Introduction

Are YouTubers changing the way education takes place? This question is presented to us, who research and work in the area of teacher training, as a provocation. Especially because the changes in the way of educating, in this case, involve broader issues, such as those related to the world of work; and those that concern the relationship between public x private in our society; and, to cite a few examples, the emerging subjectivities resulting from this process – when we start to call teachers as youtubers, and students as audiences.

Inspired by the type of reflection that ^{Rosa Maria Bueno Fischer (2013)} has been doing in recent decades – when studying the relationship between education and television –, we are interested here in problematizing the YouTube video platform, simultaneously, as a language and as a social fact. Especially because, in the words of the researcher “[…] there is […] a basic intersection there, between a form of cultural expression, typical of our time, and ways of learning and teaching, certainly altered precisely by the existence of this and other means of communication and information” (^{Fischer, 2013}, p. 20).

More recently, the topic has received the attention of researchers from different perspectives of interest. A search within Scopus, an international database of abstracts and citations for the years 2020 to 2022, based on the term [edutubers], referred us to at least five papers. We highlight here the production of ^{Daniel Pattier (2021)}, who analyzed 41 educational YouTube channels dedicated to science teaching, the results of which were published in his article under the title Science on Youtube: Successful Edutubers. The investigation indicates that the presence of youtubers in other social networks is a success factor of the analyzed channels, as 85.4% of them are also present on Twitter, 68.3% on Instagram and 78% on Facebook. Another research that can be highlighted is the study by ^{Quintana et al. (2022)}, Nano-Influencers Edutubers: Perspective of Centennial Generation Families in Spain. In the investigation, 1,228 questionnaires were applied and, of these, 20 were analyzed as a sample of the empirical corpus. In the results, there is mention of the success of youtuber teachers from private schools compared to colleagues who work in public schools.

In this scenario, we present our contribution in this article. We invite you to reflect upon the partial results of our research, which aims to map statements about education youtubers in the online version of the Nova Escola magazine, which was incorporated by the Lemann Foundation in mid-2015, after a financial crisis at Editora April. The journal is aimed at teachers and managers of Brazilian education and is part of the daily lives of many fellow educators, as it provides lesson plans for the different curricular components, information, news, educational materials, courses, network training; that is, as the magazine announces itself to the reader: in it you will find everything you need (^{Nova Escola, 2022}).

We took as a research problem the following question: "How are teachers and teaching processes represented in the publications of Nova Escola magazine that thematize the use of the Youtube platform?". The theoretical and methodological field of research is the so-called Cultural Studies of Education. We proceed to an enunciative analysis of Foucauldian inspiration.

We searched the online version of the magazine, with the following entries: [edutuber], [youtube and education], [youtuber]. 17 articles were selected that were more directly linked to our research problem question. We highlight two focuses arising from the analysis carried out in this empirical material, which we bring to the debate:

a) the enunciative recurrences found associate education with the action of entertaining, a word taken here with the meaning attributed to it in the Latin language – to keep together, to hold¹;

b) there were also recurrent statements that point to the character of creativity and innovation that the use of YouTube represents, indicating the emergence of what is named as a new way of educating.

In both focuses presented, we were led to question ourselves about the effects of this discursive event – youtubers are changing the way teaching takes place – and about teaching identities and practices within the scope of school education.

The text that follows presents, in section 1, a brief theoretical and methodological outline of the research. Then, in section 2, some data produced as a result of the analysis of empirical materials are discussed. Finally, in section 3, we consider the most recurrent utterances mapped, seeking a relationship with the guiding question of this investigation. Our final considerations must be understood as still provisional notes, as we wish to advance in studies on the topic of teacher work and its relationship with edutubers, as the youtubers of education have been named.

