Christine Edwards-Groves

Ecologies of practices

This chapter proposes that a fruitful way to think about practices is to view them as living things. Thought of this way, practices are interdependent with one another, being connected in ‘ecologies of practices’. The key idea underpinning this approach is that practices themselves are embedded in ‘practice architectures’. This approach takes us beyond previous relational and ecological understandings of practices and offers a fresh perspective on the notion of ‘learning practices’. The value of these ideas is illustrated with findings from a current project involving a cluster of schools in rural Australia. This project is examining how practices of educational leadership, professional development, teaching and student learning connect with one another, with each influencing and being influenced by the others.

The multimodal writing process: changing practices in contemporary classrooms

This paper presents research exploring ‘writing and text construction’ practices in contemporary primary classrooms. In particular, the ways 17 teachers and their students engaged with technologies in the construction of classroom texts were investigated. The case studies presented prompt the necessity to extend more traditional understandings of classroom writing and the writing process. This paper challenges and broadens ‘what counts’ as classroom writing, and results reveal that the pedagogy of writing requires teachers to account for the collaborative dimension of constructing texts in writing instruction. Results challenge teachers to use technology to enhance students’ creative possibilities in the construction of new and dynamic texts and build learning about the elements of design into their instruction. It is argued that the prevalence of design, presentation and production in classroom writing lessons now demands that it be reframed as ‘the multimodal writing process’.

Leading practice development: voices from the middle

Leadership has long been acknowledged as a significant dimension in effective school functioning and, indeed, school leaders can play a substantial role in professional development of staff. Here we have centred on the practices of leading as opposed to the qualities or characteristics of leaders, and this is emphasised by our use of the term ‘leading’ rather than ‘leadership’. In this article we explicitly focus on the leading practices of practitioners we describe as middle leaders, those with an acknowledged position of leadership but also a significant teaching role. Here we present data from a cross-national study of middle leaders in Australian primary schools and Swedish pre-schools that investigates the leading practices of middle leaders in educational contexts. The article draws on interviews with 22 teachers who have been given the responsibility for leading the practice development of their colleagues; these interviews give voice to this distinctive group of school leaders. In particular, the article draws on the theory of practice architectures to examine the social nature of the language, activities and relationships of leading ‘in the middle’, and the particular conditions or practice architectures that enable or constrain the development of middle leading practices in education. From this analysis we conclude with a definition of middle leading that includes positional, philosophical and practice dimensions. This could then be used to inform the domains of higher education, policy development and school education globally where middle leading practices are well established.

Relational architectures: recovering solidarity and agency as living practices in education

This article will explore education, pedagogy and praxis (morally informed and committed action oriented by tradition, and ‘history‐making action’) through the lens of the ‘relational’. The article brings together empirical investigations of professional development and classroom teaching to explicate the role of this relational dimension, via the concept of ‘practice architectures’. The first section describes what is meant by the term practice architectures and introduces the notion of ‘relational architectures’ as a vehicle for understanding the crucial role relationships in education, including interpersonal relationships (between actors in social settings) and institutional relationships (within systems and organisations). The second section tests this notion of relational architectures by examining it in light of the day‐to‐day, living practices in cases of educational practice. The third section defends a position that education is compromised wherever the relational dimension in educational practice is not properly addressed, that failure to attend to the relational may empty education of its moral and social purpose. Further, failure to attend to the relational also threatens agency and solidarity among participants in those practices. In our view, restoring focus on the relational dimensions of education will sustain future educational and societal growth, and provide resources of hope for educators: a sense of cohesion of purpose, commonality of direction (solidarity), and a sense of collective power and control (agency).

Pedagogy, education and praxis

This Special Issue is significant for two reasons. It introduces the work conducted by an international research and professional education network which was established to extend theoretical conversations about Pedagogy, Education and Praxis in contemporary times. These dialogic networks trace the different traditions of theory, research and practice in education across international contexts and form the basis of this edition as a collaborative writing project. Second, the co‐creation of the articles in this journal presents prominent concerns facing educational practice and research from a truly international perspective. The differences between intellectual traditions from where the authors are situated provide accounts of what enables or constrains educators across the globe; for example how some European traditions of pedagogy are being challenged and perhaps even supplanted by Anglo‐American perspectives in educational research, practice and policy.

