DISTANCING TO BRING CLOSER: THE TEACHER-STUDENT LINK AT THE PEAK OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

Relations between the public and private spheres in the educational dimension were significantly restructured in light of the development of digital technology. Indeed, communications between professors and students that hardly happened outside the space of educational institutions have become constant in the context of digital culture, in such a way that messages exchanged between educational agents through social networks help in any time and space. This digital communication
process became ubiquitous in the scenario of social confinement during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, given the fact that carrying out synchronous and asynchronous activities demanded, on many occasions, continuous digital communication. In view of this situation, the objective of this article is to critically reflect on how the breaking of boundaries between the public and private spheres led to significant changes in the teacher-student relationship, changes that also spread to the relationships of new socialization processes after the period of the overwhelming experiences of the lockdown period. To this end, articles and books by researchers on the consequences of the period of social confinement on the relationships between professors and university students were analysed. It is concluded that, paradoxically, the experiences lived between teachers and students in the period of the limit situation of remote teaching can engender the production of new limits jointly agreed between teachers and students without the teacher exercising the mistaken conviction that, by proceeding in this way, he would lose his condition of authority in front of the students.