Using Foucault’s notion of a dispositif or social apparatus, this thesis charts the pedagogical relations established in contemporary literacy discourse in terms of a space of visibility and a form of sayability, and analyses them as operating within power-knowledge. It furthers this analysis by conceptualising the space of literacy as a normative heterotopia and as a recent mutation of bio-power, the government of the developing body. Such analysis problematises the discourse of literacy, from the term’s systematic indefiniteness to its real effectivity in producing subjects, spaces and disciplinary techniques. Literacy combines and interrelates a nineteenth-century establishment and a twentieth-century rearrangement of pedagogical space. The national language, the developing child, as well as the world of demands and national progress: all emerge as part of the nineteenth-century educational state, forming a set of disciplinary procedures, a structure of perception and a desire to recognise and utilise language development. Literacy discourse appropriates these knowledges and multiplies the sites in which they operate. It articulates the recognition and enablement of non-standard literacies with the governmental project of intensifying and directing the powers of a population. The pedagogical relations operationalised in literacy discourse project a continuous disciplinary power over a general social space. Thus, literacy has become both a common and much theorised social concern, and a term which structures lives, spaces, discourse and power. / Beginning with a close analysis of a recent education policy document, this thesis looks at the deployment of literacy as a way of organising experience through discourse and as a means of modulating the relations between three historically constituted terms: the student, the text, and the world. Schooling and literacy thus insert themselves into a machinery of social production and into the production of everyday concerns and processes. Consequently, literacy enters into our most material and non-linguistic moments through a teleological arrangement of time and space, a pedagogisation which is at the same time a textualisation of existence.

What does mutuality mean in a pedagogical relation? This study seeks to explore one of the essential parts in a pedagogical relation, mutuality. From a relational perspective, that lifts the existential element in pedagogics, the study want to contribute with a possible understanding of the concept in order to strengthen the importance of this existential element. Through concept analysis, interpretations of Martin Buber´s relational philosophy and the relational perspective, the aim of the study has been to explore and to understand mutuality and its meaning in and for the pedagogical relation regarding the question of mutuality´s substance, in the sense of the substantial that lies in it. The results of the study shows: Mutuality as a substantive is scarcely described in dictionaries. It usually appears as equivalent to, and explained as, reciprocity. It was though possible to trace differences between the two terms. Mutuality denotes two parts who are involved in the same phenomenon, here and now, while reciprocity includes actions that can have a delay in time. Within the observed fields, the concept has been studied as a human attribute and mainly for its role for humans and society. It is usually used with a preconception where the involved parts, with the mutual action, give each other something they can benefit from. When studied closer, special characteristics were identified. Mainly depending on its context, variations were conditioned to: the origins/initiators of the actions – equally or unequally between parts. Advantage/influence between parts – direct or indirect. The reason for the action – as an obligation, an ideal or a common exchange of benefits. Time aspect – the actions could either keep a certain model or facilitate a sustainable change. The involved parts – either humans or non-human in co-actions. The concept´s essential characteristic, its own substance, could first be seen with help of the relational perspective and Martin Buber´s relational philosophy. By looking in between the parts of a relation and using Buber´s notion of a two folded way to relate to the world (as I to Thou and as I to It) mutuality could be interpreted and understood as a pre-condition, something that is there a priori. A constant abstract ground where the parts can meet each other. A substantial component of the gap in-between the parts, a pre-condition for the relation to be fulfilled. In this way, it is possible to understand mutuality in a pedagogical relation as symmetric, where parts relate to each other equally regardless of their differences, here and now. For mutuality’s manifestation is immediate. It affects and mutates – transforms us, forever. Without this existential, relational understanding of mutuality, it will be, in a pedagogical relation, at risk to be left just as an exchange between parts with an instrumental purpose, where the parts pass by each other and stay unaffected. The person may turn to be an object, pedagogics’ relational ground may be lost and the balance in education may remain deranged.

This thesis in Educational Theory explores how teachers in Denmark reconfigured their practices of teaching to be conducted via digital means during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a time where people were locked away in isolation from the world they knew due to the threat of a of the deadly virus, I show the reconfiguration of teaching practices that subsequently impacted educational relations situated in, out and alongside the classroom. Accordingly, I draw from interviews I conducted with teachers, reflecting on their lived experiences during this period, that gives insight into how they responded to the sudden and forced shift of the (digital) classroom. Drawing on Paulo Freire’s concepts of ‘banking education’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘alienation’ with Nel Noddings’ notion of ‘care’, I argue for an approach oriented towards care and attention to the ways in which teachers are both limited in their efforts of caring but also find new ways of doing so within the changed, digital classroom. The teachers reconfiguring interventions certainly give hope for the future in which digitalization is expected to increasingly transform classrooms but nonetheless also show a limit to how much hardship the teaching professional ideal of care can endure in educational relations.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:39:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5059.pdf: 899945 bytes, checksum: 39caf1fefbf2aca53ad119d52f92bea4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-04 / Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos / This search presents a subject that is on top of the currently education scenario, the Distance Education. This new education mode that comes as a promess to breaking barriers of timing and space, still have many things to say about their real consequences regarding education of the individual. Thus arises the importance of this research which aims investigating issues related to pedagogical directivity/non-directivity in UAB-UFSCar with a target of analysis the Philosophy of Education into the Pedagogy graduate. However it should be noted that the goal is not handle the data in order to make categorical statements, i.e, do not say if the pedagogical relations in UAB-UFSCar are directives or non-directives but trying think about such relations and how it occurs at the enviroment of learning to propose new thoughts. The main theoretical framework to be used will be the Critical Theory of Society that supported the analyzes and reflections made in the course of the four chapters of the dissertation. / A presente dissertação trata de um tema que está em pauta no cenário educativo atual, a Educação a Distância (EAD). Esta nova modalidade de ensino, que vem com a promessa de romper barreiras de tempo e espaço, ainda tem muito a nos dizer sobre suas reais consequências no que se refere à formação do indivíduo. Por isso se dá a importância deste trabalho, que objetivou investigar questões referentes a diretividade/não-diretividade pedagógica na UAB-UFSCar, tendo como objeto de análise a disciplina de Filosofia da Educação do curso de Licenciatura em Pedagogia. No entanto, vale salientar que o objetivo não foi tratar os dados com a finalidade de realizar afirmações categóricas, ou seja, não pretendemos dizer se as relações pedagógicas na UAB-UFSCar são ou não diretivas, mas sim buscamos pensar sobre tais relações e sobre como elas ocorrem no ambiente de aprendizagem, com o intuito de propor novas reflexões. O referencial teórico principal utilizado foi a teoria Crítica da Sociedade, que subsidiou as análises e reflexões feitas no decorrer dos quatro capítulos da dissertação.