“Visualising Affect Using Virtual Reality”

by Polly Card & Michelle Ruiz | Xchanges 12.2/13.1

Positionality & Rationale

Positionality

Ruiz, an e-learning designer, and Card, a producer who creates visual media for education, recognize the affordances of video as a powerful tool for transformative learning. We believe that the film has the potential to help instructors understand a greater depth of the systems that perpetuate student deficit models, cultural, and linguistic subordination for transborder students. Through the ICM, we hope to galvanize instructors to resist and transform oppressive practices in educational institutions.

The ICM builds on Card’s previous work, The Blush Machine, a visual research piece, produced at Kiosko Boliva gallery in 2013. The event explored race and gender, and engaged participants through visual texts. The ICM deals with similar topics and also extends Ruiz’s Entry Denied, an interactive multimedia installation exhibited at UC San Diego Annex Gallery in 2013. Both researchers develop media from an academic standpoint; visuals, stories, navigations, aesthetics are all elements informed by conceptual frameworks and research findings.

Rationale

Alfaro et al. (2015) examined teacher preparation and ideology and found that all prospective teachers, regardless of their ethnic background, often have beliefs and attitudes about the existing social order that reflect potentially harmful dominant ideologies, and that they do so unconsciously and uncritically (Alfaro, et al., 2015). Educators are encouraged to engage in the juxtaposition of counterhegemonic narratives firstly, to identify racist ideologies and deficit views, and to address them. Alfaro’s (2016) work on “ideological clarity” reports that if educators embrace an objective and sociolinguistic understanding of English Language Learners (ELL) skills and knowledge, then they can help students build on their language skills and achieve in school.

The ICM, encourages the process of “ideological clarity” and highlights areas for participants to examine within the world of the film. The ICM was produced to elicit greater empathy and commitment to supporting the success of men of color in community college. Darder et al’s (2003) research suggests that the study of ideology can help educators critically evaluate their practices and recognize how dominant class culture becomes embedded in the curriculum. By reproducing hegemonic culture, students are silenced and democratic education is hindered. To resist oppressive practices, Darder recommends that educators gain a firm understanding of dominant ideologies and develop effective tools to transform counterhegemonic discourse.

Alfaro and Darder’s research along with Freire’s (1993) pedagogy on the development of critical consciousness informed our decisions when producing the film. Freire writes that the development of critical consciousness involves educators experiencing a process of insight, thought, and action to become critical thinkers. The process involves an “active, dialogical educational program” (Freire, 1993, p. 19) where educators generate scenarios of alternative ways of being and challenge social relations. The graphics and sound effects overlaid on the film represent the “Ideological Machine.” The Machine scans the environment creating a multimodal layer between reality and its interpretation. Bartolomé (2008) builds on this approach arguing that practicing “authentic cariño” (care) and incorporating students’ primary languages and cultural values into their school culture and curriculum can help ELL students to excel. We also value Noddings (2013) approach that prioritizes concern for relationships; she argues that “caring involves stepping out of one’s own personal frame of reference into the other’s” (Noddings, 2013, p. 24).