will clarify how the Covid-19 pandemic has become a vehicle for the knowledge-making and what the challenges and opportunities are in the consequential shift in how I originally anticipated the unfolding of the project. I describe the methodological steps of the project and reveal some of the early reflections of the process. As part of the ethical considerations for the project, when I use the words of the co-researchers, they will give permission and we will discuss how their words are used. I purposefully do not use their words in this introduction to the project but focus instead on how the theory helps to construct a methodology that is a platform for knowledge-making with former students. Later papers, including those co-written with co-researchers, will present findings and centre the voices of the former students.

 

Choosing a Theory

The theories that we as academic researchers use in our research guide the way we approach knowledge-making (Adomako Ampofo 2010; Appiah 2006; Moletsane 2015). In African universities, as Wane (2008, 193) argues, teaching and research take place "within the context of a history of colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonial, post-colonial and anti-colonial conditionalities". Many have written on the frustrations and dangers of Eurocentric influences on our knowledge-making (Lundgren and Prah 2010; Moletsane 2015). Choosing an African theory is a disruption to the homogeneity of Eurocentric thinking to orientate and enable a process where student voices are central in the process. Blay (2008, 60), drawing on the work of Asante, explains how this orientation works:

The degree to which research is Afrocentric is often determined by the researcher's location, or centricity/centeredness, which informs the language s/he employs, the direction of his/her sentiments, themes, and interests, as well as his/her attitude toward certain ideas, persons, or objects. Thus, it is when, and only when the researcher's language, direction, and attitude are centered within an "African cultural territory" that it qualifies as Afrocentric.

As an older white woman in South Africa, given the country's colonial and apartheid history, I am awkwardly located off-centre of Afrocentric in terms of my "race", class and gender. Later in the article I grapple with this positioning to understand and undertake a process of decolonising my own thinking and being in the world. As a teacher and researcher, I am interested in the ways in which the politics of "race", class and gender play out in the knowledge hierarchies that continue to shape who teaches, and what they teach.

The kinds of theorists that undergraduate students are exposed to (for instance in Sociology at the university where I have taught for 11 years) are disproportionately white, male, Western and elite. The same can be said for numerous postgraduate courses I have taken at UCKAR. How relevant are these theories in a South African context? Tamale (2020, 43-44) argues that:

[G]iven the history of the continent and the lingering legacies of colonialism, imperialism, racism and neoliberalism, theories and paradigms formulated in the West do not necessarily apply in Africa. It also underscores the need to develop alternative schools of thought and counter-hegemonic narratives that expose the subtle and intricate power relationships embedded in mainstream theories.

Wane (2008, 185) explains that being taught from a European canon caused her "to be disassociated from and devalue the cultural knowledges and wisdom of [her] ancestors, [her] community, and [her] family". Alienation and disassociation are even more likely at a time of national pandemic lockdown, given the huge changes, such as digital teaching and learning, and a loss of connection for many. The aim of the project is to reveal adapted and expanded ways of knowing that restore connectedness. Its intention is to think through the principles of knowledge-making from a perspective that imagines a future that is unpicked from a patriarchal and colonial past. Tamale (2020, 30) explains that this "is a multifaceted, holistic and integral process" made more complex because of the pervasiveness of colonialism's legacy, resulting in a situation where "many in mainstream academia, even today, are yet to be convinced that feminist methodologies, approaches and analyses in research are part of legitimate scientific inquiry" (2020, 47).

I have taken this observation to heart by using African feminisms as the theoretical frame.

African feminisms grew as alternative contributions to the conversation about gender in response to the way in which white feminism, and, despite many overlaps, even Black feminism (Salo and Mama 2001), failed to articulate and recognise African realities regarding, for example, decolonisation struggles (Tamale and Oloka-Onyango 1995) and the different significance of gender in some African societies (Amadiume 1987; Oyëwùmi 1997). Even though, for centuries, African women struggled against patriarchy (Salami 2013), it was not known as "feminism", resulting in some resistance to the term among African women (Lewis 2010; Motlafi 2015). But through several iterations over the last few decades strong ideas have emerged that clarify some of the fundamental ideas of what African feminisms are, rather than what they are not. African feminisms foreground gender as a tool for analysis, and locate that in a collective, where the aims of gender transformation are to bring about a better world for all.

African feminist theory has many strands and is more than a set of ideas about the experiences of black women and men. Mekgwe warns against simplistic gender binaries and reminds us that "women do not easily fall into neat categories" (Mekgwe 2007, 21). Ahikire claims (2014, 8) that African feminisms are a "myriad of various theoretical perspectives emanating from the complexities and specifics of the different material conditions and identities of women" and how they resist oppression and navigate power. While African feminist theory is developed by diverse women and scholars from a variety of locations and orientations, there are common threads that are explored or assumed by many of them.

Firstly, there is a dynamic relationship between African feminisms and the women's movements on the continent (Goetz and Hassim 2003; Lewis 2001; Mama 2020), in that their intellectual orientation is the collective struggle against the effects of patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism (Mama 2011). Understanding these forces as interdependent and interlinked is key to transforming society through the lens of intersectionality, which recognises that these "systems of oppression are interwoven and co-produced in complex ways" (Tamale 2020, 66). For this reason, argues Tamale, it is vital to "understand this dynamic and stop thinking of discrimination superficially as residing in separate, neatly-marked compartments. For many disadvantaged social groups, discrimination is an inextricably blended experience" (2020, 66). In this project, thanks to the work of Tamale and others, "the epistemic value of intersectionality is that it provides us with a critical lens within which to view the world" (Tamale 2020, 67).

Secondly, while the feminist movement and theory in Africa have undergone shifts and changes over time (Ahikire 2014; Lewis 2010; Salami 2017), another common theme is the fight against the structural erasure of black women, individually and collectively (Gbowee 2011; Masola 2018). Mekgwe (2007) unpacks some of the emphases and complexities in African feminisms, including their aim towards "a positive transformation of society such that women are not marginalized but are treated as full citizens in all spheres of life" (2007, 13).

Thirdly, Mama (2011, 2) describes African feminisms as an ethical "intellectual politics", in that an important aspect of the theory is to locate African experiences within the social politics of their contexts. Ahikire explains that "in African contexts, feminism is at once philosophical, experiential, and practical" (2014, 8). Mama laments that despite the potential of African feminisms to transform universities, "the discourse on academic freedom and intellectual responsibility in African universities has rarely yielded ground for feminist ethics" (Mama 2011, 1). The feminist ethics implied here become important guidelines in how the project is set up.

For me, then, African feminisms provide an ethical orientation that opens my thinking about pedagogy and this research project in ways that recognise black young people from their own contexts and perspectives, to make knowledge that is relevant and owned by them. The theory is a lens to see how experiences of gender are intricately linked to "race" and class, and how this affects knowledge-making. African feminists have guided my thinking about ethical research, decoloniality understood through the lens of intersectionality, and have provided principles to direct how I work with young South African black people in the project. Tamale (2020, 67) explains that "an intersectional approach is multifaceted, challenging Western hegemonic structures and institutions, including the very nature of knowledge (ontology) and how we access that knowledge (epistemology)".

African feminisms mean different things in different contexts. In fields that have used other frames and theories to shape the academic conversation, African feminisms are the "other"-they perhaps have token value but have not captured mainstream imagination for various reasons (Adomako Ampofo 2010; Moletsane 2015). Using African feminisms to frame this project about knowledge-making is an alternative orientation that seeks to change the status quo. It tries to follow the directive of Tamale that as academic researchers, "we must adopt ethical non-positivist intellectual paradigms that acknowledge subjective interpretation of reality and are commensurate with Indigenous (and feminist) knowledge systems that are nonlinear, nonrational and value-laden" (Tamale 2020, 279).

 

Principles of African Feminisms that Shape the Project

The project I introduce in this article is set up for former ESP students to make knowledge together, at a time of a global pandemic that exacerbates the inequalities in our society and university. It is a mixed group of young black women and men, who at some stage between 2011 and 2019 were part of the ESP programme at UCKAR and were taught by me. As such, it works with young black people whose lives are shaped by gender, "race" and class inequalities that are the outcomes of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. In this article I foreground the thinking of African feminists who are marginalised in the knowledge hierarchies in our thinking about pedagogy in the South African academy, and I apply their thinking on how to conduct research as I grapple with power relations and ethics in the project. In particular, Ntseane (2011), drawing on Mkabela and Asante, offers principles that run through the work of many African feminists, and that have guided the thinking and planning for the project.

Ntseane (2011) writes from the position of an African woman who acknowledges that even while her being is constituted by her location in the collective, the "reality of marginalization has been pushed further to the periphery due to the gendered contexts defined by the legacy of colonialism" (Ntseane 2011, 308). Her paper explains a proj ect that draws on African and African feminist ideas that resonate with my aims in the project.

Ntseane (2011) argues that the four interconnected ideas that guide an Africanist and African feminist approach to research are a collective worldview, spirituality, a shared orientation towards knowledge, and the role of gender in how knowledge is processed. A collective worldview demands that thinking about the individual, for instance regarding human rights and social justice during a pandemic, is, as Motlafi explains, a "delicate balancing act" between individual and community needs, recognising that "both black men and women continue to struggle with colonial legacies of socioeconomic deprivation" (Motlafi 2015). Wane (2008, 187) explains that African feminisms, overlapping with most African societies, "stress the ideology of communal, rather than individual, values and the preservation of a community as a whole". As Ntseane argues, a sense of the collective shapes people's recognition of what constitutes a problem, and for this reason research on the continent must locate the research community as agents in the research (2011, 312) whose worldview becomes the perspective from which the project emerges.

Spirituality is part of the African orientation that Ntseane recognises as important to the collective worldview, in that "the spirit is the ultimate oneness with nature and the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" (Ntseane 2011, 312). Spirituality motivates African feminist politics and intellectual work to be "whole and fight the injustices, positioning the academic as one who fuses within this knowledge the head with the heart to understand the world" (Motsemme cited in Wils 2017). This holistic imperative differs from what Collins (2003, 59) calls "Western, either/or dichotomous thought", because "the traditional African worldview is holistic and seeks harmony". Tamale draws on Graham's work to encourage "decolonial activism" through a focus on, among other ideas, the Ubuntu philosophy: "the interconnectedness of all things; the spiritual nature of human beings ... oneness of mind, body and spirit; and the value of interpersonal relationships" (Graham cited in Tamale 2020, 21). The implication is that the researcher is not merely doing intellectual work, but has a responsibility to bring her body, mind and spirit to the process of inclusion and connection that she enables for others. Wane (2008) reminds us that knowledge is embodied, and this affects how knowledge is accessed. Working with former young, black students as part of the project, this will become significant in how we connect with one another, and how the interconnections of "race", class and gender affect our knowledge-making. Reconnecting the mind, body and spirit enables the process of connecting to others.

An openness to spirituality in the research process can guide and enhance the direction and legitimacy of the project. It can influence the "holistic sustainability of interconnected ecological systems" of knowledge (Wane 2008, 192) by being mindful of the values, emotions and experiences that co-researchers bring. Feminist writer Malaika Mahlatsi⁶ argues passionately that we resist excluding emotion from our intellectual work:

[E]motion is not lack of reason. The insistence on treating emotion as mutually exclusive from reason is rooted in Westernised formulations of what constitutes valid knowledge and what doesn't. It is used to delegitimise any and all things that don't fit neatly into the box of what it deems credible-such as, for example, indigenous knowledge systems that have often been dismissed as emotional, mythical and superstitious. People can be emotional and rational. It is not mutually exclusive. (Mahlatsi cited in Knowles 2020)

And so, a focus on the whole person as a spiritual imperative is brought into the project in careful collaboration with co-researchers over time. A code of practice is co-developed to keep open and to enable a deeper listening for the ideas that orientate our thinking and being towards connection and transformation. As the initiator of the project, I am learning to honour my own spiritual and emotional connectedness, and the reflective journal and critical friends I keep as part of the journey are helpful records and reminders of this.

The shared orientation towards knowledge that Ntseane emphasises is threefold. Firstly, it emphasises the fluid nature of knowledge to be shaped by the context in which it emerges. It is not absolute. It is constructed by those who work with it, for particular ends (Ntseane 2011). Secondly, it refers to the function of knowledge to liberate those who work with and produce it. Emancipation is an important feature on a continent and in a country that continues to feel the effects of colonisation, capitalism, patriarchy, and apartheid, for instance in terms of the people and ideas we venerate in universities. For this reason, Adomako Ampofo and Arnfred (2010, 25) explain the purpose of African feminisms as the work of imagining a better future, and to produce and find "the kind of knowledge that allows us to fully understand our divided realities in order to transcend them". The long-term purpose of the project is to create the conditions to reveal new possibilities to co-create knowledge about teaching and learning with students. This practice has the potential to join and develop conversations that will inspire practices of de-investment in the neoliberal model, liberation from a patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial Western framing, and the eradication of harms and oppressions based on "race", class, and gender.

The third aspect of a shared orientation towards knowledge brings together the ideas of liberatory, communal knowledge and spirituality. Ntseane explains that women in her research project that looked at women's transformational learning had the realisation of segakolodi, which means "intuitive guide", or pelo ya bobeai, which means "second heart", as part of the research outcomes. The role of these realisations "was to remind individuals of their purpose on earth, which in their context was to be useful or to give back to the community" (Ntseane 2011, 313). For her, emancipation is conceived as a connection between the past and the future in that a spiritual connection with ancestors and guides could bring about transformation (and liberation) in the community.

