Hermeneutics and Online Pedagogy, or the Transformational Power of Recognizing the Limitations of Distance Learning
Abstract
One of the consequences of the restrictions following the covid-19 pandemic is the transformation of online education from a mere possibility to a ubiquitous reality. As with different technologies, research on online education has primarily focused on exploring how to exploit such platforms to make them more efficient as a means of qualification. This instrumentalist interpretation of technology and education discloses online education as eLearning, i.e., as a tool that accentuates the crisis in education. This crisis is summarized as a focus on instrumental ratio- nality, disengagement, and lack of assertiveness of the student (Pelcová, 2014). This tendency also conforms to Biesta's (2014) discourse on "learnification" of education, i.e., the reduction of the educational vocabulary to an issue of learning and of the educational process to a matter of economical transaction
However, technology as a mere instrument is not the only way to look at technology. According to contemporary post-phenomenologists (e.g., Ihde, 2010; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015; Friis & Crease, 2015); it should be understood as enmeshing in our lives, entangling with our most profound ways of interacting with our body, the world, and others. At the same time, it conceals and reveals possibilities for our realization as humans, for our transcendence from our everyday condition. Our experiences of the world are mediated by technology. With the increasing emergence of interpretations of technology going beyond instrumentalist, together with the spreading of eLearning, it is time to apply such interpretations to the issue of educational technology.
Drawing from the fields of philosophy of technology, philosophy of educa- tion, and hermeneutics, I structure my argument in the following manner: the difficulties of eLearning, to some extent, compel educators to reassess assump- tions about their practice what leads to openness for dialogue, knowledge, and understandings of the other (in this case the student). Dialogue and understand- ing of the other are essential in the contact of different (digital) cultures, what has been emerging with the intergenerational spread of digital technologies