Denise R Newfield
University of the Witwatersrand, English, Faculty Member
- I am a retired professor of English and Education in South Africa. I am interested in and publish in the areas of cur... moreI am a retired professor of English and Education in South Africa. I am interested in and publish in the areas of curricular and pedagogic transformation. I developed the concept of 'the transmodal moment'. Currently I am involved in poetry and indigeneity, and doing academia differently. I use frameworks/orientations from multimodality and new materialism. I enjoy team work and complex collaborations.edit
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This article is a practitioner-based account of the uptake of Kress’s ideas on literacy, literature and meaning-making in South African educational contexts, in particular, his integration of politics, semiosis and literacy. It examines... more
This article is a practitioner-based account of the uptake of Kress’s ideas on literacy, literature and meaning-making in South African educational contexts, in particular, his integration of politics, semiosis and literacy. It examines the affective force of these ideas in South African classrooms in certain institutions during the immediate post-apartheid period from 1994 onwards, showing how Kress’s key concepts and principles provided a transformative theoretical framework for the work of progressive educators. A Kress-inspired framework propelled new conceptualisations of literacy and meaning-making in these classrooms and beyond – at all levels, from primary through to tertiary – and fuelled research from 1994 into the first decade of the new millennium. Given Kress’s insistence on the social, as in social semiotics, and his stress on the integration of representation, communication and situatedness, this article focuses on his ideas in context, how and why they were put to wo...
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The present moment in South Africa is marked by profound and farreaching change as South Africans struggle to redefine their histories and identities in the wake of the social transformations which have occurred since the first democratic... more
The present moment in South Africa is marked by profound and farreaching change as South Africans struggle to redefine their histories and identities in the wake of the social transformations which have occurred since the first democratic elections in April 1994. The tertiary institution in which we work, the University of the Witwatersrand, is itself engaged in transformation as it strives to become more representative of South Africa's diverse communities. It is within this landscape of change that we, two English teacher-educators, ...
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Speech delivered at a farewell party for Prof Hilary Janks at the Wits Club on 19 November 2014.
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We meditate on and talk/write about issues that arose for us during the Post Philosophy series, specifically engaging with a topic entangled within each presentation, “the new.” Quandaries that emerged for us include the post... more
We meditate on and talk/write about issues that arose for us during the Post Philosophy series, specifically engaging with a topic entangled within each presentation, “the new.” Quandaries that emerged for us include the post philosophical raison d’être for the new, the possibility and nature of the post philosophical new, and its ethical, ontological, and epistemological consequences. Taking the form of conversation, we provide tracings of our collaboration, with its multiple, complex plug-in points, hauntological connections, and missed calibrations—an agencement set in motion by this series as a minor gesture and fueled by our thinking-with the work of the presenters.
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Abstract This article, dedicated to the memory of the late Poet Laureate of South Africa and patron of the South African Poetry Project (ZAPP), Professor Keorapetse Kgositsile, situates itself within Kgositsile's struggle for cultural... more
Abstract This article, dedicated to the memory of the late Poet Laureate of South Africa and patron of the South African Poetry Project (ZAPP), Professor Keorapetse Kgositsile, situates itself within Kgositsile's struggle for cultural liberation through the arts and education. It is also located within the current South African project of decolonising the curriculum. The call to decolonise existing educational curricula—to transform colonial curricula through processes of indigenisation—is ubiquitous and strident. As a response to the contemporary call from students, educators, and theorists—more than twenty years after South Africa's liberation from apartheid—this article seeks to interrogate how one might decolonise the poetry curriculum within the discipline of English literature. As researchers of English studies, we have chosen to investigate poetry, Kgositsile's favoured genre. Our choice is informed by poetry's status as a capacious genre that stretches the boundaries of both language and knowledge. This article considers what it might mean to decolonise the poetry curriculum in terms of its selection of texts, although we acknowledge that pedagogic and assessment practices also have important roles to play in processes of educational decolonisation. We introduce decoloniality and indigeneity as concepts and analyse excerpts of current South African poetry in English in terms of these. Our aim is to open a space for discussion around the complex, sensitive issues involved in shaping a decolonised poetry curriculum.
