Sociomaterial Perspective Research Articles

Understanding Children’s Drawings as Sociomaterial Assemblages of Voice during Pandemic Times

During the COVID-19 pandemic, schools transitioned to online learning. Utilizing sociomaterial assemblages and visual methods alongside interviews to prompt children’s voices, we collected drawings from primary students at two Eastern Canadian schools to achieve a multimodal understanding of children’s online learning experiences. Younger children’s drawings reflected the issues with technology and lack of socialization, while older children’s depicted their enjoyment with online learning with the agency afforded by learning from home. We found that pedagogical creativity and innovation were essential to successful online learning. This research demonstrates the efficacy of a sociomaterial perspective on children’s drawings for eliciting children’s agentic voices.

Do innovative approaches to time allocation and timetable organisation provide a compelling alternative to traditional models?

ABSTRACT Innovative time allocation and timetable organisation can support the aim of providing students with individualised learning opportunities and deeper engagement with learning. Traditionally, time within schools is maintained and distributed through Western approaches to administration and organisation, which are socially and culturally produced and often deeply ingrained in practice. The turn to Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) in a growing number of international jurisdictions provides schools the opportunity to develop alternate time allocation and timetable organisational practices. To address the question, which is the title of this article, we have taken the socio-material perspective that there is a dialectical interplay of space, time and the lived experience of teaching and learning. This article’s question is derived from a larger qualitative New Zealand study of two schools; a secondary college, and a “junior college”. Participants included senior leaders, teachers and students who have a lived experience of alternative organisational approaches in open plan, flexible learning environments. This study explored the relationships between temporal and curricular organisational practices, pedagogy, and learning environments, whilst critically examining the underlying priorities and values these altered systems imply. This study makes a valuable contribution to innovative learning environments research as few studies focus specifically on timetable structures in this field. In conclusion, our analysis of findings indicates that progressive alternatives can make a compelling alternative to traditional models of temporal organisation.

Cloud ERP systems architectural challenges on cloud adoption in large international organizations: A sociomaterial perspective

This combined literature review and case employs a sociomaterial perspective to explore architectural challenges and countermeasures that BioOrganism, the case company, should consider in a decision to adopt a cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The case has experiences with an on-premises model, but not the cloud model per se. The study is designed with an element of case to provide a solid backdrop toward the sociomaterial perspective, which focuses on a reciprocal enactment between the cloud ERP systems architecture and the BioOrganism contextual surrounding. Six architecture challenges were identified: (1) data security, (2) data privacy, (3) network dependency, (4) system mobility, (5) vendor lock-in, and (6) scalability. Countermeasures that BioOrganism, and other large international organizations of similar nature, can take to mitigate risks from the six challenges are presented in the review.

Unintended consequences of technology in competency-based education: a qualitative study of lessons learned in an OtoHNS program

BackgroundFormative feedback and entrustment ratings on assessments of entrustable professional activities (EPAs) are intended to support learner self-regulation and inform entrustment decisions in competency-based medical education. Technology platforms have been developed to facilitate these goals, but little is known about their effects on these new assessment practices. This study investigates how users interacted with an e-portfolio in an OtoHNS surgery program transitioning to a Canadian approach to competency-based assessment, Competence by Design.MethodsWe employed a sociomaterial perspective on technology and grounded theory methods of iterative data collection and analysis to study this OtoHNS program’s use of an e-portfolio for assessment purposes. All residents (n = 14) and competency committee members (n = 7) participated in the study; data included feedback in resident portfolios, observation of use of the e-portfolio in a competency committee meeting, and a focus group with residents to explore how they used the e-portfolio and visualize interfaces that would better meet their needs.ResultsUse of the e-portfolio to document, access, and interpret assessment data was problematic for both residents and faculty, but the residents faced more challenges. While faculty were slowed in making entrustment decisions, formative assessments were not actionable for residents. Workarounds to these barriers resulted in a “numbers game” residents played to acquire EPAs. Themes prioritized needs for searchable, contextual, visual, and mobile aspects of technology design to support use of assessment data for resident learning.ConclusionBest practices of technology design begin by understanding user needs. Insights from this study support recommendations for improved technology design centred on learner needs to provide OtoHNS residents a more formative experience of competency-based training.Graphical abstract

How librarians and firefighters built a special library in Champaign, Illinois, USA: a community informatics story