Theoretical and Methodological Choices

With regard to the theoretical concepts that support this study, we point out, initially, that we understand the historical moment we are experiencing, considering the analysis carried out by ^{Noguera-Ramírez (2009)}. He names modern society the educating society. For him, modern education can be divided into three historical periods: 1) the period of the teaching society, from the institution of the Comenian idea that it is necessary to teach everything to everyone, establishing education as universal and encyclopedic; 2) the period of the educating state, in which modern liberal states increasingly assume the educational function, with a mutation operated in the concept of education, from a predominantly moral training to a training predominantly focused on knowledge, since reason is the guideline of the modern man; 3) the contemporary period, named as the learning society (^{Popkewitz; Olsson; Petersson, 2009}), in which the focus is on the learner, who must be autonomous enough to “learn to learn” in an increasingly technological and technological society. in rapid mutation.

We may also link the most recent part of this third period of education in modernity, identified by ^{Noguera-Ramírez (2009)}, to the notions of society of the spectacle, by ^{Guy Debord (1967)}, information society, by ^{Daniel Bell (1973)}, knowledge society, by ^{Peter Drucker (1993)}, and network society, by ^{Manuel Castells (2005)}. All of them are fundamental social thinkers to set up the theoretical scenario that serves as a framework of intelligibility to the issues discussed here.

It is in this context of cognitive emphasis, proliferation of media and technologies, and multiple attempts at conceptual apprehension about the ongoing social transformations that the online video platform YouTube first appeared, in June 2005. At the time, the internet had already completed 10 years of commercial opening, and personal computers were increasingly present in companies and homes, accompanied by mobile devices such as PDAs since the 1990s and by rudimentary smartphones from the beginning of the millennium.

The platform was founded by former PayPal e-commerce website employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, under the premise of removing technical barriers to unlimited online video sharing. The integrated interface allowed users to upload, publish and view videos without the need for technical skills and using browser standards and the modest bandwidth of the time. The videos published there could be linked to other users and websites through hyperlinks, the only restriction being the duration of the videos that could be uploaded: 5 minutes, at the time.

With so many possibilities for content production and sharing through social network interactions, the platform has achieved popularity, with a repertoire of 85 million videos uploaded in 2008 (^{Burgess; Green, 2009}). Technological exponent of the culture of participation, the first videos published had mostly music videos and domestic animals as content, but the uses of the platform have been diversified over the years.

Currently, several cultures and subcultures ‘inhabit’ YouTube, which houses channels on the most diverse subjects, from sports, news, politics, economics, entertainment, cuisine, arts, games and culture in general, including amenities such as "gotchas", lists of the best and worst of the most diverse topics, and varied parodies. On the platform, the emergence of new discursive genres in video stands out, such as product and service reviews, ranging from home appliances to events. Also, there are tutorials of all kinds, which teach about cooking recipes, beautification techniques, equipment maintenance, furniture construction and use of software and applications, among others.

The platform diversifies its services and increasingly counts on producers of specialized content that support it, the so-called youtubers. Some of them achieve international fame and followers. They are the main revenue providers to the platform, through partnerships with advertising brands.

Once modernity assumes itself, according to ^{Noguera-Ramírez (2009)}, as an educating society, it could not fail to emerge ‒ in this cauldron of hybrid technoscientific liberalism of spectacle, information, knowledge and purifying network criticism (^{Latour, 1994}) ‒, edutubers, youtubers specialized in educating.

Regarding the research method adopted in this study, we clarify our affiliation to the Cultural Studies in Education. The procedures involved in the stages of production and analysis of empirical data mobilized the use of Foucauldian concepts that served us as operational tools, such as: discourse, utterance, enunciation. We take the notion of discourse, understanding it according to what ^{Fischer (2013, p. 78)} teaches:

[…] as the set of statements from a certain field of knowledge, which always exist as a practice, […] they are made up of a series of statements, which properly exist as a discursive practice (there are articulated knowledges produced in these discourses) and as historical, institutional and social event (inseparable from a series of rules, norms, ways of exercising power, forms of communication, political struggles).

It is important to highlight, from such a conception, the most important idea presented by Foucault for this type of work that we are now carrying out: “[…] discourse is itself a practice: discourse constitutes our practices and is constructed within these very practices” (^{Fischer, 2013}, p. 78).

With regard to utterance/statement and enunciation, equally aligned with Fischer, we understand that “[…] utterance would be what is said or shown in a given scene (text). To describe the utterances of a discourse, we certainly need to resort to enunciations, to analyze what is said, written or shown in different materials”. In this sense, the utterance would be “[…] what causes these things to be said” (^{Fischer, 2013} p. 78-79).