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Preface, Carey Jewitt 1. Challenges and Opportunities of Multimodal Approaches to Education in South Africa Arlene Archer and Denise Newfield Part I: Recognising Resources: Multimodal Texts and Practices 2. "The Pen Talks My... more
Preface, Carey Jewitt 1. Challenges and Opportunities of Multimodal Approaches to Education in South Africa Arlene Archer and Denise Newfield Part I: Recognising Resources: Multimodal Texts and Practices 2. "The Pen Talks My Story": South African Children's Multimodal Storytelling as Artistic Practice Susan Harrop-Allin 3. Resources, Representation and Regulation in Civil Engineering Drawing: An Autoethnographic Perspective Zach Simpson 4. Arguing Art Joni Brenner and Arlene Archer 5. Teaching Visual Narratives Using a Social Semiotic Framework: The Case of Manga Cheng-Wen Huang 6. Students' Mindmaps of the Role of Technology in Academic and Social Communication Networks Cheryl Brown and Laura Czerniewicz 7. Mobile Literacies: Messaging, txt and Social Media in the m4Lit Project Marion Walton Part II: Redesigning Resources: Multimodal Pedagogies and Access 8. Design: The Rhetorical Work of Shaping the Semiotic World Gunther Kress 9. Multimodality and Medicine: Designing for Social Futures Rachel Weiss 10. An Aesthetic Language for Teaching and Learning: Multimodality and Contemporary Art Practice David Andrew 11. Jewellery Students as Designers of Meaning: A Multimodal Approach to Semiotic Resources Safia Salaam 12. Designing Assessment of Multimodal Representations of Themes from 'Pleasure Reading' Yvonne Reed
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This conceptual article theorises the role of poetry in English classrooms from a multimodal perspective. It discusses the gap between the practices of poetry inside and outside South African schools, particularly where English is taught... more
This conceptual article theorises the role of poetry in English classrooms from a multimodal perspective. It discusses the gap between the practices of poetry inside and outside South African schools, particularly where English is taught as an additional language (EAL). The former is shown to be monomodal and prescriptive, while the latter is multimodal and exciting. The reconceptualisation of poetry as a multimodal genre is effected through the integration of multimodality and orality, two fields of study that deal with meaning making. The article attempts to bridge the divide between poetry in print and in performance. It begins with a critique of the current conceptualisation of poetry that underlies the EAL curriculum, practice, and assessment in South Africa. Through bringing multimodality and oral studies together complementarily, and building on empirical studies, an alternative conceptualisation of poetry is constructed. An English poem by a South African Xhosa‐speaking poet...
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This article proposes an alternative way of using concepts in the scholarship of teaching and learning in the South. Normative understandings and uses of concepts in educational scholarship are challenged through a postphilosophical and... more
This article proposes an alternative way of using concepts in the scholarship of teaching and learning in the South. Normative understandings and uses of concepts in educational scholarship are challenged through a postphilosophical and postqualitative approach. In such an approach, concepts, instead of methods, become the generating force of research and pedagogy, as a counter to approaches which use formulaic methodologies to dictate the structure and content of pedagogy and research. Postphilosophies are predicated on a relational ontology which assumes that relationships precede entities and come into being in complex entanglements. Concepts are not seen as abstract ideas in the human mind but come into being through material arrangements as part of the world. In the paper, we develop six propositions as provocations for activating and doing concepts differently: Consent not to be singular, Render each other capable, Diffract concepts to enlarge your scholarly perspective, Make ...
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This article troubles touch as requiring embodied proximity, through an affective account of virtual touch during coronatime. Interested in doing academia differently, we started an online Barad readingwriting group from different... more
This article troubles touch as requiring embodied proximity, through an affective account of virtual touch during coronatime. Interested in doing academia differently, we started an online Barad readingwriting group from different locations. The coronatime void was not a vacuum, but a plenitude of possibilities for intimacy, pedagogy, learning, creativity, and adventure. Although physically apart, we met daily through Zoom, and we touched and were touched by each other and the texts we read. A montage of writing fragments and a collective artwork, based on the Massive_Micro project, highlight virtual touching. Undone, redone, and reconfigured, we became a diffractive human/nonhuman multiplicity.