Ntseane's fourth principle to guide research methodologies is the role of gender in how knowledge is processed. Critiquing the focus on the individual in Mezirow's transformational learning model, Ntseane points out and gives examples of ways in which her study in Botswana demonstrated that one contribution to knowledge-making that women generate is to make it communal (Ntseane 2011, 319, 320). She argues that this orientation to the communal is linked to gender roles, for instance the idea of women as mothers and the strong connection between motherhood and nature; the idea that women are strongly oriented towards labouring collectively (for instance in crop growing and harvesting); and the belief that women are expected to work towards the good and emancipation of the community. These gender role constructions are "not without the usual subtle and hegemonic sexism" (Ntseane 2011, 319), but, as she recommends, "these cultural learning values appeal to community construction of knowledge as opposed to an individual's construction; thus, they offer alternative ways in which adult educators may work with communities" (Ntseane 2011, 320). In the project I will go on to introduce, guided by this principle of communal knowledge-making, we find ways to work together to create knowledge for the purpose of communal benefit while navigating the hierarchies of "race", class, and gender.

 

Reasons for Selecting the Site of Research

I am drawn to African and African feminist theories, and methodologies, because of relationships and connections that are intellectual and emotional. The selection of co-researchers and the site of the project has not been neutral or dispassionate. The questions I ask are germinated from 10 years of connecting with students, as a group and individually. While the project is a response to the calls of 2015/2016 student protests in South Africa (Mkhize 2015; Ngcobozi 2015), it is also about reconnection with former students, in a project that is a platform where dreams, gifts and concerns find expression and are welcome.

In April 2020, I put out an open call on my Facebook page,⁷ inviting former ESP students to join me in working on a knowledge-making project as part of my PhD. I also asked them to tag friends or recommend to me others who might be interested. I followed up with all those who replied, and with those they recommended, outlining the commitment of the project. The 24 individuals who volunteered for and committed to the project are all former ESP students-half of them are still at UCKAR studying or lecturing, and the remainder are working, unemployed or between jobs/plans. I taught all of them Politics and Sociology extended studies (between the years 2011-2019) to support their success in the mainstream formal curricula. A few of them know one another, but largely the common relationship is with me. As I explain later, this has important implications for how I manage my power to enable a collective worldview and shared orientation to knowledge.

My pedagogy is based on hooks's liberatory, humanising, transgressive learning (hooks 1994). Through class and group discussions (in English and isiXhosa), numerous feedback opportunities (anonymous and named), and individual meetings with students (voluntary and compulsory), the students and I get to know each other well in the year that I teach them. They give me insight into their lived experience, their backgrounds, their knowledges, and I work hard to be aware of how power is distributed in the lecture room in order to undermine my own power and to encourage mutual vulnerability as a pedagogic and humanising strategy (Knowles 2014 a). I expose them to African feminist ideas, noticing the intersection of "race", class, and gender oppressions. Many students maintain their relationship with me (by visiting, writing, or via social media) long after they have left the Extended Studies Programme or graduated.

My pedagogic strategies in the Extended Studies Unit are to build shared knowledge and mutual trust; to establish a community of practice, where we feel a sense of responsibility for each other as well as ourselves; to encourage critical thinking from a South African, localised perspective, for the common good; and to use the power of imagination to apply theory and knowledge to potential real-life situations (Knowles 2014b).

In these and other ways, students who come through my ESP classes already have, to some extent, a lived understanding of the principles of the project. I believe that this sets us up to collaborate. Ntseane reminds us that for her, research requires a special kind of relationship between the researcher and the researched, where "African researchers are not supposed to be objective and remain distant from the person who needs assistance, but rather researchers have to work toward a close and reciprocal relationship" (Ntseane 2011, 312). I argue that the students I teach, and have taught, and who teach me, have ways of knowing and being that can expand our current canons and pedagogies. The project's aim is to find ways, with former ESP students, that enable them to benefit collectively.

 

Positionality of the Researcher in Relation to the Research Community

As a white, middle-class woman, I have the privilege to access public and private goods in the face of profound inequality in South Africa. The students I teach have gifts to give and dreams to realise, but are given only limited access to how public goods, such as universities, are configured. A focus on numbers and quotas and on a neoliberal framework purposefully accepts a majority of students categorised as black and poor, and yet in formerly white institutions such as UCKAR they are precisely the ones most likely to fail (Pather 2018). Even when qualified, they are the least likely to be hired (Diale 2019; Skade 2016).

Concern about the positionality of the researcher requires noticing ways in which power is distributed in the project, and what researcher biases and orientations influence the outcomes and benefits of the research. Because knowledge-making is never politically neutral (Appiah 2006), and because I claim to work with participants as co-researchers with agency, I have to put things in place that will provide the project with checks and balances to legitimise the knowledge we make. As lead researcher in the project, and former lecturer of the co-researchers, I inevitably have the balance of power, which I must navigate responsibly alongside my co-researchers. The privileges afforded to me by the structural benefits of my "race", class and age could blind me to the realities of my co-researchers because I do not share their lived experience and my thoughts and actions could bear the traces of residual and insidious prejudice. Few (2007, 460) generously argues that in "using a Black feminist or critical race feminist theoretical lens, how the standpoint is articulated matters more than the color of the researcher". She claims that it is our motivation for the project and for the groups we choose that will shape the relationship between the researcher and the research community. Is "motivation" enough to liberate knowledge-making beyond my limited perspectives?

Using African theories as a white woman, the daughter of missionaries, to do research among black former students, risks re-inscribing the power arrangements that for centuries have plundered Africa as a site for extraction (Grosfoguel 2020). As Carstensen-Egwuom (2014, 269) points out, "[t]his means that an awareness of a (possibly privileged) position before entering the field may be helpful, but a reflection upon experiences during fieldwork can show how such a position is negotiated, questioned, or challenged". For this reason, I am compelled to consider my position beyond mere intentions and motivations, reflecting more on "the interactional, relational and power dynamics of the research at hand, rather than focusing on a confession of emotional or discursive positionings of the individual researcher" (MacCleod in Chiweshe 2018, 77). To hold me to an African feminist orientation, I keep a reflexive account throughout the project (Ellingson 2009, 2017), developing a case record of plans and journal entries for regular reflection. I have critical friends with whom I discuss aspects of the project and how I feel about them, regular discussions with my supervisor, and an African feminist reading group that keeps reminding me of the principles I aspire to live by. These and other measures are in place to undermine the default positions of whiteness, so that I am able to work with former students with integrity, openness and care. Despite this, I acknowledge the effectiveness of privilege at hiding its own operations (Matthews 2011). I am guided by the prophetic words of Adomako Ampofo (2010, 28):

[M]aintaining commitment to core feminist goals in one's scholarship and praxis provides the strength needed to carry on scholarship and praxis in a context where the exigencies of life so often threaten to crowd out these goals. ... I contend that ultimately it is only possible to maintain one's strength as a feminist scholar and activist through constant reflection, both personal and communal.

While in many ways the project integrates my activism, worldview, and pedagogy, it is the students' perspectives, context, worldviews, and the dreams and longings they arrive with that the project will facilitate, honour and commend. There are protocols in place (discussed with the group) for anonymous feedback and for concerns to be raised by the co-researchers, including concerns around my facilitation and power in the process. My aim is a kind of leadership that is reflective, empathic, and ethical (Eze 2015), while enabling a mutually responsible community, and encouraging the visibility of alternative ways of knowing and expressing (Ntseane 2011). hooks discusses the empathy and leadership required in a pedagogy that seeks to liberate, arguing that it "means welcoming the opportunity to alter our ... practices creatively, so that the democratic ideal of education for everyone can be realised" (hooks 1994, 189). The power that I have because of histories of unequal interactions structured around student/teacher, "race", class, and gender can be reworked to be "creative and life-affirming" (hooks 1989, 86-87) by consciously embracing African feminist principles and practices in how I work with co-researchers, how I read and enable their responses, and how they experience and shape the project.

Starting the Project during Covid-19

My intention was to enable the sense of a collective through setting up a space for expressing and listening, calling and responding, so that a shared appreciation and recognition emerges. Mkabela (2005, 185) claims that the research community must be part of the research process from beginning to end, so that research outcomes are used to contribute towards community goals and needs in a relevant way, demonstrating a collective sense of the world and/or of the purpose of the knowledge-making between the co-researchers. An immersive, face-to-face weekend workshop at the start of the project would have been an opportunity to demonstrate these principles and open up an understanding of what it means to be co-researchers in a research community. It would have allowed co-researchers to get to know one another through formal and informal activities set up to create a safe space for sharing vulnerability. But as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the world, it made travel and face-to-face gatherings impossible.

As was the case with teaching, research projects have had to adapt to the changed conditions necessitated by the pandemic. Despite my experience of and frustrations with online teaching and learning during the first few months of lockdown when Covid-19 reached South Africa, I initially failed to adjust my expectations of a project that was envisaged as a collaboration between people who have developed a sense of the collective. I will explain the phases of the project in more detail, but an important aspect of introducing it is to recognise what was lost, and found, in the reconfiguration of how it unfolded alongside strict lockdown as the pandemic affected life as we know it.

 

How the Project Works

The project is conceived in five phases, which are not necessarily linear or discrete:

• the inviting phase,

• the devising phase,

• the creating phase,

• the analysing phase,

• and the disseminating phase.

I have explained the inviting phase, which secured the commitment of 24 people to the project. A dedicated Facebook group (closed to these 24 co-researchers and me) was set up and each participant joined via private message invitation.

The devising phase would have been discussed in the immersive face-to-face workshop over two days at a resort. The project is based on a call-and-response process, where co-researchers respond to topics they have devised and give feedback on each other's work. The shift from a face-to-face workshop at a venue for two days to an online Zoom workshop for two hours was a stark reminder that fostering engagement, liberation and connection as a methodology is not an event, but a process. The pandemic pushed me out of my comfort zone as an engaged, embodied, present and intuitive teacher, into a digital space that was unequally accessed, cold, and constrained by time and data issues. The Zoom workshop was by far inferior to what it could have been, and so began a process of letting go of my methods and identities that resist change. I devised a postworkshop questionnaire that at least gave voice to co-researchers' preferences, reflections and concerns. Moletsane (2015, 45) reminds us that "what is needed is the co-reflection with our participants on the research process itself, the power dynamics inherent therein, and the extent to which these tools enable us to challenge and address these so as to pave way for democratic decision making about the strategies needed for social change". The questionnaire was developed with this in mind. In private messages and completed feedback forms, participants reminded me that they remained eager to be part of the project, overwhelmingly because they believed that it could produce new knowledge, and that they had contributions to make to it. They gave input on topic suggestions, on which work-teams they wished to be part of (for example, transcribing and translating), and how they felt about participating. They signed consent forms and indicated their understanding of the confidentiality agreements and the voluntary nature of all engagements.

 

The Creating Phase

The post-workshop questionnaires delivered a list of 28 topics, and via Facebook polls a final four topics were selected from the list for the first round of submissions. The topics were, broadly: 1. Confidence/ owning the teaching and learning process; 2. Looking at how Covid-19 has exposed inequalities in South African universities and/or public schools; 3. What causes mental pathologies among SA university students? 4. What has been the most shocking/interesting discovery about yourself during the Covid-19 pandemic?

Co-researchers were invited to respond to one of these four topics. A document devised from workshop and questionnaire inputs on how to respond to a topic was posted onto the Facebook group to guide their engagement. The document explained the range of ways to respond, including in different languages and using different genres, written, voice or video submissions, and the relevance and importance of personal experience. The majority of the co-researchers submitted responses to one of the four questions, and of the 19, all were in English (one was also translated by the author into isiXhosa); all were written pieces; 15 were opinion pieces; one was a letter, and three were academic/research papers.

When we speak or write, our words take on a life of their own beyond the creator. Co-researchers expressed their fears, concerns, hopes, strategies, discoveries, outrages, and observations around the four topics, from their personal perspectives, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Considering their answers and my personal communication with some of them, I acknowledge that they engaged in this process of writing while, along with many South Africans at the time, they were dealing with the stresses of life- people falling ill, online learning, unemployment, poverty, health risks at work and home, and increased insecurity and uncertainty.

Enabling a space for people to bring their experiences with the aim of making knowledge that is liberating is perhaps idealistic, but nonetheless necessary, and it is a journey that is always incomplete and being remade. I see it as a profound and important task that needs wisdom, alertness and presence, and constant reflection. It is a process of connecting people around an idea and to one another. Collins, drawing on Belenky et al., argues for "an epistemology of connection in which truth emerges through care", claiming that "connected knowers see personality as adding to an individual's ideas and feel that the personality of each group member enriches a group's understanding" (2003, 64). Two strategies helped with an "epistemology of connection" in response to what I viewed as an inferior and cold Zoom workshop with all the co-researchers to kick off the project: the first involved a set of smaller workshops post-submission that allowed co-researchers, in groups of between two and five, to reflect on the experience; and the second was creating a composite piece from all their submissions.

The post-submission workshops were small enough to have video throughout our conversations, and this had an effect of a much freer discussion than the first workshop. Real people with faces were part of a conversation, allowing a space for co-reflection and the reading of power dynamics espoused by Moletsane (2015, 45). I told them that all submissions were written in English, despite the freedom to explore other languages. Wane (2008, 188) claims that "colonial education had seared [her] consciousness and [she] had become indoctrinated in the belief of meritocracy", and the co-researchers seemed to support this belief. Reflecting after these workshops on what they said about feeling more comfortable writing in English, I realised the more important point not brought up: what they did not say, is that part of it was that I introduced the project in English and am not nearly fluent enough in isiXhosa to hold spontaneous conversations. Reminded of Blay's injunction (2008, 60) about the language of the researcher, I recognise how the liberty of co-researchers is limited by the boundaries of my understanding in terms of language, presenting a position to be "negotiated, questioned or challenged" (Carstensen-Egwuom 2014, 269). In the workshop, co-researchers offered ideas on how they should respond to each other's work, and I worked these into a document titled "How to respond to each other's work", and posted it onto the Facebook group, as well as to each co-researcher along with two anonymised submissions for their review. My sense is that the workshops had the effect of getting to know one another better and establishing the principles of empathy and connection that would guide how they reviewed the pieces that were sent to them.

