Risk for professional learning when the academic community is forced online?

ABSTRACT

Taking a practice perspective, this article explores how built spaces within the university can impact on, and enable, practices of everyday professional learning amongst university educators. The discussion draws on analysis, informed by the theory of practice architectures, of interviews with six academics at a Swedish university. Three main themes emerged in the analysis as significant for the enablement of educators’ professional learning practices within the physical university: spontaneity, authentic relationships, and embodied interactions. Because the interviews were conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, when most academics were required to work remotely, the analysis offers a comparison between affordances of certain built spaces for professional learning compared to online spaces. We consider what opportunities for professional learning might be missed if the academic community continues to be separated from campus.

KEYWORDS:

• professional learning practices
• higher education
• theory of practice architectures
• academic community
• built spaces
• online environments

Introduction

In this article, we shed light on academics’ work and professional learning in a very specific moment in the history of the university: in the wake of academic work forced online in spring 2020 due to the circumstances of the pandemic COVID-19. Our discussion is based on interviews conducted at one Swedish university. However, we think that the findings presented here may be relevant to other university sites around the world, as we all are experiencing similar changes related to the pandemic.

Swedish universities have traditionally been open spaces where students, academics, and other members of the university and local communities are able to freely interact and co-exist. Within education literature, space is often referred to as a metaphor (Temple 2009). We use the term both as a metaphor for the social environment and as a physical place (cf. Temple 2009). The physical university environment has made possible the development of key academic practices such as research, teaching, learning, management/leading, and administration for more than 1000 years. These practices are more or less characterised by various interactions, collaborations, and ongoing critical discussions to enhance learning and knowledge development amongst scholars and students and other stakeholders – these ‘communicative learning spaces’ (Sjølie, Francisco, and Langelotz 2018) are the core of the university.

Learning environments in higher education have been researched from different points of view, such as studies concerning information and communication technology (ICT) and Active Learning Classrooms (ALC). Student perspectives on learning spaces have been studied by, for example, Beckers, Van der Voordt, and Dewulf (2016), who argue that the traditional classroom is being replaced by informal learning spaces to support contemporary learning activities (see also Matthews, Andrews, and Adams 2011). The main focus in much of the previous research on learning environments is, however, related to student learning. We have chosen, instead, to focus on university educators’ professional learning and we do so from a practice perspective. We treat professional learning as a continuing and ongoing practice (cf. Langelotz 2017) in higher education, and build on research that applies a practice lens in a study of conditions for academics’ learning during the pandemic (Sjølie et al. 2020) by paying particular attention to built spaces.

In March 2020, the Swedish government announced that all university teaching should occur online. Students and teachers were discouraged from entering campuses due to the coronavirus pandemic. University practices in Sweden, like elsewhere, were suddenly ‘sucked into cyberspace’, and daily educational and knowledge work largely moved off campus.

In this article, we consider how this enforced alternative to familiar built spaces has affected the academic community in one Swedish university. We scrutinise how interaction and collaborative practice, which are deemed to be important for the professional learning of university educators (Roxå and Mårtensson 2015), are enabled and constrained by the new physical arrangements and/or lack of access to the old ones. We are aided in this task by the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al. 2014), which provides a site ontological lens for discerning how professional learning as a practice is shaped by and responds to changed or changing cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements within a site of practice (Schatzki 2002). Our aim is to explore how and why built spaces matter for professional learning of university educators, and the tensions and challenges for professional learning created by the increasing shift of academic work away from familiar built spaces into online mode.

Our discussion is empirically grounded in material generated in two overlapping projects, one on leading practices in higher education as they relate to teaching and learning, and one on academics’ learning in the pandemic. In this article, we draw on our analysis of six interviews with academic staff in the university in focus. This analysis forms the basis of two narratives, which we use to introduce three main themes that emerged as both important for unplanned professional learning and somewhat dependent on characteristics of the spaces characterising the participating academics’ work: authentic relationships, embodied interactions, and spontaneity. Our discussion of these themes leads us to ask what might be lost if whole-scale shifts of academic work to online mode occur without critical consideration of consequences for university educators’ professional learning.

