‘I Try to Remember That This Is Temporary’: Continuous Balancing in Remote Students’ Everyday Life

Abstract

AbstractThis paper focuses on the process of development in remote and hybrid learning contexts in university students’ everyday life. Development is seen as a change in the person-environment relationship and indicates the development of the whole system. To understand development, we need to look at everyday life and participants’ grounds for action in everyday practices. The process of development is explored from the systemic person-environment perspective using cultural-historical concepts. Our understanding of students’ everyday life and empirical research processes has been strongly inspired by the subject-scientific approach. The research material consists of descriptions from 39 university students’ descriptions about their everyday lives while studying at home. The students observed and wrote about the conduct of everyday life as part of their studies. In a student’s everyday life, development occurs in relation to multiple conditions and meaning structures, which—from the standpoint of the subject—are seen as possibilities for action and experience. The results reveal four general ways of relating to the surrounding conditions and possibilities. Further, the results highlight the role of open spaces and structures in development. Remote students’ four ways of relating to possibilities for action are (1) balancing, (2) floating, (3) paralysing and (4) redefining. The study brings critical insights into continuous balancing and regulating of the demands between different life scenes and highlights the crucial elements of technology-mediated remote life in general: participations, transitions and the paradox of flexibility.