Pedagogy, Education and Praxis: understanding new forms of intersubjectivity through action research and practice theory

The Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) network is a cross-institutional, collaborative research programme which brings together researchers from Australia, Columbia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Caribbean, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. These researchers are investigating the nature, traditions and conditions of pedagogy, education and praxis and how they are understood, developed and sustained in different national contexts and various educational settings. The PEP international network emerged in 2005 out of a series of discussions about the ways in which the bureaucratization and de-professionalization of education were eroding the moral, social and political commitments that informed pedagogical practice until the recent past, and a shared conviction of the need for a form of educational research committed to reviving and restoring these commitments. This article outlines the PEP’s research programme, ‘Action Research and Site Based Education Development’, through the lens of the theory of practice architectures. This theory offers insights into the cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political conditions that shape practices, throwing light on contemporary educational issues and suggesting ways forward for site based education development.

Facilitating a Culture of Relational Trust in School-Based Action Research: Recognising the Role of Middle Leaders.

Abstract Practices such as formal focused professional dialogue groups, coaching conversations, mentoring conversations and professional learning staff meetings have been taken up in schools and pre-schools as part of long-term action research and development activities to improve the learning and teaching practices. The development of relational trust has long been described in the literature as pivotal for the ongoing ‘success’ of such research and development in sites. In this article, we attempt to re-characterise relational trust as it is accounted for by participants in action research. We present data from a cross-nation study of middle leaders from Australian primary schools and Swedish pre-schools. Middle leaders are those teachers who ‘lead across’; they have both an acknowledged position of leadership or responsibility for the practice development of colleagues and a significant teaching role. The larger study examined the practices of middle leaders; and in this article we draw on interview data from one of the case-study sites that illustrate how colleagues in schools recognise the role middle leaders have for facilitating action research and teaching development. This article specifically presents excerpts from semi-structured interviews with 25 teachers, three principals, three executive teachers and three district consultants. Interviewees described how nourishing a culture of relational trust and mutual respect are critical features in the change endeavour. For them, the practices of the middle leader who facilitated the action research were instrumental in developing trust for teacher development. Analysis of participant accounts revealed five dimensions of trust: interpersonal trust, interactional trust, intersubjective trust, intellectual trust, and pragmatic trust.

Learning as being ‘stirred in’ to practices

This chapter provides a ‘societist’ (Schatzki in Philos Soc Sci 33(2):174–202, 2003) account of ‘learning’ using the theory of ‘practice architectures’ (Kemmis and Grootenboer in Situating praxis in practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social and material conditions for practice. Enabling praxis: Challenges for education. Sense, Rotterdam, pp. 37–62, 2008; Kemmis et al. in Changing education, changing practices. Springer Education, Singapore, 2014). Drawing on observations of classrooms, schools and a school district, the authors argue, first, that people ‘learn’ practices , not only ‘knowledge ’, ‘concepts’ or ‘values’, for example. They suggest that learning a practice entails entering—joining in—the projects and the kinds of sayings , doings and relatings characteristic of different practices. The metaphor that learning involves being ‘stirred in’ to practices conveys the motion and dynamism of becoming a practitioner of a practice of one kind of another, like learning or teaching. Being stirred into practices suggests an account of ‘learning’ that elucidates the process, activity and sociality of learning as a practice.

Roads Not Travelled, Roads Ahead: How the Theory of Practice Architectures Is Travelling

This chapter asks how the theory of practice architectures is travelling, in terms of the way it has been used, primarily in this volume. The chapter (1) clarifies some key terms in the theory including (a) the relationship between practices and practice architectures, (b) the ideas of ‘enabling’ and ‘constraining’, and (c) the relationship between the theory of practice architectures and the theory of ecologies of practices. The chapter also addresses (2) the ubiquity of contestation and variation in the formation, conduct, reproduction, and transformation of practices and practice architectures to dispel the perception of ‘seamless’ harmony between practices and the practice architectures that sustain them. It examines (3) the question of agency and how it is evident in the formation and conduct of practices. Finally, the chapter addresses (4) the centrality to the theory of the notion of intersubjective spaces. The chapter concludes with some remarks encouraging critical use of the theory.

Leading from the Middle: A Praxis-Oriented Practice

Educational leadership has long been a focus of research and scholarship that focuses on effective education and school improvement. This has usually centred on the important practices of principals; but here we focus on the leading of those who are closer to the classroom—middle leaders. Middle leaders are those who have an acknowledged leadership position, but are also involved in teaching in the classroom. In this landscape, a prime role of middle leading is site-based staff and curriculum development. In this chapter, we discuss the features, characteristics and issues associated with leading from the middle, and we show how this is a mediated practice that is critical to educational development in school sites. It is mediated since the work of the middle leader is enabled and constrained by the cultural-discursive , material -economic and social-political arrangements exuding from policy and school personnel that are brought to bear on their practices. To navigate these arrangements, we will argue that the complex relational nature of this role demands practical wisdom, and the enactment of praxis .