HYBRID TEACHING AT THE UNIVERSITY AND ENUNCIATION PLACE OF PROFESSORS IN THE ACADEMIC-VOCATIONAL FORMATION ^{1 2}

ABSTRACT:

The growth of the university formation market, in private higher education, has become a big profitable business, to the point of ignoring the criterion of quality of training. In this article, we reflect on the contradictions regarding the implementation of hybrid education, in which virtual and partially face-to-face activities are reconciled, but strategically adopted following the market's appetite for jouissance. Based on the Moara case, under the coordinates of psychoanalysis, education and teacher training studies, we examine how the use of teaching mediated by technologies precarizes and can do without the teacher, while, when objectify the professors, expropriates them from their enunciation place. The incidence of technological discourse in academic-professional training, as an unfolded from capitalist discourse, creates statements that become discursive support and master signifiers through which the teacher can not only alienate himself, but also be satisfied. We'll see at what price.

Keywords:
Private Higher Education; Teacher; Technological Discourse; Capitalist Discourse; Psychoanalysis

RESUMO:

O crescimento do mercado da formação universitária no ensino superior privado tornou-se um grande negócio lucrativo, a ponto de ignorar o critério da qualidade da formação. Neste artigo refletimos sobre as contradições que dizem respeito à implementação do ensino híbrido, em que atividades virtuais e parcialmente presenciais são conciliadas, mas adotadas estrategicamente seguindo o apetite de gozo do mercado. A partir do caso Moara, sob às coordenadas dos estudos de psicanálise, educação e formação docente, examinamos como o uso do ensino mediado pelas tecnologias precariza e pode prescindir-se do professor, ao passo que, ao objetificá-lo, expropria-o de seu lugar de enunciação. A incidência do discurso tecnológico na formação acadêmico-profissional, como desdobramento do discurso capitalista, cria enunciados que se tornam suporte discursivo e significantes mestres por meio dos quais o docente pode não somente alienar-se, mas também satisfazer-se. Veremos a que preço.

Palavras-chave:
Ensino Superior Privado; Professor; Discurso Tecnológico; Discurso Capitalista; Psicanálise

RESUMEN:

El crecimiento del mercado de la formación universitaria, en la enseñanza superior privada, se tornó un gran negocio lucrativo, a tal punto de ignorar el criterio de la calidad de la formación. En este artículo reflexionamos sobre las contradicciones que aparecen respecto a la implementación de la enseñanza híbrida, en la que las actividades virtuales y parcialmente presenciales son conciliadas, aunque adoptadas estratégicamente siguiendo el apetito de goce del mercado. A partir del caso Moara, sobre las coordenadas de los estudios de psicoanálisis, educación y formación docente, examinamos como el uso de la enseñanza mediada por las tecnologías precariza y puede prescindir del profesor, al paso que, al objetalizarlo, se expropiaría de su lugar de enunciación. La incidencia del discurso tecnológico en la formación académica-profesional, como desdoblado del discurso capitalista, crea enunciados que se tornan soporte discursivo y significantes universitarios mestres por medio de los cuales el docente puede no solamente alienarse, mas también satisfacerse. Veremos a qué precio.

Palabras clave:
Enseñanza Superior Privado; Profesor; Discurso Tecnológico; Discurso Capitalista; Psicoanálisis

INTRODUCTION

A set of sociopolitical, institutional, and relational phenomena has acted to make teaching work precarious at universities surrendered to the modus operandi of a company. Such phenomena occur, especially, in several private higher education institutions legally recognized for their profitable nature, which have been producing, over the years, the commodification of university education supposedly aimed at the articulation of an education whose strict objective is to prepare young people for the competitive world of work - even though studies show that many recent graduates have their diplomas devalued (SENA, 2020).

There is a consensus that life at university, in different latitudes, with more or less particular versions, has become, for many, in the last three decades, a place of burden and a space of boredom. The authority of the teacher's words was largely dispensed with, while, due to the incidence of virtualized ties as an effect of technological culture, there is a weakening of the students' relationship with otherness (SENA, 2020).

It is worth highlighting that the implementation of inclusive public educational policies, promoted mainly by left-wing governments (2002-2016), has contributed to the process of more democratic access to higher education. It is known that the university in Brazil was considered, since its foundation, an elitist institution. With the recent sociopolitical transformations, the private sector, with its appetite for enjoyment, began to profit from the entire transformation of education conceived as a commodity (SENA, 2020). Market rules are applied without sufficient criticism of the university, which gives in to economic traps. As Lacan (1969-70/1991, p. 189) predicted: “surplus value joins capital... we are there in values. We all swim in it in the blessed time in which we live.” In the same context, Nóvoa (2014, p. 23) observes that

In political action programs or reform speeches, in documents from “experts”… or in the literature produced by researchers, we always find the same words, repeated over and over again, about the importance of teachers in the “challenges of the future”. Either because they are responsible for training the human resources necessary for economic development, or because they are responsible for training the generations of the 21st century, or because they must prepare young people for the information society and globalization, or any other reason, teachers are once again at the center of political and social concerns.