The second strategy to connect co-researchers to one another was to devise a composite piece. I read through each submission and highlighted a sentence or two in each that touched me or indicated what I thought to be their core argument. I then put all the highlighted sentences onto a page and juggled them around to create a composite piece using only the words of the contributors. Wane supports a research methodology where "knowledge is collectively and communally shared, and not monopolized by individuals" (2008, 191). hooks (1989, 131) argues for a humanising use of dialogue that creates a connection between two subjects, rather than a subject and object arrangement. Collins takes this further to claim that a "primary epistemological assumption underlying the use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims is that connectedness rather than separation is an essential component of the knowledge validation process" (2003, 59). The composite piece, posted on the Facebook group, recognised the unique contributions of each submission and put these together to resemble a dialogue with one another, to show how each one fits into their collective worldview and shared orientation towards knowledge, which are the important African feminist principles that guide the project.

The co-researchers went on to review one another's work, and then all submissions and reviews (all anonymised) were posted on the Facebook group. A third set of smaller workshops was held where we reflected on the process and discussed ways forward. The co-researchers were given the opportunity to leave the project (one did so, citing a new work opportunity), to work on co-written papers (18 would like this), and to work on other kinds of pieces such as visual art (1 is working on that with me), newspaper articles (11 are interested), or theatre/fiction (8 would like to try).

 

The Ongoing Analysing and Disseminating Phases

The project generates data from a number of sources, including transcriptions of all the workshops (completed by those of the co-researchers who were interested in this), and all the submissions to the topics and their reviews. Other data sources are contemplated by the contributors to this project that continues to unfold, including recordings of interviews with African feminists that co-researchers undertake and narrative questionnaires or recorded interviews with each participant.

The data generation for this research project serves a number of purposes: as explained, the process aims to place the co-researchers at the centre of the research, with power over their own contributions and what happens to these; and the process assumes that the data generated from it will provide the material for knowledge-making about teaching and learning, and to demonstrate the kinds of knowledge that can be produced when African feminist principles are used in research with former and current students. The project will run for a year, and over time might shift in focus and expression depending on the careful thought and agreement of the co-researchers. Currently, two teams are working on co-writing journal articles on topics they have selected, using the data from their initial submissions. This involves regular online Zoom meetings and tasks we agree to ahead of each one. Another small team of two is working on an art piece. The data generated by the project is the material we use to make knowledge together-about how we know, what we know, and what we are learning in an unprecedented global moment of uncertainty and change presented by the Covid-19 pandemic.

What emerges from the data is the subject for further papers and pieces, worked with collaboratively. How we disseminate the knowledge we make will be collaboratively decided, with permissions from those whose work will be used.

 

Conclusion

African feminist theory is a deviation from the theories usually employed to undertake research in the field of higher education. It has been explained as a political and intellectual choice because its end is not only to explain and understand, but also to transform the status quo. Importantly, as Tamale (2020) and Mama (2011) explain, African feminisms seek to dismantle the mutually constitutive "race", class and gender oppressions that arise from colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. The project I introduce in this article uses an African feminist framing to work with former ESP students whose university life is shaped by the "race", class and gender inequalities they seek to transform. As co-researchers, they have agency over the content and process of the project, which aims to make knowledge that is relevant and transformative, in keeping with the idea of the university as a public good. Although the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted what could have been an immersive weekend workshop to engage co-researchers with the purpose and process of the project, different means were found to develop a sense of the collective: smaller online workshops, individual contact, creating a composite piece from their contributions, and working in small groups on knowledge-making projects. The agency that co-researchers have, to choose the questions that are asked, to choose how to respond to them, and to engage in reflection on this together, is anticipated and enabled by African feminists who believe that members of the research community, as individuals and as a collective, matter. It places the former ESP students in the centre of the ongoing research project, as collaborators in knowledge-making as a contribution to conversations and processes that aim to decolonise the university. Using an African theory in this way sets up a methodology that breaks free from a Western framework to open up expanded ways of knowing that integrate experience, emotion, values and intellect. The project is ongoing. It finds that former ESP students have things to say and ways of being that compel the university to take them seriously, and so we are working together to find a pedagogical innovation that can meaningfully nurture and support the dreams that these students have in their hands when they arrive at the doorstep of the university.

 

References

Adomako Ampofo, A. 2010. "One Who Has Truth-She Has Strength: The Feminist Activist Inside and Outside the Academy in Ghana". In African Feminist Research and Activism: Tensions, Challenges, Possibilities, edited by A. Adomako Ampofo and S. Arnfred, 28-51. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.         [ Links ]

Ahikire, J. 2014. "African Feminism in Context: Reflections on the Legitimation Battles, Victories and Reversals". Feminist Africa 19: 7-23.         [ Links ]

Amadiume, I. 1987. Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. London: Zed Books.         [ Links ]

Appiah, K. A. A. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. London: Penguin.         [ Links ]

Adomako Ampofo, A., and S. Arnfred, eds. 2010. African Feminist Politics of Knowledge: Tensions, Challenges, Possibilities. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.         [ Links ]

Blay, Y. A. 2008. "All the 'Africans' Are Men, All the 'Sistas' Are 'American', But Some of Us Resist: Realizing African Feminism(s) as an Africological Research Methodology". The Journal of Pan African Studies 2 (2): 58-73.         [ Links ]

Borras, S. M. 2016. "Land Politics, Agrarian Movements and Scholar-Activism". Inaugural Lecture, International Institute of Social Studies, April 14, 2016. Accessed February 8, 2017. http://repub.eur.nl/pub/93021/Jun_Borras_Inaugural_14Apr2016.pdf.

Carstensen-Egwuom, I. 2014. "Connecting Intersectionality and Reflexivity: Methodological Approaches to Social Positionalities". Erdkunde 68 (4): 265-76. https://doi.org/10.3112/erdkunde.2014.04.03.         [ Links ]

Chiweshe, M. 2018. "African Men and Feminism: Reflections on Using African Feminism in Research". Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 32 (2): 76-82. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2018.1460088.         [ Links ]

Collins, P. H. 2003. "Toward an Afrocentric Feminist Epistemology". In Turning Points in Qualitative Research: Tying Knots in a Handkerchief, edited by Y. S. Lincoln and N. K. Denzin, 47-72. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.         [ Links ]

Daniels, P. 2015. "Rhodes University's Black Student Movement Responds to Jonathan Jansen". Daily Maverick, March 29, 2015. Accessed June 6, 2018. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2015-03-29-rhodes-universitys-black-student-movement-responds-to-jonathan-jansen/#.WyEu40iFPIX.

DHET (Department of Higher Education and Training). 2017. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education and Training to the President of the Republic of South Africa. Pretoria: DHET. Accessed June 6, 2019. https://juta.co.za/media/filestore/2017/11/Commission_of_Inquiry_into_Higher_Education_and_Training_Report.pdf.         [ Links ]

Diale, L. 2019. "South African Graduates Continue to Struggle Post Graduation". Sunday Independent, May 27, 2019. Accessed June 6, 2020. https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/south-african-graduates-continue-to-struggle-post-graduation-24189315.

Ellingson, L. L. 2009. Engaging Crystallization in Qualitative Research: An Introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412991476.         [ Links ]

Ellingson, L. L. 2017. Embodiment in Qualitative Research. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315105277.         [ Links ]

Erskog, M. 2015. "Transformation in Action". Daily Dispatch, April 14, 2015. Accessed June 6, 2018. https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/opinion/2015-04-14-transformation-in-action/.

Eze, C. 2015. "Feminist Empathy: Unsettling African Cultural Norms in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives". African Studies 74 (3): 310-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2015.1067996.         [ Links ]

Few, A. L. 2007. "Integrating Black Consciousness and Critical Race Feminism into Family Studies Research". Journal of Family Issues 28 (4): 452-73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X06297330.         [ Links ]

Gbowee, L. 2011. Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War. London: Beast Books.         [ Links ]

Goetz, A.-M., and S. Hassim, eds. 2003. No Shortcuts to Power: African Women in Politics and Policy Making. Vol. 3. London: Zed Books.         [ Links ]

Grosfoguel, R. 2020. "Epistemic Extractivism: A Dialogue with Alberto Acosta, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Sylvia Rivera Cusicanqui". In Knowledges Born in the Struggle: Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South, edited by B. De Sousa Santos and M. P. Meneses, 203-18. New York, NY: Routledge.         [ Links ]

hooks, b. 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston, MA: South End Press.         [ Links ]

hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. London: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Jeynes, K. 2016. "FACTSHEET: How Many South African Students Graduate?" Africa Check, December 1, 2016. Accessed November 22, 2020. https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-many-south-african-students-graduate/.

Knowles, C. 2014a. "Vulnerability: Self-Study's Contribution to Social Justice Education". Perspectives in Education 32 (2): 89-101.         [ Links ]

Knowles, C. 2014b. "Shaking Foundations: Teaching and Learning in the Extended Studies Programme". Unpublished final portfolio submitted for the PG(Dip) HE.

Knowles, C. 2020. "Thanks Malaika for this: 'emotion is not lack of reason. The insistence on treating emotion as mutually exclusive from reason is rooted in Westernised formulations of what constitutes valid knowledge and what doesn't". Facebook, November 12, 2020. Accessed October 6, 2021. https://www.facebook.com/corinne.knowles.3/posts/10157265842211557.

Kraak, A., ed. 2000. Changing Modes: New Knowledge Production and Its Implications for Higher Education in South Africa. Pretoria: HSRC Press.         [ Links ]

Lewis, D. 2001. "African Feminisms". Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 16 (50): 4-10.         [ Links ]

Lewis, D. 2010. "Discursive Challenges for African Feminisms". In African Feminist Politics of Knowledge: Tensions, Challenges, Possibilities, edited by S. Arnfred and A. Adomako Ampofo, 205-21. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.         [ Links ]

Linden, A. 2017. "Unemployed Graduates in 'Flash Mob' Protests". Dispatch Online, February 23, 2017. Accessed June 6, 2018. https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2017-02-23-unemployed-graduates-in-flash-mob-protests/?fbclid=IwAR34EQzzyFbnMi3DdkDYAFbrLB25Z6d2hFOQSPokJwfJG7WV4e_DjwvbpOo.

Lundgren, N., and M. Prah. 2010. "Disappearing Dodos? Reflections on Women and Academic Freedom Based on Experiences in Ghana and the United States". In African Feminist Politics of Knowledge: Tensions, Challenges, Possibilities, edited by A. Adomako Ampofo and S. Arnfred, 157-86. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.         [ Links ]

Mahlangu, B. 2012. "Interviewing Bantu Biko-Extracts from His Quotes". News24, September 12, 2012. Accessed January 13, 2019. https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Interviewing-Bantu-Biko-Extracts-from-his-Quotes-20120912.

Mama, A. 2011. "The Challenges of Feminism: Gender, Ethics and Responsible Academic Freedom in African Universities". Journal of Higher Education in Africa/Revue de l'enseignement supérieur en Afrique 9 (1-2): 1-23.         [ Links ]

Mama, A. 2020. "Africa Talks: The Future of African Feminist Activism". Webinar hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Accessed November 11, 2020. https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2020/11/202011121400/africa.

Masola, A. 2018. "Women Who Wrote Themselves into History". Nal'ibali (blog), August 29, 2018. Accessed June 12, 2018. https://nalibali.org/women-who-wrote-themselves-into-history#.

Matthews, S. 2011. "Becoming African: Debating Post-Apartheid White South African Identities". African Identities 9 (1): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2011.530440.         [ Links ]

McLaren, J. I., and F. W. Struwig. 2019. "Financial Ratios as Indicators of Financial Sustainability at a South African University". Journal of Contemporary Management 16 (2): 68-93. https://doi.org/10.35683/jcm19030.0027.         [ Links ]

Mekgwe, P. 2007. "Theorizing African Feminism(s). The 'Colonial' Question". Matatu 35 (1): 165-74. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401205641_011.         [ Links ]

Mkabela, Q. 2005. "Using the Afrocentric Method in Researching Indigenous African Culture". The Qualitative Report 10 (1): 178-89.         [ Links ]

Mkhize, N. 2015. "Tenacious Belief in the Ideal of the University". Business Day, May 5, 2015. Accessed June 6, 2018. https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2015-05-05-tenacious-belief-in-the-ideal-of-the-university/.

Moletsane, R. 2015. "Whose Knowledge Is It? Towards Reordering Knowledge Production and Dissemination in the Global South". Educational Research for Social Change (ERSC) 4 (2): 35-47.         [ Links ]

Moloi, K., M. W. Makgoba, and C. O. Miruka. 2017. "(De)Constructing the# FeesMustFall Campaign in South African Higher Education". Contemporary Education Dialogue 14 (2): 211-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973184917716999.         [ Links ]

Motlafi, N. 2015. "Why Black Women in South Africa Don't Fully Embrace the Feminist Discourse". The Conversation, August 7, 2015. Accessed October 1, 2021. https://theconversation.com/why-black-women-in-south-africa-dont-fully-embrace-the-feminist-discourse-45116.

Ngcobozi, L. 2015. "RhodesSoWhite: An Insight". The Conmag, March 27, 2015. Accessed June 5, 2018. http://www.theconmag.co.za/2015/03/27/rhodessowhite-an-insight/.

Ntseane, P. G. 2011. "Culturally Sensitive Transformational Learning: Incorporating the Afrocentric Paradigm and African Feminism". Adult Education Quarterly 61 (4): 307-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713610389781.         [ Links ]

Oyëwùmi, O. 1997. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis, MS: University of Minnesota Press.         [ Links ]

Pather, S. 2018. "South Africa: The High Drop Out Rate of First-Year University Students". Inside Education, March 23, 2018. Accessed November 3, 2021. https://www.insideeducation.org/featured/south-africa-high-drop-rate-first-year-university-students/.

