Cartographic lines of teaching at a distance

Abstract

This article features contours of a cartographic map as an outcome of a case study with teachers working as trainers in distance education (DE). When admitting the legitimacy of the reconfiguration in the work of a DE teacher, it is inevitable to enter a problematic field involving both the technological, communicational, didactic and methodological capabilities, and the ways by which the interrelation between teaching, auto formation, and work is conceived. It is also important to pay attention to the struggles related to the reset of the work functions of DE teachers through a merely representational, prescriptive perspective, in which it is pre-established that the teacher must know, act, and be. We used as theoretical-methodological referential the philosophical approach of multiplicity, as well as the philosophy of differentiation in the views of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The cartographic method – articulated to the rhizome concept – provides principles and clues to the cartographic production. The results of this cartography create a map composed of rhizomatic lines, which include, for instance, technological assemblages, conceptions of learning, teacher training, social and professional mediation of teaching, among others. The attention given to this cartography creates new agendas and instituting, enhancing movements in distance education.