Crossing complex boundaries: transnational online education in European trade unions

Abstract

AbstractCollaboration across boundaries in work and learning is increasingly a feature of networked organisation. We present a framework for analysing learning events as encounters across multiple boundaries of differing types, significance, role and severity. These boundaries may provide either/both obstacles to, and opportunities for, learning. Tutors and learners may negotiate these various boundaries with a variety of digital practices and artefacts. We apply this provisional framework of boundaries, artefacts and practices to the case of transnational trade union education, in which tutors and course participants negotiate a complex mix of boundaries. We identify ways in which practices and tools can have consequences for multiple boundaries and conclude that this approach provides a way to unpack some of the complexity of interactions in transnational learning situations and offers a framework to identify effective tools and practices.