The university has been undergoing significant transformations, such as changes in its customers, its traditional forms of teaching, and its conception of academic training. In the world of commercialized education, we also observe that face-to-face education competes with the growth of hybrid education. The hybrid education combines asynchronous online and face-to-face activities, partially mediated by the teacher, who often tends to occupy the mere bureaucratic role of facilitator. This condition erases the difference implied in the teacher's work of transmission: the master in whom the “enigma value” would be supposed, the one who, in the transference, according to Lacan (1960-61/1991), possesses the “agalma”. In other words: “a representative of an ideal of the self (knowledge) and of an ideal self through the qualities of his person” (CORDIÉ, 1998, p. 313, our translation).

If we assume that the role of the teacher is sustained through transfer, as a necessary condition to establish transmission; the university, as guardian of knowledge, should prioritize maintaining this place. However, surrendered to the technological discourse, it allows knowledge to no longer be assumed by others and the teacher becomes an object, an instrument of pasteurized knowledge. When we listen to teachers who work in private institutions, especially those guided by market logic³, we can record the various challenges they face in their daily work, in which we highlight the lack of guarantees of a place where they can express themselves and transmit their experience. Knowledge reduced to consumption within the logic of the market affects the imagination of the student and the teacher, whose dimension of enigma and desire is erased in the face of the idea that teaching is equivalent to a product, a commodity, similar to what is available in a “window”. Thus, what is conveyed is the promise of satisfaction that the student/client can enjoy (SENA, 2020), in other words, “all you have to do is ask for what you want. Request, order, dispose of, consume, consummate. A situation presided over by a kind of post-modern ‘genie in the lamp’. 'What do you want? We provide.’” (GONÇALVES, 2000, p. 66).

Today, the financial and speculative logic that governs securities trading is marked by global economic amplitude and volatility. Investors who invest their capital on the stock exchanges are not concerned with the national origin of the companies or the type of products or services they generate. They are not interested in the effects that these companies have on the country's development or delay. The only thing that matters, regardless of the individual nature of each investor, is the degree of profitability that that property title offers. This is the logic that governs the financial sphere (FRONT, 2020, p. 4).

The modern university, in this sense, by distancing from its vocation, is subject to market prescription. By distorting from being able to at least “touch desire”, as stated by Miller (1997, p. 113), the institution finds immersed in its instrumental purposes, in such a way that the discourse of virtuality in education transformed the ways of teaching and learning in a knowledge that only has value if it is utilitarian, substantially affecting the dynamics of teaching work, and producing substantial changes in the place and representation of the teacher (SENA, 2020).

In this article, we seek to reflect on hybrid teaching as a discursive support on which teachers rely on the incidence of technological discourse in academic-professional training. In this debate, we dispense with the reductionist approach and activist passions, as well as the Manichaean solution, to introduce short-circuit impasses in the formative bond, whose conditions engendered by politics, in the social bond, require the master's adherence to the survival for the institutional program for the massification of knowledge. Not to mention the condition of being expropriated from his place of enunciation. To explore this debate, we use critical studies on the teaching profession, the commodification of education, as well as the Lacanian orientation of psychoanalysis for understanding education and politics. Firstly, we address hybrid teaching whose foundation is the self-instructional paradigm. Next, we discuss the impact of technological discourse on the university education market and the rejection of the quality of experience as one of its various effects. Finally, we analyzed the impasses experienced by teacher Moara, according to hybrid teaching regulations.

HYBRID TEACHING ACCORDING TO THE LOGIC OF THE “SELF-INSTRUCTIONAL PARADIGM”

It is surprising nowadays that the progress promised by the technological revolution in education has produced, in the opposite direction, a rupture in the conditions immanent to the formative bond, with regard precisely to the reference to the place of the teacher, in the relationship between master and disciple, as a “depository of the word” (CORDIÉ,1998, p. 310). In the same vein, Pereira (2016, p. 205) stated: “We know today that power (and authority) is called into question, that those who exercise it have lost much of their social legitimacy”. Therefore, it is worth asking: if the teacher declines to enunciate, who represents him/her as a master signifier to another signifier, when we think that a disciple is forged from a transmission? Let's examine the impasses.

In times of seduction of the discourse of technology in education - from school to university - promising not to create borders or obstacles⁴, one can recognize, in this pioneering act, the impact of the object on the subject, producing a complete pact of satisfaction, as the response demand is similar to a “window”. Furthermore, endorsed by the discursive force of the cognitivist paradigm, currently, which disseminates that learning is reduced only to a data processing operation mechanism (input and output), submitted to perception and information, this act is processed as a machine. In this sense, the promises announced by the so-called technological revolution, guided by the premises of a cognitive orientation, transformed the forms of teaching and learning in addition to the dynamics of teaching work in educational institutions. This perspective, similarly, also applies to psychotherapies (SENA, 2020).

This approach is intellectually seductive, as it appeals to reason, reflection, and will. There would be an error in the apprehension of reality, and this error that generates psychological disorders (depression, phobia, etc.) could be corrected by adequate learning. The (conscious) system of wrong beliefs would be revised and re-elaborated more or less as “self-management”. This conception of the psyche, which appeals to reasoning and classified knowledge of trust without failure in prescription (when referring to psychotherapy), is certainly more attractive than the analytical conception of a subject submissive to castration (CORDIÉ, 2000, p. 94, our translation).

