Citizenship, Social Inclusion and Difference

Welcome

Background to this course

Background to this course

Community, Self and Identity InitiativeStellenbosch University: Psychology Fourth Year

UWC: Social Work Fourth YearOccupational Therapy Fourth Year

Our “Pedagogy of Discomfort”

“Would you recommend repeating the idea of learning with students from another university?” 84 – yes; 1 – no.“Would you recommend repeating the idea of learning with students from another discipline?” 83 – yes; 1 – no.“Would you recommend using a mix of workshops and electronic communication?” 77 – yes; 7 – no; 2 – maybe.

Concern with sustainability

Our Research Journey

Our abiding conviction

The teacher is implicated within the social and pedagogical narrative, not some empowered educator who has

figured out the problems of an unequal world and stands to dispense this

wisdom to receiving students. … the teachers are themselves carriers of

troubled knowledge, and this has serious implications for critical education.

Jonathan Jansen (2009) Knowledge I in the Blood; Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past.

Cape Town: UCT Press

Aims of this course

• That you should benefit by– Deepening your learning about diversity and difference in

higher education teaching and learning – Enhancing your reflexivity and your capacity to harness

critical questioning as a helpful resource in higher education

– Reducing isolation and creating community across boundaries of discipline and institution

– Learning more about technologies (both electronic and participatory) for creating and sustaining communities

– Engaging in the scholarship of learning and teaching

Course Aims and Outcomes

• By the end of this short course, you will be able to:– Communicate using face-to-face and online modalities with

colleagues from a range of higher education institutions – Apply particular Participatory Learning and Action (PLA)

techniques – Critique current approaches towards difference, inclusion

and citizenship education– Demonstrate reflexivity in relation to own teaching and

learning context– Apply understanding about difference, inclusion and

citizenship to own teaching and learning context

Course in briefWorkshops7 March 2011 Initial face-to-face workshop1 April 2011 Second face-to-face workshop6 May 2010 Third face-to-face workshop

Assignments22 March 2011 Assignment One (online discussion forum on PLA)

15 April 2011 Assignment Two (blog on the pedagogy of

discomfort) 6 May 2011 Assignment Three (presentation) due13 May 2011 Assignment Four (digitalisation of presentation) 27 May 2011 Assignment Five (reflective piece)

Groups

Group OneLana van NiekerkSomeka NgeceWessel le RouxDaniela Gachago Melanie Alperstein

Group TwoRoisin KellyPatricia LenaghanNicolette RomanJean FarmerJill van DugterenKasturi Behari-leak

Evaluation

• Pilot (evaluation)– Evaluation forms– Reflective essays– Our own observations

Definition of terms

• Citizenship• Social Inclusion• Difference

Teaching about difference

• Complementarity of Recognition and Distribution (Nancy Fraser, 2003)

Critical Education• All things to all people• Expose relations of power and inequality• “fundamental transformations of the underlying epistemological and

ideological assumptions that are made about what counts as “official” or legitimate knowledge and who holds it” (Apple, Au and Gandin, 2009)

• Bear witness to negativity• But point to contradictions

and possible spaces for action• Build a “decentred unity” that

tries to work across differences: race, class, gender, etc

• Origin: in Critical Legal Studies• CRT made race a central feature• Critique of liberalism• US society based on property rights• And whiteness as a form of property – real or:

“thus, intellectual property must be undergirded by “real” property” science labs, computers and other state-of-the-art technologies, and appropriately certified and prepared teachers” (Ladson-Billings and Tate, 2006, p. 18)

Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory• “Race still matters”• “There are no neighborhoods or communities to which women

and girls are restricted. We cannot locate comparable statistics that indicate that people of one particular religious group were performing worse than any other group”. (Ladson-Billings, p. 115)

• Possibilities for hope: “insistence on story-telling and counter narratives provides us with a powerful vehicle for speaking against racism and other forms of inequity”.

Critiques of “whiteness”

• “Being White is not the problem. Being a White racist is.” Zeus Leonardo, p. 127.

• “Because whiteness is a social construction, a range of possibilities is opened up for White agency”.

• “Rather than erase these inscriptions as a first step, we need a period of reinscription to redescribe and reunderstand what we see when we see race”. (p. 135)

…Thus the significance of reflexivity

• Taylor and White, 2000:198, cite Fox:reflexivity “interrogates the process by which interpretation has been fabricated: reflexivity requires any effort to describe or represent to consider how that process of description was achieved, what claims to ‘presence’ were made, what authority was used to claim knowledge”.

• Crabtree and Sapp cite Fransman:"epistemological reflexivity” is required if teachers are to be enabled to transform existing power relations, transcend cultural divides, and undo collectively-ingrained biases"(Fransman, 2003, p.11).

• Giddens (1991) refers to “reflexivity” to mobilise the self:"develops ethics concerning the issue 'how should we live?’”

And Social Justice Teacher Education

Teachers should• Be socioculturally conscious – recognize that

there are multiple ways of perceiving reality that are influenced by one’s location in the social order

• Use their knowledge about the lives of their students to design instruction that builds on what they already know while stretching them beyond the familiar (Zeichner, p. 297-8)

Zeichner cont.• Have an affirming view of students from

diverse backgrounds, seeing resources for learning in all students rather than viewing differences as problems to overcome

• Understand how learners construct knowledge and be capable of promoting learners’ knowledge construction

And Social Justice Teacher Education

Critical reflection – Paulo Freire

“all educational practice requires the existence of ‘subjects’, who while teaching, learn. And who in learning also teach”. Cited in Au, p. 222.Problem posing: asking critical questions of the world and critically reflecting on what actions they may take to change those material conditions.Dialogue: moment where humans meet to reflect on reality… improve their knowledge and improve their ability to transform reality. Cited in Au pl. 222.

The transformative power of emotions

• Emotions are classed (Boler, 1999)• Zembylas: “affective economies may establish,

assert, subvert or reinforce power differentials” (2007, p. xiv)

• Emotions can be destructive as well as productive: moral anger.

• Critical hope: Critical and connection with the other.

Emotions cont.

“Affective connections may call attention to a group’s demand for respect and recognition, but also highlight inequalities more generally. On the other hand, such affective connections in and of themselves are not a substitute for structural change.” (2007,p. xxii)“Not ‘What do I feel’ but rather, ‘what do I do with what I feel?’”

A “pedagogy of discomfort”

Boler and Zembylas: “A pedagogy of discomfort recognizes and problematises the deeply embedded emotional dimensions that frame and shape daily habits, routines, and unconscious complicity with hegemony”. (2003, p. 111)“no on escapes hegemony: we are all discomforted” (p. 115)invites criticality and creativity.

Other key ideas

• Interdisciplinarity Michael Davidson (2004, p.307): talking and exploring in an interdisciplinary setting “critical interdisciplinarity calls for both the recognition of and the decentring of the disciplinary self”

• Multi-modality(refer back to Zeichner)

The significance of “process”GROUP N: Transcending Boundaries!

Left to right: FundiswaFundiswa SetiSeti , Nina Nina RossouwRossouw (A), (A), TembelaTembela MginiMgini, Simon Lolliot , , Simon Lolliot , NtsikeleloNtsikelelo MahobeMahobe and Miriam and Miriam AmeermiaAmeermia

Joan Anyon: importance of “process” and “participation” for students