Presentation at UCT research stories series, February 2013

1. SENSE AND SENTIMENTALITY IN
DIGITAL STORIES – A CASE OF
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER
EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA
Daniela Gachago
Cape Peninsula University of Technology

4. 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).

7. 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)

8. 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 ….

9.  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)

10. 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.

11. 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).

12. 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)

13. 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)

14. 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)

15. 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?

16. Emotions in
T&L
Pedagogy of
discomfort
Critical storytelling
Critical studies
Sense and sentimentality
in digital stories -
Critical media literacy
A case of pre-service
teacher education
in South Africa
Transformation in HE
Lack of social integration
Role of multimedia
DST in HE to engage across difference

17. Sense and sentimentality
in digital stories -
A case of pre-service
teacher education
in South Africa
Transformation in HE
Lack of social integration

18. Transformation in HE
 Transformation in
Higher Education has
led to racially
integrated classrooms
 Social and cultural
integration are lagging
behind (Jansen 2010,
Soudien 2012)

19. 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

20. Emotions in
T&L
Pedagogy of
discomfort
Sense and sentimentality
in digital stories -
A case of pre-service
teacher education
in South Africa

21. 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).

22. 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)

23. 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.

24. 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)

25. Critical storytelling
Critical studies
Sense and sentimentality
in digital stories -
A case of pre-service
teacher education
in South Africa

26. Critical storytelling
 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.

27. 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).

28. 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)

29. 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)

30. Sense and sentimentality
in digital stories -
Role of multimedia
Critical media literacy
DST in HE to engage across difference
A case of pre-service
teacher education
in South Africa

32. Everybody
has a story to
tell
Give
marginalised,
silent people a
Image from Flickr by whateverything voice

33. 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

34. 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)

35. Critical media literacy
 ‘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 crit- ically 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)

36. 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

37.  ‘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)

38.  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)

39. 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)

40. 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.

41.  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&free
download=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.

42. 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