Boundary crossing of discourses in pupils' chat interaction during computer-mediated collaboration

•We examine boundary crossing of discourses in pupils' chat interaction.•Boundary crossing of the pupils' discourses gave rise to hybrid spaces.•The hybrid spaces of chat interaction supported computer-mediated collaboration.•The findings reveal sociocultural tensions in boundary crossing of discourses.•The study unpacks the social, emotional, and cultural dimensions of chat interaction.

This article presents a case study of the computer-mediated interactions of 21 primary school pupils, that is, “chats” while they collaborated in writing a school musical script both inside and outside school. Drawing on a sociocultural perspective and on the notion of boundary crossing, the study investigates the pupils' discourses during their chat interactions. Specifically, the study examines the ways in which the pupils established and managed boundaries between various discourses during their joint online activity. Boundary crossing in the pupils' chat interactions was found to give rise to hybrid spaces where the discourses of schooling and everyday life intersected. Characteristic of these hybrid spaces was the continuous fluctuation of socio-emotional features that mediated the boundary crossing of discourses in the pupils' joint online activity. In these hybrid spaces of chat interaction, the pupils negotiated a common ground and gained mutual inspiration, trust, and belonging. The study also demonstrates sociocultural tensions in boundary crossing and how these both facilitated and challenged the pupils' computer-mediated collaboration. The study enriches present-day understanding of the social, emotional, and cultural dimensions of chat interaction in computer-mediated collaboration.