PurposeThis paper aims to understand how a special library helped firefighters in Illinois navigate the digital revolution by evidencing the elements and forms of work that made its innovative services possible.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine the history of a special library through a community informatics lens, drawing from sociomaterial perspectives to highlight forms of work often invisible in digital innovation. Data was collected through documentary revision, oral histories and semi-structured interviews. Deductive-inductive coding and constant comparative analysis was used in the analysis.FindingsA historical narrative of the library between 1990 and 2021 highlights three sociotechnical innovations that assisted firefighters through the digital revolution: the facilitated collection, the co-created collection and the inside-out library. To develop these innovations the library drew from institutional relations, personal relations, grants, labor, knowledge of firefighters and technology. Various forms of articulation work brought these elements together to create innovative services.Originality/valueThe role of special libraries in addressing the digital divide has not been sufficiently detailed so far; this paper is a contribution in that direction. It also has practical value for professionals working in specialized libraries and information centers.

Theorising sociomateriality in online learning: cutting through the complexity

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the need to develop theory and practice in digital education. In this position paper, we expand on the research conducted in information systems (IS) on sociomateriality by applying it to online learning. The aim was to provide a theoretical underpinning for guidelines to reduce the complexity of social and material combinations in digital education. An overview of sociomateriality within IS research is provided, distinguishing between two sociomaterial perspectives to situate the research. A high-level review of student learning as the social and online learning as the material is applied to a four-quadrant model to unbundle the complexities within this space. Our perspectives are supported by feedback from a third-year information systems course that confirmed the merit of the model and broadened research in online learning. The model is further refined with a philosophical underpinning of Ackoff's four pursuits of humankind to provide recommendations for future interventions.

Orchestrating entangled relations to stretch the iron triangle: Observations from an LMS migration

A key strategic issue for higher education is how to maximise the accessibility, quality, and cost efficiency of learning and teaching (Ryan et al., 2021). Higher education’s iron triangle literature (Daniel et al, 2009; Mulder, 2013; Ryan et al, 2021) argues that effectively addressing this challenge is difficult, if not impossible, due to the “iron” connections between the three qualities. These iron connections mean maximising one quality will inevitably result in reductions in the other qualities. For example, the rapid maximisation of accessibility required by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a reduction in cost efficiency (increased staff costs) and a reduction in the perceived quality of learning experiences (Martin, 2020). These experiences illustrate higher education’s on-going difficulties in creating orchestrations that stretch the iron triangle by sustainably and at scale fulfilling diverse requirements for quality learning, (Bennett et al., 2018; Ellis & Goodyear, 2019). This exploratory case study aims to help reduce this difficulty by answering the question: What characteristics of orchestrations help to stretch the iron triangle? An LMS migration is an effective exploratory case for this research question since it is one of the most labour-intensive and complex projects undertaken by universities (Cottam, 2021). It is a project commonly undertaken with the aim of stretching the iron triangle. Using a socio-material perspective (Ellis & Goodyear, 2019; Fawns, 2022) and drawing on Dron’s (2022) definition of educational technology the poster examines three specific migration tasks: migrating lecture recordings; designing quality course sites; and, performing quality assurance checks. For each task, two different orchestrations – organized arrangements of actions, tools, methods, and processes (Dron, 2022) – are described and analysed. The institutional orchestrations developed by the central project organising the migration of an institution’s 4500+ courses, and the group orchestrations developed, due to perceived limitations of the institutional orchestrations, by a sub-group directly migrating 1700+ courses. Descriptions of the orchestrations are used to identify their effectiveness in sustainably and at scale satisfying diverse quality requirements - stretching the iron triangle. Analysis of these orchestrations identified three characteristics that are more likely to stretch the iron triangle: contextual digital augmentation; meso-level automation; and, generativity and adaptive reuse. Each of these characteristics, their presence in each orchestration, the relationships between these characteristics; linkages with existing literature and practice; and their observed impact on the iron triangle qualities is described. These descriptions are used to illustrate the very different assumptions underpinning the two sets of orchestrations. Differences in relationships evident in the orchestrations and which mirror the distinctions between ‘smooth users’ and ‘collective agency’ (Macgilchrist et al., 2020); and, industrial and convivial tools (Illich, 1973). The characteristics identified by this exploratory case study suggest that an approach that is less atomistic and industrial, and more collective and convivial may help reconnect people with educational technology more meaningfully and sustainably. Consequently this shift may also help increase higher education’s ability to maximise the accessibility, quality, and, cost efficiency of learning and teaching.

