The continuous time of hybrid schooling. Minimal ethnography of possibilities and inclusive misalignments in digital ecologies

Abstract

The article investigates the everyday practices and social effects generated by the use of digital school tools in the educational relationships of a small community in South-Eastern Italy. The study focuses on a hybrid context where the spatial and temporal boundaries of schooling extend beyond the physical institution, permeating domestic life. Its aim is to understand how institutional applications, communication platforms and digital tools – including AI – shape dynamics of inclusion and exclusion within education. The theoretical framework combines Goffman’s (1959, 1963) and McLaren’s (1986) dramaturgical perspectives, Slee’s (2011) critical approach to inclusion, Floridi’s (2014) concept of the onlife condition, and Wellman and Rainie’s (2012) paradigm of the networked society, in order to read the school as a performative and relational space where inclusion is enacted – or denied – through everyday rituals and digital practices. The methodological design, inspired by ethnographic microanalysis (Erickson, 1992) and a narrative-thematic approach, integrates non-participant observation, analysis of digital communication channels, and in-depth interviews with parents, a teacher responsible for inclusion, and a school psychologist. The findings show how the digitalization of educational processes generates new asymmetries, widening the gap between families with and without technological skills and resources, and affecting students’ responsibility, autonomy, and participation. The analysis identifies the category of hybrid extended time – the continuous expansion of school activities into family life – as a key to interpreting the new boundaries of inclusion. The study highlights the need for educational policies and formative practices capable of guiding the digital transition without sacrificing the relational and community dimensions of the educational pact.