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 Di-dactics (Chevallard & Joshua, 1982) and the sociological per-spective, proposed by D’Amore (2005), considering the classroom as a society. Digital technologies enable new com-plex 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 constitu-tive 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 pro-cesses when physical and virtual environments contam-inate each other.