Interpretations of Training Experiences
5.1 Separation: Teaching, and Gender
In Chapter Two (2.2), a thesis was developed proposing that the profession's silent response to opposition represents the inadequacy of academic discourse to either express - or escape - its own institutional interests. One important dimension of these interests implicated gender, and the suggestion that the profession's survival within the university system necessitated a high level of collusion with its male-dominated institutionalised discourse rules.
Interestingly, and as a result of her life history experiences, Nolwazi's sensitivity to gender has resulted in her understanding training's empirical-analytical 'subject/object' separation as a male trait ('The Monster', paragraph 19). That a masculine bias to knowledge construction lies at the heart of most academic disciplines is not a new concept. Neither is .the historical emphasis on 'thinking' itself representing the abstract
and impersonal, with these mental processes being attributed to men (Belenky et aI., 1986). At the same time, those mental processes that deal with the interpersonal and personal aspects of human experience have been classified as 'emotion', attributed to women, and de-legitimated as processes producing knowledge (Belenky et aI., 1986;
Rose, 1994).
At the risk of repetition from 2.2.2.2, what needs to be emphasised here, however, is that the predominately female teacher-professionals, aspiring to high levels of collusion in the male-dominated discourse lUles of the institution, have a vested interest in speaking with a male voice. This voice de-legitimises attributes such as interdependence, intimacy, nurturance and contextual thought (Belenky et aI., 1986;
Gilligan, 1982), female qualities that Nolwazi values highly.
It could be argued, therefore, that a significant influence on Nolwazi's inability to negotiate the training curriculum occurs from the fact that she thinks 'like a woman?, in a context where such thinking has little value or currency. Her emphasis on connectedness, sharing and caring through negotiated communication is a clear theme of both the presentational and representational analyses of Chapter Four. At the same time, it is the disconnected or 'separated' nature of her training's communication channels, both in knowledge transmission, production, and in the co-constlUction of relationships, that lie at the heart of her attributing a lack of care to it. In paragraph 7 of 'Learning Alone' s~e stresses her interpretation that other students found it easy to "put people's problems under a microscope and analyse them", a clear reference to the 'male' science at the root of the model of professional development, and an equally clear reference to her sense of her thinking as different to her non-BAFL speaking student colleagues. It could be suggested, therefore, that her female 'voice' is in a position of dis-power by virtue of the thinking it reveals, and also by virtue of her failure and/or resistance to subjugate it to the masculine voice of training.
Aninsistent and recurring feature of Nolwazi's 'female' voice is its continual reference to 'taking responsibility' as a primary expression of a caring communicative relationship. In the excerpts cited below in (5.3), she is clear about a therapist's responsibility in caring for the whole person, not just the· problem of communication in isolation. The provision of comfort and nurturance in the form of shoes and food is a
kind of 'social or occupational mothering' (Rose, 1994, citing Sirrionen; p37) that is part and part of the responsible relational skills acknowledged and valued by women, taught by her mother as a health professional, yet not legitimated by the scientific model of caring developed by the profession.
A second aspect of 'taking responsibility' is that demonstrated within - and by - the teaching and learning process. An extract from Nolwazi's reflective diary relates the story of a final year. student who leaves training six weeks before the end of the 1999 academic year: "This really disturbed the class. It really didn't have to come to this....Since the lecturers knew that she had not participated much in the class projects that were done, we were given little evaluation sheets to evaluate each group member's participation. I mean, honestly, this was done to catch out one student.... She [lecturer] first asked [us] to write a letter stating that she [student]
did not participate adequately....Sick! Cruel! Immature!" While her response underscores her perception of an abnegation of responsibility by the teachers, her own sense of responsibility as 'personal involvement' prompts her to add, "She [student]
must have been having a really tough time. I don't know how I could help her...She does not need any negativity but she needs help. I am going to be praying very hard for this poor girl. She's a single Mom, too."
In terms of communicative process, this example also highlights the dialogic gap between the voices of teachers and students. Although acknowledging the significant irony of this in a training programme aimed at educating professional communicators, the focus here is rather on how the profession's aim to provide 'helping' educational training has actually de-legitimised 'taking responsibility' and 'care'; submerging them beneath the "arrogant, objectivizing [sic] science [that] seeks to instruct women in its own practices" (Rose, 1994; p37).
