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Distilling Complexity Through Metastability and Mobility: The Networked Learning of Amara

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Mobility, Data and Learner Agency in Networked Learning

Part of the book series: Research in Networked Learning ((RINL))

Abstract

Networked learning is defined as learning in which information and communications technology (ICT) is used to promote connections between learners, tutors, community and resources. Building on this definition, this chapter explores the complexity of the connections on which this definition rests, the mobilities being generated by the relationality expressed within these connections, and the learning practices engendered as a result.

This chapter explores this complexity through Amara, a composite character personified as a Nepalese woman studying in a postgraduate programme in Europe. Drawing on mobilities frameworks, the habitus of Bourdieu is repurposed as disposition; a tendency of an individual to act, react or think in a particular way based on the relational mobilities through which they move.

The chapter concludes that networked learning needs to account for the wider range of Amara’s learning activity: across multiple interactional contexts, amongst people and interactive technologies, encapsulating public and private processes; activity that moves between micro (Amara’s) and macro (those ‘immanent to the material conditions of global interdependence’) (Braidotti 2013) mobility systems. This chapter suggests that a mobilities focus is critical to understanding the networked learning of international students generally.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Michael Gallagher

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  1. Michael Gallagher
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Correspondence to Michael Gallagher .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Kolding, Denmark

    Nina Bonderup Dohn

  2. Department of Informatics & Computing, Zagreb University of Applied Sciences, Zagreb, Croatia

    Petar Jandrić

  3. Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Thomas Ryberg

  4. Learning, Teaching & Curriculum, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Maarten de Laat

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Gallagher, M. (2020). Distilling Complexity Through Metastability and Mobility: The Networked Learning of Amara. In: Dohn, N., Jandrić, P., Ryberg, T., de Laat, M. (eds) Mobility, Data and Learner Agency in Networked Learning. Research in Networked Learning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36911-8_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36911-8_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-36910-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-36911-8

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