For Laurent (2007), who analyzes the symptom society, the modular paradigm has been imposed in our time. This is the paradigm of cognition that never ceases to propose the pluralization of its strategies. In this model, everything seems to work in an almost autistic way. This implies that it is difficult for the Other to exert any influence of suggestion.

The “technological push” has been established as a resource that aims to make the educational process viable. Thus, technologies advanced in previous processes of distance communication with the arrival of the teacher's voice and image, which introduce the elements of their corporeality (VOLTOLINI, 2009).

Lacan (1954-55/1985, p. 46), when criticizing the reduction made of the body and the phenomena of consciousness to the mechanistic model, in an attempt to explain the effect of cybernetics on society, posed a question that still seems pertinent to our time:

The first question that arises for us, analysts, and perhaps we can get out of the controversy between vitalism and mechanism, is the following - why are we led to think of life in terms of mechanisms?

The author, by highlighting what was at stake in machines at the time, showed us that they speak, like all transformations, about the spirit of a time. He concluded:

The machine is linked to radically human functions. It is not a simple artifice, as we could say about chairs, tables, and other more or less symbolic objects in which we live without realizing that they are our portraits. Machines are something else. This goes very far in the direction of what we are, what the people who build them suspect [...]. The machine embodies the most radical symbolic activity in man, and it was necessary for the questions to arise - perhaps we won't notice in all this - at the level at which we pose them to us (LACAN, 1954-55/1985, p. 99).

The premise of the cognitive conception, increasingly established as the best parameter to correct emotional problems, when applied to the educational field, tends to ratify the idea of a liberal, individualized, and self-entrepreneurial man. This idea has also been disseminated as an object of academic-professional training, mainly in private commercial universities. The massive use of hybrid teaching in these institutions, especially with the adoption of distance learning - DL, has attracted our attention due to the uncritical and instrumental way in which it has been implemented.

Hybrid teaching consists of combining virtual and in-person activities with the help of tutors. For example, the flipped classroom provides for the circulation of a certain subject not transmitted by the teacher in the classroom. The student accesses the material available online to study it before attending the classroom. They are usually problems, projects, discussions, and laboratory activities. The activities are supported and supervised by the teacher and collaboratively by colleagues. Interpersonal interactions are valued and online activities aim to make the teaching and learning process more efficient, interesting, and personalized (VALENTE, 2014). A large national (Bacich, Tanzi Neto, Trevisani 2015) and international literature (Christensen, Horn, and Staker, 2013; Stacey, Gerbic, 2009; Garrison, Vaughan, 2008) has highlighted, from different perspectives, the relevance of hybrid teaching in a technological society, the diversity of practices and reflections on the role of the teacher in this context.

Technological culture, through the various devices that connect us to the virtual world, transmits to everyone, regardless of their geographic location, the impression that we are omnipresent. The walls of the university no longer establish limits, as the networks that connect us virtually cross barriers, showing their power. All of this seems to establish a single parameter to follow, whose omnipotence excludes any possibility of refusal, in addition to appearing seductive.

The digital revolution, according to Blais; Gauchet; and Ottavi (2014), produced several political, epistemological, social, and pedagogical mutations, to the point where we question whether we still need teachers when machines are made available to each person, with the knowledge that each person may need.

Another argument widely disseminated by advertisements concerns students finding hybrid learning a way to expand their educational horizons and encourage training in social and behavioral skills, in addition to the new demand for socio-emotional skills. According to this vision, the student has the chance to practice the use and acquisition of these skills in their respective formal courses (ASSUMPAÇÃO, 2017). As Lajonquière (2011) reinforces, these mechanisms intend to impose self-education on the large masses of the population.

In this model of academic-professional training, the student becomes the agent and the center of the process - here is the primary face of “his majesty, the baby!”, whose attentions and demands are all focused on the “customer”, preferably avoiding setbacks and dissatisfaction (SENA, 2020). In this sense, Voltolini (2019) points out that, when we prioritize the empowered student, the teacher is deprived of his/her teaching and enunciation. However, this equation is beneficial for neoliberal logic, as it has become the dream of consumption of the established power. Here we have the university consumed and consummated. In other words, the “commitment” to democratize university education, under the slogan of making education universal for all, but without any quality index, turns current education into an object to be consumed and annihilated.

However, when considering the different realities of higher education institutions, the paradox consists of proposing approaches based on hybrid teaching, suitable for solving the problem and by the curriculum to be worked on, considering the students' level of knowledge. When it comes to projects, the student is the one who makes the choice, based on their interest or that of the group of students. Another problem: the diversity of topics makes it very difficult for teachers to mediate their teaching and learning. These approaches are difficult to implement in classrooms with a large number of students (VALENTE, 2014). However, what can be seen in the concrete realities of private institutions, which have little oversight, is that this approach is usually applied in spaces with a surplus of students with academic trajectories marked by mishaps and varied deficits (SENA, 2020).

Although there are controversies, the contemporary pedagogical discourse, superimposed on the technology discourse, disseminates the benefits of this teaching modality that stimulates individual autonomy and motivation, while “knowledge” is no longer under the tutelage of expertise. The teacher is, therefore, in “decentralization”. Therefore, the act of learning takes place through the consumption of information reinforced by the following observation: learn without the master, without fear, and risk. In these contexts of mass teaching, the teacher became an executor of pre-formatted instructions.

