Diffracting Students' Reflective Commentaries in Obstetrics

• In Event: 69.049 - Critical Posthumanism and Diffractive Post-Qualitative Methodologies

Abstract

Although reflective practice has become an integral component of curricula in medical education, reflective tasks are often unpopular with undergraduate medical students, and challenging for educators to facilitate. This presentation will present a teaching and research project that has created opportunities for students’ reflective tasks to be valued through diffraction, thereby moving beyond the individual into a socio-political context.

I draw on Karen Barad’s (2007) philosophy of diffraction to take up an alternative approach that considers the material forces emerging from the collection of shared students' reflective commentaries. The content of these critical reflections relate to students’ observations and experiences in their eight week Obstetrics rotation. By moving away from the human-centred reflective activity with a focus on the product and the assessment of the tasks, I describe how the reflective commentaries themselves can be put to work to produce knowledge differently (Adema, 2015). New materialism provides a theoretical perspective to explore what these online reflections on the shared platform of Google Drive can do, in and through each other as differences are foregrounded.
As part of a PhD research study, with Year 4 students at the University of Cape Town, classroom and online engagement elicited a collection of over 250 reflective texts. By sharing these commentaries within the small student groups and among other educators associated with the course, the texts developed a material force that opened up new potential.

A folder of shared reflective commentaries moves away from competitive individualism towards a collective awareness of concern about prevailing practices that include abuse, neglect and disrespect of women during childbirth. While the force of shared insights online is too intimidating for some students, the majority choose to share. Feedback indicates benefits gained by students from the exposure of their experiences and their thoughts. There is evidence that the affective intensity (Massumi 2015) emerging from the texts of peers enhances students’ ability to engage with social justice dilemmas in the birthing facilities rather than walk away or become a silent bystander.

By foregrounding differences in students’ experiences and insights, these texts become an intensity and a force to open up new opportunities for changing normalized practices of abuse and disrespect that students frequently observe in their Obstetrics learning rotation. Apart from providing evidence for authorities to take action against harmful practices, these texts have also become valuable training material for midwives by illustrating authentic practices that continue to be present and persistent.

While South Africa has one of the most progressive Constitutions in the world with inclusion of women’s rights in term of their sexual and reproductive health, operationalization of these rights continues to be impeded by obstacles such as the mistreatment of women in healthcare facilities. If students can be advocates to shift practices towards new ways of thinking and acting, their role as changemakers can be significant. A diffractive methodology is enabling the opening up a previously hidden topic. It is motivating students to realize that their individual reflections have a life that extends beyond classroom practices.

Author

• Veronica Ann Mitchell, University of the Western Cape