Multimodality and New Materialism in Science Learning: Exploring Insights from an Introductory Physics Lesson

Science disciplines are inherently multimodal, involving written and spoken language, bodily gestures, symbols, diagrams, sketches, simulation and mathematical formalism. Studies have shown that explicit multimodal teaching approaches foster enhanced access to science disciplines. We examine multimodal classroom practices in a physics extended curriculum programme (ECP) through the lens of new materialism. As De Freitas and Sinclair note in their book, Mathematics and the Body, there is growing research interest in embodiment in mathematics (and science) education—that is, the role played by students’ bodies, in terms of gestures, verbalisation, diagrams and their relation to the physical objects with which they interact. Embodiment can be viewed from a range of theoretical perspectives (for example, cognitive, phenomemological, or social semiotic). However, they argue that their new materialist approach, which they term “inclusive materialism”, has the potential for framing more socially just pedagogies. In this article, we discuss a multimodal and new materialist analysis of a lesson vignette from a first-year extended curriculum physics course. The analysis illuminates how an assemblage of bodily-paced steps-gestures-diagrams becomes entangled with mathematical concepts. Here, concepts arise through the interplay of modes of diagrams, gestures and bodily movements. The article explores how multimodal and new materialist perspectives might contribute to reconfiguring pedagogical practices in extended curriculum programmes in physics and mathematics.

Scholarship in Extended Curriculum Programmes

Editorial

Slow Scholarship: Propositions for the Extended Curriculum Programme

Higher education has been deeply affected by neoliberalism and corporatisation, with their emphasis on efficiency, competitiveness and valorisation of quantity over quality. This article argues that in the context of South African higher education, and in the Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) more particularly, such commodification of education is problematic. The article explores what the Slow movement has to offer ECP in terms of scholarship. It seeks to answer the question: How might ECP be reconfigured using Slow imaginaries? Various academic disciplines and practices have incorporated Slow philosophy to develop alternative ways of doing academia; however, it has hitherto not been considered for programmes such as ECP. This article approaches Slow pedagogy for ECP using posthuman and feminist new materialist sensibilities that are predicated on a relational ontology. The article puts forward the following 10 propositions for a Slow scholarship in ECP using ideas from posthumanism and feminist new materialism: practice attentiveness through noticing, engage in responsible relations, diffract rather than reflect (thinking together affirmatively), render each other capable, enable collective responsiveness, explore creatively, making thoughts and feelings possible, enact curiosity, ask the right questions politely, foreground process rather than product, and create conditions for trust by wit(h)nessing. It is argued that by practising Slow scholarship with these propositions, ECPs might resist market-driven imperatives that characterise contemporary academia.

Gender Stereotyping and Inequality Behind the Slogans: A Case Study in Chinese Tertiary Education

The increasing number of female students in China has contributed to reducing the gender gaps in tertiary education over the past decades; however, the debate about gender inequality in tertiary education is ongoing. This study examines how the slogans on the banners for Girls’ Day celebrations from 2018–2020 on university campuses in mainland China convey male students’ willingness to provide help and support for the perceived academic issues faced by female college students, while surreptitiously conveying gender stereotyping and intelligence quotient (IQ) prejudice in the current university campus culture. These slogans occupy a prominent position on campus and help to evaluate the perceptions of both male and female college students regarding these issues. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with 16 undergraduate students at two universities. The analysis revealed that female IQ bias based on gender stereotyping is an enduring issue, which has been unintentionally inherited from previous generations of Chinese college students. The article reveals that despite the increased number of female college students, “benevolent discrimination” against women still exists in various forms in the campus culture and gender roles have not transformed much. The findings of this study can inform future gender education, orienting its effort towards a clearly identified niche of users.

Creative Interventions: Integrating Arts-Based Approaches in a University Access Programme

This article is based on my master’s degree study at the University of Johannesburg that evaluates the impact of utilising arts-based approaches in the Workplace Preparation (WPP) module curriculum. The study demonstrates that when integrated into teaching and learning, arts-based approaches expand the capability of the curriculum to achieve more equitable and accessible participation. I use an action research approach in the study to investigate how creativity and arts-based practices might instil experiences of empowerment and agency in students in the classroom. I draw from literature to gain multiple critical perspectives in order to frame and demonstrate arts-based approaches to teaching and learning that embrace alternative ways of knowing, communicating and interacting. The findings suggest that culturally relevant arts-based approaches play a legitimate and vital role in expanding the pedagogic space in order to foster embodied learning opportunities that acknowledge and include non-linear, somatic, visceral, emotional and symbolic dimensions. Arts-based methods advance transformative agendas and support learning in the current higher education (extended programme) context. The study involves an actionable intervention that uses arts-based methods to present the Workplace Preparation module. Arts-based activities and lesson plans are devised for integration into the existing formal programme and can be used and adapted as a resource for lecturers in the Workplace Preparation Department.