Today's university, committed to the commodification of training, is involved in the transmission of knowledge that dispenses with or denies the teacher's places of enunciation. In this context, the master begins to occupy different positions, as Segenreich (2015) highlights: they become content writers, lecturers, and task workers, in addition to also playing the role of instructional designers. Some are invited to join the team responsible for production and distribution, while other teachers become tutors, as they accompany the student both on a virtual platform and in person. What can be noticed is that monitoring the teacher almost always becomes a bureaucratic task. We know that, as Costa (1991) highlights, bureaucracy has the aspect of “disenchantment of the world” in the face of the “rationality” required by the technological apparatus, implying a certain obedience in others. Laurent (2007), when quoting Heidegger, in response to his scientific vision of the world, shows that the society of technology “attacks the most intimate substance of contemporary man”.

In addition to the mercantilist strategy adopted by private educational institutions as a means of obtaining increasingly more profit, one can also currently count on the connivance of the Ministry of Education, as part of the course can be made available in the form of distance learning: 40%⁵. The justification for such an incidence of hybrid teaching lies in the following fact: “Thanks to the Internet, knowledge is no longer monopolized by those that the institution has selected, trained and certified. Knowledge is shared” (BLAIS; GAUCHET; OTTAVI, 2014, p. 241, our translation).

We observe the emergence of a new naturalistic and evolutionary conception of learning. Given this, it is understood that learning must be spontaneous, inductive, immediate, and, above all, linked to usefulness or effectiveness (“relevance”). The acquisition of knowledge is aimed at adapting the subject to his environment, it has to be useful. Learning cannot be anything other than answering a question, and looking for a solution to a problem (BLAIS; GAUCHET; OTTAVI, 2014).

Regarding these transformations, some examine them only by pointing out the positive aspects, as they seem to highlight the same fascination as those who discover a kind of golden pill or an intact Eden, when they emphasize the evidence, through statistics, that the hegemonic form of transmission, in addition to being consistent with the time - zeitgeist, it should also meet the spirit of volatile and hyperconnected youth, who can learn without sanction, implying values such as: “interactivity, effectiveness, speed, connection with the entire world, forgetting of the past” (BLAIS; GAUCHET; OTTAVI, 2014, p. 225, our translation). In other words, it is up to each person to customize their knowledge according to personal taste, time, and priorities. Here is the contemporary face of the university surrendered to the “pedagogical hypnosis”⁶ of the moment.

Faced with this set of certainties and possible guarantees, combined with developmental ideas, there remain doubts and suspicions related to “totalitarian seduction”. For example, it can be considered that this same type of argument was appropriated as a tactic to be expropriated and exploited, in a perverse way, by private institutions, but in an unrestricted and inconsequential way. It is therefore assumed that

The idea that certain scientific discoveries fell into the wrong hands, for example, does nothing but return to this old liberal prejudice, typical of the illusion of freedom cherished by American imperialism, that everything would be resolved correctly as long as the objects were in good hands. That is to say, whether, in good or bad hands, they would be hands that were free to manipulate the object in the direction they pleased, without anything about this object imposing a limit on it, an impossible one (VOLTOLINI, 2009, p 129).

The idea of effectiveness and immediacy disseminated by university institutions guided by market logic and little committed to ethical principles that guide academic-professional training convey enjoyment as a promise of a utilitarian education. This enjoyment is linked to that position of the subject in the capitalist's discourse, in which the (technological) object is a product of science (or knowledge, S2) and must be able to meet the subject's demand ($ ↔ a) in a relationship of fusion “offering, in a monotonous and repetitive way, short, quick and disposable objects of consumption - even though this generates boredom, sadness and a lack of meaning at the speed at which they are consumed” (PEREIRA, 2016, p. 210).

TECHNOLOGICAL DISCOURSE IN THE UNIVERSITY TRAINING MARKET: REJECTION OF THE QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE

Studies on higher education (SANTOS, 2021; ALCADIPANI, 2011; SAMPAIO, 2014; SENA, 2020) highlight the impasses concerning the instrumentalization of teaching work as a result of technological and hegemonic culture and tends towards homogenization as classes become more widespread in a transmission mediation strategies in different qualified forms of “teaching”. According to this model, the teacher's action, although partially necessary, becomes decentered, while the relationship with knowledge is disseminated in a utilitarian way, organized in a dispersed way, even under the control of programs. We note that the formalization of information, supposedly called knowledge, does not always translate into knowledge.

Based on the sociological debate, Bauman (2017, s/p.) warns us about the incompatibility between “education and immediacy”, considered “contradictory terms”. This contradiction is established based on the following paradox: “Either you have a quality education, or you have immediacy. You cannot have both at the same time.” According to this observation, in both statements there is the possibility of carrying out education, but with opposite results, since the ends and objectives are not the same.

Based on these premises, we can think that education, according to the assumptions of quality, helps everyone find a place in the social pact. However, education for immediate results supposes denying castration⁷, opposing the transmission of symbolic marks in such a way that what is conveyed is the promise of the subject being able to enjoy, even if obstacles arise, in an unlimited way.

