Beyond prohibition: smart environments and co-evolutionary learning in secondary schools

In recent years, the debate surrounding the use of digital devices in schools has become polarised. There are prohibition policies which aim to restrict the presence of smartphones and tablets in classrooms, but there is also a growing awareness that digital competence is an essential aspect of modern citizenship. Taking as its epistemological framework the perspectives of extended cognition (Clark & Chalmers, 1998) and co-evolutionary learning (Rivoltella, 2017), this article offers a theoretical and experimental reflection on this tension. Through a qualitative-quantitative experimental study involving two groups of lower secondary school students, we investigated the impact of incorporating a smart learning environment based on digital devices, environmental sensors, and embodied activities on attentional functions, critical thinking, and school motivation. The results showed significant improvements in the experimental group compared to the control group. This suggests that pedagogically oriented technology use can support embodied and distrib-uted cognitive processes. This is in contrast to normative narratives that interpret digital technology solely as a source of distraction. The article discusses the implications of these findings for the development of a pedagogy of intelligent environments that can rethink the educational space as a cognitive ecosystem in which the body, mind, environment and technology co-evolve synergistically.