Browsing by Author "Zembylas, Michalinos"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    The Council of Europe’s White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue: an analysis using the ethic of care
    (Symposium Journals, 2011) Zembylas, Michalinos; Bozalek, Vivienne
    This article examines what an ethic of care could offer to discussions about Europe’s increasing cultural diversity by analyzing the important White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue published by the Council of Europe in 2008. The authors consider the White Paper from the perspective of the political ethic of care and thus examine its adequacy in dealing with issues of care. Their point of departure is that policy texts display normative ways of speaking about certain issues – in this case, issues of diversity, multiculturalism and citizenship in Europe. They first contextualize the discussions for promoting intercultural dialogue in the Council of Europe and analyze the normative framework of the White Paper. Then, they use the care perspective as a lens to comment on notions of diversity, multiculturalism and citizenship. Finally, they discuss how the notion of care as a citizenship issue could contribute towards further development of discussions on citizenship education and intercultural dialogue in Europe.
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    Critical posthumanism, new materialisms and the affective turn for socially just pedagogies in higher education
    (South African Association for Research and Development in Higher Education (SAARDHE), 2016) Bozalek, Vivienne; Zembylas, Michalinos
    Critical posthumanism, new/feminist materialisms and the affective turn have a great deal in common with each other, and can be seen as similar perspectives with slightly different emphases in each framework, all focusing on: relational ontologies; a critique of dualisms; and engagements with matter and the non-human. Feminist thinkers such as Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Elizabeth Grosz, Nancy Tuana, Vicky Kirby, Jane Bennett,and Stacey Alaimo, amongst others, have been identified both as critical posthumanists and new/feminist materialists, and have also contributed to ideas about the affective turn. Many of these scholars have been influenced by the work of Deleuze and Guattari and their notions of monism and vitalism, and have moved beyond the centrality of discourse and cartesian dualisms to incorporate a vision of human/nonhuman, body/mind, subject/object, nature/culture, matter/ meaning, continuity/discontinuity, beginning/returning and creation/renewal (Barad 2007) in their work.
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    Diffraction or reflection? Sketching the contours of two methodologies in educational research
    (Taylor & Francis, 2017) Bozalek, Vivienne; Zembylas, Michalinos
    Internationally, an interest is emerging in a growing body of work on what has become known as ‘diffractive methodologies’ drawing attention to ontological aspects of research. Diffractive methodologies have largely been developed in response to a dissatisfaction with practices of ‘reflexivity’, which are seen to be grounded in a representational paradigm and the epistemological aspects of research. While work on ‘reflexivity’ and ‘critical reflection’ has over the years become predominant in educational and social science research methodology literature, our reading indicates that there is still important conceptual work to be done putting these two practices – reflection and diffraction – in conversation with each other and exploring their continuities and breaks as well as examining the consequences for research methodologies in education. This article raises important questions about how the concepts of diffraction and reflection are defined and understood and discusses the methodological implications for educational research.
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    Re-imagining socially just pedagogies in higher education: the contribution of contemporary theoretical perspectives
    (University of Johannesburg and UNISA Press, 2017) Zembylas, Michalinos; Bozalek, Vivienne
    Despite post-apartheid policy intentions to redress the effects of apartheid, inequalities in higher education have remained an endemic problem in South Africa, and continue to have a major influence on students and educators in South Africa. This has recently been foregrounded in student-led protests regarding equitable access to higher education (#FeesMustFall) and requests to decolonise the curriculum (#RhodesMustFall)—reigniting attention towards the enormous disparities that still exist in the South African education system generally, and which includes the higher education sector. Those institutions which were historically disadvantaged continue to struggle with paucity in terms of funding, geopolitical positioning, human and material resources. Student protest movements have resonated and reverberated across multiple higher education contexts internationally as well (for example at Oxford University, in the United Kingdom and the #StudentBlackOut demonstrations planned from Yale to University of Missouri in the United States). Conducting research into issues of social justice in relation to higher education pedagogical practices is thus of crucial importance in the present time and space, which remains plagued by issues of inequity.
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    Towards a response-able pedagogy across higher education institutions in post-apartheid South Africa: an ethico-political analysis
    (Unisa Press, 2017) Bozalek, Vivienne; Zembylas, Michalinos
    Internationally there has been some interest in how critical pedagogies might be enabled in higher education to support transformative social agendas. Few writers, however, have theorised the ethico-political aspects of this effort from a feminist new materialist perspective. By focusing on the analysis of an inter-institutional collaborative course which was constructed across three disciplines and two differently positioned universities in Cape Town, South Africa, this paper examines the design of the course retrospectively from a feminist new materialist theoretical framing. In so doing, it moves beyond more traditional understandings of critical pedagogy to consider the design and student engagement with the course from the perspective of what we call “response-able pedagogies.” Response-able pedagogies are not simply examples of the type of learning that can take place when power relations, materiality and entanglement are acknowledged; they also constitute ethicopolitical practices that incorporate a relational ontology into teaching and learning activities. We propose that ethico-political practices such as attentiveness, responsibility, curiosity, and rendering each other capable, constitute reponse-able pedagogies. The paper focuses on the transdisciplinary and interinstitutional course to consider how these ethico-political practices which constitute a response-able pedagogy might (be put to) work and how the students were both enabled and constrained by this design in terms of their responses to such ethico-political practices.