The hybridisation of adolescents’ worlds as a source of developmental tensions: a study of discursive manifestations of contradictions

ABSTRACT The article explores developmental tensions in Finnish adolescents’ accounts of their different worlds. By understanding tensions experienced by students, educators can develop their pedagogical practices to address those tensions. Building on cultural-historical activity theory, we analysed 12 interviews of 8th graders, focusing on their experiences in six worlds: family, school, peers, digital, civic, and future activity. The adolescents experienced their worlds as mutually penetrating hybridised configurations. Hybridisation is a source of tensions. Using the method of analysing discursive manifestations of contradictions, we identified tensions ranging from dilemmas to conflicts, critical conflicts and double binds. These represented all the six worlds, with school being the host of the largest number of tensions. The school emerged as a site of conflicts, civic involvement as a source of hesitation and doubt, and future as a source of some degree of desperation. About half of the manifestations were hybrid, involving more than one world. The world of school was most highly hybridised, and the most hybridised was the relationship between school and peer activity. For these adolescents, the challenge is not just moving from one world to another; dwelling in one single setting such as the school means facing tensions generated by hybridisation. Tensions stemming from the intrusion into the school of other worlds cannot be suppressed but should be turned into drivers of expansive learning and development. Our findings are an invitation for the school to become involved in collaborative efforts to address the sources of tensions and transform the practices of schooling accordingly.


Introduction
Adolescence is a phase in the life span that is characterised by unique and rapid changes and transitions that generate both possibilities and challenges.Tensions and conflicts are an essential part of growth and development in youth.In this article, we argue that contradictions and tensions contain potential that should be turned into drivers and resources for learning and development.To work with this potential, we need to articulate and identify the tensions.In our study, adolescents themselves talk about the tensions they experience in their different worlds, to a significant degree as a consequence of the interpenetration and hybridisation of the worlds.By gaining a clear understanding of the tensions experienced by students, educators can develop their pedagogical practices to connect to and address those tensions.
The idea of the multiple worlds of adolescents is a fruitful starting point to examine the tensions in adolescents' daily lives.Phelan and her co-authors (Phelan et al., 1991;Phelan et al., 1998) carried out a research programme on adolescent students' movement between their multiple worlds.The authors identified three worlds, namely those of family, school, and peers.Their key finding was that the borders between the worlds are smoothly crossed by some adolescents, whereas they are difficult to cross or even impenetrable for others.
Focusing primarily on boundaries and transitions between the worlds, Phelan and coauthors treated each world largely as if a rather self-sustained and well-bounded entity in itself.Our ongoing research on the search for significance among 8th graders in Helsinki, Finland, prompts us to work out a different picture.Adolescents' worlds emerge as overlapping and mutually intruding or penetrating configurations.This invites us to shift our analytical focus beyond individual transitions, to how the adolescents deal with the hybridisation of their worlds, understood as collective activities.Like Phelan, we use the term "world" extensively.But instead of being interested in the experiences and transitions from an individual perspective, we explore the worlds as dynamically interacting collective activity systems (Engeström, 1999).
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines hybrid as "having or produced by a combination of two or more distinct elements", "marked by heterogeneity in origin, composition, or appearance" (Merriam-Webster, n.d.).The hybridisation of adolescents' worlds, understood as interpenetration or overlap of two or more different worlds, is a source of tension and conflicts.Just think of situations in which the world of social media penetrates the world of the school.Each world carries and nourishes its own motives.When worlds come together, motives often collide.
As Holland et al. (1998) point out, worlds are both objectively given and continuously figured by those who inhabit them.A figured world is "a socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others" (Holland et al., 1998, p. 52).Focusing on worlds rather than on individuals directs the researcher's gaze to the social arenas in which the objectively given and subjectively constructed aspects of development interact.
We study the multiple worlds of adolescents through the lenses of cultural-historical activity theory.This means analysing the transformative, expanding, boundary-crossing, and discontinuously moving nature of the worlds (Engeström & Sannino, 2010).Within the scope of activity theory, tensions and contradictions are seen as drivers of change and development (Engeström, 1996;Engeström & Sannino, 2011).By identifying and examining contradictions, it is possible to find opportunities for learning.
In the next section, we will discuss existing literature on multiple worlds and hybridisation in the lives of adolescents.We will then define our own conceptual understanding of adolescents' worlds and their hybridisation, and formulate our research questions.After that, we introduce our research setting and data, as well as the three steps of our data analysis.Correspondingly, we present the findings in three sub-sections, followed by a discussion and conclusions.