When we examine these questions based on the psychoanalytic debate, we observe that the contradiction between education versus immediacy, taking into account Bauman's criticism, is perfectly compatible with the contemporary forms that organize the social bond and determine modes of subjectivities in which the subject is determined by knowledge. In this configuration, academic-professional training is part of an imaginary that conveys not the construction of a desire through which each person can come to weave their subjective affiliation in the name of an ideal, but, on the contrary, the promise of being able to enjoy any price. In this way, the relationship with knowledge follows the logic of consumption according to which, regardless of the circumstances, the student-consumer, in the end, will always be approved by the multiple possibilities created by private institutions to preserve the customer in the face of broad competition between similar institutions.

To understand the consequences of the incidence of the discursive effect produced by technology, we resort to the mathematics or algorithm of technology discourse, developed by Lesourd (2010). This discursive device seems appropriate to us as a reading operator to reflect on how private educational institutions articulate and think about professional training and the role of the teacher today.

It is also necessary to take into account that, in psychoanalysis, the social bond is defined, in terms, as a discourse that establishes certain modes of relationships through which enjoyment can be regulated. This notion was developed by Lacan (1969-70/1991), in his seminar 17 - The Reverse of Psychoanalysis, and has been articulated in the educational field by several authors (VOTOLINI, 2007; PONNOU, 2014; PEREIRA, 2016).

Concerning discourse theory, we must identify the specific element that dominates such a social bond. This means that we must look for what determines the subject's action. It involves verifying how the subject acts according to the dominant discourse in which he or she is inserted (QUINET, 2009). For Lacan (1969-70/1991, p. 13), “It doesn't matter, of course, the shape of the letters⁸ where we inscribe this symbolic chain. This is enough for something of the constant relationships to be manifested.”

Returning to Lesourd's technology discourse, we present the math-theme:

From this mathematics of technology discourse, we observe that knowledge is the one that occupies the place of an agent of discourse (S2). Technical knowledge is what determines and orders the subject’s place. This type of social bond constitutes, for example, medical discourse: “In the name of technical knowledge, it prescribes to the subject what his use of enjoyment should be - he cannot smoke, he cannot drink, do sport, etc.” (LESOURD, 2010, p. 147, our translation).

Examining the discourse of technology, its agent addresses the object as if the latter were determined by the master signifiers (S1), the one that symbolically orders the world. As Lacan (1969-70/1991, p. 11) highlights: “S1, the one from which our definition of discourse starts... [is] the field of the big Other”. Thus, the proliferation of communication techniques demonstrates the desire for this place of the other in the discourse that has the object and that invites the subject to be represented by another object. This will occupy a place, whatever it may be, that alienates the subject. In other words, the one to whom, as another, the statement is directed. It can, therefore, be observed that technological development has only increased the preponderance of the object of enjoyment in place of the other. Lesourd (2010, p. 149, our translation) states:

In this technological discourse, knowledge of the reality of effective technological science challenges, not the subject as the University's discourse does, but the object in place of the other in the discourse. Technological knowledge, according to the S2/$ algorithm, wants to determine the subject and demands the object so that it produces meaning to the world, that it produces a nomination ordering the world. This idea of knowledge that could produce truth in the world through the intermediation of objects of knowledge is historically dated, such as the program of the Enlightenment, of the encyclopedists, and then of religion and revolutionary Reason. In this process of discourse of universal technological knowledge responsible for producing order in the world, the subject disappears.

The circularity and the “ironic” effect produced by the technology discourse imply the fact that, when observing it, externally, we realize that it is a discourse that becomes, for those who enunciate it, the support of their subjective position, concludes Lesourd (2010). According to this perspective, the subject is not represented by a master signifier (S1). This discursive form presupposes the rejection of the quality of experience, which founds education since the teacher does not enunciate but is enunciated by the knowledge produced in series.

The suppression of the quality of experience inherent to teaching, in which masters and disciples are called upon to assume a place of enunciation, has been perverted by the commodification of university education (SENA, 2020). In this sense, Agamben (1978/2008) knew how to provide a diagnosis by showing the disappearance of the maxim and the proverb. Then, the slogan replaces both and has since become the proverb of humanity, which has lost experience. Although this does not mean that there are no experiences, the fact is that they take place outside of man. It seems curious that the man looks at her with relief. In this sense, we can observe that both teachers and students can be compared with

those comic book characters from our childhood, who can walk in the void as long as they don't realize it: the moment they realize it, the moment they experience it, they plummet irremediably (AGAMBEN, 1978/2008, p. 24).

Agamben further concludes that

All discourse about experience must now start from the realization that it is no longer something that can still be done. Because, just as he was deprived of his biography, a contemporary man was expropriated of his experience: in fact, the inability to transmit experiences is perhaps one of the few certain data he has about himself (AGAMBEN, 1978/2008, p. 21 ).

If the technology discourse rejects the possibility of the teacher being able to express as he/she is objectified, the offer of training without the basis of the quality of the experience cannot arouse any demand or desire from the students. Contradictorily, the teacher, like the other in this discourse, is “who always works to make the truth emerge, as this is the meaning of work” (LACAN, 1969-70/1991, p. 110). In other words, without the other, the discourse would not take place. So, it is not simply the one to whom the discourse is addressed, but the one who interrogates the discourse that comes as a significant response to this other, as a place of question.