ERT as Mobile Learning by Necessity

The term as below Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) has been adopted worldwide. In practice, approaches to ERT have been contextual with diverse lecturer and student experiences owing to complex assemblages of sociomaterial practices. Approaches to ERT as mobile learning by necessity are understudied. The ‘pivot' to ERT was particularly challenging for those in resource-constrained environments. Lecturers not only had to redesign face-to-face courses for ERT but were designing for mobile learning based on their own resource constraints and that of their students. For many, this highlighted broader concerns for equity and social justice. The authors share case studies of two lecturers at Rhodes University, arguing that a sociomaterial perspective can assist researchers and practitioners to better understand contextual approaches to ERT. The article demonstrates concerns when designing mobile learning experiences and how lecturers' design journeys are entangled with the material, social and political.

Why do hotel frontline employees use service robots in the workplace? A technology affordance theory perspective

The rapid robotization of the hotel industry faces reluctance from frontline employees. This study aims to explore frontline employees’ intentions to use service robots in the hotel workplace. Combining technology affordance theory and socio-material perspective, the study conducted four experiments pre-pandemic, amid-pandemic, and post-pandemic to test the proposed framework. The results reveal that hotel employees, especially those with low collectivism (vs. high), prefer a room service robot with physical affordance to a concierge robot with cognitive affordance because the former offers more relative advantages and higher trust. This main effect remained the same both pre- and amid-pandemic. During the pandemic, the COVID-19 compliance of guests showed a significant interaction effect on the employees’ intentions to use service robots in the workplace. The study findings provide meaningful implications for hoteliers selecting the correct type of robot for adoption and encouraging employees to use service robots.

Exploring enactments of the big screen and the small screen in a Norwegian early childhood education and care setting

While much has been written about how to implement digital tools for learning and play in early childhood education and care, using a sociomaterial perspective this article seeks to explore what types of activities can be the outcome of appropriating different digital tools, and who or what defines these activities. Employing a sociomaterial perspective traditionally means a move from seeing the world merely as socially constructed to including the material artefacts in the construction of that world. However, herein there is a danger of overemphasizing what things do to humans and forgetting what humans do in the relationship. Through a sociomaterial lens, digital tools, children and adults all equally exist – but do they exist equally? In the case of digital tools in early childhood education and care, it is not merely a case of how digital tools are inscribed that defines what these activities may look like. Rather, it is necessary to account for how these activities are enacted by adults and/or children as free play or as part of a more institutionalized agenda, in addition to the objects themselves. Drawing on actor-network theory and using video ethnographic data from an early childhood education and care facility that has a strong information and communications technology profile, the focus is on how the digital tools, tablets and interactive whiteboards are enacted as different types of activities depending on the actors in the assemblage. Nuancing between different types of digital tools, as well as being sensitive to how both human and non-human actors influence an activity, can be useful for researchers and practitioners alike.

Joining Multiple Collaborations: Toward a Sociomaterial Perspective on Nuclear Waste Management between Society, Technology and Nature

The article develops a sociomaterial perspective on nuclear waste management by illuminating the role of geological formations and therefore ‘nature’ with respect to site selection procedures. Besides technical barriers (containers) and geotechnical barriers (filling materials), geological formations should serve as ‘natural’ barriers in their function as host rocks in order to isolate radioactive waste for thousands of years. Referring to empirical insights into the German procedure of site selection and ethnographic research on practices in a nuclear chemical laboratory, the contribution illustrates how humans and materials are interwoven in an alliance of multiple sociomaterial collaborations united by the task to isolate a toxic object—here, high-level radioactive waste. In this way, the article sheds light on how nature is addressed not only as a resource for an anthropocentric project but also as an active collaborator in order to master such disposal processes in the long run. Such a sociomaterial perspective aims to enrich sociotechnical considerations by emphasizing the role of nature as an integral part of nuclear waste management and by studying its complexity.

A Sociomaterial Investigation into Chinese International Students’ Navigation of a Doctoral Trajectory During COVID-19

Despite a vast body of scholarship delving into international students’ educational experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about the doctoral group's perception from a sociomaterial perspective. Utilizing a group of Chinese international doctoral students while drawing on semi-structured interviews, the article unpacks what and how matter and human forces are entangled with one another as bricolages to shape a disrupted doctoral trajectory. It reveals that, within working and social spaces, human agency and non-human matter mediate, forge and produce a doctoral trajectory embedded within a complex lived experience of responding to shifting dynamics during the pandemic. It also shows how doctoral students aligned material and social assemblages to construct sociomaterial bricolages that facilitate a restoration of relative stability. The study contributes to the literature of international doctoral education with a nuanced disclosure of its navigation as a continual process of mobilization, negotiation and construction emerging from the performative flow of sociomaterial practices. It concludes that a doctoral trajectory represents network operations of experiencing and accounting for, not just what humans do with matter, but what matter does to human thinking and action.