Adolescents' worlds and hybridisation in literature
The students' multiple worlds model (Phelan et al., 1991;Phelan et al., 1998) consists of the self that is in interaction with three worlds: family, school, and peers (Figure 1).By the notion of the world, Phelan and co-authors refer to "cultural knowledge and behavior found within the boundaries of students' particular families, peer groups, and schools" (Phelan et al., 1998, p. 7).The worlds contain "values and beliefs, expectations, actions, and emotional responses familiar to insiders".In everyday life, students may face many kinds of borders, named by Phelan et al. (1998, pp. 11-13) as sociocultural, socioeconomic, psychosocial, linguistic, gender, heterosexist, and structural borders.Depending on the individual situation, the worlds are either congruent or different, and students' transitions between them smooth or resisted.Correspondingly, different patterns of transition between the worlds may be identified (Phelan et al., 1998, pp. 14-15).
In many studies applying Phelan et al.'s model, the main interest has been similar to the focus of Phelan et al.'s (1991Phelan et al.'s ( , 1998) ) original studies, namely how students with various backgrounds navigate between their worlds, and how this is related to their success in school.Chhuon et al. (2010) analysed successful Cambodian American Figure 1.Model of the interrelationships between students' family, peer, and school worlds (Phelan et al., 1991, p. 228; reproduced with permission of the author).
students' interpretations on values and academically supportive features of their multiple worlds in relation to their pathways into the university.Kumi-Yeboah (2018) explored how immigrant students from Ghana combined and managed their multiple worlds to affect academic engagement, whereas Kiramba et al. (2020) focused especially on Ghanaianborn immigrant adolescent girls from a similar perspective, thus bringing forth the gender aspect.These studies reveal features linked to different worlds that may support or hinder young people's studying efforts and also how crossing boundaries between the worlds might be made smoother.Based on their findings, Chhuon et al. (2010, p. 51) suggest that in studies of immigrant populations, the unit of analysis should include families which may also experience discrepant worlds when supporting their studying children.
Phelan et al.'s model has also been used to analyse the study choices students make.Costa (1995, p. 315) approached "students' responses to school science as a result of congruency (or lack of it) between their worlds of family, peers, school, and the world of science and the scientific community."For the purpose of analysing students' enrolments in physics and chemistry courses, Lyons (2006) modified Phelan et al.'s model to contain the worlds of family, peers, school science, and mass media.Lyons (2006) pointed out that the boundaries of the worlds are porous and ill-defined.
Researchers have also sought ways of supporting students in navigating between their worlds.Cooper (2011) and colleagues used Phelan et al.'s model when developing their "Bridging Multiple Worlds Theory" to map how culturally diverse youth build pathways to college and careers.Gosine and Tabi (2016) used Phelan et al.'s model to explore the potential of Hip-Hop pedagogy to build bridges between the urban classroom and racialized, economically marginalised youth subcultures.
For the purposes of their study on international doctoral students, Yang and MacCallum (2021) presented an adapted version of Phelan et al.'s model.In their framework, there are three worlds: "personal world", "social world", and "research world".They emphasised the individual's agency and described the worlds as "interconnected and intertwined, partly contingent upon and partly independent of each other" (Yang & Mac-Callum, 2021, p. 4).
Some studies applying Phelan et al.'s model have focused on the construction of self and identity.Hemmings (1998) analysed how African American student achievers transformed their multiple selves as Black persons, as women and men, and as members of social classes in transitions between the worlds.Mims and Williams (2020) analysed how Black girls make meaning of their ethnic-racial identities within their multiple worlds, also by responding to the different messages they get about race.Based on their data, the teaching on race at school seemed to be one-sided and the stereotypical messages from peers often mirrored that, whereas some girls talked about more encouraging messages they got from their families.Abrams and Hyun (2009) analysed incarcerated male juvenile offenders' negotiated identities by taking into account the relationships of the correctional world and offenders' other worlds.The researchers noted, however, that the correctional adaptation processes were not related to the experiences of congruence between the worlds in any straightforward way.
Overall, studies using Phelan et al.'s model quite consistently focus on individuals and their transitions between the worlds.The relationships between the worlds as such have, however, largely remained outside the focus of these studies.Mims and Williams (2020, p. 773) actually note that in their study design they were unable to systematically explore the patterns of contradiction or congruence between the participants' social worlds and further research would be needed on that.We find the notion of hybridity useful for an analysis of the relationships of the worlds.Hybridity has rarely been used concomitantly with Phelan et al.'s model.An exception is a study by Wong (2010) who analysed a community-based youth centre as "a new and hybrid culture/space" that brought together Chinese American youth's worlds.
The idea of hybridity originates in biology, but it has been widely used to describe various kinds of linguistic, social and cultural phenomena (Ackermann, 2012).Cultural identities have been studied from the perspective of hybridisation by analysing how something new emerges when different cultural features are mixed (Asher, 2008;Boland, 2020;Mishra & Shirazi, 2010;Rosbrook-Thompson, 2021;Sarkar & Allen, 2007;Ward et al., 2018).
Hybridity can also be approached from the point of view of the interplay and blending of the different life contexts young people face.Gutiérrez et al. (1999) characterised learning contexts as immanently hybrid: a classroom, for instance, contains interconnected, official and unofficial, activity systems, with different objects, norms, and divisions of labour.Urrieta et al. (2011) analysed how an educational programme for youth offenders created a "hybrid figured world"neither a traditional college nor a traditional prison.
Besides the studies of Gutiérrez et al. (1999), Wong (2010), and Urrieta et al. (2011), it is difficult to find analyses of hybridisation of adolescent worlds.Hybridisation is still predominantly seen through the lens of individual identity formation, rather than as interpenetration of worlds understood as collective activity systems.The present study contributes to the filling of this very gap in the literature.Instead of individual identity formation, we analyse the hybridisation of adolescents' worlds as a source of developmental tensions.

