Presentation at the 2013 International Conference on Digital Storytelling

1. Exploring tensions between
sentimentality and witnessing through
digital storytelling: a case of South
African pre-service teacher education
By Daniela Gachago, Vivienne Bozalek, Eunice Ivala, Janet
Condy and Agnes Chigona
Cape Peninsula University of Technology

2. Cape Town

3. Context
Legacy of apartheid
Post-conflict / post-trauma
societies
Pedagogies needed to
facilitate engagement across
deeply divided, wounded
societies

4. Class set up
Bringing students together into integrated
environments of learning is not enough to break
down deeply rooted beliefs and assumptions that
impact on students’ conscious or unconscious
choice of social engagements (Jansen 2010;
Soudien 2012).

5. Critical digital storytelling
 Alexandra, D., 2008. Digital storytelling as transformative practice: Critical
analysis and creative expression in the representation of migration in
Ireland. Journal of Media Practice, 9(2), pp.101–112.
 Benmayor R. 2008. Dıgıtal storytellıng as a sıgnature pedagogy for the
new humanıtıes, Arts and Humanıtıes ın Hıgher Educatıon, 7, 188-204.
 Rolon-Dow, R., 2011. Race(ing) stories: digital storytelling as a tool for
critical race scholarship. Race Ethnicity and Education, 14(2), pp.159–
173.
 Rose Brushwood, C., 2009. The (Im) possibilities of Self Representation:
Exploring the Limits of Storytelling in the Digital Stories of Women and
Girls. Changing English, 16(2), pp.211–220.
 Scott Nixon, A., 2009. Mediating Social Thought through Digital
Storytelling. Pedagogies: an international Journal, 4(1), pp.63–76.

6. for real transformation within students to happen, issues of
difference cannot be addressed on a cognitive or intellectual
level alone but require emotional engagement (Bozalek 2011b,
Hemson, Moletsane, and Muthukrishna 2001; Jansen 2009 and
Soudien 2012)
Disrupture can only happen through personal engagement and
encounters with the ‘other’, in a series of critical incidents,
leading to pedagogic dissonance, that can ‘begin to erode sure
knowledge’. (Jansen 2009)

7. Emotions in teacher education
Megan Boler Michalinos Zembylas
A professor at the University of
Toronto, Megan Boler teaches
philosophy, cultural studies, feminist
theory, media studies, social equity
courses in the Teacher Education
program, and media studies at the
Knowledge Media Design Institute.
Dr. Michalinos Zembylas is Assistant
Professor of Education at the Open
University of Cyprus. He is particularly
interested in how affective politics
intersect with issues of social justice
pedagogies, intercultural and peace
education, and citizenship education.

8. Role of emotions
By experiencing deep
discomforting emotions, and
critically reflecting on their
origins, dominant beliefs,
social habits and normative
practices that sustain social
inequities may be challenged
and possibilities for individual
and social transformation be
created (Zembylas & McGlynn 2010)

9. Rıver of Lıfe

10. ‘If I could
use one word
it would be
emotional.’
Emotions?

11. ‘social pedagogy’ Benmayor 2008
You’ve got to delve into the lives of people who you’ve
been with for four years, who you’ve greeted, who
you’ve asked how are you but just on that level. But after
Wednesday [day of screening] you still find people
embracing each other whom they’ve never ever spoken
really or hugged each other. (CF)

12. Reverting assumptions
Sometimes you will take people for granted and you
think that this person has everything and this person
does not have a problem you know and sometimes we
always tend to use that race thing and say I know
these white people, they’ve got everything and they
lived life perfectly but when you compare - with
some of my stories when I compare to some of the
other people, the white people I feel like my problem
is really small to what this person has experienced
and how this person got here. (BM)