Salami, M. 2013. "A Brief History of African Feminism". MsAfropolitan (blog), July 2, 2013. Accessed January 10, 2020. https://www.msafropolitan.com/2013/07/a-brief-history-of-african-feminism.html.

Salami, M. 2017. "What Is African Feminism, Actually?" Ms Afropolitan (blog), December 7, 2017. Accessed June 5, 2020. https://www.msafropolitan.com/2017/12/what-is-african-feminism-actually.html.

Salo, E., and A. Mama. 2001. "Talking about Feminism in Africa". In Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 16 (50): 58-63.         [ Links ]

Skade, T. 2016. "Black Graduates, Mainly Women, at Highest Risk of Unemployment". Destiny Man. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://destinyman.com/2016/04/05/women-and-black-graduates-face-highest-unemployment-risk/?fbclid=IwAR0scvniGRwEeZXpZPSC6GwnRtVgKq5Dhdv7U4E75Ba0Cub7cXLmbpgEvzE.

Tamale, S. 2020. Decolonization and Afro-Feminism. Ottawa: Daraja Press.         [ Links ]

Tamale, S., and J. Oloka-Onyango. 1995. "'The Personal Is Political', or Why Women's Rights Are Indeed Human Rights: An African Perspective on International Feminism". Human Rights Quarterly 17 (4): 691-731. https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.1995.0037.         [ Links ]

Wa Azania, M. 2020. Corridors of Death: The Struggle to Exist in Historically White Institutions. Polokwane: Blackbird Books.         [ Links ]

Wane, N. N. 2008. "Mapping the Field of Indigenous Knowledges in Anti-Colonial Discourse: A Transformative Journey in Education". Race Ethnicity and Education 11 (2): 183-97. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320600807667.         [ Links ]

Wils, L. 2017. "Gender, Sexuality and Transformation in Higher Education". Mail & Guardian, September 29, 2017. Accessed October 23, 2018. https://mg.co.za/article/2017-09-29-00-gender-sexualithy-and-transformationin-higher-education.

 

 

1 At the university currently known as Rhodes, the Humanities Extended Studies Programme invites students into the programme based on a number of criteria, including matric marks that fall short of automatic entry into the Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Social Science (BSS) degrees, being the first in their family to go to university, and having received township or rural schooling. They are required to select one of two streams. Those I teach have selected Politics 1 and Sociology 1 as their mainstream subjects. They are taught computer and academic literacies, and most of our work involves the augmentation and literacies of their mainstream courses. The class size ranges between 30 and 45 students.
2 To use the term "black" to define the "race" of students is contested and complicated. It dates back to Steve Bantu Biko's Black Consciousness work during South African apartheid to reclaim blackness as a subjectivity in contrast to the divisive apartheid categories under the umbrella of "non-white" (see Mahlangu 2012). Former students who are part of the project self-identify as "black".
3 South African students' completion and pass rates are "raced" and classed. Recently, Jeynes (2020), of Africa Check, reported that "the completion rate for white students was vastly higher, at 71.6%. Black students had a 53.5% completion rate and coloured students a 53.8% completion rate. Asian students came in at 62.1%". Student protesters wrote about experiences of racism and frustration with a Western curriculum (see Daniels 2015; Erskog 2015).
4 Rhodes University was renamed the University Currently Known as Rhodes (UCKAR) by protesters and allies during the 2015/16 student protests. In 2018, following a decision by the Rhodes University Council to halt any consultative process around renaming, and instead to keep the name, some are using the acronym USKAR-the University Still Known as Rhodes. See Daniels (2015) for the argument to change the name.
5 Black feminism and African feminisms have many overlaps and some differences (see Salo and Mama 2001). While African feminisms are predominantly used in this study, African-American feminists also contribute ideas that align to African feminisms.
6 Mahlatsi, writing under the pen name Malaika Wa Azania, is an UCKAR graduate. She recently published Corridors of Death: The Struggle to Exist in Historically White Institutions (2020). The book outlines the mental health crises among black students in universities such as UCKAR. She routinely leaves Facebook for periods and breaks from the thousands of people who follow her there.
7 Many former and current students are Facebook friends, and my account is open, which means that even those who are not friends can access my page. I asked those who accessed my page to recommend others who might be interested in the research project.

^rND^sAdomako Ampofo^nA.^rND^sAhikire^nJ.^rND^sBlay^nY. A.^rND^sCarstensen-Egwuom^nI.^rND^sChiweshe^nM.^rND^sCollins^nP. H.^rND^sEze^nC.^rND^sFew^nA. L.^rND^sGrosfoguel^nR.^rND^sKnowles^nC.^rND^sLewis^nD.^rND^sLewis^nD.^rND^sLundgren^nN.^rND^nM.^sPrah^rND^sMama^nA.^rND^sMatthews^nS.^rND^sMcLaren^nJ. I.^rND^nF. W.^sStruwig^rND^sMekgwe^nP.^rND^sMkabela^nQ.^rND^sMoletsane^nR.^rND^sMoloi^nK.^rND^nM. W.^sMakgoba^rND^nC. O.^sMiruka^rND^sNtseane^nP. G^rND^sSalo^nE.^rND^nA.^sMama^rND^sTamale^nS.^rND^nJ.^sOloka-Onyango^rND^sWane^nN. N.^rND^1A01^nSara^sBlack^rND^1A01^nSara^sBlack^rND^1A01^nSara^sBlack

COMMENTARY

 

What Are Universities Really For? Re-imagining Stewardship

 

 

Sara Black

University of Johannesburg, South Africa sara.black.za@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2733-0504

 

 

What societies have wanted from their universities has been historically variable, internally contradictory, and only ever partly attainable. (Collini 2017, 17)

In July of 2021, an old "public" South African university announced the launch of a new private online high school. Although not the first time public South African universities had dabbled in private, for-profit activity, this particular example of overreach stimulated polarised debate across multiple channels, including an op-ed critique written by me published in the Daily Maverick (Black 2021).

However, much of the subsequent affirmation or opprobrium that op-ed attracted (and there was much of both) mistakes the specific example for a general problem. This essay attempts to expand the horizon of discussion to that general problem, namely, the state of higher education in South Africa in the contemporary moment and how we, as people who work in these institutions, understand our own role in affirming or challenging what universities are-descriptively and normatively-for.

To repeat Stefan Collini's (2012, 2017) enigmatic question: What are universitiesfor? He slyly noted, "one begins to wonder whether societies do not make some kind of Faustian pact when they set up universities: they ask [universities] to serve various practical purposes, but if they are to be given the intellectual freedom necessary to serve those purposes properly, they will always tend to exceed or subvert those purposes" (2012, 25; italics added). The main "purposes" of which Collini speaks tend to coalesce around two primary axes: firstly, the production of future "skilled" workers; and secondly, scholarship towards enhancing humanity's understanding of itself and/in the world (which also includes the production of future "skilled" scholars).

The current concern is that the former crowds out the latter, and that the policy climate internationally encourages this in an instrumentalist sense. Universities are certainly-at least currently-an apparatus of the contemporary "knowledge economy" wherein knowledge acquired is codified, certified and tradable on an increasingly globalised labour market for economic return. Such zero-sum knowledge-as-exchange-value depends on an inverse (and perverse) distribution of ignorance (Szkudlarek and Zamojski 2020), and is inevitably subject to the forces of any market, namely, the coercive laws of competition and falling rates of return on investment (aka "academic inflation"). Anyone who works in a university will recognise these trends: the increase in enrolment along with the decrease in the "value" of a degree; preference for commercially "high return on investment" degrees in commerce, law, science and technology, and the relations of competition between universities to attract what Stephen Ball (1994, 108) has called students who are "easy" to teach.

Yet to focus solely on this aspect of universities is reductionist. For they are also institutions of open-ended enquiry and emergence, resistance and inconvenient truths, creativity and exploration far beyond what can be rapidly turned over to technical Research and Development departments or patent registrars. Universities are not just production sites of knowledge-as-object (or students as object-holders), but also institutions that enable knowing-as-verb (Szkudlarek and Zamojski 2020), or what Heidegger (1968) distinguished as "thinking" rather than mere "calculating". Higher education institutions are, like basic education institutions, caught in a double-bind between "production" of graduates and patents and commodifiable discovery and "reproduction"-not just reproduction of thinking and open-ended enquiry, but the stewardship of the conditions required that this most human of practices may continue.

Concern for this role of stewardship of thinking beyond mere economic interest should not be mistaken for some kind of nostalgia; the story of universities is not one of decline ("Make Universities Great Again"). Rather, it is a story about the future-what kind of future we imagine for our institutions of higher education, and what threats we face in manifesting that future.

 

Threats to Universities as Social Institutions of Non-Commodified Scholarship

One threat universities face regarding their role as social institutions of scholarship in broader terms, I would argue, is our current obsession with the frame of "crisis".¹ It is amnesiac and conservative (not to mention tinged with aforementioned nostalgia). The contradictions now biting universities-inadequate funding, increased pressure to massify and provide "access" (whatever that means-cf. Greene 2021), increased interference in research priorities and foci by policymakers and private donors alike- did not arrive like a bolt out of the blue. If we notice the history of universities and their social function, the "advanced neoliberal moment" under which we struggle is not a departure from the past, but a logical conclusion of it-what is constituting a sense of "crisis" among academics and the academy is an uncomfortable confrontation with our own complicity and, as Collini puts it, "loss of nerve" (2017, 203) to overtly resist or imagine differently. Moreover, the "emergency" reactionism inherent in a response to a "crisis" privileges (re)action at the expense of careful analysis and strategy concerning what is to be done beyond hand-wringing. "Crisis" is a paralysing discourse, reducing responses to weak individualistic acts of defiance rather than coordinated efforts to refuse.

The second threat to our ability to imagine our future universities beyond extensions of what they currently are is a kind of schizophrenia wherein we believe we can somehow have "the best of both"-that somehow universities can be the darlings of private capital's insatiable techno-appetite and behave like profit-seeking enterprises, while also being autonomous places of thinking and questioning. This schizophrenia is exemplified in a recent op-ed by the vice-chancellor of another prominent South African university (Marwala 2021), which insists that universities are simultaneously to embrace logics and values of private enterprises and yet not. Such schizophrenia ignores the innate tendency for the pursuit of profit (or "savings", as it is framed in neoliberalised public institutions) to consume all else in its wake, a caution sounded by Rosa Luxemburg ([1913] 2016) over a hundred years ago.

Finally, a third threat to universities' continued ability to fulfil the social function of novel knowledge production beyond mere narrow economism is the myth of disinterest among academics. This myth persists in two forms: firstly, in the idea that non-commodified research is somehow "disinterested" and hence can claim a loftier moral righteousness; secondly, that academics seem to think themselves immune to the vicissitudes of broader society, given their somewhat removed position to pursue skholé (time free to think and dwell).

On the first form: whatever our foci of research (and teaching), we cannot, to paraphrase Sartre (1948), choose that which we do not believe to be better. Our interest might not be overtly economic, but it nonetheless exists (cf. Bourdieu 1988), and disavowing whatever interest motivates academics allows such interests to escape scrutiny or reflection. That is, rather than arguing for an ivory tower conception of "disinterest", we need to reclaim the concept of interest in social and humane terms from the economic definition that would subsume all others.

The second form of disinterest emanates from the conservative form of the first- namely, that believing oneself to operate in a "disinterested" institution leads to the false assumption that the institution is not in the world and hence not subject to the problems of that world. Some naivete might have led scholars to not look up from their books and notice the library is (figuratively) burning. This second form of disinterest has perhaps, for some, meant that early warning signs have been ignored until the eleventh hour.

 

The South African Case

The issues I have outlined here are not new insights; many before me have noticed and discussed them at length (e.g., Cribb and Gewirtz 2013; Sidhu 2006). But the South African higher education landscape, I would wager-in addition to struggling with these more general concerns-has some homegrown ones of its own.

The first is in how the structure of South African economic inequality, along with the distribution and form of economic activity, has placed higher education institutions as the vehicle of economic hope. The past 28 years of democracy have seen a lack of development in economic sectors that do not rely on university education (e.g., primary and manufacturing sectors), with growth confined to high-skill service industries (finance, for example) (see Allais 2020). In addition, the advent of democracy brought promises of access to previously out-of-reach institutions for most citizens of the country, expanding demand for places almost overnight. As a result, competition for university education is at fever pitch, and returns for those who succeed are generous (for now). Furthermore, given the economic conditions from which most South African tertiary students hail, it is unsurprising that fees have become a contentious fracture in the sector: most students cannot afford them, and most universities rely on them.

With a basic education system that continues to fail the majority of children who attend (roughly 20% of first graders get a shot at university at all), and a formal labour market unable to provide those who are not university-trained with a reasonable quality of life, it is unsurprising that reaching university is seen as the pinnacle of social achievement for many South Africans. Other routes to a sustainable and comfortable life are almost non-existent.

South African universities are thus tasked with making an unviable society viable (Fanon 2018)-a mandate they will inevitably fail to fulfil. Given this, it seems a fait accompli these institutions will be (eventually) deemed as freeloaders not meeting their end of an impossible social compact, and hence needing "discipline". As I wrote this essay, the committee chairperson of the South African Parliamentary Committee of Higher Education, Science and Technology called for public comment on the issue of "the relationship between institutional autonomy and public accountability", stating that there are "on-going concerns by various stakeholders regarding the use of institutional autonomy and an apparent resistance experienced by various stakeholders when state interventions are required" (PMG 2021). What is missing from this framing of the problem is a broader perspective of what South African universities are being asked to do, and the conditions under which they are being asked to do it.