Thus, what we challenged ourselves to do here, as a modest contribution to the field of education in its interface with technologies, was to map the dispersed units of discourses – the enunciations –, and to trace, on the surface of these sayings, about the transformations in teaching resulting from the emergence of the YouTube video platform, statements that allow us to reflect on the effects of this process on teaching identities and practices.

Operationally, we mapped the statements about youtubers put into circulation in the online version of the Nova Escola magazine, whose synthetic compilation of results is in Table 1. As we read each of the subjects, we asked ourselves: “How is the teacher narrated? What characteristics are attributed to him/her? What teaching methods are described?”. These questions helped us focus on the identities and methods used by education youtubers.

We need to clarify that when typing each of the terms above, the site presented us with 10 results per page. We read each of the posts on the many pages indicated as a search result for each of the terms. But, although a tag was put, by the magazine, in the article, relating it to the keyword we were researching, the reading we carried out showed us that, in fact, most publications did not correspond to the theme, and sometimes the results were repeated even if we used any of the three distinct inputs for search. Therefore, many articles were not included in the empirical corpus of the research. From this initial screening, we obtained only 17 publications that really brought elements related to our question in this investigation, namely “How are teachers and teaching processes represented in the publications of Nova Escola magazine that thematize the use of the YouTube platform?”, as shown in Table 2.

In line with ^{Marluce Alves Paraíso (2012, p. 37-38)}, in the next stage of research we proceeded to describe the utterances, once “[…] the description is extremely important in our ways of researching, because it is through it that we establish relationships texts, discourses, statements in their multiple ramifications”.

Finally, in a third phase of work, from which this paper derives, we analyze the results obtained to reflect on the way in which, once it assumes a pedagogical status, the media “teaches” truths about teachers and teaching within the knowledge-power relationship made possible by it. After all, “[…] if the description we make of texts and discourses is always analytical, the analysis we make of power relations is always descriptive” (^{Paraíso, 2012}, p. 38).

The intention is to put in abeyance the truths that circulate, through such utterances with more recurrence, and to try to reflect on the possible effects of subjectivation implied in our relationship with the magazine. In line with ^{Sibilia (2012)}, we allow ourselves, here, to put our “present into question”. After all, we, as teachers, find ourselves recording classes, mining technological resources that make our video more attractive, incorporating teaching methods more suited to the new classroom format during the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil. In fact, we assume that

[…] being contemporary is not a risk-free task: if we are attentive to the signs of the world, perhaps we are lucky that they disturb us to the point of provoking thought; but this will only occur if we manage to escape the dangers that appear when we step on such swampy terrain without avoiding the complexity of phenomena or despising their contradictions

(^{Sibilia, 2012}, p. 10).

Mapped Enunciative Recurrences

In mid-2011, Nova Escola magazine published an article entitled 8 reasons to use YouTube in the classroom (^{Pechi, 2011a}, online). The lead urged the reader to discover how to use the tool to “[…] produce videos and plan more dynamic and interesting classes” for students. And the main argument presented, which reinforced the urgency of the content, is reflected in the statement that opens the article: “Capturing the attention of students, who are increasingly connected, has not been an easy task for educators. The problem gets bigger and bigger as students get older” (^{Pechi, 2011a}, online).

The eight tips for using the platform enunciate the teacher's role as a mediator, as he/she gathers the questions raised in class and indicates good videos to answer them; as a curator working on creating trusted video playlists on the platform; also, as an incentive, so that students also produce content to be shared on the platform.

With regard to the teaching model stated in the article, our attention was drawn to the emphasis on the students' interest and how the use of YouTube would allow them to explore subjects of their interest in greater depth, from the indications of topics and content lists in teacher channel playlists.