Professional learning: a practice in higher education

Teachers’ professional learning and development have attracted considerable attention since education became a neoliberal, global marketplace where student performance is unproblematically related to teachers’ teaching ability (Kennedy 2014; Langelotz 2017). As for school teachers, university educators’ continuing professional learning (CPL)¹ has been debated internationally, nationally, and locally over the past thirty years. Higher education is, among other things, a competitive business where students want ‘value for money’ (Gibbs et al. 2017). Hence, educational development is on the agenda and ‘academic developer’² has become a new position in the university, often with the assignment to nurture and ‘arrange’ educational professional learning, and often related to teaching in different ways (e.g. pedagogical courses and seminars). CPL in higher education is divided into two major strands (Clegg 2003, 39): activities that support research and scholarship, and staff development concerned with learning and teaching.

The first – research and scholarship development – is seldom labelled as CPL and is, as argued by Clegg in 2003 (although still relevant), ‘taken for granted’ as academic daily business and a natural part of staying in academia. So, professional learning in academia is primarily connected to teaching activities. The rise of neoliberalism and managerialism have contributed to preoccupations with performativity, and teachers are encouraged (in policies) to avail themselves of arranged professional learning activities as much to become efficient (Jauhiainen, Jauhiainen, and Laiho 2009) as to enhance their skills. In Sweden, the national agency for higher education (UKÄ 2020) emphasises the importance of spreading local experiences, models of pedagogical development, and professional learning within the academic community to nurture pedagogical development and, foremost, quality assurance in higher education. Developing one’s teaching is now imposed and expected within higher education. The professional autonomy and agency of university educators are at stake (cf. Solbrekke and Englund 2011).

Nevertheless, research, and our own experiences as educational researchers and academic developers, show how CPL is also driven by individuals and/or groups of teachers who want to discuss, and understand ‘how to go on’ in their academic practices (Langelotz, Mahon, and Messina-Dahlberg 2020; Roxå and Mårtensson 2015; Surgrue et al. 2018). Arguably, to develop new professional knowledge and critical thinking for teaching amongst academics, there needs to be ongoing dialogue (Mahon, Heikkinen, and Huttunen 2019), and spaces for creating shared meaning (Knight, Tait, and Yorke 2006). Based on a study of 2401 part-time teachers and 248 full-time staff in the UK Open University, Knight, Tait, and Yorke (2006) conclude: ‘learning opportunities come from the chance to engage with others’ practices and from engaging others with one’s own practices’ (334) (which is slightly surprising given that the learning and teaching environment is online). They argue that apart from academic developers’ efforts, managers are key people in the enhancement of environments conducive to professional development and academic professional formation.

There are indeed challenges for professional learning in academia. Academics may be used to developing communities of practice around their research, but not so much around their teaching. The teaching practice seems to be a very lonely endeavour in many respects (cf. Handal 1999; Roxå and Mårtensson 2015). Even without the shift of academic work to online spaces, there are already significant challenges, embedded within university cultures where research and teaching activities are separated (cf. Barnett 2003).

In this article, CPL includes when educators come together spontaneously at their workplace, when teachers learn experientially in the classroom, or when they attend courses or seminars and conferences concerning teaching and learning arranged by academic developers at the university. Sometimes, these different forms of professional learning are divided into ‘non-formal learning and formal’ (Knight, Tait, and Yorke 2006) or informal learning (Clegg 2003).

We will not use such concepts – formal, non-formal learning, or informal learning – as we argue, drawing on the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al. 2014), that educators’ CPL is an ongoing university practice composed of sayings-doings-relatings (Langelotz 2017, 27) shaped and reshaped by practice architectures (Kemmis et al. 2014) that hold the practice in place. We prefer instead to think of the various sites of professional learning as either formal, like in a staff development course, or informal, as in a coffee break (in Swedish, ‘fika’) in the staff room. Practice architectures of a practice include a combination of cultural-discursive arrangements – which enable and constrain what is possible to say in the semantic space – material-economic arrangements – conditions for peoples’ actions (doings) in the physical space – and social-political arrangements – which impact on how people relate to one another and to artefacts in the social space (Kemmis et al. 2014).

