Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CriSTaL)

Introduction to CriSTaL Special Issue: Thinking with ocean/s for reconceptualising scholarship in higher education

Nike Romano, Vivienne Bozalek, Tammy Shefer — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

An octo-aesthetic figuration for learning in times of crisis

Delphi Carstens — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This theoretical paper mobilises a multi-modal figuration – octo-aesthetics – to argue for a transversal approach to HE (higher education) pedagogies appropriate to times of uncertainty. Using the eight independently thinking arms of the octopus as a guide, I deploy eight interrelated conceptual thinking aids to outline the relevance of an ethico-aesthetic paradigm to HE in times of individual, social, and environmental crisis. Deployed as speculative thinking aids, these octo- aesthetic figurations – schizoanalysis, bewilderment, shimmer, ecosophy, ecologicity, holobiont, trans-corporeality, and geontology – reclaim ‘vision’ and ‘objectivity’ from the disembodied all- knowing gaze of ‘Man’ and queer the central, and often unquestioned positions of privilege accorded to this viewpoint in humanist education systems. Calling into question anthropocentric binary/separatist humanist logics and assumptions of objective mastery, octo-aesthetic figurations reveal the onto-ethical outlines of a transversally situated learning modality that defies objectifying majoritarian modes of thinking/learning that are no longer appropriate to pedagogies in times of ecological calamity.

Meandering as learning: Co-creating care with Camissa Oceans in higher education

Aaniyah Martin, Joanne Peers, Theresa Giorza — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper meanders with students from the Centre for Creative Education to understand care and our relationship with Camissa. The authors explore Slow scholarship and research-creation frameworks that disrupt practices which remain entrenched in colonial, anthropocentric and patriarchal systems. Apartheid is felt by Black and Brown bodies through exclusions from the ocean and other spaces. This paper explores how enquiries and innovations open spaces for lost care practices to be re-membered.

Thinking with/in surfing: Podcasting as public pedagogy and scholarship in/for the global South

Glen Thompson, Karen Graaff — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article introduces The Deep Duck Dive —a podcast engaging with the oceanic turn in the global South by focusing on issues that matter within surfing as a lifestyle sport. As co-hosts of the podcast, we have approached podcasting as forms of public pedagogy and public scholarship. Our aim is to increase the accessibility of scholarship and research by creating an alternative space for conversations with those outside of the academy. The article charts how we conceptualised and realised this podcast project as thinking with/in surfing. Within this epistemological approach, we seek to contribute to the intellectual currents of hydrocolonialism, hydrofeminism and critical surf studies, and to open our soundwork as an alternative pedagogical practice within justice-to-come public scholarship. To illustrate our podcasting style, reflexive of our positionalities as scholars and surfers, we have provided the transcript of our pilot episode.

Lalela uLwandle (Listen to the Sea): Interdisciplinary approaches and embodied engagements in thinking with ocean/s

Abigail Wiese — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article is a self-reflexive engagement on the performance, Lalela uLwandle (Listen to the Sea, 2019) created by the South African collective, Empatheatre. I engage with the performance in an affective and embodied way, commenting on my experience of watching myself, watching Lalela uLwandle. I ask how the performance contributes to knowledge production on the ocean, and how it might facilitate agentive engagements with its current health tragedy. To do so I examine the modalities employed in Lalela uLwandle: research-creation, empatheatre as methodology, indigenous storytelling and material aesthetics. I propose that, through its specific methodological framings and performance aesthetics, Lalela uLwandle repositions the (disconnected) audience member to reconnect with the human and the non-human. I suggest that the performance aesthetics enacted in the methodological approaches used by Empatheatre offer audiences an opportunity to acknowledge their own precarious construction in relation to the ocean by considering their historical entanglements with it.

Diffractive swimming: Learning though a Robben Island crossing

Marion Stevens — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is an experimental piece following 30 years of implementation work in sexual and reproductive justice. In 2021, I started my PhD and wild water swimming. While separate initiatives, my time in the sea enabled deep, slow, focused diffractive process in which my thoughts, connections, obstacles, engagements, relationships, memories, and writing flowed with the human embodiment of ocean watery swimming. After my proposal was finalised, I ventured further, wanting to spend time swimming distances. I joined a group training to do a Robben Island crossing. This paper documents the slow journey of my mind and body in regular practice and process. I remember some who have passed on known and unknown as Robben Island evokes ideas of individual and collective struggle. On the day of the crossing, it was clear then cloudy and rough. I was left with mist and turbulence and yet, I came to shore and my PhD continues.