In addition to the inordinate pressure on South African higher education institutions to miraculously transform the material conditions of the country (despite the failures of the systems upon which they depend), many are now also in need of cultural transformation in a moment of economic austerity. These two imperatives produce an unholy contradiction. That universities should be demographically reflective of the society they serve is necessary for their continued legitimacy, as well as to ensure pluralistic, robust scholarship and teaching. But to undertake this transformation just as budgets are slashed and admissions enlarged is to set up the incoming vanguard of young new academics to fail, irrespective of what they do. Inevitably, shallow racialised narratives will blame the degradation on the cultural rather than the economic, as is the wont in South African circles. In this way, incentives to circumvent austerity funding through seeking alternative (problematic) income streams become even stronger.

The sustenance of amnesia, schizophrenia, or faux disinterest cannot persist if the unique purpose of a public university-beyond being an extension of corporate research and development (R&D) or secondary schooling-is to be retained. No amount of "relevance" through embracing the new fetish of the labour market (e.g., the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution [4IR] and Artificial Intelligence [AI]), nor of sandbagging against the failures of other social systems (e.g., setting up a private feeder high school) will spare universities the exigencies they can now no longer ignore. Universities must somehow overcome their current tendency to behave in an individualistic manner and forge what Bourdieu called "collective intellectualism" towards a "scholarship of commitment" (Bourdieu 2003, 24), a scholarship that thinks forward in terms of systems, purpose and long-term public interest, rather than narrow economism or reactionary defensiveness. Such "collective" effort may very well include outright "refusal" to participate in the erosion of our public responsibility (Ball 2015).

This essay is not intended to be Cassandrist. There is much in our universities worth fighting for, and there are many who would take up cudgels for it. Such efforts are not motivated by a backward-looking revisionism, but by a hopeful future-oriented gaze; we may not yet know what knowledge we will produce in the future to the benefit of society, or yet how to imagine universities that minimise symbolic violence, even-dare we dream-exist outside class relations. What we do know is that such imagining and knowledge production cannot happen under the burgeoning market conditions under which we currently labour, and that the future university to which the next generation will look will be an impoverished one should we not "find our nerve" to insist there are alternatives. Whatever universities are for in any one time or place, they share one common purpose: the stewardship of institutional conditions to continue the pursuit of knowing-as-verb, asking new questions and re-asking old ones, free of narrow economism, coercion or threat, or any hegemonic episteme. In South Africa in particular, the protection of these conditions is all the more essential to forging pathways out of the tangled social problems we face.

Obsequious deference to market forces and New Managerialism is condescending to future generations, since we are essentially deciding they must accept a much narrower type of education than that which we ourselves enjoyed (Collini 2017). While universities have not always prioritised the public interest task of emergent, creative work, there are no other institutions that create these conditions. We should not abandon these sites, compromised and contradictory as they are, believing that ad hoc individual efforts or profit-driven private alternatives could suffice in their absence. To do so is to disavow our responsibility as public scholars to continuously wrestle with how we might best realise that fragile and tenacious ideal we call the public good.

 

References

Allais, S. 2020. "Skills for Industrialization in Sub-Saharan African Countries: Why Is Systemic Reform of Technical and Vocational Systems So Persistently Unsuccessful?" Journal of Vocational Education and Training 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2020.1782455.

Ball, S. J. 1994. Education Reform: A Critical and Post-Structural Approach. Buckingham: Open University Press.         [ Links ]

Ball, S. J. 2015. "What Is Policy? 21 Years Later: Reflections on the Possibilities of Policy Research". Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 36 (3): 306-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2015.1015279.         [ Links ]

Berlant, L. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822394716.         [ Links ]

Bourdieu, P. 1988. Homo Academicus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.         [ Links ]

Bourdieu, P. 2003. Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market 2. Translated by L. Wacquant. New York, NY: The New Press.         [ Links ]

Black, S. 2021. "UCT Online High School: Reproducing Elites in a Sea of Inequality and Ignoring the Rest". Daily Maverick, August 18, 2021. Accessed September 16, 2021. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2021-08-18-uct-online-high-school-reproducing-elites-in-a-sea-of-inequality-and-ignoring-the-rest/.

Collini, S. 2012. What Are Universities For? London: Penguin Books.         [ Links ]

Collini, S. 2017. Speaking of Universities. New York, NY: Verso Books.         [ Links ]

Cribb, A., and S. Gewirtz. 2013. "The Hollowed-Out University? A Critical Analysis of Changing Institutional and Academic Norms in UK Higher Education". Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 34 (3): 338-50. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2012.717188.         [ Links ]

Fanon, F. 2018. Alienation and Freedom. London: Bloomsbury Academic.         [ Links ]

Greene, D. 2021. The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11674.001.0001.         [ Links ]

Heidegger, M. 1968. What Is Called Thinking? Translated J. G. Gray. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.         [ Links ]

Luxemburg, R. (1913) 2016. The Accumulation ofCapital: A Contribution to the Economic Theory of Imperialism. Translated by N. Gray. In The Complete Work of Rosa Luxemburg Volume II: Economic Writings 2, edited P. Hudis and P. le Blanc, 1-342. London: Verso Books.         [ Links ]

Marwala, T. 2021. "As Universities Remodel as Businesses, They Need to be Wary of Losing Core Mandates". Daily Maverick, September 5, 2021. Accessed September 16, 2021. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2021-09-05-as-universities-remodel-as-businesses-they-need-to-be-wary-of-losing-core-mandates/.

PMG (Parliamentary Monitoring Group). 2021. "Call for Comments: Institutional Autonomy of Public Higher Education Institutions". PMG, September 3, 2021. Accessed September 16, 2021. https://pmg.org.za/call-for-comment/1091/.

Sartre, J.-P. 1948. Existentialism and Humanism. London: Butler and Tanner.         [ Links ]

Sidhu, R. K. 2006. Universities and Globalization: To Market, To Market. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.         [ Links ]

Szkudlarek, T., and P. Zamojski. 2020. "Education and Ignorance: Between the Noun of Knowledge and the Verb of Thinking". Studies in Philosophy and Education 39: 577-90. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-020-09718-9.         [ Links ]

 

 

1 Lauren Berlant (2011) astutely notes the use of the idea of "crisis" as a middle-class strategy for a-historicising extant problems long in the making.

^rND^sBall^nS. J.^rND^sCribb^nA.^rND^nS.^sGewirtz^rND^sLuxemburg^nR.^rND^sSzkudlarek^nT.^rND^nP.^sZamojski^rND^1A01^nBarry Lee^sReynolds^rND^1A02^nMelissa H.^sYu^rND^1A01^nBarry Lee^sReynolds^rND^1A02^nMelissa H.^sYu^rND^1A01^nBarry Lee^sReynolds^rND^1A02^nMelissa H^sYu

ARTICLE

 

A Language Course to Teach Administrative Staff English for Communication in an International University

 

 

Barry Lee Reynolds^I; Melissa H. Yu^II

^IFaculty of Education, Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Macau, China barryreynolds@um.edu.mo, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3984-2059
^IIFaculty of Education, University of Macau, China huiyenyu@um.edu.mo. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2594-5732

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

A qualitative case study was conducted to triangulate student interviews, a teacher's reflection report, and classroom observation data to understand how a local language course prepared Taiwanese administrative staff for international communication across working contexts in an international university. The findings firstly show that the teacher treated course planning as a teacher and student process of co-developing, co-moderating, co-revising, and co-managing learning resources and content. The teacher empowered the administrative staff by giving them the authority to select language targets for study that the staff thought would be useful to fulfil their job duties. Secondly, participation of the administrative staff was important in creating and managing language resources for international communication. The teacher used vocabulary and dialogue writing and speaking practices that were contextualised to the needs of the administrative staff. The targeted vocabulary was selected by the administrative staff based on gaps in their knowledge and was then used to co-construct dialogues that addressed scenarios the staff had previously encountered that necessitated the use of English with internationals. Thirdly, developing the course to address the administrative staff s communication needs was a process of rebalancing teacher autonomy, learner autonomy, and course development. Both the teacher and the students perceived the course effective in encouraging practical changes in the administrative staff s learning and use of English, which they mostly attributed to the non-formal nature of the course and the support from higher management. Implications for planning and implementing English language courses for international communication were drawn from the findings.

Keywords: EIL; ELF; WE; course development; materials development; teaching English for administrative purposes; teacher autonomy; learner autonomy

---

 

 

Introduction

The varying nature of communicative language use in global contexts has resulted in the establishment of several paradigms used to illuminate communicative phenomena in various global situations. For example, some English as a lingua franca (ELF) scholars argue for a non-static dynamic perspective that conceptualises linguistic and cultural resources emerging from or embedded in international communicative discourse (Baker 2015; Jenkins 2015). Expanding the scope of multilingualism, Pennycook and Otsuji (2015, 180) argue that English is not simply a language used as a lingua franca or used in prescribed context(s), but a "highly variable multilingual franca". Following this, Pennycook and Otsuji (2015, 180) coined the term "metrolingua franca" to highlight communicative English language use with a "spatial repertoire" emergent from diverse communication places as well as with the interactive connection to the local language practice and contexts.

The afore-cited paradigms (that is, ELF and metrolingua franca) have made considerable advancements in understanding English language use in global contexts. Furthermore, the paradigmatic knowledge about English for international communication has formed an academic think tank, offering scholars ideas and research routes to reconsider established English language courses and professional training programmes. Still, it is questionable whether the learners' needs are always at the centre of this growing body of research. Recently, Rose, McKinley, and Galloway (2021) conducted a review of pedagogical research showcasing the trajectory of English as a global lingua franca. Their review highlights researchers' overindulgence in theoretical "jibber-jabber" alongside a severe lack of longitudinal research designs aimed at investigating classroom contexts outside the traditional university language classroom. The debates about the needs of "multicompetent speakers" are questionable because it is not always clear whose interests these debates serve. The divide between theory and practice is shortening (Rose, McKinley, and Galloway 2021), but without inviting learners to take part in this process.

Over the past five years, research in EFL (English as a foreign language) or ESL (English as a second language) contexts has examined the application of ELF, WE (World Englishes), or EIL (English as an international language) to design courses. The studies aimed to 1) create opportunities for students to explore topics about English and its use in global communicative contexts, 2) discuss how courses influence students' perceptions of introduced topics, and 3) consider the implications of the introduction of concepts. For instance, Chang (2014) planned and taught a two-hour weekly course, World Englishes, in which 22 undergraduates participated and reflected on which topic(s) informed their learning the most. The course helped Taiwanese undergraduates "re-examine some of their deep-rooted beliefs about English" (Chang 2014, 24) and redefined "the purpose of language learning" (Chang 2014, 25). For those participants who wished to become English language teachers in the future, integrating "WE into existing curriculums" (Chang 2014, 26) became one pedagogical option.

Similar studies were conducted to document how the concepts of EIL or ELF have been applied to innovate existing TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) teacher training programmes in ESL contexts (Kang 2017) or plan new ELF-based courses in EFL contexts (Fang and Ren 2018). Specifically, Kang (2017) investigated how the concepts of EIL were incorporated into an existing United States-based teacher training programme. Kang's study identified a transformative versus reserved perspective among Chinese and Korean teacher trainees. This bimodal perspective was reflected in the extent to which their teaching could be considered EIL-oriented after receiving the training. Similarly, Fang and Ren (2018) found teaching a Global Englishes course to undergraduates effectively developed students' awareness of linguistic diversity, motivated them to challenge the native-speaking (NS) normative approach to developing communicative competence, and left the students with a positive perception of global Englishes. The reviewed courses/programmes focused on how theoretical constructs of WE, EIL or ELF influenced students' or teacher trainees' perceptions of English language and its use (Chang 2014). Although these and similar studies on EIL/ELF-framed courses have provided valuable insights into participants' perceptual changes about English language and its communicative use, an insufficient amount of discussion has taken place about the potential of participants' perceptual changes bringing about practical changes in English use or acquisition.

Unlike the reviewed studies that focused on the execution of courses, Sung (2018) designed an out-of-class activity attached to an English language course. In Sung's study, 18 undergraduates used the English learned inside the classroom to communicate with international students outside the classroom. The analysis of students' weekly record of communicative language use and end-of-semester reflection reports showed that their real-world communication experience changed their perceptions of English language use. They came to appreciate the linguistic diversity of English, which challenged the native-speaking linguistic norms and ensured the legitimacy of intelligible English language use. They also grasped "the importance of communicative strategies" while recognising "the value of multilingual resources" (Sung 2018, 21). Students expressed how they benefited from this course: it provided opportunities for them to become English language users and to practise applying strategies to establish intercultural partnerships in global communication contexts. Sung's (2018) investigation pointed to a new research direction when he explored how these 18 undergraduates understood ELF based on their communicative experiences. In other words, Sung was more focused on the student perspective. Unlike other studies (Fang and Ren 2018), Sung (2018) did not select specific WE, EIL, or ELF concepts to incorporate into the course. The course did not subject the students to a prescribed scope of understanding about these international communication phenomena.

The reviewed literature shows a tendency for researchers who ascribe to a WE, EIL or ELF mindset to reject the native-speaking Standard English, and the monolingual normative approaches to teach and learn English (Dogancay-Aktuna and Hardman 2018). The rejection of more traditional approaches by those who advocate modern language learning ideologies has created a new polarised way of thinking about international English pedagogy. Regardless of whether we looked to empirical research articles or book volumes, the existing literature highlighted the pedagogical value of rejecting particular perspectives for teaching and learning English. Examples include discussions of the linguistic normative dominance in teaching and learning materials (Yu 2015), international language assessment systems (Jenkins and Leung 2016), English language curriculum (Xu 2018), and pedagogical ideas and praxis (Galloway and Rose 2018; Matsuda 2017), among others. Clearly, rejecting particular approaches to teaching and learning has become the backbone of international English language pedagogy, forming a picture of what mainstream international English language courses should look like. Instead of targeting a linguistic ideology as a scapegoat, it is important to understand whether an approach has become the main factor that has steered the teaching and learning of English away from international communication in local contexts.