The theory of practice architectures can help us to understand how opportunities for professional learning can be made possible within a university, especially if we think of CPL as a practice that interacts with other practices like teaching, researching, leading, and student learning. The practices within the university hang together, and can form interdependencies and enable and constrain each other in ecologies of practices (Kemmis et al. 2012). For example, as academics, we meet, talk, and develop our thoughts in different built spaces and sometimes in online environments. This day-to-day talk can lead to new insights and ideas regarding both our research, and our teaching and learning practices (Thomson 2013). From the perspective of the theory of practice architectures, we can think about activities such as these forming traditions over time. They become ‘how we do things around here’.³

To summarise, educators’ CPL in university settings consists in practices. Such practices amount to coming to know how to be and go on in the various substantive practices university educators inhabit/enact/step into in their academic work, as well as coming to practice differently (Kemmis 2020; Sjølie et al. 2020). Often, professional learning involves collaborative, reflective, and dialogic practices (Thelin 2020). Hence, various ‘communicative learning spaces’ for being and becoming a university educator (Sjølie, Francisco, and Langelotz 2018) are necessary for educators’ CPL. A communicative learning space cultivates and nurtures educators’ professional learning through collaboration. Collaborative practices strengthen both the teaching and research practices (Aarnikoivu et al. 2020; Mahon, Heikkinen, and Huttunen 2019). As in many other professions, the professional knowledge and learning, however, is complex. To capture and develop professional knowledge one has to engage in the teaching and learning practices as well as in dialogues about these practices (El Gaidi 2007).

Background

Midtown University

The interviews were conducted in a middle-sized Swedish university, ‘Midtown University’ in a regional town.⁴ In Sweden, universities do not charge fees for national students, and they are considered to be public and ‘open’ spaces. For example, the library is open to the public (e.g. to do their reading or borrow books), and lectures held in the main lecture halls are also ‘open’ (one can sneak in without being enrolled in a course or programme). There are also coffee shops and restaurants that attract the surrounding society into the Midtown University buildings. Hence, academics, students, and other people meet in these spaces.

Midtown University claims to be a ‘close’ university with a campus in the town centre. City life, with shops, restaurants, theatres, parks and so forth, is just around the corner. It is also ‘close’ in relation to building design. The students, staff, and management meet easily in the stairs, hallways, working spaces, and restaurants. The doors are open and unlocked in many parts of the buildings. Most people (regardless of position) say ‘hello’ and often stop for a chat. In this sense, relations between people are also ‘close’ – it is easy to find one’s way to staff, teachers, and management. Educational programs mainly have a professional focus (e.g. teacher education, nursing, engineering). There are approximately thirteen thousand students enrolled both on campus and in online education. Most students are local and come from surrounding municipalities.

Radically changed conditions

In March 2020, Midtown University was radically transformed when the coronavirus pandemic prompted changes to how Swedish universities conduct educational programs. The University management took a decision to shift most educational and other activities to online mode. Meetings between colleagues and lessons via zoom (an online meeting tool) to allow staff and students to work/study ‘from home’ quickly became the norm, as they did in other parts of the world (Sjølie et al. 2020).

This shift was already underway at Midtown University before the coronavirus arrived in Sweden. However, after a pandemic was declared, the shift to online mode was swift and dramatic. Examining what has happened to professional learning as a result of the sudden shift allows us to understand what can be lost if the whole-scale virtualisation of academic work is not examined critically and/or becomes permanent. It begs the question:

What happens when the professional learning and the academic community is forced online, whether by COVID-19 or by management as part of the emergence of the knowledge economy and as part of a broader neoliberal push for flexibility and consumer choice when it comes to education?

Method

A case study approach is being used in the two research projects mentioned above.⁵ Such an approach is, according to Yin (2009), fruitful when investigating ‘a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident’ (18).

Six in-depth semi-structured interviews (dialogues) about online teaching, leading, academic community, learning practices, and the pandemic situation, were conducted by both of us jointly. Three men and three women took part in the interviews (although we use the gender neutral ‘they’ when we refer to the interviewees below). Altogether the interviewees represent four levels in the organisation: overall management, middle leading, program coordinator, and course coordinator/teaching level. The interviewees have varying experiences of teaching both on campus and online in different professional disciplines. Nowadays they are all using online resources such as zoom and other digital tools for their academic work.

Five of the interviews were carried out online in a zoom meeting room and one was a face-to-face meeting at the university. We (authors) both actively took part and contributed with pre-planned questions and follow-up questions and reflections during the interviews. The language spoken was predominantly English to include both authors, and when words were uttered in Swedish, they were collaboratively translated (by the participants and one of the authors) into English during the dialogues. The interviews lasted from 50 min to 1.5 half hours each.