What has occurred as a result of this separation IS a profound disconnection of communicative process. Throughout her experiences of training, Nolwazi reflects her powerlessness to effect change to her reactive, dependent and largely passive response to the authority of the 'male' voice. Belenky et aI., (1986; p28) in discussing 'silence' as one way of a woman 'knowing' her world, powerfully expresses Nolwazi's sense of the communicative authority within thisr~lationship:
"These women are aware of power that is accrued to authorities through might but not through expertise. They do not envision<§authorities communicating their thoughts through words imbued with shared meanings. Intheir experience authorities seldom tell you what they want you to do; they apparently expect you to know
!n
-hdvance. If authorities do tell you what is right, they never tell you why it is right. Authorities bellow but do not explain. They are unpredictable."Interms of classroom-based theoretical teaching, itis interesting to consider Nolwazi' s comments regarding the communicative practices between teacher and student outlined in paragraph 5 of 'Learning Alone'. As a teacher, I frequently used this technique, and have included a gloss of my interpretation of the skills I hoped to facilitate:
Figure 9a: A Teaching Dialogue
4. Teacher retains knowledge:(Your curiosity will make yougoand find this knowledge - then you willbea-life-long"
leamer)
_ _ _ _...~ 2. Teacher Reverses Question and asks Student:('I want youtotake responsibility for yourownlearning?
3. Student Can't Answer
/
~5. Student Feels Stupid
~
1. Student Asks Question
However well-meaning the teacher's intention, the superior and subordinate power relationships interpreted by Nolwazi need acknowledgement. In addition, what needs further discussion is how this exchange relates to Nolwazi's equating 'caring' communication with open, reasoned, and therefore participative dialogue in the teaching and learning process. To aid in expanding this point, the reader~.s referred to Appendix 4, the co-authored narrative text of Michael Samuel and 'Emmanuel' (from Samuel, 1998).
Nolwazi is sharply critical of 'Emmanuel's' interpretation of the reasons for the failure of Black female learners in his multicultural classroom to participate in the teaching and
learning process. Instead, she equates their lack of participation to children being taught that, " ...whatever is said this older person is right. So now look at it this way, a Black child has seen that white people are right, [and] teachers have to be right,
..
okay? Now you bring this child into a white school. She will automatically feel she doesn't know as much as everybody else knows. And these are older people teaching her, so they're right. " (Interview 4, pI8) Further on, she states, " ... if you participate you will learn more, but what if you don't have anything to participate IN? I mean, you don't feel- you don't have that thinking, that kind of thinking, you know, you don't think like that..•.You don't think you can actually stand up and say, 'Okay,I don't understand this.' I don't know - you don't have that kind of - you were not brought up like that. So it's not just not WANTING to participate, it's not THINKING about participation. They're not sitting there saying, 'I'm not going to say anything,' they're sitting there not knowing what to say - but wishing they could say something, but they don't know what to say."
IfFigure 9b is re.,.configured in light of these comments, Nolwazi' s interpretation of the dialogue may be glossed similarly to:
Figure9b: A Teaching Dialogue
1. Student Asks Question:('l'm __ .
overcominga life..time oflearning - . . . 2. Teacher Reverses Question and asks in standing up and saying, -I Student: ('loonY care to acknowledge
d o n Y _ J / that')
3. Student can't Answer('What _ .
will make youcare?J - . 4. Teacher retains knowledge :for
youtoknow everythingIknow, in the
~ wayIknow if)
5. Student Feels Stupid: (Identity de-valued and silenced)
It seems important to explore the implications for a 'caring' curriculum when 'male' rational, abstract and impersonal communicative teaching styles are used with students coming from educative experiences that may have taught different ways ofthinking aboutthe teaching and learning process. Before doing so, however, and because of the linkage between the issues themselves, the following section discusses the
communicative separation that is taught within the profession's text production processes; particularly those of report writing on clients, and the expansion of professional knowledge through research.