Virtual teaching and the virtuosity of teaching. Teachers' views on the educational relationship in initialteacher training

Abstract

We present aphenomenological and hermeneutical study in which we try to construe meaning upon our teacher training experience, focusing on the nature of our relationship with students and on how this relationship has been disrupted due to the forced transition to remote education in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. To do so, we establish a dialogue between our personal stories and the theoretical thoughts of authors from different theoretical traditions. This will help us to understand how online teaching distorts the initial training of teachers. This analysis focuses on three central themes: the distortion of boundaries, the distortion of relationships, and the distortion of spaces. The analysis throws light on two concluding remarks: 1) The educational relationship is the experience of an aesthetic encounter; that is, the educational relationship has a face-to-face nature); 2) We should find the ways in which remote education, with all its peculiarities, can contribute to (not substitute) the essence of a relationship that demands the physical presence of the body.