In the same year, an article entitled Teachers who are popular on YouTube (^{Pechi, 2011b}, online), aimed to present “The experiences of education professionals who became famous on the internet by producing content that helps students from around the world” . So the reader is invited to know at least two examples of teachers who, at the time, in the US, were successful with recorded classes on YouTube. The YouTube Teachers tool is mentioned – the educational area of the platform, and we read about it that

The idea of the tool – which offers a step-by-step guide on how to use Youtube to produce videos and plan classes – is to make the tool become a consistent network, made up of teachers from all disciplines. The objective is to make educators exchange and share video content to be presented in class or made available as support material for students

(^{Pechi, 2011b}, online, emphasis added).

The use of surveys and the interviewing of researchers are in common use to reinforce the argument that the adoption of technologies in the classroom is imperative for today's teachers.

In 2014, we found an article titled How do your students use technology? In it, we notice the naturalization of the use of contemporary technologies by the public who attend schools, when we read “[…] music, videos and games have always been part of the daily lives of children and young people” (^{Como…, 2014}, online, emphasis added). After presenting mathematical and graphic results that seek to demonstrate the statement above, all data resulting from a survey with 700 respondents, we read at the end of the article:

The survey ends with a sentence that can be seen as either a threat or an opportunity: 'Digital natives don't allow themselves to be bored'. It can be a threat if the teacher is afraid of reinventing himself and of rethinking his/her classes according to the new behaviors of children and young people, but an opportunity for those who are willing to better understand these new technologies and use them in favor of teaching

(^{Como…, 2014}, online).

Here, we see the issue of teaching related to entertainment being enunciated as a solution for teachers facing a generation that lives, as some thinkers have suggested, in the so-called “age of boredom” (^{Corea, 2010}).

The narratives of teachers who use apps and social networks to teach also stood out. The headline announces the enthusiasm for the novelty, as we can read below

Hello, educator! One of the things that most excites those who follow innovative practices in Education is seeing teachers creatively using everyday tools with their classes. This shows that, in a relatively simple way, it is possible to innovate with what we have at hand – and that includes social networks, often considered great competitors for attention in the room. To inspire you to try something similar – adapting to the needs and characteristics of your students – I present five successful stories from teachers who used Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Youtube in class

(^{Sassaki, 2015}, online, emphasis added).

We will highlight here the success story regarding the use of YouTube, as narrated in Nova Escola magazine. The magazine interviewed a teacher who, at the time, was part of the technical team of the São Paulo State Department of Education. About the project, we read

The Mediação e Linguagem project, created in 2014 and continued in 2015, aims to propose to students and teachers the transposition of literary works into the language of video, cinema and podcast, through distance technical guidance (in videoconferencing format), which contribute to digital literacy. From the training, they chose a literary work, which had been worked on in the classroom, and adapted it into a script for an animated short or podcast (radionovela). The works were posted on Youtube, published on blogs and exhibited at SEESP Virtual Exhibitions. The project was very significant, because students and teachers were able to eliminate classroom barriers, which often make teaching and learning difficult. From the moment of creating the script to the completion of the audiovisual, they became collaborators, working with the objective of appropriating the literary work in a pleasant and interactive way. It was a great experience for everyone!

(^{Sassaki, 2015}, online, emphasis added).

Great works were staged in short videos by the students, such as Les Misérables and Morte e Vida Severina, for example.

In another edition, still in 2016, the technological imperative is stated in an article entitled Students as content producers. In it, the emphasis is on the mediation that teachers must do when promoting, in their classes, experiences of producing content in which students are protagonists. There we read:

This whole process is important because for a long time the school was only a consumer of information from TV and radio. But it is no longer possible to ignore Digital Information and Communication Technologies. And this requires the construction of reflective and critical didactics so that students can, too, ‘leave their message to the world’

(^{Os Alunos…, 2016}, online).

In the article, the relationship of students with YouTube is presented as follows

Try asking your students in the classroom which are their favorite YouTubers and if they follow their channels. If you don't know what a YouTuber is, it's worth explaining: they are people, of the most diverse ages, who produce different content in video and communicate over the internet, more specifically through Youtube. With the advancement of technology, students are increasingly connected to information, but also with greater mastery over content production tools

(^{Os Alunos..., 2016}, online, emphasis added).

