Positioning positionality

“Becoming involves dynamic processes, through/with/in which an assemblage is constantly changing through connections it is making” Sellers 2013)

Interviewing my research participants provides the traditional core material for my data collection. The conversations are recorded and transcribed. However my additional request for drawings that summarize our discussions seems to contribute a very different dimension to these interviews. I give a blank A1 piece of paper with a set of pastels and markers to each of the interviewees, many of whom are in leadership positions. Their responses have made a significant mark on my findings. The very different behaviours seem striking and relevant.

In the image above (drawn using my finger on the Paper app on my iPad) I have sketched the physical positions that were taken up by different individuals. One educator chose to remain sitting opposite me across her desk. She was very uncomfortable drawing. Only the red marker appealed to her.  She willingly used text rather than images to describe the organization of student learning.

Moving in a clockwise direction on my drawing , another educator (who I know well through social circumstances) took on a childlike role to find a comfortable space on the floor (despite a knee injury) and engaged deeply with metaphorical concepts to explain her idea of a nurturing curriculum as opposed to one where there is “a hob-nailed boot” (Edu 3).

For each interview, there has been a choice of venue (where they would feel comfortable) resulting in our meetings happening in their educators’ offices and communal meeting areas.  In terms of the positions taken up for the drawings, in most cases the educators have chosen to sit next to me at a table explaining their thoughts and ideas.  

In common with some medical students who are finding free drawing “difficult”, one educator  only agreed to do a drawing on my third and final request. She went outside her office after our discussion to find a small table. The large paper offered to her was folded then covered by a smaller familiar A4 piece of paper placed on top of it. She was clearly uncomfortable with a changed tone of voice and a rushed product.

My fifth drawing illustrates another respondent who chose to move to her large windowsill area where there was a magnificent view across Cape Town. She also needed some persuasion and remained silent for a long time as she considered what and how to draw. A few small images emerged.

These drawings seem to be deterritorializing my thinking. There are ruptures happening in the process that send me on new lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari 1987). Is the agency of the paper debilitating some of these educators in leadership positions. Research and publications are key factors that dominate Higher Education practices - is the paper and request for images illuminating the schism between past practices and the present technology driven learning that promotes visual thinking? How can pedagogical practices adapt to such varying performativity?

Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1987. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Trans. B. Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Sellers, M. 2013. Young children becoming curriculum: Deleuze, Te Wharriki and curricular understandings. Routledge.