“Students Make History Every Day Just by Sitting on These Steps”: Performative Spaces and Re-Genring in the South

Abstract

Students’ call for decolonising the curriculum has triggered deep reflection about what we teach and how we teach it, but equally, about the role of pedagogic spaces in recognising students as agents in their learning. This paper is situated within the field of academic literacies, where students’ engagement with texts is seen as being context-specific, and involving assertions of agency to various degrees. The added dimension here is the embedding of digital literacies, defined as a set of customised online practices, into a writing-intensive, first year, foundational course at a South African university, to favour the acquisition of academic literacies. The analysis of different spaces becomes crucial in grasping how innovative forms teaching and learning may take place. In his trialectics of space, Lefebvre distinguishes between perceived, conceived and lived spaces. Butler would refer to lived spaces as “performative” ones, “congealing” into form through iterative use. Online learning spaces may well turn into performative spaces as students inhabit them, interact with online resources and explore their spatial boundaries. I perform a discourse analysis of students’ textual practices on the online and physical spaces, to explore how students reproduce or subvert genre categories through processes of “re-genring.” Furthermore, I share the extent to which such pedagogic spaces become performative, the power dynamics that emerge, and their effects on our traditional conception of teaching and learning in higher education.

Blended learning i de praktisk-musiske fag set gennem et systematisk litteratur-review

“…Mens Hunma (2018) ser en fordel i at lade studerende arbejde anonymt på en hjemmeside på nettet, finder Dredger m.fl. (2017) i modsaetning hertil, at styrken i online laering ligger i faellesskabet og samarbejdet med virkelige mennesker via i dette tilfaelde en wiki (her et hold laererstuderende, der online skal undervise en skoleklasse i at skrive poesi).…”

“…Enkelte af artiklerne fremhaever direkte fordele og/eller ulemper ved at laere praktiske faerdigheder i blendede eller online undervisningsformater (Dolan m.fl., 2015;Dredger m.fl., 2017;Erol m.fl., 2016;Ferrone m.fl., 2017;Hunma, 2018;Stanley m.fl., 2018). Således fremhaever Dredger m.fl.…”

“…( 2017) argumenterer, at fordi MyDispense-softwaren kan varieres i det uendelige, kan de studerende øve sig på langt flere simulerede situationer, end det ville vaere muligt i en praktisk fysisk virkelighed. Endelig finder Hunma (2018), at online undervisning helt generelt er den bedste form for undervisning, fordi forelaesninger kan genses, litteraturen let kan opdateres, sider på nettet hurtigt kan besøges, og at det således overordnet set skaber en mulighed for et "performativt space", hvor studerende kan udfolde sig også på egen hånd. Opsamlende i forhold til fysiske artefakter og konkrete digitale teknologier til brug for undervisning i praktiske faerdigheder og kompetencer i blendede/online formater kan vi således fremhaeve, at vi kun få af artiklerne inddrager fysiske artefakter og at ingen eksperimenterer med praktiske faerdigheder i fysiske rum i kombination med online rum.…”

“…I artiklerne ses det endvidere, at praktiske faerdigheder (practical skills) flere steder -mere eller mindre eksplicit -forstås som en ud af flere elementer i en praksisfunderet handlekompetence (Brinson 2015, Erol m.fl. 2016, Hunma 2018, Hewitt 2015. Eksempelvis beskriver Brinson (2015) i sin undersøgelse af laeringsudbytte for henholdsvis "traditionel Lab" og "non traditional lab" 2 , det ønskede "outcome" i form af; viden og forståelse, evne til at stille spørgsmål/forholde sig undersøgende, praktiske faerdigheder; opfattelse/perception samt social og videnskabelig kommunikation.…”

Tourism and ICT. Bibliometric Study on Digital Literacy in Higher Education

“…From the above, it is understood that notable interest exists in academic research on the literacy of university students [1,19,31] characterized by a constant adaptation to the new demands derived from the changes experienced by the social environment, which are caused, to a large extent, by technological development [10,16,19,32]. Another feature that defines research on literacy, and specifically on DL, is its focus or specialization in specific areas or disciplines in response to the different levels of demand that professional sectors require of graduates [9,[33][34][35], including the tourist field [36][37][38][39][40][41].…”