In August 2016, in the “Classroom” section, the title of the article explained What Youtube can do for your classroom. The first example given indicates the youtuber Átila Iamarino, who during the pandemic reached even more projection on social networks. At the time, the magazine narrated his work in this way: “This is how, with creativity and humor, researchers like Iamarino are disseminating science on the internet and attracting a large audience of children and adolescents” (Cassimiro; Perozim; Cardoso, 2016, online, emphasis added). At the end of the article, we are interested in a reminder given to readers, mostly teachers:

Next, we selected five Brazilian YouTuber channels that translate the scientific universe into a young and attractive language for students. It is worth remembering that vlogs do not replace classes. They can be an interesting trigger to motivate the class and introduce the discussion of concepts. The rest of the hard work, of course, remains concentrated in your hands

(^{Cassimiro; Perozim; Cardoso, 2016}, online, emphasis added).

Again, the statements focus on innovation and creativity, under the argument of motivation, as a means of arousing students' interest.

In the article entitled How to use video lessons to innovate in the classroom, we found several statements that point to the technological imperative and the use of videos to teach. as we may read below

Technologies are part of our daily lives. As educators, we have to take advantage of the possibilities they bring to make classes attractive, promoting concentration, interest and motivation. It is a fundamental tool to go deeper into teaching problems and to find new ways of conceiving learning […] Attractive and interactive classes are important for both sides. The teacher manages to bring awareness to learning, focus and attention of most students, feels confidence, motivation and obtains results with the learning process. The student also gains, with greater involvement, interaction, understanding and use. […] Technology is capable of transforming the curriculum, making it more engaging and giving it new meaning to the classroom

(Garofalo, 2017, online, emphasis added).

The enunciation relates technology, attractiveness and transformation in the field of teaching, similarly to other passages already presented. It reinforces the argument that YouTube makes possible the emergence of new modes of teaching.

Something that also caught our attention were the statements that referred to the communication giant Google ‒ of which YouTube is a part ‒, as an award organizer for the best initiatives by educators and content producing students (^{Seixas, 2021}); also the offer of courses, through the event “Grow with Google”, a free initiative of the technology company for “digital training for educators” (^{Semis, 2018}).

Although subtle, it is a significant shift in the field of teaching, the transition from the idea of education to another, more linked to training. Especially because, in our time, it seems that “[…] technical knowledge – the more specialized and ready for an immediate performance at work, the better – came to be valued above civic and ethical training […]” (Savater, 1997, p. 45-45 apud^{Sibilia, 2012}, p. 134).

In this sense, it is added to the statement that it is necessary to entertain in order to educate, as we are trying to demonstrate here, another one that relates innovation to technical solutions to face old problems of schooled education. Ie:

Just as industrial and domestic automation managed to eliminate the need to perform heavy or repetitive physical activities, it is considered desirable to devise equivalent technical solutions that would free us from the sufferings implicit in traditional schooling methods

(^{Sibilia, 2012}, p. 137).

If not, let's see the excerpts below.

In 2018, the magazine had published a special edition on the disclosure of the winners of the Educador Nota 10 Award, named as the most important in the area of education in the country. In the Research section, which presents the results of research carried out by different institutions, always related to the more general theme of the monthly edition, we have an article produced by ^{Oliveira (2018)}, entitled How does generation Z learn? So we read

Born after 1995, Gen Z is the most interested in learning with the help of YouTube: watching videos is the favorite method of 59% of young Americans under 21. It only loses to the teacher, but the platform pleases more than traditional classes, educational apps and textbooks. The trend was captured by The Next Generation of Learners survey, commissioned by digital education company Pearson. For them, whose older exponents now reach Higher Education, access to information (not always of good quality) is quick and simple, but there is less focus to concentrate for a prolonged period on the same activity – a challenge for the teacher, accustomed to traditional lectures

(^{Oliveira, 2018}, online, emphasis added).

Then, under the title Profession: edutuber, we see the indication of three channels of youtubers, with thousands of followers, taken as an example of those who “uncomplicate” (name of one channel) and make school content accessible.