Theoretical framework and research questions
In cultural-historical activity theory, Vasilyuk (1988) argues that the foundational core of a life-world is object-oriented activity.This means that a world is understood both as an objective material constellation and as a process or movement in which human beings the inhabitants of the worldactively shape and mold their objects and therefore also their world.The world is therefore essentially an activity system, or a constellation of activity systems connected to one another by a partially shared object.The dynamic structure of an activity system may be depicted with the help of Figure 2.
In line with for instance Costa (1995), Lyons (2006) and Yang and MacCallum (2021), we have modified Phelan et al's model to take into account the characteristics of the specific context of our study.Besides the three worlds in Phelan et al.'s model (family, school, and peers), we recognise three additional ones especially relevant in the Finnish context in question: the worlds of digital activity, civic activity, and future activity (Figure 3).In Finland as well as in many other countries, digital devices and the Internet have become an essential part of everyday life for most of the adolescents (e.g.Merikivi et al., 2016;OECD, 2017).The world of digital activity includes online and offline practices such as operating digital tools, participating in social media platforms, and engaging in digital games, videos, music and movies.As adolescents' lives are in many ways intertwined with events and issues in the surrounding society, we included in the model also the world of civic activity.When compared internationally, Finnish young people's societal participation is low, but politics and societal problems, for instance environmental issues, arouse interest and the general interest in politics has been somewhat growing (Mehtäläinen et al., 2017;Myllyniemi & Kiilakoski, 2019).Future activity is the domain of generating scenarios, imaginaries and plans pertaining to both one's personal future and to the future of the world.Recently educational researchers have expanded their focus from future orientation to actual futuremaking among youngsters (Erstad & Silseth, 2019).
The arrows between the worlds in Figure 3 depict potential interplay between the worlds.Yet the worlds are still represented as separate entities.This may be read as  our null hypothesis: hybridisation of the worlds is not yet shown.We assume that our empirical analysis will change the picture in this regard.
We use the concept of hybridisation to explore the challenges the interpenetration of the different worlds poses for adolescents' life and development.How do adolescents experience the penetration of digital activities into the world of the school, or the collision of civic activities with family or peer worlds?For us, the adolescents' accounts of lack of hybridisation are as interesting as the actual appearance of hybridisation.
Following Il'enkov (1977), Leont'ev (1978) and Vasilyuk (1988), we see contradictions and tensions as key drivers of change, development and learning.The experiencing of contradictions and motive conflicts may be empirically examined by means of identifying discursive manifestations of contradictions in adolescents' accounts of their worlds and activities (Engeström & Sannino, 2011).Our analysis is guided by the following two questions: (1) What kinds of discursive manifestations of contradictions do adolescents produce when talking about their worlds?(2) How is the hybridisation of the worlds expressed in the discursive manifestations of contradictions?