The analysis was carried out in several steps: (1) we discussed the interviews based on memories and written notes, (2) several themes were identified, (3) we listened to each audio recorded interview conversation ourselves a number of times with the themes and the research questions in mind, (4) new categories emerged and were jointly discussed/explored. The theory of practice architectures informed the process, although there was also an element of induction (e.g. Miles and Huberman 1994) from the data themselves. We acknowledge that the empirical material only gave us access to people’s interpretations of their practice.

Findings and discussion

The analysis gave rise to a number of themes. Three are relevant to the relationship between university educator CPL and built spaces: spontaneity, embodiment, and authentic relationships. In this section, we present two narratives, or ‘scenes’, set in Midtown University to frame our discussion. Both scenes draw on real situations described or alluded to by the interview respondents. The actual dialogue and contextual details have been invented using a ‘composite narrative’ strategy (Willis 2018). The scenes are effectively fictional representations of experiences that the respondents collectively described. The composite narrative strategy allows us to highlight the complex relationship between spaces and professional learning in a concrete way, while obscuring the identity of our interviewees (Piper and Sikes 2010). We chose to write the narratives as scenes (as if in a play) to put a spotlight on action and settings. The first scene is of a chance encounter between three colleagues, starting in a corridor which joins their on-campus offices. The second unfolds in a ‘classroom’ where a seminar involving a lecturer and 25 students is in progress. The second scene draws mainly on one of the interviews⁶, but raises issues that are also relevant to the other interviews. Both of the scenes represent sites that still do not appear to be formally recognised as sites of academics’ professional learning in universities (see Clegg 2003).

Scene one: the corridor

Alex is making her way through the corridor of the building’s fourth floor, heading to the ‘fika room’ (staff coffee room) to make herself a coffee. The corridor is well lit, spacious, and lined with windows and doors to the offices of Alex’s colleagues. Most offices are currently occupied, which is obvious at a glance because so many doors are open. Alex smiles. There is something comforting about all of these people beavering away at the same time, in the same place, on more or less the same things.

As Alex reaches Kim’s office, six doors away from her own, she sees Kim through the internal window engaged in conversation with Anders. Both are sitting at a table swamped by their laptops, notebooks, and pens. Their attention is drawn to a small but ‘busy’ whiteboard mounted on Kim’s wall. Alex knocks spontaneously on Kim’s door, and then opens it. She has been wanting to talk to them both about a new course she is developing. Her coffee can wait … 

Alex: (Standing in the doorway and looking at the whiteboard) What are you two doing? That looks interesting.

Kim: Yes, we are working on a paper about student engagement and we are trying to develop a model to represent this new idea we have.

Alex: Exciting! Why student engagement? That’s a bit unusual for you two, isn’t it?

Kim: True, but there isn’t much written about it in our subject area, and especially not in the Swedish context.

Alex: You know, I have been thinking a lot about engagement lately. I’m trying to figure out how to make one of my courses more interactive. I’ve been teaching it for years, and the last lot of student feedback says it’s not interactive enough.

Anders: That’s precisely what this paper is about. Tell us about your course. What have you tried?

Alex explains the course and the student feedback to her colleagues, and they engage in intense conversation about the issues Alex raises.

Kim: I bought a new book that might help you make some changes. Arrived yesterday. Here (grabbing the book from a shelf and passing it to Alex). I don’t have time to read it right now, but you can borrow it until I do.

Alex: Thanks. I have some ideas already just from talking to you. You’ve reminded me that I need to read more about teaching in our field. So I will definitely read it. This conversation has really helped.

Kim: Well it has helped us too. I can see that we need to develop the interaction part of the model a bit more.

Alex: Great!

The three colleagues grin.

Kim: (To Alex) Was there something you wanted?

Alex: Oh yes … .

And the conversation moves on.

In this scene, there are important traces (found mainly in five of the six interviews), of how the built spaces within the university play a significant role in people’s professional formation. We have, as previously alluded to, condensed some of the findings into the two narratives. We will now elaborate further on the findings represented in the scene using direct quotes from the interviews for illustrative purposes. We focus more so on material-economic arrangements because of our interest in built spaces, but acknowledge that the three kinds of arrangements are only separable analytically, not in reality.

