Opening meanings

This photo was taken on the main campus of the University of Cape Town during the summer vacation. I used Adobe Ideas, a new App for me - one that is particularly helpful for developing different layers of images and text. The photo shows the stairway between the university main library and the students’ cafeteria.  On the one side is the space for gaining formal knowledge and on the other side the informal space designed for eating and talking. There seemed a strong connection with the binaries expressed by 2 recent educators who I interviewed. One spoke about the need in medical education for an equal division of focus between health information and healthy well-being, while the other discussed the requirement for skills and knowledge to be balanced by “soul” matters.

As students return to campus after their summer vacation, this physical campus space is much busier. Some students are coming to encounter the first year experience or to begin another year of their studies. For many students, the transition from school is extremely difficult and challenging as the curriculum structure and design is often very different. Medical undergraduate students face a second acknowledged and difficult transition when they begin their clinical years after 3 years of mostly theoretical training.

While these challenging curricular moments are acknowledged, the emphasis is on skills development and competence training. Student support is available at UCT and valued by many. First year students in the Health Sciences have the benefit of possibly entering an intervention programme. Students in later years can access support through several channels. Yet, I question what changes are visible in the curriculum to smoothen these later rough curricular transitions. My research is aiming to open up new meanings to difficult issues that students confront in Obstetrics. Students’ insights and experiences of dissonance can help to shape and to drive change.

Jackson and Mazzei (2012:34) point out that “[i]f we purposefully seek the snags that trip us up and let ourselves fall, then meanings have the potential of presenting themselves from our view on the floor. If we keep our heads down in order to anticipate the snags, thereby avoiding a fall, we risk a foreclosure of that which is a new concept, as named by Derrida”.

Jackson, A. & Mazzei, L.  2012. Thinking with theory in qualitative research. New York. Routledge.