Seminar 1: Initial analysis of Interview data from the NRF Post humanism project.

On Thursday the 18 February the project group had an online session to extend an initial analysis of  interview data  recorded and transcribed by project members. Prior to the session seven project members had volunteered to analyse the 21 interviews already transcribed.

A preliminary initial analysis of the interview had already been done by Susan Gredley and presented at the project group’s Mont Fleur research meeting in November 2015. Susan Gredley’s presentation is available here. This online research meeting was led by Professor Richard Edwards and Professor Tara Fenwick from the University of Stirling, UK, who, before the session, created an analytical template based the initial analysis done by Susan Gredley. The templates were used to analyse transcripts, from which broad themes, issues and questions were derived. This was coordinated by Richard and Tara.

Based on the returned templates, Richard and Tara identified the Issues raised by interviewees. These were sub-divided into:

• issues relations to pedagogic and personal and social commitment; and  
• issues relating to teachers’ pedagogical perspective.

They also identified the Tensions faced by university academic staff. This was sub-divided into:

• tensions experienced by the the teacher in the situation; and
• tensions of engaging with the situation from a research perspective.

Based on the analysis, Richard and Tara raised further analytical Questions:

• What are the differences between the ‘socially just teacher’ and the ‘good teacher’?

• What really is the difference between good process pedagogies, and process pedagogies with a particular normative goal? And, are there any significant differences in student outcomes?

• Is there fundamental mismatch of the social justice ambition with certain subjects, class sizes, nature of student body, resources etc that prevent pedagogic possibilities? And, should this be better recognised and supported?

• How do normative stances of staff and structural role of higher education in reproducing social inequalities? And, are some social justice pedagogies complicit?

• How can the tension of provocation and nurture in pedagogic practices be better supported?

• Are social justice and affective pedagogic approaches necessarily always aligned?

In response, Denise Newfield noted that there was a thick description from each teacher on their own pedagogies, but that they were dependent on their own teaching paradigms and perceptions of pedagogies. She noted that there were tensions in the interviews she analysed between pedagogic descriptions and normative commitments to socially just pedagogies.

Denise further highlighted the complexity in having an authority position, such as a teacher, yet seeking to promote social justice or prevent injustice. She also pointed to the aspect of assessment in addressing injustice: If students are knowledge makers then how do you assess this, especially from a posthuman perspective?  

In her analysis Daniela Gachago returned to the teacher’s role as a central figure whose skills and capabilities appear crucial  in helping students to transform. This was especially significant from her analysis of interviews with a leader of a writing centre and a mature student. Daniela raised the question on how to go about this in a posthumanist perspective - what other resources could one draw from to transform students.

Richard suggested that the teacher should become more decentred in this context, but highlighted the paradoxical position that the role of the teacher to empower students can result in the teacher becoming more central - giving power to students.   

For Vivienne Bozalek, it was interesting to look more carefully at  two interviews - yet looking  through the lens of Nancy Fraser, despite the posthumanist criticism of Fraser, the analysis brings out two issues. From a regional perspective, Vivienne noticed that it makes a huge difference to how academic staff engage depending on what institution one work in South Africa. As an example, one interviewee only fully engaged with black students and ignored white students - a pedagogy of discomfort. Vivienne found it fascinating to see how people's conception of social justice  were playing out.

Richard suggested that one might want to go back to the interviewees to get more data, focussing on a range of different issues. In addition, Tara  quoted one interviewee who stated that educators in South Africa are ‘crippled’ by Anglo-American models of social justice.Tara suggested that one might rather look at e.g. South African practices, especially when it comes to talking about pedagogies and things that got messy. What is sayable and what is not - what positions are you allowed to hold?

Another point raised by Siddique Motala was the issue of language. He felt that in a posthumanist analysis he has to be able to speak many languages that he can’t. Siddique raised the question on how from an analytical point of view does one get around this.

Tara noted that in terms of language within the interview transcripts,  this appeared to be very emotional and contain a lot of pain, which therefore made it useful to include affect theory to consider what is occurring. On the point of pain, Lindsey Nicholls recommended looking at how pain is handled in societies e.g. in Post-apartheid South Africa and post-war Germany, where she finds this to be comparable.