Although in the past three decades rejecting a linguistic normative approach and raising the awareness of English linguistic diversity have become the mainstream of international English language pedagogy, it should not be seen as the only or even the primary way to frame pedagogy. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to the teaching of the English language. Besides, rejecting the linguistic normative approach may be necessary for one teaching context or one student cohort but not for another. For instance, raising students' awareness of the linguistic diversity of English was found to be quite helpful for one Taiwanese student cohort (Chang 2014), but not necessarily an urgent need for another (Yu 2018). While placing reliance on rejecting the linguistic normative approach to frame international English language courses has formed a dominant way to think of ELF pedagogy, other ways to think about glocal pedagogy should also be identified. As McKay and Brown (2016, 60) have argued, "the final decision on whether or not to adopt, adapt, or develop a locally defined EIL course should depend not only on the teacher's beliefs but also on factors in the local context that need to be thought through". The current study identified how a teacher planned and implemented an English for international communication course specifically for one student cohort.

As Leung and Lewkowicz (2018, 70) argue, "teachers themselves could determine what is relevant for their learners in terms of models of language and language use, in addition to (or even instead of) the ones imposed by others including textbooks and official curriculum statements". Expanding this argument, we feel that developing an English language course for international communication should not be restricted to any prescribed or unidirectional scope. We are aware that there are particular strengths and weaknesses associated with adopting or adapting EIL, ELF, and WE paradigms to teach English for international communication. We also are aware of the dangers in assuming any particular English language user will or will not encounter any particular international community situation that may or may not require English language use. Thus, it is not feasible for us to suggest which paradigm is more or less suited for any number of scenarios that can or cannot be foreseen. Instead, this article has begun with a balanced approach to reviewing previous literature by discussing empirical studies framed within these research paradigms. We use the term EIL as an alternative to ELF or WE; however, we draw upon the paradigmatic knowledge of the latter to explain the international communicative use, learning, and teaching of English in the course analysed. We analysed both how an in-service teacher designed and delivered a language course aimed at developing students' international communicative competence and what the learning outcomes were.

 

Methodology

A qualitative case study method was adopted to explore an English language course designed by a local in-service teacher to develop students' communicative competence. This methodological decision corresponds to one of Stake's (1995) suggestions for conducting qualitative case studies by identifying which activities will and will not be discussed in the studied case. Within this framework, the focus of this study was on the locally designed English language course, not on a course focused on incorporating EIL theoretical constructs. The theoretical constructs of EIL are drawn upon to discuss the analysis of this qualitative case study, not to frame this study in terms of pre-determining which learning activities are or are not related to English for international communication. This methodological decision also corresponds to Richards's (2003) point about taking a critical perspective when framing a research study by not beginning the project with a paradigmatic alignment. An open approach was necessary to interpret what an international English language course meant to a local in-service teacher and his students, not what such a course should look like according to the existing literature.

 

Research Questions

Three questions were formed to address the concerns that arose from the literature discussed above.

1. When planning and teaching the language course, what did the teacher prioritise to teach administrative staff students in order to help them communicate with international students in a university?

2. What were the main teaching/learning principles used to design and implement the language course?

3. Did the administrative staff students and teacher perceive this language course effective in encouraging the use of English at workplaces for international communication?

 

Research Context

This case study was conducted at an international university in Taiwan. Due to the internationalisation of higher education in Taiwan, the number of international students increased in this university. With the 28 international students enrolled in courses in the School of Management, the administrative staff in this university reported to the School of Management Dean about their needs when using English to communicate with international students. To address the administrative staff s language needs, the dean decided to plan a four-month language course to develop the administrative staff s communicative competence. This course was not compulsory, so it was the administrative staff and not the dean who decided that they needed this language training.

 

Participants

Twenty female administrative staff (students, henceforth) enrolled in the language course and were divided into four groups of five students each. Each student had the opportunity to meet the teacher once a week for an hour. Before this course, each student had received between six and 10 years' English language education within the Taiwanese national education system. Apart from the international English language use experience at the university, most students had few opportunities to use English for communication on a daily basis.

Before the data collection, all students received an email with information about the purposes of the current study, the voluntary research activities, and the ways their confidentiality as participants would be ensured. The students were informed that their attendance and language performance would not affect any work review. All students were provided with opportunities to ask questions about this study. Based on the students' understanding of this research, all students who enrolled in this course agreed to take part in this study. While all students agreed to be videoed in class, only seven students agreed to be interviewed. Only two students agreed to write reflection reports about their learning experiences.

This case study also recruited a native-speaking teacher of English who completed his undergraduate and master's degree studies in the United States (US) and PhD study in Taiwan. At the time of the study, the teacher had two years' ESL teaching experience in the US context and 11 years' EFL teaching experience in the Taiwanese context. In the US, he mainly taught academic reading and academic oral skills courses. After arriving to Taiwan, he taught a wide range of English language courses at different universities, including teaching EFL skills-based courses, introductory English literature courses, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses. None of these courses had a direct link with the concepts of EIL and related pedagogical paradigms. Yet, he had experience teaching English for communication purposes to different student cohorts in the US and Taiwan.

The teacher and the students had a collegial and professional relationship. Although the main purpose of the teacher's interactions with the students during class was to assist with their learning of English for communication purposes, due to the similarity in age, interests, and life experiences, some of the students felt comfortable enough to approach the teacher outside class to converse with him about their work lives and struggles. This may have given him an advantage in course design as he could draw upon the language difficulties the students shared with him to steer the course in particular directions to meet students' needs.

 

Data Collection and Analysis

This study analysed 1) interviews with seven students and one teacher, 2) the reflection reports of two students and one teacher, and 3) two hours of video showing 20 students practising English conversation with student-written dialogues. Qualitative research often has small sample sizes as it is fundamental to methods of inquiry such as case study (Creswell 2019); the data collected for the current study was adequate for addressing the three research questions. Furthermore, as the video recording was of students' active engagement in communicative language use, it provided rich data (Given 2008).

Teacher and Student Reflection Reports

The students were offered a guide with questions to help them reflect on the process and results of learning from the course (see Appendix 1). Two of them provided reflection reports after this course. The researchers asked the teacher to write an open-ended reflection report that included a discussion on the topics he thought an English language course for international communication should cover; the teacher had a set of topics to structure the reflection report (see Appendix 2). The reflection focused on the development of the course and how the teacher planned and taught the course.

Interviews

Based on the preliminary analysis of the teacher's reflection report, two sets of interview questions were formulated to carry out two email interviews with the teacher (see Appendix 3). The first interview focused on how the teacher planned this language course and the underlying theories to support his pedagogical decisions. The other set of questions used for the second interview explored the foci, strategies, principles, and evaluation of teaching and learning. Seven out of 20 students volunteered to be interviewed at the end of this course (see Appendix 4). These students chose to be interviewed in English but some of them used Chinese to clarify their intended meanings when necessary. The teacher also chose to be interviewed in English although he is a fluent Chinese speaker.

Observational Videos

Classroom observational videos were made to record students' language practice when using the dialogues they wrote. From the beginning of the course, the teacher positioned a video camera at the front of the classroom to make the students familiar with its presence. However, the video camera was only turned on when the students were engaged in communicative conversation practice. This type of data was used as a supplementary resource to support the discussion of the findings that resulted from the analysis of the interviews and reflection reports.

Interpretative Content Analysis

All interviews and observational videos were transcribed verbatim. Interpretive content analysis was carried out to analyse the data by referring to relevant contextual information with the aim to answer three what-and-how research questions (Drisko and Maschi 2013). Interpretive content analysis can deepen the understanding of the meanings of text contents as a result of the increase of research validity (Drisko and Maschi 2013).

Coding

Coding was carried out according to the existing main themes, which emerged from the reviewed literature, namely, "what to teach", "how to teach", and "course usefulness". Through rereading, cross-referencing, labelling, and categorising the data, six subthemes emerged. Regarding "what to teach", two subthemes were identified: "learner needs" and "using a vocabulary list to write international communication dialogues". The two subthemes "practise using English to interact" and "underpinning teaching principles" emerged from the main theme "how to teach". For the main theme "course usefulness", the following subthemes emerged: "teacher's evaluation" and "students' evaluation". The findings of this study presented below address the three research questions.

 

Findings and Discussion

When planning and teaching the language course, what did the teacher prioritise to teach students in order to help them communicate with international students in a university?

The teacher began planning and teaching this course by producing materials collaboratively with the students. Prior to this course, the teacher indicated that the Dean of the School of Management gave him a vocabulary list, which included the names of buildings/departments/faculties at the university and administrative terms for the students to familiarise themselves with. Addressing students' needs by learning and using profession-related words echoes the educational conventions or language need assessment discussed by research in the fields of ESP and EAP (Coxhead 2018; Wang, Liang, and Ge 2008). However, as will be described below, the students created their own vocabulary lists based on their need to use English in their workplace.

In addition to the word list provided by the dean, the teacher let students create a new word list. Students proposed the words that they wished they knew in English because they had encountered a situation in which they needed to know a term in English but did not know it. The students were also encouraged by the teacher to share words with each other so that they could compare unknown and known words to help build up the new word list. The students' vocabulary list derived from their language use experience and directly addressed their language learning needs. This was different from the word list provided by the dean who made the list based on his assumptions about what vocabulary the staff may need. So, learning to use the words identified by each student ensured the relevance of the content of vocabulary learning to their language use. "Encouraging learners to connect with the language in their personal lives" increases language authenticity (Pinner 2016, 49).

In addition, the teacher designed a learning activity to co-produce learning materials by writing communicative dialogues with students. The teacher co-produced dialogues based on the information he gathered from the students' reports on their communicative experiences in their workplace. The students were then given copies of the dialogues typed by the teacher and "encouraged to read and discuss the dialogues in order to explain and share with one another" (Teacher interview one) and revise them. The teacher indicated that the rationale behind this activity was that "students may have different communicative experience in different international contexts" (Teacher interview two). In other words, "even though [administrative] staff were working in [the same] university" (Teacher interview one), they held different administrative positions engaging in dissimilar communicative activities that shaped each student's linguistic repertoire. Extract 1¹ below illustrates an example of the spoken language produced based on one of the written dialogues. The teacher's conception of the relationship between the students' language use and multiple communicative contexts echoes Hall, Cheng, and Carlson's (2006, 232) point that language should not be conceptualised as "a-context-bound language system".

Extract 1

A: Hello Mr C, I'm D, a graduate student from the Department of Business Administration. I have a question regarding student scholarships. Could you please tell

me how to apply?

B: I'm not familiar with the process either but I can ask if someone can help you. Please wait here for a few minutes.

A: Sure, uh that is so kind of you. Thank you.

B: Okay, D. I contact the office of international affairs regarding your inquiry. The office informed me that you must submit an application before July 15th in order to apply. This application must include a completed application form with an attached photo, uh your latest academic transcript, a copy of your ARC, and a copy of your passport. Here is the application form.

Extract 1 above shows content grounded in students' own language knowledge and resources emerging from their real-world communication experience across professional contexts. As Widdowson (1998, 711) observed, "real language, then, is local language in that it is always associated with specific contextual realities". The content of learning also did not illustrate pre-packaged language knowledge presented in traditional textbooks for students to learn, as Yu (2018) has discussed. The dialogue-based learning materials represented the students' knowledge about language use in communication activities for administrative purposes. This finding aligned with Hall Cheng, and Carlson's (2006, 232) point that language is "grounded in and emergent from language use in concrete social activity for specific purposes".

In sum, the results firstly indicate that the teacher's way of thinking about learning materials was not tied to any set of predetermined linguistic resources for students to learn from. The content was not based on prior assumptions about which set of ELF/EIL-related language knowledge ought to be incorporated into locally designed courses (Chang 2014; Fang and Ren 2018). To be specific, the language knowledge concerning learning and using EIL for communication was not tied to any fixed ways of understanding the English language and its use. The vocabulary list and dialogues developed by the students illustrated how international English language communication was used across glocal working contexts in multiple ways to complete administrative tasks. The learning materials depicting students' language use experience corresponded to Tomlinson and Masuhara's (2010) conceptualisation of authentic materials: they should "provide an experience of the language in use" (2010, 400). Most of the learning resources were proposed and produced by the students. The students decided which learning materials and content would be used in the course. In contrast, the teacher assisted the students by collecting and managing the learning materials. The role of the teacher was that of a material manager, not a learning material writer, provider, or decision maker.

What were the main teaching/learning principles used to design and implement the language course?

This section explores the underlying principles that supported the teacher's decision on what and how to teach. Firstly, the teacher felt that the students' jobs "required the knowledge of certain administrative vocabulary that they did not know, and these needed to be understood so they could communicate with the internationals on campus" (Teacher interview one). The idea of learning professional vocabulary to express intended messages was also recognised as an essential skill for nurses to communicate with international patients or healthcare providers in Taiwan (Lu 2018). Secondly, the teacher thought that this course should focus on "the target vocabulary that they [students] had previously mentioned that they needed to know" (Teacher interview one) for work. The teacher's idea of familiarising students with vocabulary needed for work echoes McKay and Brown's (2016, 61) argument for EIL instruction to set realistic learning goals by assessing students' needs. Thirdly, if one student "encountered this need then maybe another would as well" (Teacher interview one) and constructing the vocabulary list created an opportunity for the students to explore vocabulary they may encounter in the future. Lastly, the teacher encouraged the students to choose words they needed to learn for work purposes. Selecting words to express meaning at workplaces echoes Nation's (2013) point about learning well-selected words. Nation (2013, 14) observed that "a relatively small amount of well-chosen vocabulary can allow learners to do a lot". It is important that students are learning practicable vocabulary.

The teacher felt he "could understand ... the problems or information that [international] students may need" and could help the students in his class by providing support through the co-construction of English dialogues. The teacher and students discussed "what was wrong with the dialogues that the teacher had co-written" and then the "[students] would suggest changes". According to the teacher, "about 50% of the dialogues would be changed". After two months of doing this, the teacher advised the students "to generate discussion in class and write . dialogues" on their own with the help of their vocabulary list; they were encouraged to draw upon their resources.

