The Postdigital Panorama

Conceptualising Higher Education Teachers’ Intermingled Identities in Australasia

Abstract

University teachers are in the midst of a messy and entangled postdigital era. They face a constant stream of data and increasingly visible teaching as a consequence of digital media and AI spaces. This prompts the need for identity work to reconsider the personal, professional and societal meanings of the role of teachers in a world where people and machines are becoming further interwoven. Narrowing it down to social media spaces that encompass context collapse, it is becoming increasingly difficult to draw a line between personal and professional facets of life. Higher education teachers, who contribute to social media, construct fluid, greatly changeable and intermingled identities. The current study aims to conceptualise the practices and roles that may guide these emerging identities using a theoretical vignette as a tool. The presented case can initiate the discussions on who we are and who we are becoming in the current realities and prompt questions about learning and teaching in the networked society.