Research setting and data
The foundation of the Finnish education system is the nine-year obligatory comprehensive school that begins the year in which the child turns seven.The comprehensive school, including daily meals, textbooks, and transportation, is free of charge.The comprehensive schools in the city of Helsinki follow the principle of inclusion.The primary place of education for every pupil is the local school close to the pupil's home address.In all schools in Helsinki, general, intensified, and special support is provided to pupils if necessary.The instruction of special education students is increasingly organised within the general classes, and the pupils are provided the support they need.In Helsinki, 23% of students study Finnish as a second language, and 24% receive intensified or special support.The number of immigrant students has doubled during the past ten years.
Our study was conducted in a suburban area with about 20,000 inhabitants.In the key social indicators, the area is quite close to the average in metropolitan Helsinki.6.3% of the underage inhabitants are child welfare clients, which is one percent higher than in the whole city.18% of the inhabitants have a foreign mother tongue, compared to 16% in the whole city.13% of the inhabitants are recipients of social assistance (whole city 10.4%).The average annual income per inhabitant is €31,468, compared to €35,366 in the whole city.The unemployment rate in the area is 10.2%, one percent higher than in the whole city (City of Helsinki, 2020).
We conducted the study at a public comprehensive school.The school is mediumsized, with 500 students of whom 37% study Finnish as a second language and 38% receive intensified or special support.Most of the students lived in the school enrolment area, some commuted from different parts of the city.39% of all schools in Helsinki, including the school we studied, receive additional Positive Discrimination (PD) funding from the city, aimed at supporting equality and evening out of differences in wellbeing among the city districts.
We discussed our project with the principal of the school before applying for and receiving permission for the study from the city.We informed the principal that participants should be 14-15 years old adolescent students who represent the typical, heterogenous student population of their school.We wished to have 8th grade students as they would not be in their last year of the school and would not yet have to focus on choosing studies after comprehensive school.It was also important for possible follow-up that the students would continue in the same comprehensive school the next school year.The principal suggested a group of 8th graders as potential participants.We visited the school and met the potential participants of the study.Particular care went into ensuring that the given information about the purpose and progression of our research project was clear and understandable also for adolescents who speak Finnish as a second language.Informed consent was obtained both from the participants and their guardians who received information letters and consent forms.Participants were told that they could withdraw from the research project if they wished to do so without any negative consequences.
The overall aim of the research project is to identify and test ways in which adolescents can find and cultivate significance in their lives, understood as commitments and actions that connect the adolescents' interests with collective activities and projects for a just and equitable world.The project was implemented with the help of the Change Laboratory intervention method (Sannino et al., 2016;Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013).In this paper, we focus on the pre-interviews of the intervention.
The data analysed for the present article consists of 12 semi-structured initial interviews with 8th graders who voluntarily participated in the study.The interviewees included seven girls and five boys, all 14-15 years old at the time of the interviews.Some of the participants received special support in schooling but all participants followed the general curriculum of the school.Three of the interviewees studied Finnish as a second language and nine as a first language.Nine interviews were conducted before the Change Laboratory intervention sessions began in the fall of 2020.Three students joined in the intervention later and they were interviewed some four months after the others.
Three members of the research group interviewed the students face-to-face at school during the school day.In two interviews, a special education teacher was present as a silent observer at the request of the interviewee.Students who spoke Finnish as a second language were offered to have an interpreter present, but nobody wanted it.The length of the interviews varied between 15 and 53 minutes, the total length of the 12 interviews being 383 minutes.All interviews were transcribed by a professional transcriber and the total length of the transcripts is 44,721 words.
The interview structure was based on our expanded model of adolescents' worlds (Figure 3).In the interview, the adolescents were asked about the positive features and pressures they experienced in their six worlds.Typical questions about the world of the school were "What is best at school?" and "What is difficult at school?" Similar questions were asked about each world.Additional questions included for example "What would you like to do in school?"Interviewees were also asked about changes they had experienced or desired: "Has anything changed in your schooling?"and "Would you like to change something related to schooling?"For each world, we also asked about its connections to the other worlds.The interviews were audio-and video-recorded and transcribed verbatim.
Before the interview, the students were asked to create a poster of "my worlds" depicting their different worlds.We used the poster as a supporting prompt in introducing the interview themes.All the participants made the poster during the school day.They were asked to reflect on the things that are related to their worlds and to focus on issues that are important and relevant for them.In the interview situation, students had the poster with them.The interviewees were asked to tell about their poster at the beginning and during the interview.One student's poster is depicted in Figure 4 as an example.

