My Pedagogical Becoming as a Stellenbosch University Residential Educator During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This article explores my pedagogical becoming through the enactment of a residential education and support programme (RESP) at Stellenbosch University (SU). I co-created the RESP with nine women students who remained in a university residence with me during the Covid-19 pandemic. The RESP focused on the relationality and interrelationships that transpired at the nexus of the institution, the students, and me. I propose that this RESP acted as catalyst for the transmission and acquisition of valuable qualities and dispositions-what Barnett (2009) referred to as epistemic virtues-which are vital to knowledge acquisition in higher education. This article uses an autoethnography approach to capture my personal experiences against the sociocultural backdrop of residential learning and living at SU before, during, and after the pandemic. Narrative prose expressing my embodied emotional, spiritual, and intellectual self (Bochner & Ellis, 1992), and emotional recall were the primary data sources, which I analysed against van Manen's (1982, 1994) conceptualisation of the pedagogical relation and Tronto's (2015) principles of care ethics. Both those authors emphasised the centrality of the pedagogical relation for good and effective teaching. This article demonstrates how an institutional care-based response to the pandemic enacted at one residence (at a university with an erstwhile separatist educational agenda) can surpass its legacy momentarily to point the way towards the possibility of inclusive transformation at such an institution. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how nurturing pedagogical relationships based on care can effectively cultivate and transmit valuable qualities and dispositions (epistemic virtues), and why these are important in our current supercomplex (Barnett, 2007) and fast-changing world. I offer the claim that the acquisition of these epistemic virtues by students holds promise for providing them the key to unlocking an education for life.