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This article troubles touch as requiring embodied proximity, through an affective account of virtual touch during coronatime. Interested in doing academia differently, we started an online Barad readingwriting group from different... more
This article troubles touch as requiring embodied proximity, through an affective account of virtual touch during coronatime. Interested in doing academia differently, we started an online Barad readingwriting group from different locations. The coronatime void was not a vacuum, but a plenitude of possibilities for intimacy, pedagogy, learning, creativity, and adventure. Although physically apart, we met daily through Zoom, and we touched and were touched by each other and the texts we read. A montage of writing fragments and a collective artwork, based on the Massive_Micro project, highlight virtual touching. Undone, redone, and reconfigured, we became a diffractive human/nonhuman multiplicity.
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This article, based on a research project with learners in a township school in South Africa, seeks to discuss whether WhatsApp was able to transform the space of the poetry classroom in positive and productive ways. The project was... more
This article, based on a research project with learners in a township school in South Africa, seeks to discuss whether WhatsApp was able to transform the space of the poetry classroom in positive and productive ways. The project was designed in response to research in EFAL (English First Additional Language) classrooms that revealed the marginalisation of poetry as a component in the English classroom, a lack of enthusiasm for it on the part of teachers, and a lack of engagement and energy on the part of learners—all of whom seemed to find poetry remote, irrelevant, unengaging and difficult. The shift to a WhatsApp chatroom, after school hours and outside the classroom, revealed encouraging results. The article seeks to explore the transformative effects of that move, how the chatroom gave learners a creative space in which to express themselves, to speak with their own voice, in their own tongue and to take control of their learning—which seem to us to be decolonising effects. We u...
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This article concerns ZAPP (the South African Poetry Project), which is a community of poets, scholars (including the authors), teachers and students, established in 2013 to promote, in educational systems, the work of contemporary South... more
This article concerns ZAPP (the South African Poetry Project), which is a community of poets, scholars (including the authors), teachers and students, established in 2013 to promote, in educational systems, the work of contemporary South African poets. For the past three years (2017–2019), we have attempted through outreach and research to contribute to decolonising South African education by paying attention to indigenous poetic traditions and practices. Our research has focused on content, pedagogy and institutional practice. The article outlines and attempts to assess three interrelated components of ZAPP’s research into the decolonisation of poetry and education: our research into the transformation of teaching and learning in EFAL (English First Additional Language) poetry classrooms, our ongoing research into what constitutes indigenous South African poetry today, and our research into institutional practices concerning the production and dissemination of knowledge about poetr...
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The editors acknowledge the support of the National Research Foundation of South Africa, Grant no. 105159, for the following articles: “Towards Decolonising Poetry in Education” (Newfield and Byrne); “Mapping Pathways for Indigenous... more
The editors acknowledge the support of the National Research Foundation of South Africa, Grant no. 105159, for the following articles: “Towards Decolonising Poetry in Education” (Newfield and Byrne); “Mapping Pathways for Indigenous Poetry Pedagogy” (Mavhiza and Prozesky); “That’s Schoolified” (Cooper); “Dancing with Mountains” (Ndlovu); “South African Indian Indigeneity” (Govender); “Reflections on Decoloniality from a South African Indian Perspective” (Naicker); “Poetic Bodies” (Genis); “Research That Is Real and Utopian” (de Villiers, Botha and Maungedzo); “Moments That Glow” (Naidu and Newfield); “Transforming Data into Poems” (d’Abdon and van Rooyen).
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This is the School of Education Research Site at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. New Zealand's number 1 Educational Research School. Journals, Conferences, and research projects of the School are presented here.
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This article troubles touch as requiring embodied proximity, through an affective account of virtual touch during coronatime. Interested in doing academia differently, we started an online Barad readingwriting group from different... more
This article troubles touch as requiring embodied proximity, through an affective account of virtual touch during coronatime. Interested in doing academia differently, we started an online Barad readingwriting group from different locations. The coronatime void was not a vacuum, but a plenitude of possibilities for intimacy, pedagogy, learning, creativity, and adventure. Although physically apart, we met daily through Zoom, and we touched and were touched by each other and the texts we read. A montage of writing fragments and a collective artwork, based on the Massive_Micro project, highlight virtual touching. Undone, redone, and reconfigured, we became a diffractive human/nonhuman multiplicity.