Methods of analysis
As the first step in our analysis, we identified discursive manifestations of contradictions in the transcripts (Engeström & Sannino, 2011).This method of analysis has been used in several studies for analysis of intervention processes (e.g.Cenci et al., 2020;Montoro, 2016), interviews (Virtaluoto et al., 2016), open-ended questionnaire responses (Paju et al., 2018), narratives (Ivaldi & Scaratti, 2020), and written diaries and messages (Castelló et al., 2013;Dennehy et al., 2020).The method distinguishes four types of discursive manifestations of contradictions: dilemmas, conflicts, critical conflicts, and double binds.Key characteristics of the four types of discursive manifestations of contradictions are presented in Table 1.To identify discursive manifestations of contradictions, each of the four authors analysed the interview transcripts independently.Divergences in their analyses were reanalysed in the research group until consensus was reached.We found altogether 147 discursive manifestations of contradictions.As the second step, based on the primary or host setting in which a manifestation was located, we classified the manifestations into the six worlds depicted in Figure 3. Six out of the 147 manifestations could not be classified into these categories.These manifestations concerned the interviewee's relation to people or the world in such general or vague terms that we could not identify a specific world in them.
In the world of the school, we identified manifestations that concerned teaching, learning, school subjects, and social interaction that takes place in school.Manifestations about family mostly dealt with what the respondents would like to do with their families and what kind of difficulties they had at home.The peer world included manifestations related to friends and interactions with young people of the same age.We included in the peer world also group hobbies and leisure activities outside the school.The digital world contained manifestations related to the Internet, social media, games, and digital devices such as mobile phones and computers.In the future world, we identified manifestations related to dreams, fears and plans, including concerns about what one might do after graduating the comprehensive school.The world of civic activity contained often opinionated manifestations concerning topics such as news about world events, politics, racism, climate change, and sexual minorities, as well as possibilities of participation and influencing the society.
As the third step, we examined and identified cases of hybridisation of the worlds in the manifestations.As we classified the manifestations into the six different worlds, we identified manifestations that included references to more than the initial host world.After each discursive manifestation was classified into the host world, we reanalysed these potentially hybrid ones and identified the other world(s) involved in each case.
In this article, we present altogether 11 excerpts from the interviews of 10 different students.Two excerpts are from one student, but the other nine excerpts are each from a different student.The excerpts are presented without numbers or pseudonyms in order to protect the identity of the interviewees.
We illustrate our method with the help of Excerpt 1.In this excerpt, the manifestation of contradiction was first identified as a dilemma as it expresses hesitation between rejection ("for some strange reason") and acceptance ("in a way a good thing") of the rule of the "phoneless school".The manifestation was classified as belonging to the host world of school activity.The manifestation also deals with social media, the web, and mobile phones, which makes it a hybrid between the world of school and the world of digital activity.Well, it is in a way a good thing.
The discursive manifestation in Excerpt 2 was identified as a double bind.It is an expression of a dead end, a feeling of impossibility.As the interviewee was referring to politicians and influencing the society, this manifestation was classified as belonging to the host world of civic activity.As the interviewee brought in an explicit concern with the future ("perhaps after twenty billion universes"), the manifestation was classified as a hybrid between the world of civic activity and the world of future.
Excerpt Get a real job and quit fabricating useless stuff.We don't have any chance in this universe.Perhaps after twenty billion universes we may have, but not now.
The four researchers re-read independently the discursive manifestations of contradictions in order to identify hybridisations.In every phase of our analysis, the problematic cases were reanalysed and negotiated to reach consensus.

Identification of discursive manifestations of contradictions
We identified 44 dilemmas in the data, 30% of all the manifestations.The students' thoughts about the future were a frequent topic in the dilemmas.These dilemmas dealt with both the student's personal hesitation about their own future plans and worries about the world, for example climate change.
Excerpt 3 Well, I don't know.Perhaps climate change is such that it cannot be stopped anymore, so what will happen?And then, I don't quite know what I would want to do now.
Another central topic was the dilemmatic relation between civic participation and limited time or willingness to participate.On the one hand, interviewees felt it was important to be active in societal issues; on the other hand, they felt that there was not enough time and energy to actually participate.