TEACHER MOARA ACCORDING TO THE HYBRID EDUCATION REGULATIONS

The statements from an emblematic case that we are going to discuss are the result of one of the research themes⁹, carried out with professors from private higher education, who complained, above all, about the brutal incidence of new communication and information technologies - NICT, which comes, significantly, changing the forms of teaching and transmission and consequently replacing the transfer relationships between teacher and student.

Professor Moara¹⁰, 49 years old at the time, was very interested in participating in the research. Graduated in Physiotherapy 25 years ago, she is married and has a couple of children (a 12-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy). She has been teaching for eighteen years. She has a master's and doctorate in the area of collective health, in public institutions. The reports she made seem to be divided into two moments of her career as a teacher at the private institution where we carried out the fieldwork. At first, she taught all courses in the health area: nursing, physiotherapy, dentistry, nutrition, pharmacy, and speech-language therapy. Then, she was invited to dedicate herself exclusively to the medical course. Thus, it became inevitable to establish some contrasts between the courses and the heterogeneity of the students.

The challenges appeared when Moara had to dedicate herself to tutoring to meet the requirements of the subjects implemented through the hybrid teaching modality. The use of active methodologies became an impasse in the face of the sociocultural realities of the students, which were quite noticeable during the night shift. The teacher drew up a profile, using comparisons:

“Students who come to study at night theoretically have little time to study, sometimes their study time is class time. So, the proposals that we make to work with daytime students on the same course, we cannot apply to the evening course, because they need to study, read, come prepared, the pre-class history [access preliminary guidance on the university website], to come and use a more active methodology. So, it has always been a huge impasse to be able to work with the same methodologies and the same materials. Even if they are different students, we couldn't use the same methodology. Practical class, we don't always have the same results as night students and day students. So, working like we work today in Medicine, with active methodologies, with other courses, I couldn’t, I wasn’t successful” (Professor Moara, verbal information, 2018).

In this statement about teaching conditions, two issues seem to stand out: first, students who attend courses in opposite shifts - afternoon and evening - present different performances and live different realities; second, the homogenization of the methodology requires its application to everyone, without distinction. The biggest impasse for the teacher consists of the modus operandi of active methodologies, as it implies a hardening, the act of complying with what is prescribed, with standardized training.

For Gonçalves (2000), the capitalist's discourse, according to the rules of the technomarket, is based on the idea that the greatest attraction of the merchandise is its fluent availability in the form of fast and tailored delivery. It is the imaginary of a pure offering under the standardizations of merchandise and mass.

However, the paradox of offering active methodologies at the institution in question is that the student should become the center of learning, have autonomy, and be able to manage their educational path. The teacher, following the program, would work as a tutor, hypothetically, helping the student. This would be the ideal model of the “self-instructional paradigm” (SEGENREICH, 2015). However, admission to courses is also not homogeneous, as there are historically more privileged courses, such as medicine and dentistry, whose selection criteria require passing an entrance exam, establishing a very clear distinction between the aforementioned courses and others for which it is enough to complete an essay to achieve a performance considered satisfactory. Thus, the “differentiated customer” will demand unequal treatment from the teacher. The teacher needs to encourage the student - night worker - so that he remains “awake” and is “more participative”. Thus,

The supply of knowledge rarely follows a demand or a need, and, if there is a problem, it is because the teacher was able to create the situation that allowed it to be placed (we call this a “problem situation” precisely because it is fictitious) (BLAIS; GAUCHET; OTTAVI, 2014, p. 238, our translation).

We also add that, despite technological advances and given the fact that a vast array of information is available for download, the appetites of young people seem moderate. Furthermore, there is an apathy towards the need for density of thought. This implies the fact that the teacher, in a more popular version, needs to offer “everything ready and chewed”. Lacan (1969-70/1991, p. 172) showed that, as we are governed by science, latusas proliferate, that is, “objects made to cause desire” of the subject, which are populating the world. “The latusa has no reason to limit itself in its multiplication.”

Under the imperative of applying the methodology linearly, Professor Moara reports her difficulty faced with the incompatibility of the hybrid teaching model adopted by the institution and the concrete reality of the classrooms. When mentioning the significant number of students, their discomfort becomes clear:

“The teacher has to be able to handle and apply a technique no matter what. Then, think: in a class of one hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty students, how are you going to apply an active methodology? It's unfeasible because I can't help everyone, because in a situation like this, we have to help each other, it's not enough to propose and 'get by'. So, it wasn’t easy” (Professor Moara, verbal information, 2018).

The mass effect produced by the generalization of hybrid teaching, a methodology more suitable for small groups, is impressive. The teacher shows resentment when faced with the imperative of using the aforementioned technique for one hundred and forty students. In addition to the excess, there is a complaint related to the perverse model of commercialization of university education, which does not follow pedagogical criteria, but rather mercantile ones. Lesourd (2010, p. 162 our translation) observes that

In addition to the virtualization of the Other that builds the postmodern world, the relationship with the same figures of the Other has changed. The imaginary incarnations of the Other are no longer more or less good, more or less protective tutelary figures as were the images of God or the Father. The virtual Other becomes a simple anonymous persecutor... total, entire, and mocking.

