Dark side of care (1)

Vivienne Bozalek - UWC vbozalek@uwc.ac.za
Daniela Gachago - CPUT dgachago@cput.ac.za
Kathy Watters - UWC watterslife@gmail.com

● Background and context
● Emerging technologies project
● The dark side of care as a framework
● Research findings
● Conclusion

South African context
Emerging technologies project

Research and Development
Expenditure
Research and development is what scientific and technological and medical companies engage
in to find new designs. This can be an expensive pursuit, given the costs of materials, machines
and skilled specialists. Yet the development of a new design can bring financial rewards, as well
as the benefits of developing a new medicine, gadget or piece of software.
In 2002, US$289 billion was spent on research and development in the United States; in the
same year there was practically no research and development spending in Angola.

The question of how to make higher education more inclusive has been a
central concern internationally over the past two decades (Drakich, Taylor &
Bankier 1995). In South Africa, inclusivity has been even more of a concern
since the first democratic election given the structuring of educational
opportunities on the basis of race under apartheid.
South African post-apartheid policy documents, reflect an intention to
embrace values such as democracy, openness and a human rights approach
to education (Department of Education, 1997; 2001, a&b). However, there
remains a disjuncture between these policy intentions and the actual
experiences of students and staff in the higher education sector.
South African concerns in higher
education

The continuing impact of apartheid-designed
segregated higher education institutions and lack of
imaginative attention to issues of difference in
teaching and learning remains a stumbling block for
achieving participatory parity amongst students in
this sector.
SA concerns in higher education

The South African higher education landscape is still affected by the historical inequities
of past policies, and many students and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), particularly
the Historically Disadvantaged Institutions (HDIs) are affected by scarce resources and
poverty. Higher education institutions themselves are also unequally placed with regard
to resources and the students that they enroll (Bozalek & Boughey, 2012)
Challenges facing SA HEIs

Involves the following research partners:
A group of eight differently placed HEIs in South Africa four
in the Western Cape (Cape Peninsular University of
Technology (CPUT), Stellenbosch University (SU), University
of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of the Western Cape
(UWC) as well as the Universities of Fort Hare, Rhodes,
Witwatersrand and Pretoria.
An international NGO – the Open Courseware Consortium

Funded by the South African National Research
Foundation (NRF) for a period of three years
Overarching question
How could qualitative outcomes in education be
realised by using emerging technologies to
transform teaching and learning interactions and
paradigms across higher education institutions in
South Africa?

Qualitative outcomes
Stimulating learning environments where:
• learners are empowered, safe to express themselves,
ask and respond to peers’ questions without feeling
oppressed, domesticated or silenced;
• there is encouragement to ‘think aloud’, try out new
things and reflect on lessons learnt
• the psychological distance between knowledgeable
others (peers and experts) is reduced
• Learners are equal partners in knowledge production
(participatory parity) (Henschke, 2010)

Characteristics of ET
1. May or may not be new technologies
2. Evolving organism, that exist in the state of
coming into being
3. Go through hype cycles
4. They are not yet fully understood
5. They are not yet fully researched
6. They are potentially disruptive, but that
potential is mostly unfulfilled Veletsianos, 2010:13-17

Veletsianos (2010, p. 17) sees ETs as transcending
academic disciplines and describes ETs as ‘tools,
technologies, innovations, and advancements utilized in
diverse educational settings to serve varied education-
related purposes’. We tended to favour this definition
above others, as it emphasises the context-specific
nature of ETs, which we regard as particularly important
for our discussion on interdisciplinary Southern
perspectives and experiences.

Sub-questions addressed by the project
In what ways are emerging technologies used in innovative pedagogical
practices to transform teaching and learning across South African HEIs?
What can be learnt from an in-depth examination of case studies of
innovative practice in a sample of HEIs in which these emergent
technologies are being used?
What are the conscious and tacit theoretical assumptions guiding higher
educators' teaching and learning practices?
What models of innovative theory and practice can be developed from the
identification of transformative teaching and learning interactions and
paradigms across the HEIs?

Phase 1 of Project - Survey
Ethics clearance
Literature reviews and theoretical frameworks – Cultural Historical Activity
Theory (CHAT) (Engeström, 2005, Leontiev, 1981)
Survey of Emerging Technologies and Teaching and Learning Practices in SA
HEIs
This survey answered sub-question 1: In what ways are emerging
technologies used in innovative pedagogical practices to transform
teaching and learning across South African HEIs?
Design and piloting of questionnaire (May-July 2011)
Target group: lecturers that are known to be open to/engaged with
technology
Sent by email to contacts in all public HEIs institution, snowball sampling
Three parts to questionnaire – demographic, tools used, open questions re
practices

Open ended questions answered by respondents
What is the most innovative pedagogical practice that you used recently
using ICTs (in the last two years)?
What prompted you to initiate or use this pedagogical practice? (own
motivation, addressing a specific problem;
Please describe your teaching context in which you used this practice
(level of programme, discipline, size of class, students’ characteristics)?
Which technology/tool did you use? Please describe
How did you come to use this specific technology? (eg heard from
colleagues, from workshops, from students, from international
conferences) ;
What impact did it have on your teaching and the learning of your
students?
Did you use other technologies?

