Theoretical perspectives for the study of the contamination between physical and virtual teaching/learning environments

Abstract

We propose an analysis of the effects on the teaching/learning practices of mathematics that stem from digital technologies in school classrooms. We describe two episodes - an exchange of messages in the Stream of Google Classroom and an extract from a private Whatsapp chat between two classmates. We analyze such episodes with a theoretical lens based on the Chevallard Triangle of Didactics (Chevallard & Joshua, 1982) and the sociological perspective, proposed by D’Amore (2005), considering the classroom as a society. Digital technologies enable new complex teaching/learning environments whose study require a systemic and relational approach as the one offered by the concept of Triangle. Moreover, we show how such environments in turn can be considered societies with their constitutive practices and extra-functional meta-practices that are linked with the societies that originate in the school classrooms. We show how the interaction between these theoretical perspectives allows us to characterize teaching/learning processes when physical and virtual environments contaminate each other.