Teaching vocational pupils in their pyjamas: a socio-material perspective on challenges in the age of Covid-19

PurposeDue to the global outbreak of Covid-19, Swedish teachers in upper secondary education were forced to conduct emergency remote teaching. As of today, there is a stream of research that addresses digitalization in education in light of the pandemic. Previous studies show that the challenges with the sudden intensification of digitalization have been particularly challenging in practical and aesthetic subjects. The research question is as follows: What challenges did vocational teachers experience during the emergency remote teaching caused by Covid-19 and what emergent tactics can be identified in vocational teaching practice?Design/methodology/approachThe empirical data consists of (1) interviews with two vocational teachers and, (2) workshops with 25 teacher students from different vocational programmes that addressed vocational teaching during the Covid-19 crisis.FindingsEmergency remote teaching meant challenges due to the changed socio-material environment that cannot easily be transformed to a vocational teaching setting. The challenges were related to authentic situations and material, problem solving and dexterity. Tactics that emerged as a response to the challenges were mainly connected to attempts to mimic vocational practices.Originality/valueContributions include explaining specific challenges and possibilities in developing vocational competence when teaching is digitalised. Furthermore, it increases the understanding of the relationship between theory and practice in vocational education. By adopting a socio-material perspective on vocational competence, the authors enhance the understanding of the importance of a shared socio-material environment.

Soundtrapped? Socio-material perspectives on collaborative teaching within the music classroom

This article draws on a classroom project to explore the complexities of collaborative teaching within the music classroom, where a professional team collaborated to facilitate digital music-making at a lower secondary school in Norway during a student teacher practicum placement. The collaborative team, including in-service and pre-service teachers, researchers, and a professional musician, facilitated a composing project by means of the digital audio workstation (DAW) Soundtrap. The purpose was to shed light on the complexity and emergence of the collaborative music project; how material, structural, and educational conditions impacted the process; and the pre-service music teachers’ ways of handling a complex situation. The study was theoretically guided by a socio-material perspective, more specifically by complexity theory, and an abductive analysis was performed. In keeping with the nonlinearity and complex causality of socio-materialism and complexity theory, the researchers created three reflexive viewpoints: emergence, enabling constraints, and entanglements. The results show that technological and technical issues permeated the classroom work, making it difficult to separate social and material aspects of the project. Awareness of the entanglement of social, institutional, historical, and material dimensions of education thus can provide a useful framework for emerging music teachers’ professional development. In this way, our findings support the claim that music teacher education should aim at helping pre-service teachers prepare for encounters with complex and versatile educational situations.

Exploring the process of care for people who inject drugs in hospital settings

In recent years, hospitals have experienced alarming increases in admissions of people who inject drugs (PWID), which present unique challenges to the care process. Untangling the complexity of care can be difficult due to interactions that occur between human and non-human elements including hospital systems, policy, technology, time, and space. The purpose of this study was to explore relations between social and material elements within the acute care environment, to better understand how care is enacted and to identify novel approaches for improvement. Data collection and analysis utilized a practice-based approach informed by constructivist grounded theory and sociomaterial perspectives, which emphasized relationships between human and non-human elements. Data included observational field notes, interviews, and artifacts from 154 hours spent on acute medicine units of two hospitals in an urban setting in Ontario, Canada. Findings revealed that differing expectations, strained conversations, and various policies assembled to produce misalignments in care. Such misalignments included mistrust, suboptimal pain and withdrawal management, and frequent patient absences and/or discharge against medical advice. Care misaligned in ways that reflected both social and material elements, demonstrating a need for hospital staff and systems to challenge existing care models built around individual control and abstinence-informed practices.

Digital disruption in a state-controlled ecosystem: A sociomaterial perspective of public use of the internet under China's Social Credit System

This paper draws from sociomateriality in explaining how digital user behavior may be shaped by private, individual users of the internet (“netizens”), and how this behavior can be understood as an enactment between social and technological agency. Based on observation of, and interviews with, netizens in a large city in China, we suggest how the design and performance of digital disruption by Chinese netizens reflects the sociomaterial values that embody a collectivist sense of social harmony under China's state-controlled Social Credit System. This research is original in its use of actual user behavior, which we observed in a sample of Chinese netizens. We explain how these netizens created commercial opportunities on the internet by building and marketing their personal profiles. Yet our netizens demonstrated how this opportunity-seeking behavior nonetheless aligned with state rules for maintaining social harmony. The importance of our findings is in the apparent duality of behavior among our sample of netizens who presented their commercial activities as socially harmonious while seeking to build followers and earning income from their online activities. The study contributes to understanding this user behavior by suggesting how netizens may build substantial identities in one of the world's largest online communities that remains politically constrained. Implications for research and governance are suggested in understanding digital user behavior in and beyond China.

