This paper presents a pilot study investigating how South African primary school classrooms, as intra-active semiotic landscapes, influence or promote diverse and inclusive learning environments. South Africa, with its profound cultural and ethnic diversity, historically faced inadequate representation within classrooms due to apartheid segregation laws. Despite efforts to reform educational practices since 1994, the impact of the past persists in classrooms, affecting children's cultural identity, sense of belonging, and appreciation for other cultures. To explore these issues, three culturally diverse primary school classrooms, comprising learners of various economic backgrounds, were semiotically analysed from a new materialist perspective using an onto-epistemological approach. From this perspective, all role-players in the classroom, whether of material, human and/or non-human form, exist in entangled, intra-active relationships to each other. Research findings revealed a stark misalignment between cultural representation within the classroom and the learner demographic. Prescribed books, mostly imported from England, featuring the Queen and teatime, and posters displaying British flags and snow, presented experiences vastly different from those of the participating South African learners. This could negatively impact inclusivity due to the intertwined relationship children have with the classroom environment. To demonstrate how the classroom could be reimagined collaboratively, children created artworks to celebrate the positivity in cultural differences to give form to their own lived experience. Displaying the learners’ artworks served to integrate their vision into the classroom’s semiotic landscape and give them agency. The study underscores the need for reshaping South African educational environments to reflect diversity thirty years into democracy.

Authors:
Mieke Hall, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

About the Presenter(s)
Mieke Hall is a Lecturer at Stellenbosch University’s Visual Arts Department in South Africa currently pursuing her PhD in cultivating inclusive educational spaces through Art and Design.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mieke-hall/

Additional website of interest
https://www.instagram.com/miekevdmerwe/

See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule

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