Spatial fluencies: acts of navigation and negotiation in the postdigital learning environment

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ABSTRACT Spatial fluency describes the ability and confidence of an individual to navigate and negotiate their experiences in a postdigital world. This paper reflects on teaching and learning experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and its aftermath, and on the volatile nature of social media, and the threats and opportunities afforded by AI. It argues that having digital skills and knowledge is not sufficient for educators, students or graduates to deal with challenging situations and opportunities in a volatile world of ubiquitous and pervasive media. Instead, spatial fluency establishes a multimodal framing for considering learning spaces, tools, and media and their configuration as productive environments. People need to be critical, creative and confident users of physical and digital spaces, tools and media, understanding them holistically as interconnected spaces. Active learning strategies can help students to navigate, negotiate, and enhance their experiences of multimodal spaces and develop their fluency through diverse practices. Several vignettes are presented that situate spatial fluency in terms of learner agency, spatial affordances, wayfinding and desire paths, and formalities. It is argued that spatial fluency, therefore, provides teachers, students and organisations with an alternative to deficit discourses centred on skills. At its core is developing a person’s agency to critically analyse the postdigital environment and its spatial affordances.