sense and sentimentality in digital stories – a case of pre-service teacher education in south...

SENSE AND SENTIMENTALITY IN

DIGITAL STORIES – A CASE OF

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER

EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

Daniela Gachago

Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Story circle

“Stories move in circles. They don’t move in

straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles.

There are stories inside stories and stories

between stories, and finding your way through

them is as easy and as hard as finding your

way home. And part of the finding is getting

lost. And when you’re lost, you start to look

around and listen.”(Lambert 2010, v).

Opening wounds

This story it freaked me out completely

because it sort of scratched open wounds and

not just surface wise. But I was digging

deeper into getting an understanding of me

and even just consolidating the things that I

came up with, how I felt and how it impacted

and unpacking that and sort of putting it back

where it belongs again or rearranging your

whole mode of thinking. … it’s unnerving and

it left us sort of scattered, you know. (CF)

Vulnerability

Student 1: And then I think what - what the

most challenging to me was having to read it

out aloud - the story.

Student 2: Sharing your story.

Student 1: And then there was that dot - dot -

dot moment where you just went I'm - I'm

naked. I'm just exposed… And not knowing the

responses that you are going to get ….

You’ve got to delve into the lives of people who

you’ve been with for four years, who you’ve

greeted, who you’ve asked how are you but

just on that level. But after Wednesday [day of

screening] you still find people embracing

each other whom they’ve never ever spoken

really or hugged each other. (CF)

Emotions in education

Megan Boler Michalinos Zembylas

A professor at the University of

Toronto, Megan Boler teaches

philosophy, cultural studies, feminist

theory, media studies, social equity

courses in the Teacher Education

program, and media studies at the

Knowledge Media Design Institute.

Dr. Michalinos Zembylas is Assistant

Professor of Education at the Open

University of Cyprus. He is

particularly interested in how

affective politics intersect with issues

of social justice pedagogies,

intercultural and peace education,

and citizenship education.

Pedagogy of discomfort

Stipulates that for both

educators and students to

develop a deeper

understanding for their own

and their shared past, it is

necessary to move outside

their comfort zone, to start to

unpack their understanding

of norms and differences (Boler 1999, Boler and Zembylas 2003).

Guilt

It suddenly made me realise like - how hard some of the people work here and how strong some people actually are. You’d often say like - ah you know - look at this person they never come to class and things - or they don’t do their assignments but you don’t know that they’re not doing it because they were up working all night until five in the morning like trying to earn money - it’s very emotional… I was howling yesterday and then I - I felt bad when I got home I felt so guilty I thought but all I had to do was ask that person all I had to do was take an interest in them and I haven't for four years. (WF)

Anger

Sitting there with them, looking at the story for me the aim was not for them to feel pity for me, because that’s always been an issue for me. You don’t feel sympathy for me. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. This is my story and I’m proud of it. I’m not ashamed of it. So for you to feel pity it’s not going to help. It’s not going to help me - I don’t know if you will understand. (BM)

Danger of sentimentality

Zembylas: sentimental reaction by students

identifying with the privilege feeling guilt /

defensiveness in privileged party and anger in

the victim, leading to desensitization &

disengagement (2011: 20)

Questions

How and what emotions are being constructed

in digital stories?

What role does the multimodal nature of digital

stories play in the construction of these

emotions?

Sense and sentimentality

in digital stories -

A case of pre-service

teacher education

in South Africa

Emotions in

T&LPedagogy of

discomfort

Critical studies

Critical storytelling

Lack of social integration

Transformation in HE

Role of multimediaDST in HE to engage across difference

Critical media literacy




teacher education

in South AfricaLack of social integration



Transformation in

Higher Education has

led to racially

integrated classrooms

Social and cultural

integration are lagging

behind (Jansen 2010,

Soudien 2012)

Explosive emotions

Many educators shy away from difficult topics

such as race and privilege for fear of the

emotions that might come up, be it bitter

feelings, anger, resentment and real pain (Burbules 2004)

But also growing interest in literature around

practices that unsettle established beliefs and

assumptions




teacher education

in South Africa

Emotions in

T&LPedagogy of

discomfort

Pedagogy of discomfort

Stipulates that for both

educators and students to

develop a deeper

understanding for their own

and their shared past, it is

necessary to move outside

their comfort zone, to start to

unpack their understanding

of norms and differences (Boler 1999, Boler and Zembylas 2003).

Emotions

To engage in critical inquiry often means asking students to radically re-evaluate their world views. This process can incur feelings of anger, grief, disappointment, and resistance, but the process also offers students new windows on the world: to develop the capacity for critical inquiry regarding the production and construction of differences gives people a tool that will be useful over their lifetime. In short, this pedagogy of discomfort requires not only cognitive but emotional labor. (Boler and

Zembylas 2003: 110)

Pedagogy of possibility

Result of pedagogy of discomfort: negative

emotional labour such as vulnerability, anger,

suffering.

Emotional labour can produce favourable

results, including self-discovery, hope, passion

an a sense of community.