Alex has a chance encounter with colleagues that opens up an opportunity for them to learn with and from each other. Kim and Anders are in conversation about research that is relevant to Alex’s teaching practice. Alex has experience relevant to Kim’s and Anders’ research. What unfolds in the scene is a spontaneous form of professional learning that enables learning in conversation about practice, in this case mainly teaching practice. The conversation, through the colleagues’ sayings, includes an exchange of ideas and thoughts about student engagement and interactive teaching, as well as studying and reflecting on these aspects of practice. The conversation becomes a form of self-reflection that may lead to new self-understanding (professional learning), and nurtures the research practice going on in Kim’s office. The practices ‘hang together’ and nurture each other (Kemmis et al. 2014).

These kinds of conversations, where research and teaching practices are entangled and contribute to academic professional formation (c.f. Clegg 2003; Mårtensson and Roxå 2016), are talked about in various ways in the interviews. The physical (and often spontaneous) meeting for such dialogue is emphasised as crucial. In online environments, the meetings are either, for example, about course development or research (e.g. in a research group). Hence, the risk for dividing practices such as teaching and learning versus research is obvious. Spontaneous conversations in a platform like zoom most likely have to be planned for, as the following quotations show:

The meetings now [the interviewee gives an example of ‘development talks’⁷] get flatter and shorter.

Partly, it is the kind of informal meetings that: Ohh I have a question, it’s not a big question … you can just go to the next door and pop the question. Now you have to decide to call someone or send an email and … .. /../. It’s not fun.

From this interviewee’s perspective, it is not ‘as much fun’ to disturb or interact with someone when it has to be planned, and the opportunity to interact unexpectedly with colleagues is reduced: ‘Online meetings are around specific, limited topics and with just invited people’ (interview). Furthermore, the interaction was seen as even more difficult if new colleagues take part since relations are not developed and it becomes harder to engage in ‘chit chat’. However, the academic formation does not have to take place only at the physical university. Two of the interviewees talked about the surrounding cafes, ‘pubs’, and so forth as important built spaces for learning for students and for university educators.

In the scene, the material-economic arrangements make the exchange possible. The whiteboard in Kim’s office makes Kim’s conversation with Anders visible and gives Alex an entry point for the conversation, while the internal window in the offices allows Alex to peer into Kim’s room from the corridor and see that Anders is there. The door, the corridor, and the doorway also play a role. Alex uses the door (by knocking on it) to announce that she wishes to enter both the room and the conversation. One of the interviewees emphasised that they really miss ‘the knocking on the door’ by students as well as colleagues. Staffroom- and the corridor/doorstep-conversations were mentioned in various ways as important in all the interviews and these physical spaces were associated with meeting possibilities that can generate CPL.

The corridor, with office windows and often open doors, makes other colleagues visible while doing their work, giving Alex a sense of belonging and meaningfulness. This is further elaborated on in the interviews:

And at least for me the sense of everybody around me working on approximately the same thing makes me feel connected / … / at home you feel more alone and it does not feel fun anymore. / … / If you are in a good research flow you can do it anywhere but if you are a bit stuck it really helps to know that there are other people around you to go on.

The doorway acts as the threshold to Kim’s office and physical location where Alex encounters new perspectives that relate to her teaching.

However, it is not only built spaces that nurture professional learning and academic formation. The conversation between the colleagues in the scene is also made possible by the relationships between them, since Alex’s actions could be considered intrusive. A social-political environment of safety and respect is emphasised as important in the following interview comment:

… it is both for the students and the learning situation but also for the staff/ … / is that we have a safe environment. / … / also psychologically safe. We shall respect each other for our competences and treat one another in a respectful way. / … / one of the keys to learning.

The kind of microculture (Mårtensson and Roxå 2016) illustrated in the narrative is described by one of the interviewees as a ‘generous culture’, which is ‘not based on performance / … / it’s not about output, it’s about sharing and listening and reflection, and sometimes something really good comes out of it’. A ‘safe place’ is connected to trust and the possibility to create reflective practices to make professional learning possible (Mahon, Heikkinen, and Huttunen 2019). The exchange in the scene is meaningful and educative because it relates directly to the participants’ reflections about teaching, but also research. The meeting, the problems, and the relations are authentic as an interviewee put it.

Spontaneity and the authentic relationships, according to most of the interviewees, have been difficult to replicate in a zoom environment, or while working from home more generally. So the opportunities for professional learning through spontaneous interactions have decreased.

