Theoretical Framing of a Digital Education Experiment

An educational experiment as a method was originally theorised as the study of a theoretical problem in practice in a context of a collaboration between researchers and teachers. But when teachers and researchers are not able to be physically together because of government guidelines restricting access, suspending research in schools and centres, or by reducing movement of a population through ‘lock down’, then how can an educational experiment be undertaken? The richness of the concrete research methods that follow are theorised through bringing together a system of concepts that enable a digital educational experiment to proceed under conditions of crisis, contradiction, and drama. Named as a digital educational experiment, the theorised model draws on Vygotsky’s original core conception of development, Hedegaard’s writings on an educational experiment, and the new methods presented in Sect. 2.1. It builds on the concepts of motives and demands in relation to digital environments and interactions, where time, space, and physicality are virtually defined and enabled.