13. Pity / guilt
It suddenly made me realise like - how hard some of the
people work here and how strong some people actually are.
You’d often say like - ah you know - look at this person they
never come to class and things - or they don’t do their
assignments but you don’t know that they’re not doing it
because they were up working all night until five in the
morning like trying to earn money - it’s very emotional… I was
howling yesterday and then I - I felt bad when I got home I felt
so guilty I thought but all I had to do was ask that person all I
had to do was take an interest in them and I haven't for four
years. (WF)

14. Anger
Sitting there with them, looking at the story for me the aim was
not for them to feel pity for me, because that’s always been an
issue for me. You don’t feel sympathy for me. I don’t want you
to feel sorry for me. This is my story and I’m proud of it. I’m
not ashamed of it. So for you to feel pity it’s not going to help.
It’s not going to help me - I don’t know if you will understand.
(BM)

15. More critical voices
Now in fourth year you know they expect us to be all
integrated and be a happy family and it’s such a false. I
feel like you know lecturers are crying we all crying but its
false because we've been with these people for four years
and we've never bothered to ask them you know and now
we crying about their stories. (WF)

16. Sentimentality
In trauma education: risk of over-
engagement with trauma stories
sentimental reaction by students
identifying with the privilege feeling guilt
/ defensiveness in privileged party and
anger in the victim, leading to
desensitization & disengagement (2011:
20)

17. Active empathy /
witnessing vs passive empathy
Testimonial reading can lead to active
empathy, in which the reader recognizes his or her
position of power provided through the distance to
the event recounted in the text
‘Passive empathy absolves the reader through the
denial of power relations. The confessional
relationship relies on a suffering that is not referred
beyond the individual to the social’
Boler 1999:162

18. Sentimentality in digital stories
originate directly from participants lived
experiences, and often deal with significant episodes
in somebody’s lives
tendency to be very emotional
danger of ‘sentimentality of digital stories’, arguing
that it promotes ‘individualistic, and naively
unselfconscious accounts of personal stories’ (Hartley
and McWilliam 2009: 14)

19. ‘Somewhat paradoxically from a critical
perspective, it is the very qualities that mark digital
stories as uncool, conservative, and ideologically
suspect – ‘stock’ tropes, nostalgia, even
sentimentality – that give them the power of social
connectivity, while the sense of authentic self-
expression that they convey lowers the barriers to
empathy.‘
(Burgess 2006:10)

20. Conclusions
Digital storytelling opened up important space for
emotional engagement with own identity and the
‘Other’
‘social pedagogy’ : Part of the process of generating
the digital story involves sharing and disclosure
(Benmayor 2008)

21. evidence of sentimentality and ‘passive empathy’,
leading to pity from the part of the privileged
observer and resentment from the subjugated
storyteller (Boler 1999)
risk of re-affirming existing beliefs and assumptions
about the ‘Other’?

22. students essentialised race, identified strongly along
racial background and actively constructed entities in
opposition to each other, confirming findings of
previous research (Pattman 2010; Rohleder et al.
2008; Swartz et al. 2009; Bozalek 2011).

23. Recommendations
Engagement with critical texts
Importance of reflective essay
Multimodal discourse analysis? How do various
modes work together to create/construct
emotions/sentimentality? Critical media literacy?
Reflection on emotions that the stories evoke within
different student groups?

24. Critical emotional reflexivity
….a process of using emotions as catalysts, to allow
the questioning of beliefs and assumptions, exposing
privilege and comfort zones, with the aim for learners
to find new ways of being with the ‘Other’, and
ultimately leading to transformed ‘relationships,
practices, and enactments that benefit teaching and
learning for peace, mutual understanding, and
reconciliation’
(Zembylas 2011: 2).

25. Questions and discussions?
 More information found on our blog:
www.cput.ac.za/blogs/edutech
YouTube channel:
www.youtube.com/user/CPUTstories
Email: gachagod@cput.ac.za

26. Acknowledgement
CPUT Research into Innovations in Teaching and
Learning Fund (RIFTAL 2011, 2012)
CPUT University Research Fund 2012
National research foundation 2012-2015
Facilitators and students of 2011 ISP Digital
Storytelling project