The essay attempts to focus on the advantages that Distance Teaching/Learning (DTL) has allowed to achieve, first of all the fact that, thanks to web connection, lessons were not completely blocked during the pandemic crisis. However, Distance Teaching which is unbalanced more on instruction than on education, has generated new inequalities, educational poverty and other psycho-social disadvantages. After the traumatic absorption of Distance Teaching/Learning by teachers and students, traumatic because it was carried out in such short times and almost with self-training, Italian academic system now seems to have settled on a new balance which would like to make DTL continue to play a role, even when health emergency will be over. From an “emergency” role and from a simply “replacement of a face-to-face teaching”, Distance Teaching will presumably become “integrative” (although the mix with “face-to-face teaching” may vary even within the same hour of lesson, within the same course, within the different disciplines of the same Department and between courses in the same University). Some experts already talk about Digital Integrated Education and discussion is open and vivid. This integration between “face-to-face teaching” and DTL should be wisely governed and not suffered, it should be the result of an aware choice of the whole socio-educational system rather than the mature fruit of a resilience process. From this point of view the massive introduction of DTL had its acceleration in the pandemic, but DTL already corresponded to a certain spirit of the times (“Age of pragmatism”); it was already in line with a certain type of rationality (rationality according to the ends and instrumental rationality), with a certain type of ideology (newliberism), with a certain type of political philosophy (populism); with the incipient decline of the figure of “Masters”. Therefore DTL had already found extremely favorable environmental/cultural conditions at the time of its traumatic introduction into the educational system. In the search for a clever and balanced mix between “distance teaching/learning” and “teaching/learning in presence” in planning the “University of the Future” when the end of the pandemic will take place, it would be wise not to forget the importance of Masters and to keep in mind that educational relationship between Master and disciples is primarily a relationship of care. This relation is very concrete, is founded on an exchange of reciprocal gifts between students and teacher that needs of proximity, is based on some passions (love for knowledge) which wants the body and the real presence of people. It is also is important that lesson should take place in a “public” place and not simply in a virtual arena for the growth of a better quality of social capital (social capital of bonding). For all these reason “blended lesson” should be avoided, being a didactic oxymoron. It is also necessary to ask what types of knowledge and of didactic will be needed to understand the complexity of the pandemic crisis and to face all the related challenges, included a paradigm shift in the development of economy and societyin the direction of “integral ecology”, which can be conceived only by Masters because of their creative imagination.
How a virus has changed teaching and learning
Cristina Montesi
2024
Abstract
The essay attempts to focus on the advantages that Distance Teaching/Learning (DTL) has allowed to achieve, first of all the fact that, thanks to web connection, lessons were not completely blocked during the pandemic crisis. However, Distance Teaching which is unbalanced more on instruction than on education, has generated new inequalities, educational poverty and other psycho-social disadvantages. After the traumatic absorption of Distance Teaching/Learning by teachers and students, traumatic because it was carried out in such short times and almost with self-training, Italian academic system now seems to have settled on a new balance which would like to make DTL continue to play a role, even when health emergency will be over. From an “emergency” role and from a simply “replacement of a face-to-face teaching”, Distance Teaching will presumably become “integrative” (although the mix with “face-to-face teaching” may vary even within the same hour of lesson, within the same course, within the different disciplines of the same Department and between courses in the same University). Some experts already talk about Digital Integrated Education and discussion is open and vivid. This integration between “face-to-face teaching” and DTL should be wisely governed and not suffered, it should be the result of an aware choice of the whole socio-educational system rather than the mature fruit of a resilience process. From this point of view the massive introduction of DTL had its acceleration in the pandemic, but DTL already corresponded to a certain spirit of the times (“Age of pragmatism”); it was already in line with a certain type of rationality (rationality according to the ends and instrumental rationality), with a certain type of ideology (newliberism), with a certain type of political philosophy (populism); with the incipient decline of the figure of “Masters”. Therefore DTL had already found extremely favorable environmental/cultural conditions at the time of its traumatic introduction into the educational system. In the search for a clever and balanced mix between “distance teaching/learning” and “teaching/learning in presence” in planning the “University of the Future” when the end of the pandemic will take place, it would be wise not to forget the importance of Masters and to keep in mind that educational relationship between Master and disciples is primarily a relationship of care. This relation is very concrete, is founded on an exchange of reciprocal gifts between students and teacher that needs of proximity, is based on some passions (love for knowledge) which wants the body and the real presence of people. It is also is important that lesson should take place in a “public” place and not simply in a virtual arena for the growth of a better quality of social capital (social capital of bonding). For all these reason “blended lesson” should be avoided, being a didactic oxymoron. It is also necessary to ask what types of knowledge and of didactic will be needed to understand the complexity of the pandemic crisis and to face all the related challenges, included a paradigm shift in the development of economy and societyin the direction of “integral ecology”, which can be conceived only by Masters because of their creative imagination.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
