Transitioning Across Networked, Workplace and Educational Boundaries: Shifting Identities and Chronotopic Movements

Abstract

This chapter focuses on transitions across educational, workplace, physical and online settings, for those on professional undergraduate programmes where continual movements between work-based placements and university environments are commonplace. It introduces the idea of chronotopic movements, drawing on Bakhtin’s concept of a chronotope or space:time configuration. By analyzing how students in higher education work across different settings and time frames through this perspective of chronotopes, we show the influence of chronotopic movements on transition, their disruption of learning across boundaries and their mobilisation as resources to help solve boundary-related problems. Six medical students created video diaries to document their use of digital technologies whilst on clinical placements. Chronotopic movements were analysed in relation to access, management of resources, creating and repurposing artefacts and cultural transitions. Networked learning environments helped manage the changes in space and time and helped students adapt to, and make sense of, different spaces and create their own hybrid ‘places’. We conclude that the dynamics of fluid, shifting boundaries of space and time are amongst the key changes that networked learning environments have made possible for working and studying in higher education. Chronotopes can act as resources for mobilizing human agency and supporting students’ sense making when transitioning across boundaries. Yet they also present conflicts as multi spatio-temporal working places increase. Investigating chronotopic movements can reveal how spatiality and temporality frame our actions, including the hidden tensions and cultural challenges of boundary crossings, making this a rich seam for further research and investigation.