Bridging the Archipelago

Part I focuses on concepts and models of flow, the variety within which reveals several significant areas of debate and inconsistency in the existing literature. The totalising versus graduated nature of flow, the number, nature and significance of different components of flow, the relations between those components, and the specific interplay between skills, challenge and control, are just some of the areas of contestation explored in this part. Each chapter attends to specific forms of model (componential, channel, process) and seeks to integrate different perspectives and resolve some of the inconsistencies identified with respect to each form. This concluding chapter brings together the outcomes of these discussions within an interstitial model of flow, which nestles in the gaps and connections between models not only of the same sort but between different sorts of models. This interstitial model distinguishes between the activity process, the challenge process and the flow process, as well as between the flow process and the flow experience, while also accommodating different types of flow and diverse accounts of control (or lack thereof) in flow experiences. This chapter thus recognises the value and limitations of different models, and different types of models, as encapsulating partial and complementary constructs of flow, and presents an interstitial model that provides a more cohesive conceptual landscape of flow to facilitate more joined-up scholarship.