Abstract
It is written that hope is contagious: once ignited it gains momentum, and is self-sustaining. My research project sought to stimulate dialogue and critical thinking with second year education students about what hope and hopeful schools mean to them as future teachers. The aim of this critical transformative study was to explore how the research process itself, i.e. engaging the students through multiple participatory visual methods (via collages, drawings, Mmogo-method, photovoice) on the topic of hope, might mobilise a ‘practice of hope,’ thereby mobilising student-led hope initiatives in the Faculty of Education. The key findings of this on-going study show that bringing hope explicitly into the research dialogue mobilised the participants’ hope on a personal, relational and collective level. Further, discussions took an agentic turn as the participants formed the Hopeful Vision Gang, designed a logo and slogan, and initiated a hope activity to inspire fellow students and staff before having to face the challenge of exams. This study shows that threading hope with participatory dialogic engagement holds positive transformative value in teacher education programmes, and thus has implications for the possibilities of student-led agency through ‘research as hope-intervention.’ Keywords: agency; dialogic engagement; higher education; hope; humanising pedagogy; participatory visual methodology; positive psychology; research-as-change; transformative student citizenship
Highlights
Institutions of higher learning in South Africa are being held to account regarding their roles in enabling students to achieve academic success, and equipping students to be “skilled, confident, active citizens who can contribute to the deepening of our democracy and the sustainable futures of our world” (Olckers, 2017:86)
The data presented here to evidence the personal growth of the participants and their learning about being agents of hope were generated from the various group conversations conducted during a weekend workshop, and from subsequent personal communications on a Whatsapp group created by the participants
The findings further show that inserting dialogic engagement on hope in teacher education programmes has value in promoting an education, which Topshee (2011:51) describes as one where students are able to “deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
Summary
Institutions of higher learning in South Africa are being held to account regarding their roles in enabling students to achieve academic success, and equipping students to be “skilled, confident, active citizens who can contribute to the deepening of our democracy and the sustainable futures of our world” (Olckers, 2017:86). The plan was clear in its mandate: It is the staff and students who will build this dream, not the physical bricks and mortar, for they are the drivers, the ones whose knowledge, innovation and commitment will make it happen (NMMU, n.d.:13) This institutional re-visioning laid the groundwork for the Faculty of Education to engage in a process of redeveloping its own vision and mission in 2011, through numerous critical dialogues with multiple education stakeholders. The Faculty had to reflect on its theoretical orientation and transform its learning programmes and teaching culture into experiences that would foster adaptable and critical teachers, who are able to face the current challenges in South Africa’s schooling systems, and to disrupt the status quo that perpetuates injustice and inequality in schools This thinking is aptly represented in the Faculty’s current mission, namely, to cultivate effective and compassionate teachers who are critical thinkers and agents of hope and social change. The small pilot research engagement described in this article reflects an interest with the possibility of applying the key principles underlying humanising pedagogy (using critical consciousness, and dialogic engagement) to put hope into practice in the context of a public university
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