We also wish to highlight the article that served as a monument³ to us at this stage of the research, from which this article stems, corresponding to the work with empirical materials, entitled The Youtubers are changing the way of teaching – and you can be one of them. It caught our attention how the statements in the other editions of the magazine, as we have shown so far and will demonstrate in the rest of the text, make the statement that youtubers are changing the way of teaching visible and sayable. Let us see the argument presented at the opening of the article:

It is very common to hear from students the question ‘Teacher, is there a video that we can watch to better understand this subject?’. We are facing a new generation of students increasingly attracted to the Internet and the channels of Youtubers. While we teachers reach an average of 30 students in a class, they reach millions. As educators, we have to take advantage of the possibilities they bring to make our classes attractive. It is an essential tool for digging deep into teaching problems and finding new ways to idealize learning

(^{Garofalo, 2018}, online, emphasis added).

So, after presenting six tips, aimed at teachers who want to start a video channel and diversify their classes, and indicate the channels of great youtubers, the magazine ends the article provoking our thoughts:

Visual resources transform the curriculum, making it more engaging and giving new meanings to the construction of knowledge. Have you ever thought that most of the information we absorb today comes to us through the sense of sight? This way we connect with the outside world and assimilate new knowledge. Therefore, working with visual stimuli is important to arouse interest and curiosity, in addition to being a facilitator for understanding the object studied

(^{Garofalo, 2018}, online, emphasis added).

We visited the channels indicated in the magazine. Here, we present just two examples. The Manual do Mundo channel has 14.5 million subscribers. The sum of views of the videos is 2,672,148,850. The statistics are impressive. In the channel description we read:

Hi! We are Manual do Mundo and we came to show that there is always a more interesting and fun way to learn about things around us. We offer creative products and content that promote unique entertainment and learning experiences, physically and digitally, alone or with others

(^{Manual do Mundo, 2006}).

Another channel referenced in the Nova Escola magazine is Se Liga Nessa História. There are 1.43 million subscribers and 59,874,317 views. And its description is as follows:

This is the Se Liga channel! Here you will find video classes to learn all subjects in an easy and humorous way! We are an online course and you can get to know our study platform. There, we have a complete preparation course for the Enem and Entrance Exams with amazing classes, exercises with commented resolution, essay corrections, simulations, doubt duty and all the support you need to study!

(^{Se Liga - Enem e Vestibulares, 2014}, online, emphasis added).

The statements that relate teaching to entertainment are repeated in the set of empirical material analyzed. In the case of the article entitled Students create Domingão do Platão to discuss philosophy on a Youtube channel (^{Menezes, 2018}), this is very evident. After highlighting the difficulties encountered by Philosophy teachers to make the discipline “dynamic and up-to-date” for high school students, we are introduced to a project entitled TV PHILOSOPHY. About it we read:

The project took the philosophy to where the students were, since the vast majority of them have access to the internet, social networks, video channels, among others, but few use these tools for study and research. From the research of themes, through the elaboration of assignments until the final presentation, there are countless contributions that the students obtain in their human and intellectual formation. The work is easy to apply and can be taken to other educational realities. As a central activity, students should create a creative video on philosophy, including themes, concepts and discussions held in the classroom. This video should be in the format of a mini TV show

(^{Menezes, 2018}, online, emphasis added).

And the project's collection has many videos on YouTube. These are adaptations of programs that already exist on the schedule of major open television stations in the country, or classics of literature, and even cinema. As stated in the text:

Imagine getting to know a little bit more about Greek philosophy by watching the program 'Domingão do Platão', cheering for one of the 'Hunger Thinkers' contestants, getting into a comic book in the episode of 'The World Without Philosophy', learning more about Freud and venture with 'Alice in the country of madness', reflecting on morals and ethics through the episode of 'Em Família', following the interviews of city politicians and common people talking about various topics in the 'Jornal Filosofia da Política' or update Plato's cave allegory by watching the short film 'The Mind of the Chained'

(Menezes, 2018, online).