Phase 2- Institutional Case Studies
In-depth case studies of innovative pedagogical practices using emergent
technologies to enhance teaching and learning in South African higher
education, with particular emphasis on those that would be useful and
affordable in resource scarce contexts.
These case studies were used to answer the second and third research sub-
questions:
What can be learnt from an in-depth examination of case studies of
innovative practice in a sample of HEIs in which these emergent
technologies are being used? and
What are the conscious and tacit theoretical assumptions guiding higher
educators' teaching and learning practices?

Survey at all 22 HEIs in SA – 262 responses
20 indepth interviews selected from survey
responses – analysed for this paper by three of
the research team members
Seven interviews selected which exemplify
constraints and enablements for achieving
qualitative outcomes

Seven case studies
Tools - blogs, LMS, google drive, digital stories and facebook
groups
Disciplines – blended learning Mphil health sciences course
HAI, collaborative lecture notes in a Physiotherapy course
HDI, Obstetrics and Gynaecology reflective practice HAI (3),
social work HAI & HDI(2), online Education education PhD
reading group HAI (1), natural science – Biodiversity adaptive
management of a fish tank HDI (1)

● paternalism - power differentials between care-giver
and care receiver - infantalising
● parochialism - caring for only those close to oneself
Both are distortions of responsibilities that people should
appropriately assume
(Tronto, 1993)

Powerful position of caregiver re care receiver
Knows and anticipates needs
Sense of importance re own role
Danger of student becoming infantilised
Duflo – necessity of state to take certain
decisions for people especially in relation to
basic needs

Care restricted to private or intimate realm
(Robinson, 1999, 2011; Tronto, 2013)
Dyadic mother-child relationships
Concerned with those close to us rather than
distant others
Young’s socially connected responsibility
regarding issues that affect all across
distances

Caring about (attentiveness)
Caring for (responsibility)
Care-giving (competence)
Care receiving (responsiveness)
Caring with (trust and solidarity) (Tronto, 2013)
Need integrity – if for example responsibility is
foregrounded in teaching > patronising

● Paternalism vs student agency
● Protectionism and expert knowledge
● Recognition of vulnerability and the power of
interdisciplinarity
● Parochialism/dyadic vs peer-to-peer/cross disciplinary
learning

They are active participants in the
process, it’s no longer a passive
exercise. They self-select, I don’t
like to impose those things. (KR)
Many of our students come from very
poor home backgrounds and also do
not the best educational backgrounds
in terms of their formative schooling.
And so my teaching philosophy is a
very developmental one (RJ)
Many of our students take their
Wizard card that they get, which
is supposed to be used for
buying food and books and they
buy stuff and they sell it and
send the money home. (BVA)

What we’re trying to do is that
students have their own
personal information which
they turn into knowledge and
they’re learning to share the
knowledge through blogs. (KR)
… And then I’ll have prepared a
PowerPoint of key point bullets or
questions for reading. And then I sort
of think maybe I manage it too much;
maybe I should just shut-up more.
maybe I’m posting too many things
so my voice is too dominant. (KMS)

I totally let the so-called
knowledgeable students assist – I
mean, they do, they just jump in.
They would sometimes be working
later at night than I am – so there
would be a question and X would
just jump in and the next morning I
would see, ...that’s way better than I
could ever say it. So that really is
my style. (BPJ)
I have a little impairment and so technology has
changed my life for me because material that
wasn’t accessible to me is now accessible, so it’s
just lifted me to a whole new space and put me
on an even footing with other people, where
before I would want to explore something and
just couldn’t because even just finding books in
the library was always difficult because I couldn’t
see what was on other shelves and reading.
(MV)

...how do we teach measuring for wheelchair alignment,
because that was one specific module someone was
developing. So I can’t really comment. I can comment on the
technologies but the other one will say, ‘Listen, this is actually
very good and it’s needed.’ And the others would say, ‘Oh,
that’s interesting, we don’t do that but we have this thing and
we can also use it in this way.’ (BPJ)

Ethics of care lens useful for analysis of the constraints and
enablements towards qualitative outcomes in teaching and
learning practices using emerging technologies which
higher educators engaged in
The dark side of care is an important consideration for
teaching and learning and democratic classrooms

