VIRTUAL REALTY BETWEEN CORPOREITY AND CONTEXT SCHOOL

The current historical, educational and social context is characterized by the con-stant presence of the digital world, both before the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, and even more so later (Molina, Michilli, Gaudiello, 2021). The world of education has undergone, and will still have to face major changes to adapt to the continuous development of digital practices and contexts (Fabiano, 2020). Nevertheless, there is always one constant: the physical presence of the students and the body, which represent a fixed and irreplaceable point in the educational processes (Küçük, 2023). Virtual world and corporeal reality, as an-tithetical as they may seem, are both involved in the teaching-learning process (Agbo, Oyelere, Suhonen, Laine, 2021). This work aims to highlight how in reality the body and digitization should not be put in opposition, but rather work in harmony, in a perspective in which the virtual world is seen as a fundamental dimension of corporeality. In this sense, the educational experience that the student lives in the virtual world must be considered as something that involves the body and therefore belongs to the real world (Gadille, Impedovo, 2020). Body and virtual reality are, therefore, two closely interdependent and multidimensional realities. In this regard, the world of schools must not think and act according to a perspective of dis-embodied digitization and a devirtualized corporeality, but according to the criterion of a body that becomes a virtual body, therefore capable of exploring and inhabiting spaces in different and unprecedented ways, and of giving value to the plurality of embodied experience (Rinn, Khosrawi-Rad, Grogorick, Robra-Bissantz, Markgraf, 2023).