DIVERSITY OF GEOMETRIC PRACTICES IN VIRTUAL DISCUSSION GROUPS

Interactive processes turned to professional development usually interest researchers in this area. Nevertheless, the analysis of the various teachers ’ meanings collaboratively shared in a given virtual community is still incipient in mathematics education. In our longitudinal research we have been analysing the contributions of a virtual environment to the professional development in geometry (Bairral and Giménez, 2003). In this study we will analyse the teachers ’ discourse and identify hypertextual links (Jonassen, 1986; Gall and Hannafin, 1994) in discussion forum. Data analysis We consider that the reflections to the discussion forum are sequences of professional actions and that they must establish different semantic relations. In each teleinteraction it is possible to identify new information on the content of the teachers ’ knowledge. This information is somehow hypertextually related to the contents of the contribution to which we are referring or to another educational context. The discussion forum was one of the communicative spaces and the interventions to the debate were registered. The procedures followed for the analysi