Making contact with organisations

3.4.2 Multiple theories

The multi-dimensional nature of educational practice as well as the relational approach to theoretical praxis, requires “intentional movement between theoretical sensitivities, given the interscalar and multidimensional aspects of practice” (McKenzie and Bieler, 2016, p. 34).

With the interest of continuously linking our experience to broader structures in the world, the study of critical education requires both ‘zooming in’ on how practice unfolds, and

‘zooming out’ to understand how this practice is located and affected in time and space (McKenzie and Bieler, 2016, p. 34 referencing Nicolini, 2013 ).movement requires an embrace of multiple theories. Pacini-Ketchabaw et al. (2014, p. 143) agree, arguing that a singular approach should not be used to capture the complex processes of education. Instead, multiple theories are brought together to create community connecting “…actively and creatively, both individual and social growth” (Malaguzzi, 1998, p. 85). Connecting back to the bricolage of research, Reggio Emelia and literature on critical education research embrace the use of a multiplicity of theories to study educational practice.

SECOND HALF

environmental crisis. There are arguments for working with both sides of the wealth gap and it is the intent behind this decision which makes the critical difference. For example, working with low resourced schools should not be about attempting to rescue them from being

‘behind’; it is instead about honouring the lived rich knowledge that is located in those spaces. This alludes to Christie’s (2020) argument that lower quintile schools are the communities with which we should be working to re-imagine our education system.

The first organisation I joined up with was the South African Education and Environment Project (SAEP). Here I worked with the educators on a Grade 4 literacy programme.

Remembering that literacy was a central project for Grade 4s as they develop practices of reading and participating in the world, I saw literacy practices as an ecopedagogical entry point. The programme organiser and educators were interested in merging curriculum based environmental themes and arts-based activities with their reading activities. In this case I was enfolded or incorporated into the programme with co-designed activities designed to draw on curriculum materials exploring water. I ran the same workshops in both 2018 and 2019.

The second project I joined with was Beyond Expectations Environmental Project (BEEP). I met an organiser at a Cape Town Environmental Education Trust meeting. BEEP is a youth leadership environmental project based in Philippi. BEEP’s model is one whereby older learners teach younger learners about various environmental topics which I discovered later had a strong emphasis on school support. I really liked the idea that I was working with young people who themselves ran workshops and had an educator praxis. The organisation also facilitates outdoor visits and camps. A later conversation I had with one of the educators provides further context:

…at the same time [the outdoors] is where we connect with God, for example, when we are going to Table Mountain we go there and take ourselves back because at the same time we understand who we are because we grown up in the Eastern Cape, we know that when there is a problem in the village our parents would… go to the

mountain and pray there for the rain. It wouldn't even take a long time, when they are going down the mountain then the rain will be raining …and that is where BEEP also connected us back … because that is who we are so when we are in the mountain we go to a place that is called Tembilisweni, to pray. I will take the kids because we know that in our modern day people don't pray and that's where we take the kids back to nature where they go and connect with nature and sleep, they will lie down on the

stones and speak to their god about every problem that they have because at the same time we can mentor the kids and tell them what to do and all that stuff and then. We cannot bring every solution to their problems so that is where we tell them they must connect with nature and speak with God because that is where we believe that we are one with God and with nature so it is there that we pray so that we can have better solutions and how to build our future. (Pers. comm. BEEP , 22 October 2018) The organisers were interested in cultivating further learning about the water crisis for their high school learners who were themselves involved in teaching the younger learners in their school and communities. In this case, I led a series of workshops together with another educator on the programme.

Part of the contextual profiling was understanding the positioning of these organisations in the local context. School and education NGOs played an important role in attempting to address the need for school support and enabling young people in marginalised and resource- poor schools to get quality support for their curriculum-based schooling. They also, however, had space for working on leadership and outdoor education encounters which did not link directly to the school programme. An important contextual learning here was that any attempt at emergent and ‘free-er’ inquiry space for young people would always be wrapped up in the urgency to get through school successfully. In this way, working within the educational cultures was a way to understand a bit about the learning cultures of the participants – I was in this way trying to be sensitive to the ruling relations (Carpenter and Mojab, 2017) that structured the local organisations and the people who acted within them.

Note on ethical considerations regarding relationship building

Collaborating with existing organisations requires negotiating some ethical concerns. First, as these organisations were operating on school properties, I needed permission from the

Western Cape Education Department which I applied for and received (see section 10.2).

More in line with an ethic of care, working with young people and children within their organisations aligned with the political intent of this project. The power relations between adults and children are uneven for several reasons and because of this we need to ensure that children and minors are not put into vulnerable positions in relation to the researcher.

Whether I, the interventionist researcher, was part of existing sessions or co-designing new extra-curricular sessions, I was accompanied by the long-standing educators. Our co-planning and feedback sessions provided the possibility of a flexible and responsive relationship

between myself, the organisation and the children. This collaboration with educators on the programme meant there was little experienced by the children as unfamiliar in terms of time, place and relationships, and thus reduced the potential for vulnerability.

While building relationships with existing organisations has a significant ethical intent, the relationship itself is not sufficient for research ethics. As a researcher, I needed to understand my own positionality in relation to the organisations and make my goals explicit. It was tempting to continue as part of the organisational programme, as an educator, and I felt uncomfortable prioritising research goals that had less immediate results. Thus, in order to maintain transparency of the fact that our encounters were part of a research study, I re- reminded the learners what I was there to do at the beginning of every session: support an inquiry into water and the work with our common or joint experience to think and study education.

Trying to explain what the research would bring about was challenging. Two reasons for this were that firstly, due to a year of reading educational ideas, I had terms and tools for

understanding knowledge production which were not necessarily useful to the learners. With discomfort, I acknowledged that this did not have to mean that I disrespected their knowledge but rather that these studied perspectives I brought into dialogue with the context through the act of research were something of value. This recognition is challenging in the milieu of today’s knowledge production world that is so critical of hierarchy but at the same time, it is a critical exercise for all researchers – what is the value that our research practices bring?

Secondly, in an emergent research process there is a limit to being able to make research practices explicit to the participants. Processes of reflecting on my thinking through educator interviews, learner one-on-one conversations and dialoguing with the theory were important here (discussed in Phase 2 of the data section, section 3.7.3).

An ethical tension of working with existing organisations is that it cannot be assumed that the organisation upholds a perfectly ethical set of relationships nor does it uphold the care

relationships valued in ethical knowledge production. I did not witness any troubling

practices for which I would have had a responsibility to report. However, as a researcher who sought voluntary participation in the research, it was challenging to bump up against the notions of compulsory participation by the organisation, particular adult-child, and educator- learner relations that differ from the relations I envisioned. (For more on this see section 3.7.2 where I discuss case study 2).