Teaching Geography in the digital territory – virtual learning environment: contributions of social representations theory to teacher practices
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22456/1982-0003.150630Keywords:
Distance Education, Social Representations of Geography teachers, Teaching practice in the VLEAbstract
This article aims to analyze the Social Representations (SR) of Geography teachers regarding teaching in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), within the context of Distance Education (DE), seeking to understand how these meanings influence pedagogical practices in the digital territory. The research starts with the following research question: what representations do teachers construct about Geography teaching in DE, and how do these representations guide their didactic actions? The justification for this study lies in the growing expansion of DE and the need to understand the symbolic dimensions that structure teaching practices in VLE. The methodological approach was qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive in nature, grounded in the Theory of Social Representations (Moscovici, 2012), and operationalized through Content Analysis (Bardin, 2011). The empirical field was delimited to the Geography Degree Program at the State University of Bahia (UNEB, in Portuguese), focusing on 13 professors working in DE. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews, sociodemographic questionnaires, Likert-type scales, and field diaries. The results were organized into five thematic axes, revealing ambivalent representations of the VLE, highlighting both its innovative potential and challenges related to pedagogical mediation, infrastructure, and teacher isolation. The analysis demonstrated that the meanings attributed to Geography teaching in DE are influenced by identity, institutional, and territorial factors, pointing to the need for training policies that integrate theory, practice, and active listening to teachers.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Julia Santana de Britto Cunha, Natanael Reis Bomfim

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Accepted 2026-07-07
Published 2026-08-03