Excerpt 4
So, a person wants to.Do you want to build homes for the poor?Yes.Are you going to build them?No.In my opinion it is a good thing, but would I do it?I don't have the energy.
Tolerance for different kinds of people and opinions and the right to be accepted as you are was one of the main themes in the dilemmas.Another theme concerned situations in which one has many friends but thinks that their number should be restricted in order to avoid problems.
We found 77 conflicts in the data, 52% of all manifestations.Many of the conflicts dealt with situations in which school practices and policies did not meet adolescents' needs and hopes.The absence of digital activity in school was a common source of conflicts.Conflicts also arose from fear of rejection or condemnation by peers or close ones regarding one's demeanour and opinions.Compared to dilemmas concerning the same challenge, conflicts were more aggravated and severe, openly talking about losing friends, being called names, bullying, social exclusion, and discrimination.Excerpt 5 is quite typical in that by using the passive form ("someone", "one") the interviewee seemed to avoid letting the conflict become too personal and emotional.
Excerpt 5 Well, if for example in Instagram someone puts a photo in there, like posts a photo.And then someone else comes and denigrates it or bullies in the comments there, saying that it is not a good photo or it is an ugly photo or something like that.One can be really hurt.And then one develops kind of pressures, and one may remove the photo or think that one does not like it anymore.
We found 20 critical conflicts in the data, 14% of all manifestations.These critical conflicts were partly related to the same topics as conflicts, but they contained openly personal and emotional involvement, expressing feelings like fear, anger, anxiety, and irritation.Critical conflicts were related to difficult relationships with peers, world events and rulers that caused severe anxiety, personal experiences of racism and discrimination, and personal thoughts that could not be expressed to others.Also, the erroneous assumptions made by teachers or people on the Internet on one's language proficiency or lack of it aroused critical conflicts.
In critical conflicts, quarrels and disagreements with peers took severe forms such as emotional and physical violence and harassment.The interviewees described themselves as either victims or witnesses.In Excerpt 6, we see a shift from the passive form to active personal narrative ("I was called … "), typical to critical conflicts.

Excerpt 6
The amount of all this homophobia, because many people call someone "homo" or "lesbian," as an insult.I'd say that the biggest difficulty is perhaps that kids do not understand much about this yet, maybe there isn't much instruction about such issues.Like what does it really mean if you shout that someone is homo because that person is doing something.Or for example the fact that I was called "a fucking whore" because I told someone that he should calm down a bit because he was shouting to everyone.[…] It is a bit like boys' toxic masculinity.
We found six double binds in the data, comprising 4% of the discursive manifestations of contradictions.Five of the six double binds expressed a hopeless or desperate view of the world and its future.This stance is exemplified in Excerpt 2 presented earlier.One of the double binds (Excerpt 7) was related to social exclusion among peers in the school.

Excerpt 7
Student: Well, for example, it is difficult to explain, but for instance when I am quite often alone, you know, in the school breaks.It would be nicer that for example a friend of mine would say, come and join us.It would be nicer if I could join in myself, and not so that I feel that they don't even want me there.It would be nice to feel that they would want you there for real, if they would ask you.Interviewer: You can explain this really well, at least I think so.You mean that they would not leave you to stay alone.Student: Yes, yes.Interviewer: That is very important.How do the teacher or other adult act in those situations in your opinion?Student: Well, they talk about it, but no student will ever take it seriously, they just continue it.They just tell one to join in.But a person who is shy doesn't dare anymore to join in and ask herself.Interviewer: Can you think of some good ways to act in such a situation?Would you have a suggestion?Student: How do you mean?Interviewer: What should be done in such a case, if one is a bit shy and … Student: Well, I cannot really do anything about it, I don't know how.Interviewer: I guess I'm thinking if you'd have some wishes for the teachers, for the adults at school, what they could do?Student: I don't know if they actually can, they cannot force them to take me in, or such.
To sum up, we found in the interviews all four types of manifestations of contradictions.The most common type was conflicts.The somewhat milder type, dilemmas, was clearly less frequent.This indicates that conflicts have an important presence in the lives of these adolescents.We will now examine how the manifestations can be classified into the different worlds of the adolescents.

Classification of the manifestations into the six worlds
Table 2 shows the distribution of the different types of manifestations of contradictions into the six worlds of the adolescents.In the table, the category "other" refers to the six manifestations that could not be classified into any of the six worlds.Table 2 illustrates the frequencies of the type of manifestations and how they are distributed to the worlds of adolescents.33% of the manifestations of contradictions were hosted by the world of the school.Both the world of peers and the world of civic activity generated 18% of the manifestations.Perhaps surprisingly, even the world of the future generated more manifestations (10%) than the world of the family, which generated the lowest number of manifestations (7%).
In school, conflicts were the most frequent type of manifestations, and the world of school also generated the largest number of critical conflicts.The civic activity was the most dilemmatic world.The world of the future generated most of the double binds.At the risk of over-simplification, we might say that for these adolescents school was a site of conflicts, civic activity was a source of hesitation and doubt, and future was a source of some degree of desperation.

