A diffractive exploration of affect: Learning, research and teaching in obstetrics

Instances of abuse, neglect and disrespect to women in labour are not uncommon in South Africa's public health birthing facilities. These social injustices are surrounded by a pervasive silence that confronts undergraduate medical students in their first practical obstetrics rotation. In this article I draw on affect theory to explore how students engage with these unjust practices. Through a diffractive analysis I question how drawings can be used to elicit affect as a pedagogic device towards developing a socially just pedagogy in obstetrics. In this ethics-approved study I address three aspects of student learning. Firstly, the ways in which the medical curriculum appears to obfuscate affect. Secondly, how affect is entangled in student learning, complicating responses to unjust practices. Thirdly, how drawings as data-in-the-making have elicited students' affective responses to confront difficult curriculum encounters. This visual methodology is thus opening in/determinate educational spaces for activism against unjust practices.DHE

The curriculum in medical education: a case study in Obstetrics related to students' delivery experience

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.In this research project, the small sample of students displays varying experiences as they engage in the practical curricular tasks in Obstetrics. Their responses indicate the challenges they face which are exacerbated by uncertainty particularly when the university’s chosen values contrast with those confronted in the broader context in which any curriculum operates

Diffracting reflection: a move beyond reflective practice

Reflective practice has become a core component in higher education studies. In the health sciences, reflective tasks are required throughout the undergraduate programmes, yet many students struggle to find value in these tasks for their present and future professional practice. Benefits that can be derived from the process are undermined by this lack of motivation for reflective engagement. Concern around the static, contained, individualist nature of reflections that often face judgement through assessment can be addressed by opening up the process to generate new potentials. In this paper, I draw on new materialism and the Baradian (2007) philosophy of diffraction to move beyond the reflective practices of representation and sameness by affirmatively working with/through differences. I refer to data collected in an ethics approved research study at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, to explain a context of unjust practices in which students learn. I demonstrate how students’ reflective texts shared online on the Google Drive platform can be productive and transformative material forces that enact new knowledge, valued by students. The apparatus of text-students-events is put to work creating new possibilities to enable a socially just pedagogy in medical education

The case studies: authentic learning

Moving from theory to practice in higher education is deeply challenging. While exploring pedagogical models in the literature may lead to tacit understanding of general principles, actually implementing these principles in practice can be an entirely different matter

Medical students’ response-ability to unjust practices in obstetrics: A relational perspective

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDThis study is located in the fourth-year obstetrics curriculum that undergraduate medical students at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, traverse, and in which they are initiated into the knowledge and skills of practical obstetrics practices in local birthing facilities. I investigate student learning and what contributes to students being rendered in/capable when they find themselves immersed in the high levels of prevailing injustices to women in labour. Disrespect during the intrapartum period is a local as well as global problem which has actually reached epidemic levels. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of posthumanism and feminist new materialism, and using post-qualitative inquiry and non-representational methods, I put forward a novel perspective for interrogating responsibilities in terms of students’ ability to respond to unjust practices they observe, I discern what matters for student learning, exploring the troubled practices that emanate through/with/from the curriculum-student relationships in the past/present, and what it means for the future. Assemblage thinking provides a relational tool to understand the impact of the curriculum, assessment processes and other materialising forces that have agency as students are becoming-with human and more-than-human bodies. An initial survey was followed up with interviews and focus groups with students, midwives, educators and administrators. My study revealed hidden aspects of student engagement with their curriculum in obstetrics. What emerged was that students are entangled in a mesh of forces influencing their ability and capacity to respond to the injustices they witness. These forces arise from the discursive and material practices and the in-between relationships that are generated in the learning processes. The study also brought to the fore the intensive forces of affect that appeared to be obfuscated in terms of students’ response-abilities. My findings foreground how reciprocal relationships matter and that a relational ontology can provide helpful insights to engage with responsibility, response-ability and social justice. Students’ capacity to respond to the injustices they witness is limited by multiple forces that include the curriculum itself and other materialising forces generated, for instance by floors, beds, curtains and the student logbook. Time is also a crucial issue amidst the tensions emerging in the complex and risky process of birthing. What matters to students, such as their assessment needs, appears to undermine their efforts to offer care and to promote social justice. Affect plays a powerful part in shaping students’ actions, yet there are few opportunities for acknowledgement of affect. I used drawings as data-in-the making. The process of drawing contributed an extra material force to the study illuminating the power of an affective pedagogical approach for fostering students’ capability to respond to injustice. This socially just pedagogy as well as classroom performances and online collaborative engagement contributed to a collective effort to engage with obstetric disrespect in an innovative and empowering manner that gave voice to students’ experiences and the emerging forces. My study contributes to the field of medical education by opening up a relational perspective to issues of social justice and responsibility that moves beyond individualist and human-centred conceptions of student learning. Through a relational ontology, students’ clinical encounters can be conceived as enactments of the multiple prevailing forces. Each moment matters

