A vertical gaze

An African safari is a greatly sought after experience by many people around the globe. Beyond taking time out away from home, it also offers an opportunity to connect with wildlife and learn from other species.

The height reached by a giraffe particularly while stretching to nibble leafy nutrients gives a very different perspective to the life world of the dung beetle shifting its way along the road. It reminds me of standing in a lift next to a very young child whose perspective is restricted by height. 

Considering the labour facilities where women are told to lie on a bed with health care providers and others attending to them, and looking down, it could be different. Doulas tend to sit beside a woman at the same level to offer support and compassion.  Perhaps we ought to give more consideration to these connections.

Horizontally speaking through the passage in Obs and Gynae

When I first became aware of the hidden curriculum, it was described as the informal learning that takes place outside the classrooms, such as in the passageways and refreshment areas. A new awareness was awakened to become conscious of these occurrences and opportunities which most frequently occur without planning. At the time I was participating in a health and human rights workshop and recognized the unmet needs of some of the participants who were keen to share their stories from the Apartheid years of discrimination.

Recently and unexpectedly I engaged in a brief conversation in the corridor with our departmental head, the importance of this interaction led me to again reflect on the unexpected opportunities arising from these open spaces. Our mutual concern was about the normalization of disrespectful practices in labour wards. What about those who are unaware of the inappropriateness of their habitual poor and abusive practices?

A recent reading from Lenz Taguchi's book, Going Beyond the Theory/Practice Divide in Early Childhood Education, draws on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of striated and smooth spaces demonstrating the differences between organized, controlled, ordered and safe learning as opposed to that which is uncertain, with multiple opportunities and avenues, yet both are generally intertwined. Do the passageways provide us with an agentic force and materiality that inspire deeper insights and conversations?

Google chain

Google Drive has become part of me and my work. 

Am I chained to it, amidst the roughness of my teaching and research? Perhaps I am, as it provides a firm hold with an organized structure that assists my progress. I like the ever-increasing affordances, shifting my practices into new and uncertain spaces.  

Since discovering Google Drive through a course on Emerging Technologies in Higher Education (run by the Cape Higher Education Consortium), I’ve shared it with colleagues, and introduced it to students enabling them to use it through authentic learning, as their comrade. It offers a user-friendly avenue for reflective practice from where students’ voices and experiences can be amplified through online collaborative engagement.

  

An explanation of my use of Google Drive with medical students is now published in a Routledge book edited by Vivienne Bozalek, Dick Ng’ambi. Denise Wood, Jan Herrington, Joanne Hardman and Alan Amory.