From Paradox to Paradigm
This year the Finnish University Seminar will be organised as a two-hour webinar. The focus is on well-being at work: Do we still have energy to develop our work, despite the COVID19 hassle?
For me, energy to develop my teaching means a fizzy, bubbly, empowering feeling. In other words: Do I still have that bubbly feeling about my work?
Since coronavirus-March I've been trying to make something else bubble, too. I've been trying to make a sourdough starter bubble as a gluten free version. Oh my, what a learning process that has been, and still continues to be so.
I opted for a gluten free diet a few years ago, for health reasons. I have found the best gluten-free advice and the best gluten-free recipes online, in the English language sphere of the internet.
Sourdough starters caught my attention last year. At first, I went for any sourdough starter blog and recipes. I thought I could easily just rehash them myself and replace the wheat flour with any gluten-free flour, thank you very much. Finally, through trial and error, I realised the only way forward was to browse only the gluten-free sourdough starter blogs, although they are fewer in numbers than the gluten-filled sourdough blogs, for now.
Namely, the same rules do not apply for gluten-filled and gluten-free baking. You cannot just modify a gluten-filled recipe into a gluten-free one on your own (unless you are an expert, I gather). Give it a try if you don't believe me! It is a guaranteed disaster. I had to learn it the hard way, too.
I used to be a very skilled baker, and it used to be quite easy to modify the recipes on the go. Not so with gluten-free baking.
As an analogy, the above applies also to the difference between on-ground (or on-site) and online teaching. If I just take the materials of my on-ground courses and upload them to an online learning management system, asking the online students to do what I ask the on-ground students to do, what is the result? A guaranteed disaster.
Logically speaking, that is how it should be, too. Fully online interaction, fully online learning, and fully online teaching are a whole other world, a completely different paradigm, governed by different "laws of physics" than the ones that apply to on-ground, in-person, face-to-face interaction, learning, and teaching.
I had the honour of receiving the Excellent Teaching Practitioner Award of the University of Eastern Finland in 2018. To me, being an excellent teaching practitioner means a continual reconstructing and reformulating of one's professional identity as a teacher.
My own professional identity has been reformed through Critical Digital Pedagogy. My professional identity as a teacher has acquired even more holistic, humanist underpinnings than before.
A few years ago I would not have believed I would ever admit to this. I used to think that the only element in my background was Drama Education and experience-based learning through which the holistic and humanist streams could flow. I considered it a paradox to be able to combine the holistic concept of human being and digital pedagogy. I believed that the online and fully online pursuit would lead me forever further away from humaneness.
Luckily though, paradoxes are good: "Paradoxes focus our attention, and we think harder," as the Nobel Laureate in Physics, Frank Wilczek, put it.
I became familiar with the principles of critical digital pedagogy and got to know some wonderful people in the field -- online.
And guess what! My gluten-free sourdough starter started to bubble and double in size! Moreover, I learned how to work with it better by experimenting with the ideal consistencies and proofing times. Now I can bake the fluffiest and most delicious gluten-free bread, buns, scones, pancakes, waffles, and cornbread with it.
Image by Susanna Kohonen
Source:
Wilczek, F. (2005). Nobel Lecture: Asymptotic freedom: From paradox to paradigm. Rev. Mod. Phys. 77, 857 –https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/RevModPhys.77.857
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