When the teacher was asked for the reasons behind asking the students to create the learning materials (that is, dialogues) on their own, he firstly replied that he wanted to "show students that they had the language amongst them if they only worked together to share their knowledge. In a community of practice they could share with one another what would be needed to perform their job duties." Through this process, the students learned how to use English to communicate with international students by interacting and negotiating with their colleagues who had similar experiences. Secondly, the teacher reported, "I could not anticipate questions" about international communication that "I [had] not experience[d] in the past" and "I [could] only guess at what encounters they may have". Clearly, the teacher recognised that he could not present the unexpected communicative situations in the learning materials for the students to learn from. The teacher's response to the challenges of the unexpected communicative situations resonates with Pennycook's (2012, 131) observation about classrooms: "[W]e know we can only understand some of what is happening and can never know what is about to come." Thirdly, against the backdrop of the unexpected communication situations, the teacher shared in the teacher reflection report:

I did not know how long I would be able to guide students, so I knew it was up to me to give them as much support and information as possible. ... If I had to leave them, they would be able to carry on their learning independently. So, I was a support for them in writing dialogues initially but then I wanted them to be able to do so independently. . They could empower themselves to think about how they may handle future interactions with the internationals they encountered on campus.

The teacher's comment above reveals that while students developed learning autonomy, they also developed their communicative fluency. From the teacher's point of view, developing students' fluency and autonomy were not two separate things. The more students became autonomous in learning and using English, the better they would be able to handle communicative situations in the future when he would not be their teacher. This finding corresponds to Little's (2007, 14) claim that "the development of learner autonomy and the growth of target language proficiency are mutually supporting and fully integrated with each other".

The students paired off or grouped up to practise using English to communicate. When students used the dialogues to practise, they began with reading. First, there was silent reading, then the teacher's read out loud for students to hear, and then "students took turns reading". After silently reading, students paired off to "practise reading dialogues out loud" (Teacher interview two). The reading aloud was used as a warm-up and a scaffold for students who were not used to or had reservations about speaking in English. The reading aloud allowed the staff to "hear the other staff speak English" so that it might make them "more willing to speak" (Teacher interview two) in English. Finally, students were asked to "try to recall the content" of dialogues through practised conversations. All throughout the process of individual reading, group reading, and group conversing, "students used individual words or sometimes phrases to confirm their understanding of the conversation" (Teacher interview two). When the students practised the dialogues, the written dialogues were not used as a reference. Instead, the students recalled the content and practised the dialogues repeatedly. Repeatedly conversing about the same topic with different speaking partners under time pressure has been shown to result in improvements in speaking fluency (Nation 2007, 2013; Nation and Yamamoto 2012). Extract 2 illustrates an example of how two students used one of the written dialogues to practise conversing in English.

Extract 2

A: Oh, well um, but I am not very sure where the administration building is located. Can you please tell me where it is?

B: Do you know the location of library?

A: Of course! Yes, I often read books and magazines there.

B: Okay, uh the kiosk is on the side of the building facing the library. Uh by the way, the cost is 10 NT dollars, and your academic transcript will immediately print at the kiosk after paying.

A: Oh, thank you for your explanation. Um, I will prepare you mentioned the documents you mentioned before as soon as possible. However, um, ((I)) ((uh I)) lost however, I not sure uh whether can where I can fill out the application form correctly.

B: If you have any question regarding how to complete application form, you can either come to the department office to ask me or go directly to the office of international

affairs.

A: Okay, I see. Uh, ((is there)) anything else I have to do?

B: Oh yes! Uh there is one little thing I have to I need to tell you. I need to verify the information at ((the)) information uh on the application form before you turn it into the office of international affairs. Please bring the application to the department office so I can have a look and affix the department seal before you turn it in.

A: Oh, thank you.

B: Good luck with your application.

A: Thank you, I really do ((appreciate)) your kindness.

The excerpt above illustrates the decrease of the teacher's pedagogical and linguistic intervention and the increase of students' involvement in learning English for international communication. In other words, with the teacher's guidance, the students increasingly took more responsibility and became increasingly independent learners of English. This evolutionary process also confirmed that the teacher mediated the students' autonomy development by offering guidance and limited input, as Gao (2018) has suggested. The teacher did not focus on selecting predetermined learning resources for students to learn. Instead, he managed and edited the materials to ensure their work-related communication authenticity. Incorporating the students' international communicative experiences and language use into this course echoes the arguments put forth by Little (1995, 178): developing students' learner autonomy "requires a shift in the role of the teacher from purveyor of information to facilitator of learning and manager of learning resources".

Writing and using the dialogues to practise conversing with international students were the main activities used for the teaching and learning of English. As discussed, the process of how the students wrote and used the dialogues to learn English for international communication received very little input from the teacher. Firstly, the teacher "focused mainly on the scenarios" that he "gathered from the staff in the beginning of the class" (Teacher reflection report). His version was simply "a rough draft based on what students had shared with [him]" and he knew that these dialogues "would be edited later on" (Teacher reflection report) mainly by students. The only intervention from the teacher was with helping students revise when he did not understand the texts. When the students engaged in speaking practice, "correction took place only when [he] heard something that was unintelligible" (Teacher interview two). This approach to linguistic intelligibility-oriented correction and teaching has been advocated by ELF scholars (for example, Jenkins 2000).

Despite the students having written the dialogues themselves, the teacher felt it was unlikely for them to produce spoken English during conversation practice that exactly matched the dialogues. According to the teacher's observation, the words that students used did not necessarily "match the script words" because he wanted students to "focus on fluent communication, not on grammatical accuracy" (Teacher interview two). The evidence in the excerpts above showed that the students used English beyond any prescriptive scope (for example, Seidlhofer 2011) and they did not use English in adherence with any linguistic norms. The result also indicated that fluency was prioritised over linguistic accuracy (Hall 2014). Our support for the teacher placing more importance on communication does not indicate that we believe the eventual outcome should or should not be grammatically accurate based on any linguistic norms. Instead, norms set by a teacher should correspond with students' language learning needs and goals. In other words, if a student cohort needs to learn English that requires grammatical accuracy that aligns with a particular norm, then this should be echoed by the teacher's approach to correction and teaching.

Did the administrative staff students and teacher perceive this language course effective in encouraging the use of English at workplaces for international communication?

In this section we discuss the exploration of the students' and teacher's evaluation of the course. Since the teacher and students agreed that this course was successful, the discussion below focuses on the students' learning outcomes and which part(s) of the course helped the students to learn and use English for international communication. Then, the teacher's evaluation of this course is considered.

Students' Evaluation

When asked about how the course helped the students communicate with international students at workplaces, all students indicated that they perceived the course as helpful. Table 1 below illustrates examples of students' comments on learning outcomes. All students thought highly of their use of English for communication at their workplaces. The positive comments by the students prioritised using English to communicate with international students and using English to effectively complete their administrative tasks.

 

Table 1 - Click to enlarge

 

Students were also asked what about the course was helpful for international communication. The students gave the following reasons (see Table 2). Their successful use of English to communicate with international students to complete administrative tasks was additional evidence that they benefited from the course (see Table 1).

The students expressed that the course was a catalyst for practical changes in their learning and use of English. Firstly, the students all highlighted the effectiveness of developing vocabulary skills for successful international communication (e.g., SS2). Secondly, students practised using English to converse (e.g., SS1). Students also appreciated the value of the language support from the upper management (e.g., SS7).

After this course, the students: 1) became confident users of English willing to speak as much as they can (e.g., SS1, SS7), 2) spoke as freely as they could (e.g., SS7), and 3) became autonomous learners of English (e.g., SS6). While most of the existing literature has focused on students' conceptual changes and the implications of acquired knowledge from the courses for learning English (e.g., Chang 2014), the examples above illustrate practical changes in students' language learning.

Among the practical changes, the students became autonomous learners and users of English. While the students' learner autonomy developed, their English language fluency and communicative abilities also improved. This finding echoes Little's (1995, 179) argument that "the learner's acceptance of responsibility for his or her learning entails the gradual development of a capacity for independent and flexible use of the target language". In other words, the more autonomous and independent the students became, the more fluent and confident they became.

Apart from practical changes, the students also mentioned how they obtained direct support from upper management. For instance, the teacher answered students' queries about learning or this course directly (e.g., SS4), and they received professional support from the School of Management (e.g., SS7). Students' evaluation of this course pointed to the importance to consider contextual factors that determine whether courses can be successfully planned and implemented (McKay and Brown 2016).

Teacher's Evaluation

The evidence presented below shows a minimum impact of the linguistic normative approach on planning, teaching, and learning. Firstly, the vocabulary was selected by the dean and the students according to real-world communication experience and needs. The aim of the vocabulary learning was not to acquire a native-speaker-like vocabulary size. Instead, the learning of selected words enabled students to express and negotiate meaning. Secondly, the teacher indicated that he only intervened when he heard "something that was unintelligible" (Teacher interview two) or when students sought his advice in terms of international communication experience. Thirdly, the teacher's input allowed the students to revise. As mentioned, at the beginning of the course, 50% of the content of the dialogues written by the teacher was revised by the students. Later, the students wrote the dialogues entirely by themselves. As can be seen, NS, monolingual, and Standard English ideology did not dominate this course. Supporting the findings of Yu (2018), the current study did not find the need for learning activities aimed at rejecting a linguistic normative approach.

When the teacher was asked about the major difference between this course and the previous language courses that he taught, he emphasised that he "can see a very clear result from having the ability to evaluate what students' needs are before teaching". In previously taught formal courses, he was expected to "start teaching on day one" and was given no time to "get to know students before getting to business" (Teacher interview two). Assessing students' needs before planning a course has also been advocated by previous researchers (McKay and Brown 2016). Pedagogical decisionmaking is often based on the teachers' assumptions about what students may need if there is no needs assessment. This highlights the importance of assessing students' needs before teaching begins. In this study, as the teacher suggested, it was important to assess students' needs prior to the start of the course in order to "create a specialised programme that targets the needs of students" (Teacher reflection report). However, if the teachers have experience in using English for international communication, teachers may still be in a good position to "determine what is relevant for their learners" (Leung and Lewkowicz 2018, 70).

As highlighted in our literature review, McKay and Brown (2016) argued that decisions related to teaching should not solely be based on teacher beliefs and should instead also consider contextual factors. As SS7 pointed out, she appreciated the School of Management arranging the training and creating opportunities for English use (see Table 2). The teacher also said:

Usually for courses, I am just given a title or syllabus and even in those situations where I have control over the content, there are some general guidelines that are laid out that I must follow. I was given freedom over the class that sort of empowered the students. ... We had a lot of control over the content. It is a pity that in other courses I may not be granted this type of freedom, so it will be a bit impossible for what I have experienced in this class to transfer over to other classes. (Teacher reflection report)

Recognising the positive impact of this course on the students' language learning and use, the teacher firstly appreciated the support from the upper management, giving him "freedom" to teach and the students to learn. From the planning of this course to the end of its execution, the teacher showed that he had abilities to implement this course. These abilities included assessing the students' language needs, managing the learning materials, addressing the students' needs as well as the School of Management's requirements, developing students' learning autonomy and independence, drawing students' attention from learning to using English, and skillfully keeping a balance between his and the students' autonomy. The examples of the teacher's freedom to teach this course correspond to the definition of teacher autonomy put forth by Lamb (2008, 275) as "freedom to be able to teach in the ways that one wants to teach". The evidence also showed that the teacher successfully developed students' learner autonomy by helping them to identify, develop, and use essential materials to freely learn and use English for communication purposes. Helping students become autonomous learners and independent users of English in the classroom echoes Little's (1995, 180) argument that "language learners are more likely to operate as independent flexible users of their target language if their classroom experience has already pushed them in this direction".

 

Limitations and Future Research Directions

While the aim of a case study is not to make inferences about other contexts, it has provided insights into how an English for communication course can be implemented in the Taiwanese higher education context. While other Taiwanese contexts might take into consideration the findings of this study, it is best to delimit these results to informal non-credit bearing contexts. The amount of freedom that the teacher and students had in this course is not typical of formal English courses taught in Taiwan. Moreover, additional case studies within other higher education contexts in Taiwan and beyond are necessary to determine the transferability of implementing this teaching approach in other contexts. While much research has been conducted to gather academic staff and students' perceptions of the internationalisation of higher education and the role that English as a language of instruction plays, few studies have highlighted the voices of administrative staff (Reynolds and Yu 2016, 2018). Large-scale survey research conducted under a quantitative paradigm across multiple contexts is needed to bring the voices of this under-represented group of stakeholders to the forefront.

 

Conclusion

The findings from the current case have uncovered implications for the teaching of communicative language courses. The first implication is that a pre-determined syllabus or curriculum for local teachers to follow is not needed; students can also reap benefits in a locally planned language course executed from an international perspective. Secondly, local language courses aimed at preparing students for international communication can be better planned and effectively implemented when teacher and student autonomy is developed. Instead of using learning materials found in textbooks, students and teachers should have the option to collaboratively construct communicative dialogues that are relevant to the students' language needs. Thirdly, to understand what knowledge of the English language is necessary for local students to develop communicative competence, language needs assessment should be carried out before planning and teaching the courses. Lastly, developing EIL-oriented language courses should be seen as a process of altering the content of teaching and learning to ensure the relevance of the course to students' needs for communicative language use. To this end, a local English language course for international communication purposes should be collaboratively planned by the institutes, teachers, and students to make sure that the content of the course serves the communication needs of the specific student cohort.

