Vivienne Bozalek
University of the Western Cape, Education, Faculty Member
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Criticality and critique require careful attention by authors, reviewers, and editors in Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CRiSTaL), since they form a central focus of the journal. Conventional views of critique are influenced by... more
Criticality and critique require careful attention by authors, reviewers, and editors in Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CRiSTaL), since they form a central focus of the journal. Conventional views of critique are influenced by unexpressed assumptions that what is needed is an authoritative expert, who from a position of superiority and distance, diagnoses and pronounces on the inadequacies of the text. This article explores more generative approaches to critique and criticality such as immanent critique and diffractive methodologies. We argue that in order for immanent critique and diffractive methodologies to happen, sensibilities such as attentiveness, response-ability, accountability, generosity, and curiosity are necessary. The final section of the paper considers academic practices of reviewing, writing, reading, pedagogy, and conferencing in relation to immanent critique and diffractive methodologies and the sensibilities we propose which make these forms of critiq...
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Understanding how indeterminacy is different from uncertainty is crucial to posthumanism and has major implications for reconfiguring curriculum. Uncertainty has to do with epistemology, about not knowing whether a state of affairs is or... more
Understanding how indeterminacy is different from uncertainty is crucial to posthumanism and has major implications for reconfiguring curriculum. Uncertainty has to do with epistemology, about not knowing whether a state of affairs is or is not; for instance, one would not know whether something is here or there, now or then. Indeterminacy, however, is ontological and eschews the idea of individually existing determinate entities, proposing instead phenomena-in-their-becoming and a radically open relating of the world. Karen Barad, a feminist queer theorist, uses Niels Bohr’s quantum physics to show how atoms possess an inherent indeterminism or lack of identity in space and time. Indeterminacy is thus an un/doing of identity that unsettles the very foundations of being and non-being. Furthermore, neither space nor time are predetermined givens, but come into being intra-actively through the emergence of phenomena. This article shows how an understanding of space/time indeterminacy ...
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This article considers how academic practices such as reading and writing might be reconfigured as creative processes through thinking-with posthuman philosophies and theorists, particularly, but not confined to the works of Karen Barad... more
This article considers how academic practices such as reading and writing might be reconfigured as creative processes through thinking-with posthuman philosophies and theorists, particularly, but not confined to the works of Karen Barad and Erin Manning. Both Erin Manning and Karen Barad are involved with creative philosophies and practices, albeit from different vantage points. Manning’s work engages with arts-based practices such as research-creation through process philosophies, whereas Barad reads queer theory through quantum physics to develop their agential realist framework and diffractive methodology. Although Manning and Barad never refer to each other’s work, this article proposes that thinking-with both of these feminist philosophers might be fruitful to consider how reading and writing as part of research projects and graduate supervision might be enacted creatively and differently.
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In January 2014, after many years of preparation, the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education Teaching and Learning [PG Dip (HETL)] – a collaboration between the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the University of Stellenbosch and... more
In January 2014, after many years of preparation, the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education Teaching and Learning [PG Dip (HETL)] – a collaboration between the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the University of Stellenbosch and the University of the Western Cape – was offered. The qualification is a two-year part-time course, and the first cohort of participants graduated in December 2015. The question that this paper seeks to address is whether a collaborative qualification, offered to academic staff across very different institutions, can make a contribution towards socially just teaching and learning in higher education. The study draws on Nancy Fraser's (2003) conceptualisation of social justice, with its three dimensions of redistribution, recognition and representation, as a framework for reflecting on the extent to which the programme contributed towards the development and understanding of socially just pedagogies in professional learning. This paper draws on ...
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Nancy Fraser and Participatory Parity provides a philosophical framework based on the work of Nancy Fraser, examining how her ideas can be used to analyse contemporary issues in higher education and reimagine higher education practices.... more
Nancy Fraser and Participatory Parity provides a philosophical framework based on the work of Nancy Fraser, examining how her ideas can be used to analyse contemporary issues in higher education and reimagine higher education practices. Providing a forum for considering Fraser’s work in relation to participatory parity in higher education, the book shows how her political philosophy is relevant to higher education pedagogies, scholarship and practice. The recent student protests in South Africa in 2015 and 2016 has created an impetus to think about how to do things differently in higher education in response to economic, cultural and political inequities. This South African experience is aptly used as a prime example of rethinking issues of coloniality and social injustice in higher education. The contributors’ use of Nancy Fraser’s theories provides their analyses and reflections with a particularly sharp lens and clear focus. The book also puts her work into conversation with other contemporary writers on social justice and explores the resonances and differentiations of the various approaches. This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of social justice in education and educational policy.
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In the last 20 years, the South African higher education has changed significantly, influenced by global trends national development goals and pressure from local educational imperatives, in the context of a digitally networked world.... more
In the last 20 years, the South African higher education has changed significantly, influenced by global trends national development goals and pressure from local educational imperatives, in the context of a digitally networked world. Shifts in technology enhanced pedagogical practices and in discourses around information and communication technologies (ICTs) have had varying degrees of influence in higher education. This paper takes a rearview of a 20‐year journey of technology enhanced learning in South African higher education. An analysis of literature view is presented chronologically in four phases: phase 1 (1996–2000), phase 2 (2001–05), phase 3 (2006–10) and phase 4 (2011–16). In phase 1 technology was used predominantly for drill and practice, computer‐aided instruction, with growing consciousness of the digital divide. In phase 2 institutions primarily focused on building ICT infrastructure, democratizing information, policy development and research; they sought to compare...
