Educational flexibility in cyberculture: an analysis of space, time and curriculum in scientific works within the educational field

This article analyzes the principles of flexibility in education and discusses their implications in the quality of teaching and learning in distance education (DE). The categories of space, time and curriculum are analyzed as founding elements of flexibility, which are based on the virtualization of human activities promoted by the emergence of cyber-culture. Firstly, we carried out a theoretical study on educational flexibility by conceptualizing terms and by characterizing their constitutive elements, In this way, we were able to highlight their importance to improve research and learning. Secondly, as part of the field work, we mapped out the theme based on two educational sources of publications: 1,540 doctoral theses and 3,988 scientific articles (journals). As a result, the qualitative-quantitative analysis showed that there was a lack of research on flexibility in DE. However, it was observed that the structure of pedagogical models, which was more appropriate to our current needs, requires extensive knowledge of pedagogical flexibility, including factors such as: where (the virtual space); how (curricular organization) it occurs; and how teaching and learning are involved in cyber-culture.