The findings also highlight an insufficient understanding in the existing EIL, ELF, and WE studies. Firstly, these studies have paid more attention to EIL/ELF/WE-oriented course development for teacher training programmes and less attention to English language courses aimed at different student or professional cohorts. Secondly, the existing studies have investigated these courses as products of course development. These studies did not discuss or document the process of developing courses. Readers of this body of research are left questioning: 1) how these courses are developed, 2) who developed these courses, 3) against which educational backgrounds have the courses been developed, and 4) for what purposes have they been developed? Lastly, there is insufficient understanding of whether local in-service teachers need professional support to be able to plan and implement such courses or their related teaching activities. In order to understand locally planned EIL-oriented courses, the areas identified above point to new directions in which course development can be reconceptualised.

One locally planned language course to prepare students for international communication cannot necessarily be adopted in other contexts. Locally planned language courses are not developed in a vacuum. A case in point is this course, which obtained the support from the upper management as well as the development of learner and teacher autonomy. The results of this case study offer motivation for future studies to investigate the development of local English language courses for international communication with a focus on contextual factors.

 

References

Baker, W. 2015. "Culture and Complexity through English as a Lingua Franca: Rethinking Competences and Pedagogy in ELT". Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 4 (1): 9-30. https://doi.org/10.1515/jelf-2015-0005.         [ Links ]

Coxhead, A. 2018. Vocabulary and English for Specific Purposes Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315146478.         [ Links ]

Chang, Y.-J. 2014. "Learning English Today: What Can World Englishes Teach College Students in Taiwan?" English Today 30 (1): 21-27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078413000527.         [ Links ]

Creswell, J. W. 2019. Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.         [ Links ]

Drisko, J., and T. Maschi. 2013. Content Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.         [ Links ]

Dogancay-Aktuna, S., and J. Hardman. 2018. "Teaching of English as an International Language in Various Contexts: Nothing Is as Practical as Good Theory". RELC Journal 49 (1): 74-87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688217750642.         [ Links ]

Fang, F., and W. Ren. 2018. "Developing Students' Awareness of Global Englishes". ELT Journal 72 (4): 384-94. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccy012.         [ Links ]

Galloway, N., and H. Rose. 2018. "Incorporating Global Englishes into the ELT Classroom". ELT Journal 72 (1): 3-14. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccx010.         [ Links ]

Gao, X. 2018. "Language Teacher Autonomy and Social Censure". In Autonomy in Language Learning and Teaching, edited by A. Chik, N. Aoki and R. Smith, 29-50. London: Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52998-5_3.         [ Links ]

Given, L. M. 2008. The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.         [ Links ]

Hall, C. J. 2014. "Moving beyond Accuracy: From Tests of English to Tests of 'Englishing'". ELT Journal 68 (4): 376-85. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccu016.         [ Links ]

Hall, J. K., A. Cheng, and M. T. Carlson. 2006. "Reconceptualizing Multicompetence as a Theory of Language Knowledge". Applied Linguistics 27 (2): 220-40. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/aml013.         [ Links ]

Jenkins, J. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.         [ Links ]

Jenkins, J. 2015. Global Englishes: A Resource Book for Students. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Jenkins, J., and C. Leung. 2016. "Assessing English as a Lingua Franca". In Language Testing and Assessment, edited by E. Shohamy, I. G. Or and S. May, 1 -15. Cham: Springer International. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02326-7_7-1.         [ Links ]

Kang, S.-Y. 2017. "US-Based Teacher Education Program for 'Local' EIL Teachers". In Preparing Teachers to Teach English as an International Language, edited by A. Matsuda, 51-65. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783097036-006.         [ Links ]

Lamb, T. 2008. "Learner Autonomy and Teacher Autonomy: Synthesising an Agenda". In Learner and Teacher Autonomy: Concepts, Realities, and Responses, edited by T. Lamb and H. Reinders, 269-84. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.1.21lam.         [ Links ]

Leung, C., and J. Lewkowicz. 2018. "English Language Teaching: Pedagogic Reconnection with the Social Dimension". In The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca, edited by J. Jenkins, W. Baker and M. Dewey, 61 -73. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315717173-6.         [ Links ]

Little, D. 1995. "Learning as Dialogue: The Dependence of Learner Autonomy on Teacher Autonomy". System 23 (2): 175-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/0346-251X(95)00006-6.         [ Links ]

Little, D. 2007. "Language Learner Autonomy: Some Fundamental Considerations Revisited". Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 1 (1): 14-29. https://doi.org/10.2167/illt040.0.         [ Links ]

Lu, Y.-L. 2018. "What Do Nurses Say about Their English Language Needs for Patient Care and Their ESP Coursework: The Case of Taiwanese Nurses". English for Specific Purposes 50: 116-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2017.12.004.         [ Links ]

Matsuda, A. 2017. Preparing Teachers to Teach English as an International Language. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783097036.         [ Links ]

McKay, S. L., and J. D. Brown. 2016. Teaching and Assessing EIL in Local Contexts around the World. New York, NY: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Nation, I. S. P. 2007. "The Four Strands". Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 1 (1): 2-13. https://doi.org/10.2167/illt039.0.         [ Links ]

Nation, I. S. P. 2013. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139858656.         [ Links ]

Nation, I. S. P., and A. Yamamoto. 2012. "Applying the Four Strands to Language Learning". International Journal of Innovation in English Language Teaching 1 (2): 167-81.         [ Links ]

Pennycook, A. 2012. Language and Mobility: Unexpected Places. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847697653.         [ Links ]

Pennycook, A., and E. Otsuji. 2015. Metrolingualism: Language in the City. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315724225.         [ Links ]

Pinner, R. S. 2016. Reconceptualising Authenticity for English as a Global Language. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783095681.         [ Links ]

Reynolds, B. L., and M. H. Yu. 2016. "Using Web-Based Video Technologies to Increase Taiwanese University Staff's Willingness to Use ELF". In Intercultural Communication: New Perspectives from ELF, edited by L. Lopriore and E. Grazzi, 131-44. Rome: Rome Tre Press.         [ Links ]

Reynolds, B. L., and M. H. Yu. 2018. "Addressing the Language Needs of Administrative Staff in Taiwan's Internationalised Higher Education: Call for an English as a Lingua Franca Curriculum to Increase Communicative Competence and Willingness to Communicate". Language and Education 32 (2): 147-66. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2017.1405017.         [ Links ]

Richards, K. 2003. Qualitative Inquiry in TESOL. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505056.         [ Links ]

Rose, H., J. McKinley, and N. Galloway. 2021. "Global Englishes and Language Teaching: A Review of Pedagogical Research". Language Teaching 54 (2): 157-89. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444820000518.         [ Links ]

Seidlhofer, B. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.         [ Links ]

Stake, R. E. 1995. The Art of Case Study Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.         [ Links ]

Sung, C. C. M. 2018. "Out-of-Class Communication and Awareness of English as a Lingua Franca". ELT Journal 72 (1): 15-25. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccx024.         [ Links ]

Tomlinson, B., and H. Masuhara. 2010. "Applications of the Research Results for Second Language Acquisition Theory and Research". In Research for Materials Development in Language Learning: Evidence for Best Practice, edited by B. Tomlison and H. Masuhara, 399-409. London: Continuum.         [ Links ]

Wang, J., S.-I. Liang, and G. Ge. 2008. "Establishment of a Medical Academic Word List". English for Specific Purposes 27 (4): 442-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2008.05.003.         [ Links ]

Widdowson, H. G. 1998. "Context, Community, and Authentic Language". TESOL Quarterly 32 (4): 705-16. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588001.         [ Links ]

Xu, Z. 2018. "Exploring English as an International Language-Curriculum, Materials and Pedagogical Strategies". RELC Journal 49 (1): 102-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688217753848.         [ Links ]

Yu, M. H. 2015. "Developing Critical Classroom Practice for ELF Communication: A Taiwanese Case Study of ELT Materials Evaluation". In International Perspectives on English as a Lingua Franca: Pedagogical Insights, edited by H. Bowles and A. Cogo, 35-54. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137398093_3.         [ Links ]

Yu, M. H. 2018. "Using Textbooks to Teach and Learn English for Lingua Franca Communication: An Insight into Classroom Autonomy". The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher 27 (4): 257-66.         [ Links ]

 

 

1 The transcription conventions used can be found in Appendix 5. It should also be noted that these are transcriptions of the videoed communicative interactions of the students and not the written dialogues.

 

 

Appendix 1

A Reflection Guide for Students

Section I: Job-related English language use and needs

1. How do you use English to communicate with international students?

a. Based on your communicative experience and preferences, could you give examples of effective ways to communicate with international students?

b. Did you learn your English skills through this course, your previous learning experience, or actual communicative experiences at work?

Section II: Teacher's teaching

2. How did you feel about being asked to write your own dialogues using your own ways to speak English?

a. Do you feel you are learning English, using English, or both?

b. What is your teacher's and peers' responses to your English use?

c. Which aspects of teaching effectively helped you become users of English?

d. How do you feel about or how do you evaluate your English language performance?

e. Did the teacher correct your English? Can you give examples?

f. How do you feel as a user of English?

Section III: Evaluating your English language education from the past to the current course

3. Can you briefly write about what Taiwanese English language education has offered you?

a. Did previous courses and the current course give you any opportunity to use English?

b. Prior to this course, did you find that the English you learned meets your language needs in workplaces?

c. Are you satisfied with the current course? Did you find it useful? Did it meet your language requirements for working in this university?

 

Appendix 2

A Reflection Guide for the Teacher

1. Background information about this course

2. Course plan: how, when, why, for whom, by whom, which contexts, what materials, etc.

3. Teaching delivery

4. Learning and students

 

Appendix 3

Two Sets of Teacher E-mail Interview Questions

Teacher Interviews constituted Interview I and II. Interview I focused on the teacher's professional background, the teacher's analysis of Taiwanese EFL contexts, and the teacher's teaching principles and practice. Interview II addressed the issues about the content and realisation of the planned language course.

Interview I

This interview is divided into three sections. The first section is about teaching experience and the teacher's educational background. The second section considers the teacher's understanding of the Taiwanese EFL context. The third section addresses principles and practice of teaching.

Section 1: Information about the teacher's background The teacher's English language teaching experience

1. Could you tell me about your teaching experience (e.g., years of teaching, teaching contexts, courses taught)?

2. Could you give me examples of your teaching English for communication purposes before this course?

The teacher's educational background

1. Could you briefly describe your educational background?

2. When receiving teacher education, did you receive training about WE, EIL, and ELF? If yes, what courses did you take and how did you feel about them? Did you feel the knowledge you gained useful to your teaching in the Taiwanese context? If not from previous courses, how did you learn about ELF, WE, or EIL? Did you find any of this knowledge useful to your teaching in the Taiwanese context?

Section 2: The teacher's perspective on Taiwanese EFL contexts Language use

1. How do you perceive Taiwanese people's English in general as a teacher as well as a foreigner in Taiwan?

2. How do you find international students' English and their communicative use with Taiwanese people?

3. Are there any further comments on Taiwanese people's English you would like to provide (e.g., anecdotes from other foreign friends)?

Language teaching and learning

1. In general, what about language teaching and learning do you think teachers and students in Taiwan have paid more or less attention to?

2. What do you think of Taiwanese students' approach to English language education? Can you name the approaches used by your previous students which you think are useful and useless to preparing them for communicative language use?

English as a lingua franca and internationalisation of higher education in the Taiwanese context

1. What did you think of the university staff s English when you were an international student?

2. When you were an international student, how did you feel about local and international students' use of English to communicate with one other? Can you give me some examples?

Section 3: The teacher's evaluation of his teaching

1. How have you taught Taiwanese students or other EFL learners before this project?

2. Can you identify the major difference or changes in your teaching and ideas of learning English language before and after this research project?

3. While teaching during this research project, did you find any principles of teaching and learning particularly useful for students to develop their English?

4. What ideas of learning and teaching were not very effective or helpful in creating opportunities for language use?

Interview II

The following interview questions were formulated based on the teacher's reflection report and videoed classroom practices.

1. Why did you focus on vocabulary rather than grammar, pronunciation, or other linguistic input? Was this decision related to your expertise? Were there any theories or ideas of teaching English for intercultural communication that supported your decision?

2. In addition to students' scenarios for language use, what other resources did you refer to when you wrote the dialogues in the first two months? Did you add any ideas of yours when writing the dialogues? If yes, what were those ideas and why did you add them? If not, why not add some of your own ideas?

3. Can you tell me how your students practised English using the written dialogues and target vocabulary? Did they have to memorise the written conversations, or did they use other ways to practise English?

4. What made you decide that students should write their own dialogues? What theories of teaching or other ideas supported your decision?

5. Why did you think your students would be unwilling or not confident to use English in their own ways? Are there any examples of the ways you used or you think can make students confident in their English use?

6. Can you give examples of students' English which was intelligible or unintelligible to you? How did you make judgments about whether your students' English was internationally intelligible or unintelligible? Did students help you understand their English when it was unintelligible? How did the students do this?

7. Was the use of dialogue writing a strategy that you used to prepare students who have lower proficiency of English to become a user of English?

8. Can you tell me what kind of strategies you used to help students become English users? Do you find these strategies useful to your students to learn and use vocabulary? Why is that?

9. Do you find L1 resources can help your students use English? Could you give examples to support your viewpoint?

10. You stated in the reflection that students like vocabulary strategies. Do you mean they like the strategies because they find them useful for learning or using English? If not, what did you mean?

 

Appendix 4

Student Interview Questions

1. How do you feel when you are communicating with foreign students? For example, do you feel it is difficult or easy to communicate with them?

2. Do you think you speak differently when talking to someone whose first language is English compared to someone whose first language is not English?

3. Do you think that after you have had this kind of experience with foreign students that there is anything that has changed about your attitude and/or perception of English learning?

4. Is there anything else that you would like to describe or just tell your feelings about when dealing with international students, learning English, or taking a training course like this one? Is there anything else you would like to add? You can share your feelings, or you can express your feelings about anything you would like to share.

 

Appendix 5

Transcription Conventions

 

Click to enlarge