Diffracting socially just pedagogies through stained glass

This article emerges from our relationship with Theo Combrinck, a colleague, a passionate social and academic activist, a recovering addict and a PhD student, who left our living space during 2014 - a death that was unexpected yet a consequence of an iterative desire to end a troubled/ing life. The intensity of Theo's physical absence retains a vibrant presence and continues to intra-act with us as we consider socially just pedagogies. Theo's work lives on through memories, audio recordings and different forms of texts written by him, all representing his views of socially just pedagogy. Our entanglements with Braidotti's posthuman and Barad's diffractive methodologies shape our understandings of the past and present intra-actions with Theo in time and space. The generative process of our individual and collective becomings through Theo illustrate how the collaborative energy of co-constituted relationships contribute an affective response towards developing socially just pedagogies.DHE

Participatory relationships matter: Doctoral students traversing the academy

In this article, we take our thoughts for a walk through our three different doctoral journeys and experiences with the Post Philosophies and the Doing of Inquiry Webinar Series (2020–2021). The webinars presented an example of Slow scholarship, enabling us to think deeply and differently from others and develop new ideas to take further. The online connections offered opportunities for extending learning spaces beyond traditional bounded structures. Here we explore the rich learning gained from each other’s experiences of research, learning, and teaching in different higher education settings and ways in which these intersected with the webinars during the global COVID-19 pandemic. We contend that the generosity of senior academics in leadership positions who embraced global networks of communication, connected students with experts, and learned with and from their students through communal egalitarian spaces has enormous potential to support students as they traverse often demanding and challenging doctoral journeys

Crafting Medical Education Differently: An Innovative Pedagogical Approach to Enhance Deep Learning in Obstetrics and Gynaecology

In this article we explore an innovative pedagogical approach initiated during the COVID-19 lockdown period to support student learning in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town. Student isolation and the lack of exposure to clinical cases during this period brought many challenges to the teaching platform. However, the global disruption enabled an ontological opening for imaginative and creative experimentation, an aspect of teaching rarely brought into medical training. We take up the unusual work of a clinician educator and others to describe the process of developing novel video recordings for undergraduate medical students. These videos, used as pedagogical tools, enabled new ways of engaging with core curricular needs in this discipline: for the teacher, new ways of producing teaching materials, and for the students, new ways of learning medical content. The videos drew on a range of creative modes including drawing and acting, to augment student learning. As authors, we suggest that the collision of the clinical content and the performative delivery in the videos fostered deep learning and made the curricular material alive and engaging. The existence of the videos enables a sustainable blended learning approach moving forward. The uploading of the videos as Open Educational Resources onto a YouTube channel and a public website now also contribute to teaching resources extending beyond institutional boundaries

Working with Children with Learning Disabilities and/or who Communicate Non-verbally: Research experiences and their implications for social work education, increased participation and social inclusion

Social exclusion, although much debated in the UK, frequently focuses on children as a key 'at risk' group. However, some groups, such as disabled children, receive less consideration. Similarly, despite both UK and international policy and guidance encouraging the involvement of disabled children and their right to participate in decision-making arenas, they are frequently denied this right. UK based evidence suggests that disabled children's participation lags behind that of their non-disabled peers, often due to social work practitioners' lack of skills, expertise and knowledge on how to facilitate participation. The exclusion of disabled children from decision-making in social care processes echoes their exclusion from participation in society. This paper seeks to begin to address this situation, and to provide some examples of tools that social work educators can introduce into pre- and post-qualifying training programmes, as well as in-service training. The paper draws on the experiences of researchers using non-traditional qualitative research methods, especially non-verbal methods, and describes two research projects, focusing on the methods employed to communicate with and involve disabled children, the barriers encountered and lessons learnt. Some of the ways in which these methods of communication can inform social work education are explored alongside wider issues of how and if increased communication can facilitate greater social inclusion

In‐situ extraction and impregnation of black walnut husk into polyethylene film using supercritical carbon dioxide with an ethanol modifier

Walnuts are commonly cultivated for their kernel, which is a rich source of antioxidant phenolic compounds. The husk likewise contains antioxidant and antimicrobial compounds, but is typically discarded without further processing. Antioxidant compounds are useful in creating active packaging films, but typically decompose at melt extrusion temperatures in polymer processing. Due to carbon dioxide\u27s low critical point and ability to swell polymer films, supercritical carbon dioxide may be used to impregnate phenolic compounds into polymers. For this study, a novel technique is used to simultaneously produce walnut husk extracts and impregnate the extract into polymer films in the same batch extractor using supercritical carbon dioxide with a 15 wt-% ethanol modifier at 60°C at 19.4 MPa. The effect of varying the loading of walnut husk in the extractor upon impregnation mass was evaluated with the impregnation mass of the film increasing with walnut husk loading. It was determined by FTIR, as well as the eduction of the protein cytochrome c, that antioxidant compounds may be extracted from walnut husks and impregnated into low-density polyethylene film (LDPE) by this technique