The ambition of market logic, according to “the appetite for gain”, applies indiscriminately to education, under the impetus of virtualization determined by the master signifiers who subjugate teachers. For Estacolchic (1999), market laws function like a sordid web, woven exclusively with personal appetites and profit rates. Thus, the market is the place of winners. Lacan (1969-70/1991) was visionary in his critique of neoliberalism and his premise seems correct regarding “wise politicians”, referring to those who master the metrics of the art of governing and who know exactly everything that must be done to achieve your ideals.

As we previously announced, Maora stopped teaching other courses in the health area and migrated to dedicate herself exclusively to the medical course in 2012, as she summarizes:

“For a year now, I have worked in Medicine since the first class and I became exclusive: the reality is completely different, we have students with time, we manage to have students who come prepared... So we changed from water to wine and that's very good because it makes me want it. I wanted to study more, to work for them, because until then it was very comfortable for me” (Professor Moara, verbal information, 2018).

On the one hand, the cultural heterogeneity of students in other courses caused discomfort in the teacher, on the other hand, the new profile of medical students, due to the selection process, represented a marvel for Maora. Furthermore, it became the source of her motivation for her work. Even though it was not the objective of our research, we can generally observe, from the interviews carried out, that the professors who taught in the medical course expressed with some satisfaction the fact that they constituted the teaching staff of that course. Interestingly, the monthly fee for this course can cost up to twelve thousand reais. Students are highly demanding as customers, generally coming from families with high purchasing power and studying in schools with a standard of academic excellence. Therefore, teachers are charged intensely. However, regarding the programmatic reproduction of content according to the hybrid teaching format, the teacher expresses the following complaint:

“The methodology is still under construction. But we received everything very quickly from the institution. So, at first, it was ‘it applies’. Receive and apply. Then, we started to adapt, the reality wasn't like that, so we started to make small adaptations. However, when we enter modules that are more medical, more clinical, we are faced with great difficulty in working with people who are experts in their field, but who, perhaps, are not specifically teachers” (Professor Moara, verbal information 2018).

The impasse refers to the fact that the faculty arbitrarily decides which method should be applied - “it applies”, emphasizes Maora. The teacher then reproduces the statements but with little flexibility to make structural adjustments. This means that there is little space for the teacher to express. Another equally relevant aspect concerns specialists hired as tutors, who do not necessarily have experience as teachers and who only have to complete the program. In this case, the teaching role reduced to instrumentalization is still problematic. According to Voltolini (2019, p. 30),

[...] dispossessed of his/her mastery, the teacher is reduced to being a boss, 'little boss', even though his power does not come from his competence and his value, but, rather, from the legality established by the institution. On the other hand, deprived of the dimension of mystery, in favor of a version of problem-solving, knowledge becomes anodyne, tasteless, and disconnected from the big questions of life.

Lacan (1972-73/1985, p. 132) found that everything will be summarized, according to Marx's vision, in an exchange value. In the capitalist's version of the discourse, the being is rejected and despised, there is a “contempt” for the subject. Although it is the “one-price-one”. Thus, he concludes: “We are in the times of Supermarkets, so we have to know what we are capable of producing even in terms of being”.

Although teaching in the medical course is a source of pleasure, the teaching model adopted deprives the teacher of being able to transmit his/her experience, he/she cannot express or do so is quite a limitation, as highlighted by Moara about his identification with teaching: “I often hear some colleagues say today: 'I'm not a teacher. I’m being a teacher’”. (Professor Moara, verbal information, 2018).

This reflection is followed, as a synthesis, by some statements, from which the teacher, faced with the avalanche of technology and forms of submission to the modus operandi, speaks of her/his annulment: “Ah, I am an indigenous, I am not a cacique, right? So, we are shoved down our throats. Oh! The cacique orders and the indigenous has to comply. And it is an imposition”, concludes Moara. We can highlight, in the face of the indigenous versus the cacique opposition, that there is a tone of obedience, insinuated by the teacher and determined by a programmed knowledge that structures the discursivity of technology. This position,

on the side of the oppressed, obedience comes as a last resort to give meaning to an existence that seems to witness the impossible [...]. Being part of the “machine”, the individual finds his world, under the figure of destiny or any other similar idea (COSTA, 1991, p. 44-45).

After all, she is an indigenous, her name is Moara. As an indigenous, she does not name as a cacique! The cacique, therefore, will always be another one.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Considering the limits of this article, we explore the effects of the incidence of technological discourse on academic-professional training, as an unfolding of capitalist discourse creates statements that become discursive support and master signifiers through which the teacher can not only alienate himself/herself but also satisfy, taking into account the type of institution focused on large educational groups dedicated to mass education, linked to financial institutions, in which we work in our research. In this sense, we do not delve into how hybrid teaching is developed in other public higher education institutions, but we recognize its potential and the possibility of it being developed differently for both postgraduate and undergraduate courses. This teaching model combines face-to-face and virtual elements, providing a more dynamic, enriching, and adaptive experience for students, who will be able to develop essential skills, such as teamwork, critical thinking, and complex problem solving, being more adapted and aligned with the demands of contemporary life.

It is important to highlight that the implementation of differentiated hybrid teaching requires, above all, adequate planning, teacher training, and technological infrastructure. It is necessary to ensure that students have access to the necessary resources and can also receive adequate support to make the most of this teaching modality.

