Papers by Kristian Stewart
Most educational institutions focus on the shaping of the mind by sometimes forcing a mental conf... more Most educational institutions focus on the shaping of the mind by sometimes forcing a mental conforming...leaving the emotions and stories in our hearts unattended and raw (Daniel, 2015).
Race Ethnicity and Education, May 3, 2022
"I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right" (Zusak, 2009, p.528... more "I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right" (Zusak, 2009, p.528). "It all seems impossible until it's done" (Nelson Mandela). This dissertation could not have been written without the support and guidance of several people and entities. First, I would like to thank my chair, Dr. Christopher Burke. I am grateful, Dr. Burke, that you took a student and turned her into a scholar. I hope that I have constructed this project in a way that has made you proud. I would also like to thank you for your guidance, encouragement, and friendship over the last five years. To the rest of my committee: Dr. Gloria House, Dr. Joe Lunn, and Dr. Stein Brunvand, thank you for believing in my work enough to support me over the last few years. Dr. Lunn, I feel like you and I have been on this journey the longest, as you were the first to witness as I wrestled with this new pedagogy that turned out to be digital storytelling so long ago. You have been with me since the beginning, and I feel grateful that you are standing next to me at the end. To Dr. Eunice Ivala, my South African supervisor: You have been my mentor, editor, and teacher. Thank you for supporting me from the first email I sent you after hearing you speak at a conference, to the message of encouragement you sent me last night! Thank you actually seems inadequate for all of your dedication to me over the last two years! A special note of appreciation also goes out to Janet Condy, Marlene Esau, and Matthew Curr. Thank you for including me in the wonderful South African tradition of rusk and tea iii breaks. Not only did I learn to love rusks, but thinking out loud with all of you developed and refined my understanding of South African subjectivities. I also would not have been able to complete chapter two without the aid and assistance of Pippa Campbell, the wonderful librarian who tracked down elusive texts for me from all over South Africa! Also, in Cape Town, I thank the Steelworx Bar at the Rockwell Hotel (my hut away from home) where I drank rooibos tea and constructed chapter two. To my friends there-Diana, Jack, Soma, Talent and others, your insight was invaluable to my work. To my friends at Vasco (world's best bar): thank you for adopting me as a regular, talking me through several chapters, and keeping me fed and happy through all of my stays. GO BOKKE! Thank you also goes to my good friend Malcolm Chinake and the "Changing Education Express." Malcolm, it was nice dreaming about changing South African schools with you! Next, back in Michigan, I would like to thank both Sabrina Guyton and Ann Lampkin-Williams. These wonderful ladies managed my King-Chavez-Park Future Faculty Fellowship, which provided funding for the totality of my doctoral education. In addition, the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs and the Lecturers' Employee Organization (LEO), both at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, provided financial support for this research through different grants. And, my gratitude goes to Dr. Bill DeGenaro and the Writing Program at the University of Michigan-Dearborn for offering financial support that was instrumental in facilitating this research. To my Cohort 3 girls-particularly Amira and Alison: You both have kept me sane through this journey. I am a better person and definitely a more rounded scholar because I was lucky enough to attend graduate school at the same time as both of you. #GKG! To my partner in List of Appendices APPENDIX A.
AERA Online Paper Repository, Apr 13, 2018
Routledge eBooks, Sep 12, 2019
Race Ethnicity and Education
This paper reports the findings of a digital storytelling praxis within a higher education classr... more This paper reports the findings of a digital storytelling praxis within a higher education classroom located outside of Metro Detroit in the United States. Drawing on Zembylas’s (2006, 2008) scholarship on emotion in the production of knowledge and the teacher’s role, adjacent to literature surrounding personal writing and safe houses for learning, an investigation of student perceptions of digital storytelling within a writing classroom took place during the 2016 and 2017 academic years. Data highlights the students’ interest for the emotionally-driven course content digital storytelling encourages, as it taught students how to insert genre conventions into their own writing. Digital storytelling, according to the students, also supplied a means for students to develop relationships with their peers as many students felt isolated on this largely commuter campus. Students additionally viewed the curriculum as promoting ‘real world’ skills they could transfer outside of the classroom...
This dissertation questioned the role of digital storytelling in a South African teacher educatio... more This dissertation questioned the role of digital storytelling in a South African teacher education classroom. Foregrounding this study was an examination of the link between student subjectivities and the places they inhabit, with emphasis on how student-driven stories might connect the old South Africa with the new. Further, digital storytelling as a pedagogical endeavor that alters both classroom spaces and student perceptions of “self” and “other” was investigated. Theory underpinning the spatial, cultural, and pedagogical implications of this research stemmed from the scholarship of Henry Giroux (1988, 1992, 1996), Henri Lefebvre (1974/1991), Edward Soja (1971, 1976), and Pierre Bourdieu (1983/1986, 1989). Digital storytelling as both a mode of personal writing and a multimodal genre was framed by contributions from the disciplines of composition and rhetoric and digital storytelling (Benmayor, 2008; Elbow, 2002; Hull & Katz, 2006; Lambert, 2012; Selfe, 2010). Findings from this...