● Useful framework to look at teaching in HE
● Some find it difficult to relinquish control
● Non-expert might have positive impact – particularly in deparochialising and
democratising the curriculum
● Cross-disciplinarity and multiple participants/facilitators also beneficial
● Choice of technology and affordances of tools is also important for democracy and
allowing student to take control of learning and collaborative work
● We may not be conscious of paternalism, parochialism, protectionism due to
current HE discourses of 'under- and unpreparedness’ – inadvertantly inhibit
responses from care receivers (students) due to superior knowledge
● Could use it to self-reflect and for professional development

Bozalek, V. & Boughey, C. (2012). (Mis)Framing Higher Education in South Africa. Social Policy & Administration, 46(6):688-703.
Department of Education. (1997). Education White Paper 3: A programme for the transformation of higher education. Pretoria: DoE .
Department of Education (2001a) The National Plan for Higher Education. Pretoria: Government Printer.
Department of Education (2001b) The Restructuring of the Higher Education System in South Africa. Pretoria: Government Printer.
Drakich, J., Taylor, M. and Bankier, J. (1995). Academic freedom is the inclusive university. In S. Richer and L. Weir (eds), Beyond Political Correctness: Towards the inclusive university. Toronto:
Toronto University Press. pp. 118-135.
Duflo, E. (2012). "Human Values and the Design of the Fight against Poverty" Tanner Lecture 1. May 2 2012 Harvard University.
Engeström, Y. (2005). Developmental Work Research - Expanding Activity Theory in Practice. Berlin: Lehmans Media.
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The NewMedia Consortium.
Henschke, J. A. (2010). Bringing Together Personal Learning, Higher Education Institutions Elements, and Global Support for a Re-Orientation towards a Focus on Lifelong Learning and Education. In
V. Wang (Ed.), Encyclopedia for Using Technology in Adult and Career Education, IGI Global, Hershey, June 2010.
Leontiev, A.N. (1981). The problem of activity in psychology. In J.V. Wertsch. (Ed.), The concept of activity in Soviet psychology. (pp.37-71).Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.
Robinson, Fiona 1999. Globalizing care: Ethics, feminist theory and international relations. Oxford: Westview Books.
Robinson, F. (2011). The ethics of care: A feminist approach to human security. Philadelphia.
Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries. A political argument for an ethic of care. London,:Routledge.
Tronto, J.( 2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality and justice. New York: New York University Press.
Veletsianos, G. (2010). Emerging Technologies in Distance Education. Edmonton: AU Press.

● Bozalek, V., Ng’ambi, D. & Gachago, D. (2013) Transforming teaching with emerging technologies: Implications for Higher Education
Institutions, South African Journal of Higher Education, 27(2): 419-436.
● Bozalek, V., Gachago, D., Alexander, L., Watters, K., Wood, D., Ivala, E. & Herrington, J. (2013) The use of emerging technologies for
authentic learning: A South African study in Higher Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, 44,4:629-638.
● Bozalek, V. & Watters, K. (2014) The potential of authentic learning and emerging technologies for developing graduate
attributes, South African Journal of Higher Education, 28(3): 1069-1084.
● Bozalek, V. , Gachago, D. & Watters, K. (2015) Twenty First Century Pedagogies: Portraits of South African higher educators
using emerging technologies. In V. Bozalek, D. Ng’ambi, D. Wood, J. Herrington, J. Hardman & A. Amory (eds.) Activity Theory,
Authentic Learning and Emerging Technologies: Towards a Transformative Higher Education Pedagogy. London and New York:
Routledge.
● Bozalek, V., Ng’ambi, D., Wood, D., Herrington, J., Hardman, J. & Amory, A. (eds.) (in press) Activity Theory, Authentic Learning and
Emerging Technologies: Towards a Transformative Higher Education Pedagogy. London and New York: Routledge.
● Gachago, D., Ivala, E., Backhouse, J., Bosman, J.P, Bozalek, V. and Ng’ambi, D. (2013).Towards a shared understanding of
emerging technologies: Experiences in a collaborative research project in South Africa, The African Journal of Information
Systems (AJIS) Vol 5, Issue 3, Article 4 available at http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/ajis/vol5/iss3/4
● Ng’ambi, D., Bozalek, V. & Gachago, D. (2013) Converging institutional expertise to model teaching and learning with emerging
technologies. Progressio, 35(2):19-36.
● Rowe, M., Frantz, J. & Bozalek, V. (2012). Physiotherapy students’ use of emerging online technology as part of their learning practices.
South African Journal of Physiotherapy, 68(1):29-34.

For more information on the project visit
www.emergingicts.blogspot.com

Dark side of care (1)

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