Analysis of hybrid manifestations
In Table 3, the distribution of hybrid discursive manifestations of contradictions is presented as the portion of hybrids of the respective category of manifestations.For example, the hybrid conflicts hosted by the world of school numbered 24 out of the total of 33 conflicts in that world (24/33).
Almost half of all the discursive manifestations of contradictions (46%) were hybrid.Double binds were most hybridised (83%), and dilemmas least hybridised (20%).Conflicts and critical conflicts were in the middle, with approximately half of the manifestations exhibiting hybridisation.Among these adolescents, increased intensity of tension came with higher degree of hybridisation.
The world of school activity was most highly hybridised, with 69% of the manifestations exhibiting hybridity.The world of peers was also quite highly hybridised (46%).The world of the family was the least hybridised, with 20% of the manifestations exhibiting hybridity.
The hybridisation of the worlds expressed in the discursive manifestations of contradictions had a dual nature.In most cases, the adolescents talked about interpenetration, intrusion or overlap between two or more worlds.In some cases, however, they took up the lack of, or the need for, such interpenetration as a source of tensions.This dual nature of hybridisation expressed by the adolescents may be illustrated with the help of digital activity.Tensions were frequently located between the time the interviewee was spending in the digital world and the school's or the parents' attempts to restrict what they saw as excessive time spent in digital activity in school or at home.On the other hand, some interviewees also criticised the insufficiency of digital activity in the school.

Excerpt 8
Here [in the school] everything should be electronic.The books should be electronic.I mean in a way everything.At the moment they have here only the computers and those monitors.No, I mean those … well, it doesn't matter.
Another challenge related to the lack of hybridity in the world of school activity was the absence of topics that were significant to the adolescents.Many of the topics mentioned as particularly important to students were related to civic activity.For example, an interviewee pointed out that issues related to the LGBT community were not discussed in school as part of instruction but appeared in peer relations in negative ways, such as name-calling.Table 4 displays the distribution of different types of hybrid manifestations of contradictions among different combinations of the adolescents' worlds.Hybrids between school and peers were the most common combination (13 manifestations), followed by hybrids between school and digital activity (9 manifestations).
In most of the cases, hybridisation occurred between two worlds.There were also five manifestations that included hybridisation between three worlds.
Figure 5 displays the overall picture of hybridisation graphically, by means of overlapping ovals.Differently from Table 4, Figure 5 is constructed on the basis of total numbers of hybrids regardless of which one was the primary host world.For example, the overlap between the world of school and the world of peers in Figure 5 represents 23 hybrid manifestations between these two worlds.Relating to Table 4, these 23 are the sum total of 13 manifestations of "school/peers", 5 manifestations of "peers/school", 1 manifestation of "peers/school/civic activity", and 4 manifestations of "school/peers/ civic activity".
In Figure 5, the most hybridised relationship is the one between school activity and peer activity.The second most hybridised relationship is the one between school activity and civic activity.Importantly, only the worlds of peer activity and civic activity overlap with all the other five worlds.On the other hand, even the least hybridised world, the family, has overlaps with three other worlds.
We found no manifestations involving hybridisation between the digital world and the world of future.The interviews did include optimistic statements about the digital future, but digitalisation was not seen as a dilemma or conflict.The manifestations in which future was seen as out of control or destructive were not explicitly connected to the advance of digital technologies.Figure 5 may be compared with our initial null hypothesis presented in Figure 3.Our key finding is that the worlds interpenetrate and hybridise in ways that can best be represented as overlaps depicted in Figure 5. Interaction without hybridisation would be described as exchanges or relations between clearly separate entities.Such statements could in principle be also expressed as discursive manifestations of contradictions.Interestingly enough, we did not find clear instances of this type of manifestations in our data.Instead, we found ample evidence of hybridisation.Thus, the arrows of Figure 3 are not used anymore in Figure 5.

