Reflecting on reflections

In the drawing above (using an iPad pen and Explain Everything) I’ve tried to demonstrate the tenuous lines of communication and relationships that are evident in our State health system’s birthing facilities. The medical undergraduate students traverse this netting. For educators, there are many challenges. We are all vulnerable through our interdependence.

Zembylas (2012:8) claims that “a pedagogy of discomfort is valuable in uncovering and questioning the deeply embedded emotional dimensions that shape some individual and group privileges ...through daily habits and routines” then he adds that by “problematizing these emotional habits and routines and their attachments to  … structural injustices, it is shown that teachers and students in a posttraumatic context can begin to identify the invisible ways in which they comply with dominant ideologies”.

When we stand in front of a class giving a lecture, we tend to create and maintain a physical and emotional distance between us and the students. When we engage with interactive participatory pedagogies there is a dynamic and fluid arrangement where we as educators aim to facilitate learning rather than teach in a didactic manner. However when we shift to the online space inviting students to engage in critical reflection through their real life clinical encounters, a different dynamic occurs. The comfort of distance is disturbed. Our roles and responsibilities become less clear and less comfortable, particularly when working with ‘troubled knowledge’.

Like the stories from women in labour wards in our State facilities (Chadwick, Cooper and Harries 2014), students reveal many narratives of distress. A question that sits with me as I read students’ reflective commentaries is: how bad is bad?

Reflective commentaries have become an increasingly popular pedagogical tool, now used in various ways and through several mediums. For instance in Obstetrics it offers an opportunity for debriefing. Many students have expressed the value in hearing about the experiences of their colleagues – a sense of shifting from individual discomfort and at times trauma, to a collective recognition for changing the normalized structural injustices that pervade practices in our health care system.

As I, the educator and researcher, acknowledge the students’ experiences and offer support, sometimes taking matters further through the institutional mechanisms, I sometimes sit with uncertainty struggling with the emotional labour that accompanies my role.

How much do we support and report? Every move on and in the net has an impact.

Chadwick, R., Cooper, D. & Harries, J. 2014. Narratives of distress about birth in South African public maternity settings: a qualitative study. Midwifery. 30. 862-858. 

Zembylas, M. 2012. Critical pedagogy and emotion: working through ‘troubled knowledge’ in posttraumatic contexts, Critical Studies in Education. 1-14.