The Delicate Architecture of Poetry Illuminates the Agony and Resilience of University Lecturers During COVID-19 Remote Learning

Conference: The Barcelona Conference on Education (BCE2022)
Title: The Delicate Architecture of Poetry Illuminates the Agony and Resilience of University Lecturers During COVID-19 Remote Learning
Stream: Teaching Experiences, Pedagogy, Practice & Praxis
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Authors:
Marí Peté, Durban University of Technology, South Africa

Abstract:

For two years from April 2022, universities were thrusted into remote learning without warning during Covid-19 lock-down. In this time while providing eLearning support, I observed the agony and resilience of lecturers at a university in South Africa. Thus, I conducted a study to inquire into the agency of lecturers in relation to their encounters with technological teaching tools. Because of poetry’s potential to distill, I employed poetic inquiry to illuminate these ineffable experiences and to understand our co-existence with technology in higher education in the post-human era. In this presentation I argue for poetry as visual medium – for example, topography – poetic inquirer Piirto (2009) is one of many who supports this premise, saying each line break or space is intentional and contributes to meaning. Sharples (1999) makes an argument for writing as a form of design – discussing how a primary generator should leave scope for imagination. Sullivan (2007) proposes there is a delicate architecture in poetry that includes concreteness, voice, emotion, ambiguity, tension, and associative logic. In this presentation I show the design of pertinent poems and their architecture, and how these works illuminate the resilience of human teachers during unprecedented encounters with technological teaching tools. I turned conversations and interview transcripts into poetry, by way of analysis. As seminal post-qualitative scholar Norman Denzin has done, I used the performative interview technique, for its potential to create truth between interviewer and interviewee, treating the interview as a world in its own right.

---

Conference Comments & Feedback

Place a comment using your LinkedIn profile


Share this Presentation