Throughout her career in higher education, Elmarie was passionate about pedagogy, particularly from a social justice perspective. She was renowned for creating hospitable, welcoming, yet challenging spaces for students to learn. Her approach to pedagogy combined theory and practice, mind and body - as she put it “I believe it is through the combination of theory and practice that new understandings and insights emerge. I believe that mind-body learning is the most effective way to learn" (https://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/news/DispForm.aspx?ID=10197).
As a form of critical citizenship, Elmarie developed a pedagogy of visual redress that brought students and communities in contact with each other in social justice projects. Her influence extended to other institutions of higher education throughout the continent as well as in some European Universities. She was involved with Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC) courses, such as the 2018 Reconfiguring Scholarship: Writing, Reviewing and Publishing Differently, where she was an inspiring influence for participants of the course in their own creative pedagogical scholarly endeavours.
Although located as a senior lecturer in the visual arts programme at Stellenbosch University, she pursued education in her postgraduate studies. She obtained a second Master’s Degree in Adult Learning and Global Change, graduating in 2007 from the University of the Western Cape. She then completed a PhD in Curriculum Studies at Stellenbosch University, graduating in 2012. She received multiple teaching awards both from her own institution, Stellenbosch University as well as nationally. Elmarie was also a teaching fellow in the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Stellenbosch University and was chosen to be part of the Teaching Advancement at Universities (TAU) Fellowship programme, a national programme for outstanding teachers in higher education. In 2023 she won the Teaching Advancement at Universities (TAU) Fellows Award, which she felt honoured to receive - as she expressed it: “I am proud of how my work developed from student projects on the Rooiplein, to the MA Visual Art (Art Education) course that focused on critical citizenship, and then to the visual redress project and now the embodied practices for the Shared Humanity co-curriculum learning experiences."
Elmarie had a quiet and attentive, measured and modest demeanor. She did not talk much, but when she did, her voice was clear, careful and sincere. Speaking was not her mother tongue, her language was more nuanced than words. Her thinking inhabited other modes, other material worlds. Elmarie was open and generous. Her approach to teaching and learning, thinking and making was responsive – a call and response to the world around her. Always curious, she allowed the world to lead her, materials to teach her, contingencies to guide her. She seemed to delight in the world of “what if?” What would happen if you allowed the material, the process, the dust on the floor to be your teacher? What if the world around you – the specific environment you are in, provides clues to doing concepts, for creating concepts? How might processes and events gently and politely refuse and free us from the baggage of traditional academic practice in serious ways, without taking ourselves too seriously?
This call for papers invites contributions inspired by and celebrate Elmarie’s scholarly contribution. Please submit an extended abstract of 750 words (including references) that pertains to the legacy of Elmarie’s pedagogical practice as elucidated above. What follows are some further possible prompts that we associate with her practice that may spark your ideas:
- How does trust affect practice/process … trusting that the process will lead somewhere, trusting that the lessons/learnings lie in wait, ready to be recognised, ready to carry learnings forward?
- How might being open to the lessons that lie in wait, to the contingent, to the agency of all matter of which we are a part, affect our learning about pedagogical practice?
- How might ongoingness challenge prescriptiveness in higher education pedagogies. What if the outcome is the process itself, and is always already ongoing?
- How might pedagogies that force a frictional encounter between seemingly unrelated or “unconventional” concepts and materials create new meanings (Costandius 2018)?
- How might pedagogical experimentation lead to a “lightning bolt, sparks of creation” (Deleuze and Parnet, 2002, p. 11)?
- How do creative, material, tangible and embodied processes decentre the individual cognitive discrete “I” in pedagogical practice?
Papers should pertain both to the concerns of the special issue and to the focus of the journal, the details of which appear below.
Information about the journal Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CRiSTaL)
Aims and Scope
Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes scholarly articles and essays that make marked contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher (university) education. The Journal aims to provide a stimulating and challenging forum for contributors to describe, theorise and reflect on their higher education teaching and learning practice and is particularly interested in contributions that have relevance to the South African educational context.
Areas in which research is invited include:
- academic literacy development in university-level courses or modules (including writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines, as well as writing centres)
- methodologies and methods in researching teaching and learning at university
- theory-development in higher education studies, particularly within the broader area of critical social theory
- teaching and learning with technology (including blended learning and other innovative approaches)
- discipline-based teaching and learning development or change
- socially just, socially inclusive educational praxis
- studies in higher education assessment and evaluation practice
- multilingual teaching and learning resources and development
- innovative materials development for teaching, learning, curriculum, assessment and evaluation
- professional education (please note: this excludes studies in adult, technical and vocational education and training, and teacher education, which should be redirected to more suitable journals. You may consult African Journals Online for alternatives).
Contributions that are critical, well-researched and address challenging problems and issues from theoretical, practice-based or analytical angles are welcomed, as well as contributions that focus on innovative and reflective approaches to teaching and learning.
All submissions must have a clear issue or problem that is addressed and must make reference to the relevant literature. Where applicable methodology, results and evaluation of findings must be clearly discussed and related to the wider field. Submissions relating to local studies should make clear the applicability to a wider context and international readership. Please look carefully at the resources in the 'Authors' tab, and also under the 'Reviewers' tab, and consult recent issues under 'Archives' to get a sense of the work we tend to publish, and our guidelines.
Indexing
The journal is indexed (full text) with Sabinet and African Journals Online (AJOL). It is also included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), WorldCat, Sherpa-Romeo, the Norwegian List (Level 1), SCOPUS and the DHET's list of accredited journals.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Copyright Policy
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (SeeThe Effect of Open Access).
Licencing Policy
All journal content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0. CC BY ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Number of articles envisioned -between 6 and 10 articles:
Word length: 6000 - 8000 words
Timeframe
- Extended abstract submission – 30 June 2024
- Notification of acceptance – 15 July 2024
- Submission of first draft for peer review – 30 September 2024
- Reviewer feedback – 15 November 2024
- Submission of final article – 15 January 2025
- Publication date: March 2025
Please submit extended abstracts to the guest editors Nike Romano (niker@icon.co.za) and Professor Vivienne Bozalek (vbozalek@gmail.com) and by 30 June 2024.
Please use the Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning author guidelines at
http://www.cristal.ac.za/index.php/cristal/about/submissions