The concept of the "Didactic Contract" was developed by Guy Brousseau in the late 1960s. The didactic contract refers to the implicit and explicit rules that govern the relationships between the teacher, the student, and knowledge in a didactic situation. It is a set of specific behaviors expected from the teacher toward the student and from the student toward the teacher, regarding the knowledge being taught. According to Brousseau, this contract regulates the rights and obligations of each party.

According to Brousseau, the didactic contract influences how learning takes place and how problems arising from it are resolved.

The functioning of the didactic contract presupposes the existence of what is known as "didactic transposition," that is, the conversion of scientific knowledge into "knowledge to be taught." This occurs through the dynamics generated in the "milieu," which is the physical, social, and cultural environment in which learning occurs and where the students constructs their knowledge. The milieu plays an important role in identifying the knowledge that the learner is expected to acquire.

This is not merely a tool but a fundamental element of the didactic relationship, which the teacher modifies to provoke new adaptations and constructions of knowledge in the student.

In this space, it is necessary to exercise careful epistemological vigilance over the changes that occur in the object of knowledge; the transformation of knowledge should be minimized in order to preserve its nature; and the ultimate goal of learning should be for the student to be able to apply that knowledge in situations where the teacher is no longer present. The student is immersed in the didactic situation, with the goal being to use that knowledge in non-didactic contexts.

Gil-Galvan proposed the concept of a “learning contract,” defined as a shared agreement in which roles, responsibilities, content, competencies, methodologies, activities, roles, expected outcomes, and assessment are explicitly established. Within this framework, Gil-Galvan defined three categories of human competencies:

1. Technical competencies ("knowing");
2. Methodological competencies ("knowing how");
3. Personal competencies ("knowing how to be").

Technical competencies ("knowing") refer to the combination of general or specialized knowledge and the mastery of skills necessary to perform tasks appropriate to the professional field. Methodological competencies ("knowing how") allow for the acquisition of experiences that can be transferred to various scenarios, enabling the practical application of knowledge to solve problems independently. Finally, personal competencies ("knowing how to be") enable individuals to act responsibly, constructively, and communicatively when making decisions in academic, professional, and personal situations (Gil-Galván et al., 2021, p. 276).

The aim of this article is to ask: How is the didactic contract transformed in the era of AI?

First of all, the “milieu” could be redefined as:

A dynamic, interconnected, and intelligent learning ecosystem permeated by the agency of technological devices and AI systems (including generative agents and visual learning analysis systems). This environment goes beyond traditional physical and sociocultural conditions, becoming a hybrid space where interactions between humans and intelligent machines are constitutive of learning and knowledge construction. In this "milieu," the external conditions for developing and acquiring knowledge include not only implicit and explicit relationships (didactic contract), but also AI’s capacity to influence human cognition, mediate social relationships, and affect values—demanding from individuals new competencies for interacting, interpreting, creating, and deciding in a human-machine collaborative context.

In short, we move from a "tripartite" relationship to a "quadripartite" one.

What are the implications of this new situation?

Some examples are set forth in the following table:

 

 

Aspect	Traditional Didactic Contract (Brousseau)	New Didactic Contract in the AI Era
Relationship to knowledge	Focused on the transmission and reconstruction of established knowledge	Focused on active, critical, and creative construction with the mediation of intelligent systems
Role of the teacher	Transmitter, organizer of knowledge, and regulator of the didactic situation	Designer of hybrid scenarios, mediator between types of knowledge, ethical guide, and manager of the human-machine environment
Role of the student	Active receiver, participant in a structured situation	Co-creator, autonomous explorer, with agency over tools, sources, and processes
Ethical dimension	Implicit or dependent on the teacher	Central, linked to decisions about privacy, authenticity, bias, transparency, and critical resistance
Evaluation	Based on individual performance and achievement of predefined objectives	Based on processes, authenticity of work, authorship, ethical responsibility, and human-machine collaboration

 

 

The emergence of AI has profoundly disrupted the relationships between teacher, student, and content as we knew them. The new didactic contract requires a much more active, creative, and ethical attitude from all actors involved in today’s didactic situation. It calls for a renewed "alliance" for learning and for awareness of the importance of cognitive effort in the face of a phenomenon which, as previously mentioned, can become problematic and even hostile.

Delia Lerner argued that we must move from the idea of learning being "step-by-step and complete" to learning as "complex and provisional."

In light of AI's emergence, we propose "interactive”, “conscious”, and “ethical" as the characteristics defining the three central components of the new didactic contract:

1.     The opportunity to engage with an intelligent cognitive interlocutor;

2.     The need to become aware of and invest anew in learning;

3.     The revaluation of the ethical dimension involving the teacher's and student's commitment to learning.

The rise of AI in education challenges us to design a new contract, in which ethical attitudes and awareness of the importance of learning become key pillars.

 

 

Sources

Brousseau, G., Le contrat didactique: le milieu. Recherches en didactique des mathématiques, 1990. 9(9.3): p. 309-336.

Chevallard, Y. On didactic transposition theory: Some introductory notes. in Proceedings of the international symposium on selected domains of research and development in mathematics education. 1989.

Brousseau, G., Fondements et méthodes de la didactique des mathématiques. Recherches en didactique des mathématiques (Revue), 1986. 7(2): p. 33-115.

Gil-Galván, M.R., I. Martín Espinosa, and F.J. Gil Galván, El Contrato de Aprendizaje como estrategia para fomentar las competencias comunicativas. 2024.