Before entering the next scene, we will conclude here by saying that the findings in the first scene show how professional learning is related to professional formation within the academic community. Furthermore, they highlight that the academic practices hang together, and how they, in the physical university, enable CPL that goes beyond the distinction between research and teaching (cf. Clegg 2003). The discussion sheds light on how the academic community and the university assignment when forced online might be ‘fragmented’. In the next scene we focus on professional learning related to teaching and learning as it happens in the classroom.

Scene two: the classroom

The lecturer, Robin, glances up from the group in front of her to survey the class. It is a small room, just enough for the twenty or so bodies currently present. One wall is a bank of windows, opening to the street below. Another wall contains a whiteboard covered in hand-written sticky notes and a Smartboard displaying a powerpoint slide. The other two walls are white and blank. Beside the smartboard stands a podium. The students are sitting at five evenly-spaced arrangements of wheeled trapezoidal tables. They have their laptops and equipment in front of them and bags at their feet. The powerpoint slide is Robin’s. It displays the current group task instructions.

Robin can sense that her attention is needed somewhere else now, despite the busy hum filling the room.

Robin: (to self; looking at the group to the left) They seem to be going ok. Good.

Her eyes arrive at the next group in the middle of the room.

Robin: (to self) There. Yes. Puzzled faces. I wonder why?

Robin walks toward the group to find out, scanning the rest of the room as she moves.

Robin: (to self) Another confused group. Oh, they’re looking at my powerpoint slides. (still heading in the same direction, but looking quickly at her slides as she walks). Oh dear, yes the third instruction is a bit confusing. I’ll get to that group in a minute. Better change that slide for next time.

Just as Robin says that to herself, she notices a raised head and eyebrows from a student in another group, signalling for help she presumes.

Robin: (Signalling back with her eyes and a nod) I see you.

Robin hesitates for a moment. Perhaps she ought to stop the activity and re-explain the third part of the task. She pauses.

Robin: (to the whole class) Sorry to interrupt. Who understands what you need to do for part three? I feel some of you are not getting it.

The group she has just visited raise their hands. Robin smiles.

Robin: Is there anything else that you don’t understand?

Silence.

Robin starts to explain again, moving towards the screen on the wall and then pointing to her confusing instruction on the ppt slide. As she does this, she hears murmuring from the group that raised their hands a moment before. Without a pause in her explanation, she turns to the group. The students are engrossed in their own conversation and their murmuring is becoming a distracting chatter.

Robin: (to self as her explanation continues) How can I engage the group in this conversation?

Robin suddenly stops talking.

The chattering group also stops and looks at Robin.

Robin: (to the group, but with the intention of being heard by the whole class) I’m thinking it would be better if you explained the task. You get it now, and you had some good ideas.

The group members smile back at her.

Robin quickly organises for one group member each to join one of the other groups to explain. After a few moments of disturbance as the groups rearrange themselves, the room is humming with activity.

Robin relaxes and figures out what she needs to do next … .

Robin’s interactions with the students in this scene, and her internal dialogue, exemplify a teacher learning in teaching practice (cf. ‘reflection-in-action’, Schön 1983; ‘on-the-job’ learning, Knight, Tait, and Yorke 2006, 323). Robin is learning how to go on in the practice of teaching as it is unfolding; that is, in interaction as an embodied being with other bodies and material artefacts (Schatzki 2002) in the social and physical space of the classroom. She is continually sensing, or ‘reading’, the pedagogical situation in order to know how to act, and she relies on the feedback and cues she receives in the flow of actions and consequences – like a raised hand, a puzzled face, a chatting group – to work out what to do next. In this, we could argue, she relies on her sensory awareness of what is going on around her, as well as pedagogical awareness in terms of what the minute by minute cues and signals mean for her students’ learning, and thus the demands on her as a teacher. In some ways, she learns in the moment, and for future practice (we can presume, for example, from her reflection on her powerpoint instructions), by experiencing the consequences of what she is saying, doing, and how she is relating, as they unfold. She continues to act on the basis of emerging insights (e.g. rearranging the groups to promote understanding of the whole group). In this sense and context, her practice is a form of educational praxis (Kemmis and Smith 2008) in which her teaching and her professional learning are inseparable.