Faculty Perspectives on Vocational Training in South Africa, 2019
Oral History, Education, and Justice, 2019
Whiteness and Education, 2020
This paper reports the findings of a dialogical narrative analysis conducted by two white academi... more This paper reports the findings of a dialogical narrative analysis conducted by two white academics in distinct higher education contexts-one based in the United States and the other in South Africa. Through the retelling of actual classroom scenarios, the authors assess their own teaching methods, responses, and classroom practices in order to examine how whiteness has shaped their classroom and teaching practices. As a result of this critical examination, the authors present strategies that centre around reorienting 'habits of mind' (vulnerability, flipping curriculum, collective buy-in, challenging safety, and inter-racial collaborations) to break the cycle of pervasive whiteness that exists in classroom environments and curricular endeavours. In an effort to work against reifying the colonial wound and move towards decolonising teaching practices, the findings of this analysis and the discussion that follows is our attempt of 'stepping back' in order to travel forward in our professional lives.
British Journal of Educational Technology, 2016
This article reports the findings of a collaborative digital storytelling project titled 'Bei... more This article reports the findings of a collaborative digital storytelling project titled 'Being Human Today,' a multimodal curricular initiative that was implemented simultaneously in both a South African and an American university classroom in 2015. By facilitating dialogue and the sharing of digital stories by means of a closed Facebook group, instructors were able to investigate students' critical awareness and social consciousness regarding notions of 'self' and 'other' across continents. Case study methodology was applied as a research framework to collect, code, and triangulate data gathered from student-driven texts, Facebook entries, and student-produced digital stories. Framed by Giroux's border pedagogy and set within social justice education, findings provide evidence of our students' desire to be connected to each other, both locally and abroad, which we found to be the heart of what it means to be human today. Further, data revealed how sharing stories as cultural and personal artifacts worked to demystify notions of otherness in both local and global contexts. In particular, the comparison of personal stories shared in this space allowed for critique and a raised awareness of how students are impacted by global hegemonic discourses. Implications of practice for this study include breaking down the barriers-both real and imagined-as they relate to how educators conceive the use of technology in classroom spaces and student engagement across continents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Posthuman and Political Care Ethics for Reconfiguring Higher Education Pedagogies, 2020
British Journal of Educational Technology, 2017
In order to investigate the composing practices of digital storytellers in a South African contex... more In order to investigate the composing practices of digital storytellers in a South African context, a qualitative case study, set within a university of technology in South Africa and framed by literature stemming from the disciplines of digital storytelling and composition and rhetoric, was implemented as part of a larger dissertation project initiated in 2014. This study spanned a year and included participant observation and the collection of interviews as primary methods of investigation. Findings linked digital storytelling to creating a liberating classroom space where students could redefine themselves outside of historicized representations. Within a digital storytelling praxis, the story circle component has proven to be an effective means to engage students in both a reflective and critical engagement of their own writing practices, highlighting the synergy between the spoken word, process-based writing, and digital formats for composing. However, questions remain surrounding the ethical practice of digital storytelling in classrooms especially when students share personal stories and those stories are both publicly consumed and graded. Implications for practice cover themes relating to the integration of technology that supports the democratization of varied voices in the public sphere, which is particularly important in post-conflict zone environments like South Africa.
Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
In this paper, we report on an intervention across continents and disciplines that brought togeth... more In this paper, we report on an intervention across continents and disciplines that brought together differently positioned students in South Africa and the USA. A collaboration between our classes-an introductory Geographic Information Systems (GIS) class in South Africa and a composition class in the United States-was facilitated and investigated by us. The point of departure of the intervention was to service socially just and anti-racist pedagogies through experimentation. Drawing on posthumanist, feminist, and new materialist theory, we investigate the hauntings of several prejudices and stereotypical tropes that foster racism. We link the concept of hauntology to Plumwood's (1993) theorization of dualisms. We then draw a cartography of geomatics education in South Africa, focusing on the subjectification of geomatics graduates in particular and engineering graduates in general. We then zoom to our collaboration, and focus on several interactions amongst the cohorts to show instances of hauntings that perpetuate anti-Black, anti-Muslim, and related silences. We find that analysis of dualisms can highlight racist hauntings, and can also provide guidance on how to flatten hierarchies. Our transdisciplinary activism allows us to harness the positivity of difference to trouble binaries. We conclude with some thoughts on pandemic pedagogy in an unequal world.
Whiteness and Education, 2020
This paper reports the findings of a dialogical narrative analysis conducted by two white academi... more This paper reports the findings of a dialogical narrative analysis conducted by two white academics in distinct higher education contexts -one based in the United States and the other in South Africa. Through the retelling of actual classroom scenarios, the authors assess their own teaching methods, responses, and classroom practices in order to examine how whiteness has shaped their classroom and teaching practices. As a result of this critical examination, the authors present strategies that centre around reorienting 'habits of mind' (vulnerability, flipping curriculum, collective buy-in, challenging safety, and inter-racial collaborations) to break the cycle of pervasive whiteness that exists in classroom environments and curricular endeavours. In an effort to work against reifying the colonial wound and move towards decolonising teaching practices, the findings of this analysis and the discussion that follows is our attempt of 'stepping back' in order to travel forward in our professional lives.
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Papers by Kristian Stewart