However, given the conditions posed by strictly market-based higher education institutions, our analysis is that faced with their displaced function, the complacent master, as an instrument of the entire process, can also feel relieved in being able to respond to the demands of a position similar to that of an advisor. Although he suffers in this system, in the exercise of this consultancy, he also knows how to recognize the inconsistency of the Other, despite showing to be consistent, from the point of view of the avalanche of methods, control, and the search for homogenization. Thus, if there is relief from the responsibility of failure, which can be shared between students and teachers, everyone cannot be free from the weight and implications of their relationships with enjoyment.

This enjoyment will, in some way, be (re)reimbursed by the institutions, as they offer teachers multiple - albeit precarious - possibilities for teaching at the mercantilist university. Finally, the master participates in the production line by occupying multiple positions. What catches our attention, as we discussed previously, is the promise of professionalization disseminated by more democratic access to university, which encourages young people to seek “professional stability”. The teacher initially acquires a technical behavior and is deprived of his critical thinking.

Like Moara, we believe that many teachers, when forced to join private higher education institutions, even for reasons of professional and personal survival, tend to make use of the technological and hybrid resources imposed by such institutions. This allows them to deny or camouflage their faults, deficiencies, tyrannies, malformations, conceptual, political, and social weaknesses, relying on master signifiers that such resources offer them: virtual platforms, synchronous and asynchronous activities, handout contents, facilitating modules, active methodologies, mediated assessments, tutorials, etc. By relying on these signifiers, they begin to demand from others - their students - knowledge not only of mastering the contents but, above all, of the uses of the technological machinery that allows them to access such contents. Students must then convert such knowledge and adherence to the machinery into products (often in the form of rankings) that must be consumed by everyone: students, teachers, institutions, and systems in general. This is illustrated by the institutions' internal evaluations, the National Student Performance Exam (Enade), the Preliminary Course Concept (CPC), and the Institution's General Index of Evaluated Courses (IGC).

Products constituted as rankings, in a singular kind of phallic brilliance, make everyone enjoy themselves. Everyone instinctively enjoys this unequivocal satisfaction: Moara, certainly, when she ascends to the medical faculty and has better results, but no different from so many others, each in their way. They just do not know that, by doing so, by adhering to the technological, ranked, and, therefore, joyful imperative, they fix themselves in the condition of objects, reify themselves, and become equal to them. Once alienated, as we suspect, they become objects of consumption, objects manageable as well as disposable. “Their act of educating declines. There is no sufficient social or pedagogical bond, as the teacher will tend to objectify himself when paired with the objects he consumes” (PEREIRA, 2016, p. 195).

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• 1
  The translation of this article into English was funded by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq/Brasil.
• 2
  The Editor-in-Chief participating in the open peer review process: Suzana dos Santos Gomes
• 3
  In Brazil, there are different types of private educational institutions. Among them, long-standing philanthropic institutions stand out, generally linked to religious entities, as well as limited companies and privately held and publicly traded corporations. In this discussion, we are focusing on institutions that act as publicly traded companies, and in this sense, trade their ownership titles on the stock exchange. (Front, 2020).
• 4
  In a recent report, around 90 teachers were fired from an institution. To take the place of teachers, robots began to be used. The full text can be consulted at: https://apublica.org/2020/05/apos-uso-de-robos-laureate-agora-demite-professores-de-ead/
• 5
  The Ministry of Education published Ordinance No. 2,117, dated December 6, 2019, which provides for the provision of Distance Learning - Distance Learning courses in face-to-face undergraduate courses. HEIs will be able to introduce the offer of distance learning hours in the pedagogical and curricular organization of their in-person undergraduate courses, up to a limit of 40% of the total course load.
• 6
  Ferenczi criticized the fact that hypnosis applied in analysis exerted extreme influence on the analyst about his patient. When establishing a parallel with the pedagogical aspects regarding the education of children, the author alludes that adults, when seeking to implement their authority over the child, end up exercising it violently (PECHBERTY, 2019).
• 7
  Referring to the “castration complex” which, for Freud, is the set of subjective and unconscious consequences that determine the subject’s submission to social norms. Its normalizing function represents the imposition of limits through which each person must regulate their enjoyment or instinctual satisfactions. (CHEMAMA, 1995).
• 8
  “Master signifiers (S₁), knowledge signifiers (S₂), barred subject ($) and small object a (Autre, in French): as a cause of desire or more enjoyment” (PEREIRA, 2008, p. 128).
• 10
  Fictitious name of indigenous origin that means “help to be born, the one who assists in childbirth”. We use in analogy to the place occupied by the teacher in technological discourse, the place of the other, who works to make the truth of the discourse emerge.

• 9
  This research followed the guidelines and regulatory standards for research involving human beings, according to the guidelines of Resolution 466/12 of the National Health Council, approved by the Research Ethics Committee (COEP)/UFMG, under number CAEE - 66241417.0. 0000.5149. During the interviews, participants signed the Informed Consent Form. We thank CAPES for funding the research.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  18 Dec 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  01 Mar 2022
• Accepted
  01 Nov 2023

• This document has a preprint version
  10.1590/SciELOPreprints.3624