A hidden education: the formative impacts of technologies for the self-management of type 1 diabetes

Nowadays, the acknowledgment of technology pervasiveness and of its active role in human beings' existence and in their experience has contributed to focus the attention on the non-human agency in different aspects of people's life and to debate on the effects of individuals' health.In fact, the non-human (technologies, materials, objects and animals) is not only a tool or a passive and inert matter, but it is part of that complex thread twine of variables that, according to the bio-psycho social model, contributes in defining a person's health.A representative case study is type 1 diabetes, a chronic disease which is on the rise all over the world. Diabetic patients' bodies interact with technologies, objects and procedures without which they could not survive.This paper intends to illustrate, from a pedagogic point of view, the hidden educational role of technology in the socio-medical area, and, in particular, in the practices of self-management of type 1 diabetes. This role is unde...