The physical space is important here in that it enables the people in the scene to interact in particular ways. The room makes it possible for their bodies to be together at the same time and place. They can hear, see, feel each other’s presence, activity, and energy, and act accordingly. The screen and powerpoint, among other things, provide a visible reference point for the students so that they simultaneously engage in the same activity. The arrangement of tables, allowing group members to face each other, facilitates group discussion, and enables free movement around the room. It also enables Robin to spontaneously rearrange groups and re-shape the flow of activity, and at the same time learn through ‘trial and error’. Robin can quickly survey the room for any signs that she needs to act in particular or different ways.

This kind of spontaneous and embodied interaction in the on-campus physical space was highlighted by one of the interviewees in particular. An experienced teacher, they talked about hearing and feeling if students do not understand something, and being able to rearrange things ‘on the spot’ to suit the situation: ‘I can see this doesn’t work. From one minute to the next minute, I can change my setup. OK this is not working … . Let’s do it this way instead’. They also explained how their capacity to work in this way was constrained in the zoom classroom. When teaching in zoom, they need to anticipate and pre-plan for student actions in minute detail leaving less room for spontaneity. They also receive limited feedback from the students when people’s bodies are not present in the same physical space:

/ … / you can’t hear what’s going on. Most people are muted. You don’t hear. If everyone was unmuted, you could hear the sighing. I mean all those things that are not verbal but they are a way of saying something about the situation … . It is important that we can see each other, but it is so one dimensional. Or two or whatever … it’s not three at least. It’s not four dimensional, and I think the fourth dimension is the sense in the classroom, that you can sense if people are not grasping because- ‘Oh wow. I feel you are not getting this. Should I repeat it? Should I say it in another way?’ You can ask that question in the classroom, and people will say ‘yes yes. I don’t get anything.’ And sometimes … people will ask you, if it’s a really good atmosphere, they will ask you before you grasp it. But you lose out on that. You have to create moments for that and say, ‘OK, let’s stop. Anyone got any questions?’ Or you could do exit cards, you know, use formative assessment, but then you have to plan for it. It doesn’t arise in the moment. So I think you lose a lot of things there.

Although the interviewee concerned when making these comments was talking primarily about their teaching and not specifically their professional learning, they nevertheless hinted at the kinds of signals used in zoom versus physical classrooms to gauge when to change something (e.g. change voice, or tempo) in their in-the-moment practice. Examples include people restlessly moving their shoulders or ‘trying to get out of their skin’. The reference to atmosphere (social-political arrangements/relatings) and four-dimensionality in the extended quote above are worth noting. The interviewee explained the significance of both with a comparison to being in a dark room:

When you are in a dark room, you can sense when someone else is there. Even if you can’t see them, you can smell them, you can sense it. / … / We sense the people around us. And they do something with the atmosphere in a room.

The interviewee suggested that their capacity to create classroom atmosphere and use their senses to understand the atmosphere was more limited in the zoom environment without physically present bodies with which to interact. To find out if students were understanding something, they would have to ask them, or wait for them to raise a hand. Hence, it is clear how the classroom (material-economic arrangement) enables not only the (professional) learning and teachers and students but also how the relatings and the social-political arrangements matters and are intertwined.

This interviewee, like other interviewees, hinted at relatings in virtual spaces being less authentic than they would be in built classrooms, which affected how they worked in the online space as educators. One reason offered for this was that people do not not meet each other’s gaze in zoom. Also, people can ‘hide behind the interface: you can mute yourself, you can take away your picture, it can look like you are there but you’re actually doing something else’. A further reason offered was the absence of ‘the unexpected’ because people ‘go by manuscript’. We also question the extent to which zoom interactions are synchronous, since there is a slight delay between sound and image, and sometimes a person’s image can freeze or disappear altogether. In this way, university educators can themselves become disconnected from aspects of the practice that aid understanding/sense making in practice – or learning how to go on. From an interviewee perspective, it can also make the interactions less fun and meaningful, and more instrumental, which might also affect the potential of the pedagogical moments to be instructive for educators in terms of their own practice.

