Learning landscapes: professional learning and the formation of coalescent space

For academics working in UK Higher Education, professional learning is a complex and messy endeavour requiring time and space. To maintain authenticity and credibility, academics are expected to be familiar with a range of knowledge domains that cut across various epistemic boundaries, often sitting outside of their subject discipline or teaching practices. This can suggest conflicting priorities in what academics can, should or want to learn, especially in a climate of managerialist targets and data-driven metrics.

Whilst time is often cited as a major barrier for academics to engage with professional development; space also plays a significant role in academics' professional learning. This professional learning space can be enacted, fluid, relational and emergent, constituted with spatial configurations that are physical, digital, psychological, and biological in character. These multiple spatial configurations do not interact with each other in isolation; they overlap, become entangled, and coalesce. They can operate in close proximity to each other or at a distance. Specifically, I suggest that these multiple and interconnected spatial configurations form a particular spatial configuration, which I have conceptualised as coalescent space. Furthermore, I identify four interrelated spatial properties that may explain why some spaces are more conducive to professional learning than others.