By Diana Saragi Turnip (UNSW), Carrol Besseling (UNSW) and Colin Simpson (Deakin University)
What if some of the most important lessons about working in the third space are the ones nobody formally teaches us?
This question shaped a recent TELedvisors network webinar conversation about the lived realities of working across higher education’s academic and professional boundaries in roles such as learning designer, academic developer, educational technologist and similar. The reflections in this post bring together the shared experiences and insights of those who took part.
Rather than beginning with definitions or job titles, we started with three simple words:
Nobody told me…
The chat immediately came alive. Participants reflected on managing up, becoming unexpected project managers, explaining repeatedly what our work involves, carving out roles that do not quite fit organisational structures, continually learning and discovering how much the work depends on relationships.
Different roles, institutions and career trajectories were represented. Yet the experiences people described felt remarkably familiar.
The work is relational, ambiguous and continually evolving
People may enter third-space roles because of their expertise in curriculum, assessment, learning design, educational technology or teaching. However, participants repeatedly described discovering that relational capabilities were equally important: listening, translating, negotiating, building trust and influencing, often without positional authority.
This reflects scholarship describing third-space practitioners as working across conventional academic and professional boundaries (Whitchurch, 2008). Veles and Carter (2016) similarly describe “borderless professionals” whose value lies partly in bringing different forms of expertise together.
Role ambiguity was another strong theme in the discussion. Participants described having to carve out their own roles and discovering that their job titles could represent very different types of work to their peers, while different titles could equally describe remarkably similar practices. Abblitt (2024) identifies considerable diversity in learning designers’ professional backgrounds, organisational locations and responsibilities. Simpson (2025) reports third space practitioners coming to the field from teaching in K-12, VET and corporate sectors, web and media production and even IT.
This led us to a question:
Is the third space something you are, or something you practise?
Whitchurch (2008) conceptualised the third space as an emerging territory spanning academic and professional domains. We find it useful to extend that thinking towards the idea of the third space as practice: how people actively cross boundaries, connect institutional spaces, translate between different perspectives and bring educational, disciplinary, technological and organisational knowledge together.
Rather than only asking, “Am I a third-space practitioners?”, we might also ask: “Do I recognise myself in this way of working?”
Moving between worlds
Third-space work also requires an in-depth understanding of the organisation itself: its culture, relationships, language, priorities, decision-making structures and informal networks.
During the webinar, Carrol captured this idea through Ratatoskr, the squirrel of Norse mythology who moves up and down the world tree Yggdrasil, carrying messages between worlds. The metaphor quickly sparked a flurry of responses in the chat, from squirrels and chameleons to mycelium and even a proposed “scurry of squirrels”, capturing how third-space practitioners adapt, connect and move across different environments.
Behind the humour was an important point.
Third-space practitioners move between these worlds. We connect people, translate knowledge for different audiences and work across strategy and implementation, pedagogy and technology, and policy and practice.
White et al. (2021) offer a useful parallel through their study of learning designers, whom they describe as hubs within socio-technical networks of activity. This resonates with the broader connective and boundary-crossing work described by participants in our conversation.
Perhaps Ratatoskr was not such an unlikely metaphor after all.
Then we changed the question
Towards the end of the conversation, we changed the prompt to consider the advice we would share with newcomers to the field:
Now I’d tell someone…
Participants encouraged others to find their community, build relationships, keep learning, have confidence, remain flexible, listen before prescribing and recognise the value of their expertise.
Something had shifted.
“Nobody told me…” looked back at what had been unexpected or difficult to navigate.
“Now I’d tell someone…” transformed those experiences into something that could be passed on.
Individual experiences became shared professional wisdom.
Knowing, doing and showing
Boreland et al. (2025) offer a useful framing through knowing, doing and showing. Rather than assuming that education and learning designers must first prove their expertise, they focus on how expertise already embedded in practice can be evidenced and made visible.
Third-space practitioners are already designing, translating, connecting, advising and enabling educational change. The challenge is not whether this work matters, but how its contribution is recognised, evidenced and resourced within institutional structures. Thorpe and Partridge (2026) found that, despite the growing third-space scholarship, its influence on institutional policy and practice remains limited.
So, what would we tell someone starting today?
Know what you bring. Keep learning. Learn the organisation as well as the education. Invest in relationships. Find your community. Make your contribution visible.
And that is our invitation to you.
If you work in third space roles, join the ASCILITE TELedvisors network or Learning Design SIG or local networks in your institution. Share what nobody told you, and what you would now tell someone else. Together, we can continue making third-space practice more visible, connected and valued.
References
Abblitt, S. (2024). Learning designers: A socio-material snapshot of the profession. In T. Cochrane, V. Narayan, E. Bone, C. Deneen, M. Saligari, K. Tregloan, & R. Vanderburg (Eds.), Navigating the terrain: Emerging frontiers in learning spaces, pedagogies, and technologies. Proceedings ASCILITE 2024. Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education. https://doi.org/10.14742/apubs.2024.1133
Boreland, J., Henry, T., & Sharpe, S. (2025). Knowing, doing and showing: A framework for evidencing education and learning designers’ practice in higher education. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 33, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi33.1210
Simpson, C. (2025). Educator Advisors in Australian Higher Education: Their Roles, Purpose and Contribution to Learning and Teaching [PhD, University of Sydney]. https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/34308
Thorpe, C., & Partridge, H. (2026). The third space in higher education: A scoping review. Higher Education Policy, 39, 16–35. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-024-00374-z
Veles, N., & Carter, M.-A. (2016). Imagining a future: Changing the landscape for third space professionals in Australian higher education institutions. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 38(5), 519–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2016.1196938
White, S., White, S., & Borthwick, K. (2021). Blended professionals, technology and online learning: Identifying a socio-technical third space in higher education. Higher Education Quarterly, 75(1), 161–174. https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12252
Whitchurch, C. (2008). Shifting identities and blurring boundaries: The emergence of third space professionals in UK higher education. Higher Education Quarterly, 62(4), 377–396. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2273.2008.00387.x