Critical emotional reflexivity

….a process of using emotions as catalysts, to

allow the questioning of beliefs and

assumptions, exposing privilege and comfort

zones, with the aim for learners to find new

ways of being with the ‘Other’, and ultimately

leading to transformed ‘relationships,

practices, and enactments that benefit

teaching and learning for peace, mutual

understanding, and reconciliation’

(Zembylas 2011: 2)




teacher education

in South Africa

Critical studies



One way to unearth students' historically

situated and culturally mediated lived

experiences is the telling of stories (Aveling 2006)

Critical storytelling (Solorzano & Yosso 2002) aims at

telling stories about uncomfortable issues,

stories of marginalised and often silenced

people.

Critical race theory

giving voice to normally silenced people and subjugated knowledges, to provide ‘a way to communicate the experiences and realities of the oppressed, a first step on the road to justice’ (Ladson-Billings & Tate 2006: 21).

stockstories and counter-stories: ‘challenge social and racial injustice by listening to and learning from experiences of racism and resistance, despair and hope at the margins of society’ (Yosso 2006: 171).

potential of healing through the communal hearing of counterstories (Yosso 2006; Delgado 1989).

Its messy!

Within this culture of critical thinking (which is

not separated from feeling), a central focus is

the recognition of the multiple, heterogeneous,

and messy realities of power relations as they

are enacted and resisted in localities,

subverting the comfort offered by the

endorsement of particular norms. (p.131)

No one escapes hegemony

A POD invites not only members of the

dominant culture but also members of the

marginalized cultures to re-examine the

hegemonic values inevitably internalized in the

process of being exposed to curriculum and

media that serve the interest of the ruling

class. (Boler 1999)




teacher education

in South Africa

Role of multimediaDST in HE to engage across difference


Everybody

has a story to

tell

Image from Flickr by whateverything (CC)

Give

marginalised,

silent people a

voice

Studies on digital storytelling and

difference

Lots of engagement around digital storytelling and difference

Less on difference & critical pedagogy

Only 2 references on digital storytelling & counterstories

Rolon-Dow (2011): Race(ing) stories: digital storytelling as a tool for critical race scholarship

Vaseduvan (2006): Making Known Differently: engaging visual modalities as spaces to author new selves

Multimodality

Multimodal pedagogy

Telling a story through different modes

Combination of different modes will result in

different meanings (Kress and Van Leuwen 2001)

Critical media literacy: critically analyzing

relationship between media and audiences,

information and power (Kellner and Share 2007)


‘Critical media literacy expands the notion of literacy to include different forms of mass communication and popular culture as well as deepens the potential of education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information and power. It involves cultivating skills in analyzing media codes and conventions, abilities to criticize stereotypes, dominant values, and ideologies, and competencies to interpret the multiple meanings and messages generated by media texts. Media literacy helps people to discriminate and evaluate media content, to critically dissect media forms, to investigate media effects and uses, to use media intelligently, and to construct alternative media.’

Kellner and Share (2007: 4)

Sentimentality in digital stories

originate directly from participants lived

experiences, and often deal with significant

episodes in somebody’s lives

tendency to be very emotional

‘Somewhat paradoxically from a critical

perspective, it is the very qualities that mark

digital stories as uncool, conservative, and

ideologically suspect – ‘stock’ tropes,

nostalgia, even sentimentality – that give them

the power of social connectivity, while the

sense of authentic self-expression that they

convey lowers the barriers to empathy.‘ (Burgess 2006:10)

The element of ‘emotional content’ is one of

the ways in which personal stories are

powerful and convincing and, in the context of

‘Digital His-tories’, communicate a personal

historically ‘situated truth’, one that is always

partial and incomplete. (Coleborn and Bliss 2011)

Danger of sentimentality

‘too sentimental, individualistic, and naively

unself-conscious’

call for everyone involved in digital stories to

‘maintain a reflexive and critical attitude within

a supportive and human purpose’ (Hartley and

McWilliam 2009: 14)

References

Boler, M., & Zembylas, M. (2003). Discomforting Truths: The Emotional Terrain of Understanding Difference. In P. Trifonas(Ed.), Pedagogies of difference: Rethinking education for social change (pp. 110-136). New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Bozalek, V. (2011). Acknowledging privilege through encounters with difference: Participatory Learning and Action techniques for decolonising methodologies in Southern contexts. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 14(6), 469-484.

Hemson, C., Moletsane, R., & Muthukrishna, N. (2001). Transforming Racist Conditioning. Perspectives in Education, 19(2), 85-97.

Jansen, J. (2010). Over the rainbow - race and reconciliation on university campuses in South Africa. Discourse, 38(1).

Lambert, J. (2010). Digital storytelling cookbook. Elements. Berkeley, CA: Center for Digital Storytelling.

Pattman, R. (2010). Investigating “race” and social cohesion at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. South African Journal of Higher Education, 24(6), 953-971.

Soudien, C. (2012). Realising the dream. Cape Town: HSRC Press. Retrieved from http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/product.php?productid=2291&freedownload=1

Zembylas, M. (2012). Teaching in Higher Education Pedagogies of strategic empathy: navigating through the emotional complexities of anti-racism in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, (April), 37-41.

Zembylas, M. (2011). The politics of trauma in education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Zembylas, M. (2007). Five pedagogies, a thousand possibilities. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Acknowledgement

CPUT Research into Innovations in Teaching

and Learning Fund (RIFTAL 2011, 2012)

CPUT University Research Fund 2012

National research foundation 2012-2015

Facilitators and students of 2011 ISP Digital

Storytelling project