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This article proposes an alternative way of using concepts in the scholarship of teaching and learning in the South. Normative understandings and uses of concepts in educational scholarship are challenged through a postphilosophical and... more
This article proposes an alternative way of using concepts in the scholarship of teaching and learning in the South. Normative understandings and uses of concepts in educational scholarship are challenged through a postphilosophical and postqualitative approach. In such an approach, concepts, instead of methods, become the generating force of research and pedagogy, as a counter to approaches which use formulaic methodologies to dictate the structure and content of pedagogy and research. Postphilosophies are predicated on a relational ontology which assumes that relationships precede entities and come into being in complex entanglements. Concepts are not seen as abstract ideas in the human mind but come into being through material arrangements as part of the world. In the paper, we develop six propositions as provocations for activating and doing concepts differently: Consent not to be singular, Render each other capable, Diffract concepts to enlarge your scholarly perspective, Make ...
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The focus of the article is on injustices towards South African families in postcolonial and neocolonial contexts, our understanding of which has been greatly enlarged by Nancy Fraser’s conceptualisations of expropriation and imperialism... more
The focus of the article is on injustices towards South African families in postcolonial and neocolonial contexts, our understanding of which has been greatly enlarged by Nancy Fraser’s conceptualisations of expropriation and imperialism and Jacques Derrida’s notions of hostility and hospitality. We used Walter Benjamin’s and Karen Barad’s montage methods of fragmentary writing to diffractively read expropriation, imperialism, hostility and hospitality through one another in the context of injustices done to South African families. A diffractive methodology entails a close and attentive reading of concepts or pieces of text through one another, to arrive at new insights with regard to a particular issue. The new insights we arrive at in the article are five propositions for ethically engaging in a justice-to-come for social work – that of attentiveness, rendering each other capable, responsibility, response-ability and radical hospitality.
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It is now widely accepted that the transmission of disciplinary knowledge is insufficient to prepare students leaving higher education for the workplace. Authentic learning has been suggested as a way to bring the necessary complexity... more
It is now widely accepted that the transmission of disciplinary knowledge is insufficient to prepare students leaving higher education for the workplace. Authentic learning has been suggested as a way to bring the necessary complexity into learning to deal with challenges in professional practice after graduation. This study investigates how South African higher educators have used emerging technologies to achieve the characteristics of authentic learning. A survey was administered to a population of 265 higher educators in South Africa who self-identified as engaging with emerging technologies. From this survey, a sample of twenty one respondents were selected to further investigate their practice through in-depth interviewing using Herrington, Reeves & Oliver’s (2010) nine characteristics of authentic learning as a framework. Interrater analysis undertaken by five members of the research team revealed both consistencies and differences among the twenty one cases across the nine el...
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This chapter argues that in relation to developing and doing socially just pedagogies, emerging technologies in themselves cannot be seen as a panacea for addressing inequalities and access in higher education as many claim they do.... more
This chapter argues that in relation to developing and doing socially just pedagogies, emerging technologies in themselves cannot be seen as a panacea for addressing inequalities and access in higher education as many claim they do. Indeed, they may serve to deepen existing inequalities, as has been evidenced by the digital divide and the consequences that they have for access to knowledge and information. Nonetheless, despite the exclusion from the Internet and technological devices experienced by many people in southern contexts, there have been some indications that the emerging technologies together with transformative pedagogies can be used to work towards participatory parity in higher education. This chapter uses as its point of departure Nancy Fraser’s conception of social justice to understand the extent to which South African higher educators who use technologies are able to achieve participatory parity in their pedagogy. According to Fraser, participatory parity involves the ability to interact on a social level with peers on an equal footing. Participatory parity (or social justice) involves three dimensions—the economic, the cultural, and the political. In order for students to be able to interact on an equal basis in higher education, pedagogical arrangements, which affect each one of these dimensions, would have to be considered and these pedagogical arrangements can be considered either affirmative or transformative.
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English Exploration of the impact of cultural and economic factors on the personal and professional identities of adult learners as critical friends across geographical locations becomes possible through e-learning. Correspondence between... more
English Exploration of the impact of cultural and economic factors on the personal and professional identities of adult learners as critical friends across geographical locations becomes possible through e-learning. Correspondence between adult learners can create a space for intellectual and emotional sharing, thus enhancing the learners’ abilities to function reflexively as professional practitioners. French L’apprentissage électronique permet d’explorer l’impact des dimensions culturelles et économiques sur l’identité personnelle et professionnelle des apprenants adultes répartis géographiquement. En correspondant entre eux, les apprenants adultes peuvent mettre en place un espace de partage intellectuel et émotionnel, ce qui leur permettrait d’accroître leurs capacités à fonctionner de façon réflexive comme praticiens professionnels. Spanish La exploración del impacto de factores culturales y económicos en las identidades personales y profesionales de los aprendices adultos como...