With Dreams in Our Hands: An African Feminist Framing of a Knowledge-Making Project with Former ESP Students

This article introduces a research project that works with former Extended Studies Programme students to make knowledge that emerges through online, multimodal collaborations. Knowledge-making is not politically neutral, and the project and article are responding in part to the calls of the 2015/2016 South African student protesters to decolonise and transform university curricula. The project draws on African feminist ideas, emphasising the intersectional oppressions of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy, which continue to influence theoretical choices in the knowledge hierarchies of South African and African universities. The “race”, class and gender inequalities that drive success or failure at university and in society become some of the topics addressed in the project, where former students as co-researchers collaborate to devise the topics, responses, and kinds of dissemination. Ntseane’s overlapping principles of a collective worldview, spirituality, a shared orientation to knowledge, and communal knowledge-making are motifs that influence how the project is imagined and run. My positionality as lead researcher and former lecturer of the co-researchers is navigated using African feminist guidance, which also informs the ethical principles of the project.

What Are Universities Really For? Re-imagining Stewardship

Commentary

A Language Course to Teach Administrative Staff English for Communication in an International University

A qualitative case study was conducted to triangulate student interviews, a teacher’s reflection report, and classroom observation data to understand how a local language course prepared Taiwanese administrative staff for international communication across working contexts in an international university. The findings firstly show that the teacher treated course planning as a teacher and student process of co-developing, co-moderating, co-revising, and co-managing learning resources and content. The teacher empowered the administrative staff by giving them the authority to select language targets for study that the staff thought would be useful to fulfil their job duties. Secondly, participation of the administrative staff was important in creating and managing language resources for international communication. The teacher used vocabulary and dialogue writing and speaking practices that were contextualised to the needs of the administrative staff. The targeted vocabulary was selected by the administrative staff based on gaps in their knowledge and was then used to co-construct dialogues that addressed scenarios the staff had previously encountered that necessitated the use of English with internationals. Thirdly, developing the course to address the administrative staff’s communication needs was a process of rebalancing teacher autonomy, learner autonomy, and course development. Both the teacher and the students perceived the course effective in encouraging practical changes in the administrative staff’s learning and use of English, which they mostly attributed to the non-formal nature of the course and the support from higher management. Implications for planning and implementing English language courses for international communication were drawn from the findings

How Female Students Are “Educated” to Retreat from Leadership: An Example from the Chinese Schooling Context

Women’s continued under-representation in leadership positions is well documented. This article asserts that part of the reason for this can be found within educational settings. Chinese educational environments are examined using secondary data analysis, and it is argued that a) the protective approach that teachers adopt towards female students, b) the reserved and unworldly female images exhibited by textbooks, and c) the improper view of leadership that girls tend to develop through classroom-based leadership experiences combine to damage girls’ leadership potential. These mechanisms are usually unintentional and hard to detect, which means that part of the solution lies in promoting the awareness of teachers and educational leaders. Meanwhile, it is important to note that this issue is not merely about equal treatment for both genders; rather, it is broadly linked to our construction of leadership as a concept. Ultimately, the educational setting is expected not only to produce an equal number of “great women” and “great men”, but also—partly through its explorations of how to cultivate the female version of a “great man”—to contribute to updating and advancing the “leadership” concept and practice as a whole.

Multilingualism: A Resource for Meaning-Making and Creating Ontological Access

This article explores first-year Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) students’ multilingual practices in a university course where students have access to professionally translated technical terminology of the subject field. The study examines whether multilingual technical terminology—embedded in a dialogic teaching model—can contribute to students’ epistemological and ontological access to the disciplinary content, and whether it can contribute to knowledge construction in a discipline by incorporating students’ oral contributions of their lived experiences into the curriculum content. In order to answer the research questions, qualitative data were collected by transcribing, analysing and interpreting students’ multilingual oral contributions on key political science topics. The findings of the study confirm that students’ vernacular literacies can play an important role in providing epistemological and ontological access for students at university, and can contribute to authentic transformation and decolonisation of higher education.