Just students

Springgay and Freedman (2009) write about touch and relationality in terms of (m)othering in their quirky paper referring to Canadian visual artist, Diane Borsato’s experimental narratives in which she touched 1000 people with different reactions to the entitlement of space emerging, and slept with ten cakes in her bed to sense the materiality of such closeness. The concept of space, both interpersonal and personal, when linked to the material, highlights the relationships between things and bodies.

These relationships of “inter-embodiment” where knowledge is gained through the intermingling of bodies and non-bodies, places educators and students in in-between spaces. When our medical students are immersed in their clinical rotations they traverse this “space of movement, of development, and of becoming” (Springgay & Freedman 2009:29). The suggestion of a “bodied curriculum” is helpful as it illuminates difference in the daily realities “where bodied encounters become the performance” (Springgay & Freedman 2009:32).

In a recent focus group with six year 4 students who had just completed their 8 week Obstetrics rotation, I heard about their many difficulties in building relationships with other health team members in their attempts to offer care and support to women in labour. One student claimed that she learnt more about people in this learning rotation than about medicine. There was agreement that students felt there was just nothing that could adequately prepare them for the situations they faced - a sense of feeling at the bottom of the food chain of the medical hierarchy. Even patients who had just been through the labours of labour, sometimes asked students why some midwives were so rude to them.

One of the objects that matter is the placenta. Its removal becomes a force and intensity that disturbs learning and relationship building. There are both active and passive options for cord traction with a multiplicity of viewpoints and ways-of-doing. It can get pulled and pushed with varying levels of tension. I’m told it’s about the feeling of tightness to the puller. Great caution is needed to avoid the cord snapping. Each practitioner appears to develop their own ways that work best for them and sometimes belittle different ways recommended by others. Judgemental comments about the touch and the pull are frequently experienced by students who then feel undermined rather than encouraged in their learning to become confident doctors. The placenta moves from a position of providing life to a foetus, to a point of tension between students and those with more experience. It then becomes a waste product leaving its mark. Students find themselves trying to be people-pleasers as their thoughts drift through their own agendas for passing through to the next learning rotation by fulfilling the curricular requirements.

Listening to the students’ voices brings a different perspective to curriculum matters. When they move from theoretical lessons in the classroom to practical encounters in the local health facilities, they find themselves in this in-between space where uncertainty prevails amidst many multiplicities. Apart from the memories of such challenging moments, the smell of the placenta also lingers with students long after they have left the learning space of Obstetrics facilities.

The image above was drawn on my iPad as I sat and reflected on the focus group. Using the Brushes App I tried to illustrate the powerlessness felt by students, and the force and intensity that the placenta can have on student learning. From their own drawings, 2 out of 6 students drew tearful faces indicating their struggles through this curricular imperative.

I wish I had more artistic skills to better portray the bodily encounters in my research intra-actions. Recently I was connected to the inspiring artworks by David Hockney. He uses the Brushes App on the iPad to create an innovative art collection. He shifts perspectives in unusual ways through the affordances of technology and his artistic expertise.

Springgay, S. and Freedman, D. 2009. M/othering a Bodied Curriculum Sleeping with Cake and Other Touchable Encounters. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. 25:2:25-37.