Discussion and conclusions
The main message of this article is that the idea of multiple worlds, combined with a rigorous framework for identifying discursive manifestations of contradictions, can be fruitfully applied to analyse developmentally significant tensions in the lives of adolescents.Our findings make it clear that for these adolescents hybridisation of the worlds is not merely a matter of isolated or incidental cases.It is a matter of pervasive and systemic interpenetration of the different worlds.In other words, facing different worlds is no longer just a matter of moving from one world to another.Differences, disparities and conflicts are frequently encountered while ostensibly dwelling in one single world, which in fact contains elements of one or more other worlds.This article extends the theoretical reach of the idea of adolescents' multiple worlds, thus far mainly applied in analyses of individual transitions between the worlds.Shifting the focus to dynamic relations and hybridisation between the worlds as collective formations and invoking the concepts of contradiction and tension open up new possibilities for the study of the challenges young people face in different cultural contexts.Analyses such as the one reported in this article offer a starting point for pedagogical development aimed at increasing the relevance of instruction by connecting to the tensions experienced by adolescents as a consequence of hybridisation.
We found manifestations of contradictions representing all the four types: dilemmas, conflicts, critical conflicts, and double binds.The fact that the most common type was conflicts indicates that experiencing, articulating and working out conflicts needs to be seen as an important challenge in the lives of these adolescents, both in and outside the school.
Manifestations of contradictions were generated by all the six worlds of the adolescents.The school hosted one third of the manifestations.The civic activity was the most dilemmatic world, whereas the world of the future generated most of the double binds.The findings indicate that for these adolescents school was a site of conflicts, civic activity was a source of hesitation and doubt, and future was a source of some degree of desperation.
Nearly half of all the discursive manifestations of contradictions were hybrid.Double binds were most hybridised, and dilemmas least hybridised, indicating that increased intensity of tension was connected to a higher degree of hybridisation.The world of school was most highly hybridised, with more than two thirds of the manifestations exhibiting hybridity.
Some critical conflicts, such as being called "a whore" (Excerpt 6), may be experienced as "cosmology episodes" in which "people suddenly and deeply feel that the universe is no longer a rational, orderly system" (Weick, 1993, p. 633).Weick shows that a cosmology event can also trigger extraordinary creative innovation (see also Sannino & Engeström, 2018).This is in line with Orellana's observation that hybridisation involves the possibility of "resolution of dialectic tensions and the emergence of something newsomething that we perhaps cannot even imagine" (Orellana, 2016, p. 91).
However, such creative and expansive resolution of tensions does not happen automatically.As Vasilyuk (1988) shows, it requires deliberate work of joint experiencing, making the tensions explicit and generating practical solutions that transform the activity.Sannino (2008) points out that the formation of personal sense is a shift from experiencing to action."Discrepancies in the experience of talk lead the subject to 'search for' a personal sense of an event.The search and formation of personal sense require material support and dialogical processes" (Sannino, 2008, p. 289).Leaving tensions to be handled by individual adolescents alone is a risk that can have unanticipated consequences.
Our findings pose a challenge to schools.The world of school activity was by far the most important source and host of manifestations of contradictions and specifically of hybridised manifestations.Tensions that emerge out of the intrusion into the school of the worlds of peer activity, family activity, civic activity, digital activity and future activity cannot be suppressed.They should be turned into drivers and resources of joint elaboration and expansive learning.While we acknowledge the ethical sensitivity and pedagogical difficulty of the task, we see our findings as an invitation for the school to become involved in outward-oriented collaborative efforts to address the sources of tensions and transform the practices of schooling accordingly.
Our analysis carries typical limitations of an exploratory study.The number of participants was low and the share of students having a foreign native language was higher in our sample than among the adolescent population in Finland.The present study focuses only on hybridisation expressed in discursive manifestations of contradictions in interview data.Evidence of tensions and hybridisation in other kinds of situations and other types of data, for example in recorded regular lessons, would be a topic of another analysis.
These limitations notwithstanding, we see our study as a step toward theoretically grounded and methodologically systematic analysis of developmental tensions generated by the hybridisation of adolescents' multiple worlds.In the future, the framework developed here needs to be implemented, validated, and further developed in studies that use larger data samples as well as longitudinal and interventionist designs.Such studies need to treat the adolescents as co-investigators and agents who can collaboratively transform their activities.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Adolescents' six worlds as spheres of activity.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4.One student's poster of "my worlds" (the speech bubbles are our translations of the original Finnish texts).

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Overview of the hybridisation of adolescents' worlds in the discursive manifestations of contradictions.

Table 2 .
Distribution of discursive manifestations of contradictions into the six worlds.

Table 3 .
Distribution of hybrid discursive manifestations of contradictions.

Table 4 .
Distribution of hybridised manifestations of contradictions among different combinations of worlds.