In the Get Inspired section, we meet a 24-year-old youtuber, creator of the channel A Matemaníaca. The article is from July 2019. When we visited the channel, at the time of writing this article, we found 92,1 thousand subscribers. The presentation made by the creator, in About section, shows us her profile:

Here the speaker is Julia Jaccoud, the Mathemaniac. I have a degree in Mathematics from the University of São Paulo (IME-USP). Everything I produce for the internet aims to popularize mathematics by showing it in the beautiful and fun way I see it! Regardless of where you follow me, you will see many debates and questions. I want to introduce you to a mathematics that goes far beyond its applicability, to present mathematics as an art form! Shall we walk together at recess?

(^{A Matemaníaca por Julia Jaccoud, 2015}).

In the article of Nova Escola, the statements point to the idea of innovation, linked to the new formats that, supposedly, YouTube allows. Interviewed, the youtuber says:

I didn't want to do video lessons, but I didn't know how to innovate. Even so, I recorded the first video and started posting. The big turning point happened when I traveled and had the idea of talking about Mathematics from the places where I was. I had no blackboard, no paper and I decided to test a different format

(^{Oliveira, 2019}, online, emphasis added).

As of 2020, the pandemic scenario emerges in the materials of Nova Escola. Free access channels on YouTube, free training courses, among other resources, are listed to assist teachers in remote teaching (^{Educação..., 2020}). Tips are also published to manage time well in quarantine (^{Martins, 2020}) and solutions found so far for three different realities (limited internet, study routine with Facebook messages, and suburbs connected with Google Classroom) most frequent in public Brazilian schools, so as not to let the kids lose their study pace (^{Albuquerque, 2020}).

What caught our attention was the article entitled Creative strategies that teachers found to teach at a distance (^{Santos, 2020}). In it, the magazine claims to have interviewed educators and experts to give tips on which tools we can use to overcome the challenges of educating during the pandemic. The creativity argument is mentioned, as we read below:

Since the first case of COVID-19 was registered in Brazil, the school world has turned upside down: with the 100% remote scheme, teachers, students and parents have had to experiment with different tools and class formats to continue their studies. 'What we've seen since then is that a great support network has been formed, in which all educators are working together to reach a level of learning and development in these new tools', says Renata Capovilla, teacher trainer and enabler of the Google For Education. ‘Teachers found themselves very creative at that moment, while facing a surreal work load’

(Santos, 2020, online, emphasis added).

At the center of the debate is the school. This same expert concludes the article, stating “We will hardly have a school as it was before, and even schools that resisted technology will start to adopt these tools more often” (^{Santos, 2020}, online).

The WhatsApp messaging application and the YouTube platform were the most cited tools in the reports. As in the example below:

For her videos, Helenita used her cell phone and a tripod. With the help of her son, she recorded two content: one with the legend of Tangram, who had the help of a friend for a more elaborate edition, and another teaching an esfiha recipe with ingredients that go in the lunch kit delivered by the school. Both were made available on Youtube and WhatsApp. ‘The students liked it a lot’, says the teacher, ‘I received videos of parents and children doing the Tangram activity, another mother sent me a video of a student, who is deaf, making the esfihas, happily. I was very touched by this feedback’

(^{Santos, 2020}, online, emphasis added).

And we read the account of another teacher and her relationship with new technologies due to the pandemic:

Eliane created Dicas Geografia, in which she shares a multitude of materials, such as texts, audio explanations, polls, Youtube videos, podcasts and movie tips, and the feedback from students has been very good. ‘This moment is a big shift in my professional life’, says the teacher

(^{Santos, 2020}, online, emphasis added).

Here, we perceive the strength of the utterances that cross us and populate us as teachers. Creativity and attractiveness were repeatedly mentioned as a solution to what is narrated as more traditional teaching. And due to the different school subjects analyzed, the use of moving images – facilitated by the cameras on smartphones and the YouTube video platform, seems to be a “big shift”, as states the teacher mentioned above.

The YouTube Effect on Education

All these findings led us to reflect on what we have called the YouTube effect in education. At the end, it is necessary to remember that, in this study, we are aligned with the post-structuralist perspective of Cultural Studies. In this sense, we do not take in advance, neither as true nor as false, the statement “[…] youtubers are changing the way of educating”. What interests us here is “[…] the process by which something is considered as true” (^{Silva, 2015}, p. 123), that is, the conditions of possibility that make an utterance like this visible and sayable in our days, in our society.

