Building Intersubjectivity in Online Learning: Pupils’ and University Students’ Perception of Teachers’ Social Presence in Technology-Mediated Teaching and Learning Processes

Abstract

Jaan Valsiner has been pivotal in my research endeavor. His contributions to the educational field are enormous. He has invited researchers to focus on the individual and the context from an interdisciplinary perspective leading to inspiring ideas that can materialize in novel ways. As an advocate of interdisciplinarity, he has gathered researchers and practitioners together in the Kitchen research group. This weekly innovative global online meeting sees attendees sharing knowledge and experience, thus expanding research borders and adding a global perspective to the presenters' research. Kitchen Seminar is an academic activity born in a university kitchen and evolved into a symbolic online space where novel and experienced researchers can feel at home and free to discuss ideas. When asked to contribute to this issue, I aimed to write a pilot study in the Kitchen fashion, a paper that can trigger debate and discussion and be enriched by different perspectives. In this piece, I will attempt to explore how two subjects, a schoolgirl and a university student from Argentina, perceived their teachers’ social presence during the switch to emergency remote learning and teaching during the 2020s global health crises from cultural psychology of semiotic mediation perspective. When the usual school practice was suspended, and the screen became a ubiquitous school, the relationship between students and teachers turned into a technology-mediated one. After a brief theoretical discussion, the analysis of the subjects’ narratives can hopefully offer a glimpse of the ways intersubjectivity operated in remote teaching and learning during the period under analysis. I hope many researchers will provide insightful comments that will enrich this work following the Kitchen manners.