Social e-leaders in Frontline Service Industries: A Sociomaterial Analysis

Deskless workforces comprise more than 80% of the global workforce and many of these are found in customer facing service industries (e.g., retail, hospitality and healthcare). These frontline industries are often characterised by workforces lacking access to corporate email and in attempting to fill this communication gap, organisations are increasingly employing mobile technologies – including enterprise social media – to enable leaders to communicate with their teams. The consequence has been an increase in e-leadership via web 2.0 technology, about which little is currently known. Adopting a sociomateriality perspective and drawing on qualitative findings of 33 interviews with senior, mid-level and frontline leaders, we reveal how the entanglement of web 2.0 technology with formal leaders culminates in the emergence of three social e-leader types (avoidant, pragmatic, intrepid), and how their different configurations have implications for fulfilling a service-oriented leadership strategy. In doing so, we highlight the distinctive ways in which leadership in this context is enacted. We further identify conditions under which these social e-leadership practices are likely to emerge, highlighting factors affecting the degree of entanglement between the human and material.

The materialities and embodiments of mundane software: exploring how apps come to matter in everyday life

PurposeIn this article, the authors aim to explore mobile apps as both mundane and extraordinary digital media artefacts, designed and promoted to improve or solve problems in people's lives. Drawing on their “App Stories” project, the authors elaborate on how the efficiencies and affordances credited to technologies emerge and are performed through the specific embodied practices that constitute human–app relationships.Design/methodology/approachThe project involved short written accounts in an online survey from 200 Australian adults about apps. Analysis was conducted from a sociomaterial perspective, surfacing the emotional and embodied responses to and engagements with the apps; the relational connections described between people and their apps or with other people or objects; and what the apps enabled or motivated people to do.FindingsFindings point to three salient concerns about apps: (1) the need for efficiency; (2) the importance and complexity of human relationships and maintaining these connections; and (3) the complex relationships people have with their bodies. These concerns are expressed through themes that reflect how everyday efficiencies are produced through human–app entanglements; apps as relational agents; apps' ability to know and understand users; and future app imaginaries.Originality/valueThis project explores the affective and embodied dimensions of app use and thinks through the tensions between the extraordinary and mundane dimensions of contemporary techno-social landscapes, reflecting on how apps “matter” in everyday life. Our analysis surfaces the active role of the body and bodily performances in the production of app efficiencies and underlines the ways mobile apps are always situated in relation to other media and materialities.

Lecturer professional identities in gamification: a socio-material perspective

ABSTRACT Online gamification is an innovative educational practice, yet little is known about how the socio-material imbrications entailed in this pedagogical approach influence educator professional identities. Adopting a social-material sensibility to examine lecturer professional identities, this qualitative study mobilises visual-elicitation interviews and observations to understand the nuanced lecturer identity positions emanating from Kahoot! gamified practice in a Middle East college. Following a socio-material narrative analysis, the imbrication of people and Kahoot! reveals four distinct identity positionings underpinned by the material affordances and constraints of gamification. This study contributes to the growing body of research into how subject positions are manifested through the imbrications of human actors and materiality, revealing that the enactment of Kahoot! is not a neutral process, but one which may have transformative effects for lecturer professional identities in the higher education gamification context.

Material-Driven Architectural Pedagogy

Most contemporary architecture programmes use a pedagogical model in which students construct their design knowledge by engaging in an architectural project. Due to the size and complexities of the physical environments they study, students develop their design knowledge primarily by using representations of the material world. The learning opportunities afforded by the experience of materials hence are often overlooked. In this study, we seek evidence that material experiences have an agency on architectural teaching and learning. Using sociomaterial perspectives, we followed two architecture designbuild courses, analysed their students’ learning diaries, and contextualised them with the teacher’s pedagogical reflections. We found correlations between specific materials and specific knowledge, skills, and technological competencies and demonstrated how materials could be used as ‘learning agents’ in architectural education. The paper’s findings contribute to the development of a material-driven ped­agogy in which materials are used as ‘learning agents’ in architectural education.