Here we point out some of the contingencies of our time that may be involved in this double process, in which culture constitutes new ways of teaching and, at the same time, these new ways of teaching end up constituting the culture around us.

Initially, it is necessary to take into account the context mentioned in our theoretical and methodological section, which refers us to the idea of a learning society (^{Noguera-Ramírez, 2009}). In this type of society, for reasons that we are not able to exhaust here, we see the emergence of the appreciation of entrepreneurship. Success comes to be understood as self-fulfillment, depending almost exclusively on the individual. And failure too, via self-responsibility. And, as ^{Sibilia (2012)} explains to us, the transformations in the pedagogical field are also under this effect, after all:

This is what many discourses related to neoliberal entrepreneurship support, also present in the context of the pedagogical reforms in progress, when they highlight the importance of individual distinction and the advantages of the singularization of the individual as a brand, exploring their own creativity in order to always be the first to win over others

(^{Sibilia, 2012}, p. 46, emphasis added).

Interesting how the link between entrepreneurship and creativity is materialized at the discursive level and in practices. It is expressed in success stories published in the magazine aimed at teachers - as is the case of Nova Escola -, as well as through everyday materiality, in which teachers, forced by salary issues, unemployment, pandemics, search for personal fulfillment , in short… launch themselves as digital entrepreneurs, for example, creating “attractive” channels that conquer thousands of followers on YouTube. And it is still necessary to point out that:

[…] all this takes place in a culture that praises the pursuit of celebrity and immediate success, combining in this project personal fulfillment and instant satisfaction, exalting values such as self-esteem, youthful appearance and constant enjoyment. In short: bodily, emotional, professional and affective well-being, derived from an ideal of happiness or personal fulfillment that crosses all spheres and no longer seems to find obstacles or dams capable of inhibiting it

(^{Sibilia, 2012}, p. 49, emphasis added).

Added to this is the emerging need, arising from the type of society that we also seek to demarcate in the initial section of this work, in which the spectacularization (also) of teaching processes prevails, facilitated by the large networks of content and information, as well as the creation of of communication products and services. Along with this, we see individuals of school age with their existences marked by boredom, looking for entertainment, increasingly stated as necessary; after all, feeling bored doesn't seem to be allowed to anyone anymore. Taking into account that “[…] the school was established under the aegis of 'literate culture' as a horizon of achievement” and that, today, we live what some call the “civilization of the image” (^{Sibilia, 2012}, p. 63), we came to learn a little bit about the success of youtubers in education.

One of the main effects of YouTube in education, in our view, is also marked by the historical fact that “[…] when young people stop being a student par excellence and become, above all, a user of the media and a consumer more active than many adults, there is an obviousness that perhaps should not be so: the logic of the market has become generalized” (Sibilia, 2012, p. 66). Especially because, “Many current discourses, including the official ones, seem to coincide on one point: students of the 21st century need to be entertained” (^{Sibilia, 2012}, p. 81). It seems to be this: media subjectivities want, or are led to think they need, to have fun all the time.

Final considerations

Thus, concluding our reflection, and considering, according to ^{Paraíso (2012, p. 29)}, that “[…] the discourse we investigated produces objects, practices, meanings and subjects”, we understand that the manifestation of utterances such as “YouTube changes the way of educating” is contingent, it makes us think about how we are constituting ourselves, as teachers, in the relationships we are establishing with information and communication technologies.

From the existence of the YouTube platform, a digital culture in consolidation and an individualistic logic increasingly focused on a learning society, the internet offers educational actors, students and teachers the metaphor of the screen as a showcase, which is producing effects on the subjects and on the ways in which they relate.

The screen as a showcase accentuates the roles of teachers and students as products, producers and consumers, transforming their modes of subjectivation through the crossing of these identity marks. It subjects teachers to the sign of performance – the Edutubers. It modulates the pedagogical practice of those who are (pre)concerned with the best scenario for the show, in order to gain subscribers and increase metrics of views, access and engagement.