One of the interviewees had a very positive experience of the shift to teaching in zoom, and this runs counter to the discussion above. They commented that they were able to relate to students on a more personal level in zoom. In the built classrooms, the desks were invariably arranged in rows, creating a hierarchical relationship between themself and the students. They often did not know the students’ names, and never spoke about their personal life. They found that zoom, in contrast to built classrooms, afforded a more democratic dynamic in that no person was positioned differently from anyone else, and having people’s names on the screen meant that they could get to know the students by name. The pandemic played a key role here, according to their interview responses, in that it gave them and the students a shared experience around which they could unite: they were able to share experiences of the pandemic. This brought the interviewee closer to students than previously experienced. The interviewee did not elaborate on how this impacted on their professional learning, but it is interesting that they were able to relate to students in ways that the other interviewees did not mention, and this prompted the interviewee to reflect on their personal life. This suggests that there are many other practice architectures at play in shaping practice besides the physical environment, as well as a university educator’s dispositions and prior experiences of teaching, which is hardly surprising from a theory of practice architectures perspective.

The classroom scene and discussion of relevant findings we have presented are not meant to suggest that CPL is impossible in online spaces. The interviewees did not state nor imply this. Reflection and learning in practice is not restricted to built spaces. Rather, we have highlighted what can be missing when not working in built spaces. Interacting and opportunities for developing teaching practice in practice, can be constrained without some of the taken for granted affordances of built spaces.

Concluding reflections

Built spaces within the university, viewed through the lens of the theory of practice architectures, and depicted in our narratives, seem to have a significant impact on the formation of the academic community. Authentic relationships, embodied interactions, and spontaneity, all of which emerged in our interviews as important for educators’ CPL, appear to be nurtured in built spaces. The most significant places for unplanned professional learning, according to our analysis, are classrooms (through interaction with students and reflections-in-action), staff/coffeerooms, and in-between spaces like corridors and doorways (through interactions with colleagues and/or students). In-between spaces are under-researched and probably taken for granted. We have, in this article, shown how these sites might enable professional learning in its broader sense (Clegg 2003), particularly by allowing meaningful, spontaneous conversation. Spontaneous conversation can be a space for creativity (fun/playfulness), criticality, and collegiality, and when limited, as has been the case with the academic community being forced online, these aspects of academic work and learning risk being lost.

We chose to focus on routine academic activities because they are important for long-term development of educators (see Knight, Tait, and Yorke 2006), and they signal what can be at stake when academic work shifts online. Furthermore, since they happen to represent kinds (and sites) of professional learning that may not be so easily recognised as such in the context of higher education, they could easily be overlooked when assessing the effects of the large-scale changes we have seen during the pandemic, or when envisioning a post-pandemic university. This has implications for university leaders, managers, and academic developers, and is most likely relevant beyond the university, country, and work context in focus because the shift to online learning and work during the pandemic has occurred in many nations and professions, and the ICT movement, intensified by the pandemic, is a global phenomenon.

Our intention has not been to present built/familiar spaces as good and online/new spaces as bad. The interviewees all commented on important educational possibilities created by advances in online education that we recognise ourselves in our own work. Rather, we have raised questions that we think are important to consider regarding professional life and learning after the pandemic. An important question to bare in mind, since digitalisation is a reality, is,

How can we as academics come to know/ learn how to go on in educational practice, if we practise in isolation, or in the absence of the cues and other practitioners, and their nuanced sayings, doings, and relatings – the everyday university practices that inform the core of the university that built spaces can allow?

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Continuing professional learning (CPL) is, in previous research, referred to as, for example, ‘continuing professional development’ (CPD) or ‘staff development’ (for a distinction and discussion see Clegg 2003).

2 The terms differ amongst researchers and universities. Neither professional learning nor academic development (and the professions that come with them) are coherent or easy to capture or describe since they are site specific (see e.g. Clegg 2003; Land 2001).

3 For a comparison, see Mårtenson and Roxå’s (2016) discussion of institutionalised traditions, norms, and actions within academic ‘microcultures’.

4 Midtown University is a pseudonym.

5 As mentioned, this article is based on empirical material generated in two larger overlapping studies. These studies do not have built spaces as a specific focus. However, since both are theoretically informed by the theory of practice architectures and both examine how practices (like teacher professional learning) shape and are shaped by various conditions, the interview responses have yielded insights into how spaces matter - especially in this particular moment in history.

6 We have not necessarily drawn on the interviews equally since not all interview responses were equally relevant to the professional learning sites we have chosen to highlight here.

7 These are formal conversations at the university between staff and their line managers (or line manager representatives) about the staff member’s development and support needs, and their contributions to the university community.