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This article troubles touch as requiring embodied proximity, through an affective account of virtual touch during coronatime. Interested in doing academia differently, we started an online Barad readingwriting group from different... more
This article troubles touch as requiring embodied proximity, through an affective account of virtual touch during coronatime. Interested in doing academia differently, we started an online Barad readingwriting group from different locations. The coronatime void was not a vacuum, but a plenitude of possibilities for intimacy, pedagogy, learning, creativity, and adventure. Although physically apart, we met daily through Zoom, and we touched and were touched by each other and the texts we read. A montage of writing fragments and a collective artwork, based on the Massive_Micro project, highlight virtual touching. Undone, redone, and reconfigured, we became a diffractive human/nonhuman multiplicity.
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... The school population is ethnically diverse (primarily Bengali and So-malian) and the ... English (NCERT, 2006) and the National Curriculum Framework (NCERT, 2005) have provided a ... hyped from participating in interesting... more
... The school population is ethnically diverse (primarily Bengali and So-malian) and the ... English (NCERT, 2006) and the National Curriculum Framework (NCERT, 2005) have provided a ... hyped from participating in interesting discussions and sometimes get into trouble for talking ...
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The paper reconceptualises poetry as a multimodal genre, explicates this reconceptualisation through two frameworks - multimodal social semiotics and oral studies. It discusses how both curriculum and pedagogy can be shifted and expanded... more
The paper reconceptualises poetry as a multimodal genre, explicates this reconceptualisation through two frameworks - multimodal social semiotics and oral studies. It discusses how both curriculum and pedagogy can be shifted and expanded through the reconceptualisation, to include spoken word poetry, with positive outcomes for education. An analysis of exciting contemporary spoken word poem is provided as an example.
The paper deals with the activity of crossing modes in the representation of meaning in learner activities in pedagogic environments. It introduces the concept of the transmodal moment to demonstrate the multiple forms of transformation... more
The paper deals with the activity of crossing modes in the representation of meaning in learner activities in pedagogic environments. It introduces the concept of the transmodal moment to demonstrate the multiple forms of transformation that occur semiotically and in terms of learning.. The concept may be linked to Kress's notion of transduction. Exemplary analyses are provided.
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In this article the writers offer a model for lesson preparation for Curriculum 2005. The model integrates outcomes, pedagogy and content in a way that is theoretically sound and practically useful. It incorporates the outcomes for the... more
In this article the writers offer a model for lesson preparation for Curriculum 2005. The model integrates outcomes, pedagogy and content in a way that is theoretically sound and practically useful. It incorporates the outcomes for the Language, Literacy and Communication learning area, includes the approach to content outlined in COTEP (1996) (content as knowledge, skills and values), and suggests
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Since 1994 South Africa has been transformed from an isolated, apartheid state into an Afro-modernist democracy linked to the rest of the world. Our chapter locates itself within this post-apartheid historical moment and reports on the... more
Since 1994 South Africa has been transformed from an isolated, apartheid state into an Afro-modernist democracy linked to the rest of the world. Our chapter locates itself within this post-apartheid historical moment and reports on the findings of an ELT teacher research group, the Wits Multiliteracies Research Group that has focused, since 1996, on the applicability of multimodal pedagogies to multilingual, multicultural classrooms in Johannesburg (Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Kress and van Leeuwen 1996, 2001). Multimodal pedagogies work across semiotic modes, including the visual, written and spoken language, the gestural, the sonic, and the performative. In South Africa, writing culture is underdeveloped, except in educational institutions where success is unattainable without access to written language skills in English. Our research in early childhood, secondary, and tertiary classrooms reports on the limits and possibilities afforded through the use of different representational resources in the representation of meaning, suggesting that multimodal pedagogies can broaden the base for representation by opening up the third ground in the struggle between mainstream schooling literacy demands and cultural difference. In their multiple configurations, such pedagogies have the power to unleash creativity, intelligence, and agency through the creation of symbolic identity objects and practices that lead to creative rapprochements in a society struggling to heal itself after a painful, traumatic past.
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The paper explores the activity of crossing modes in meaning-making in pedagogic environments. It discusses Kress's principle of meaning-making, which is based on transformation, but shows how transmodal meaning-making can bring more... more
The paper explores the activity of crossing modes in meaning-making in pedagogic environments. It discusses Kress's principle of meaning-making, which is based on transformation, but shows how transmodal meaning-making can bring more radical change. It puts forward the concept of the transmodal moment as a way of understanding and researching modal shift in pedagogic environments. A number of examples from classrooms are provided.