Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times [1st ed.] 9789811569258, 9789811569265

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Kathleen Mahon  Christine Edwards-Groves Susanne Francisco Mervi Kaukko  Stephen Kemmis Kirsten Petrie Editors

Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times

Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times

Kathleen Mahon · Christine Edwards-Groves · Susanne Francisco · Mervi Kaukko · Stephen Kemmis · Kirsten Petrie Editors

Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times

Editors Kathleen Mahon Department of Educational Research and Development University of Borås Borås, Sweden Susanne Francisco School of Education Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga, NSW Australia Stephen Kemmis School of Education Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga, NSW Australia

Christine Edwards-Groves School of Education Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga, NSW Australia Mervi Kaukko Faculty of Education and Culture Tampere University Tampere, Finland Kirsten Petrie Te Huataki Waiora School of Health University of Waikato, Hamilton New Zealand

ISBN 978-981-15-6925-8 ISBN 978-981-15-6926-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

Questions about pedagogy, education, and praxis have long been faced by individuals and societies in global, national, and local contexts. This book, Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times, explores critical questions about education that have concerned researchers in the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) international research network for over 15 years. Such questions have provided PEP researchers with scope, and direction, to study the conditions and possibilities of and for education, including those associated with understanding and developing the double purpose of education—helping people to live well in a world worth living in. Taking this up as a core principle, this book provides a qualitative meta-analysis of an international body of work that aimed to advance theoretical, methodological, and practical issues and challenges concerning pedagogy, education, and praxis. Chapters capitalise on the “practice turn” (Schatzki 2001) to theorise different dimensions of educational research and practice—researching, leading, teaching, student learning, and professional learning—extending its relevance across multiple fields, global interests, disciplines, and paradigms with renewed importance in the light of current global uncertainty, disruption, and precariousness. In the first half of 2020, when this book was in the final stages of publication, humankind was grappling with a global crisis, unlike anything many of us have ever lived though. COVID-19 was something we all experienced in unique ways, both as individuals and as members of communities whose lives were “dictated”, “disrupted”, or “diverted” by varied, redesigned, and contextually specific historical, cultural, economic, social, and political arrangements. Times have always been uncertain, and education always critical, yet as the world is confronted with many uncertainties, as for example in facing the COVID-19 pandemic, hopeful insights and new practices have emerged as people have found ways to respond positively, respectfully, and ethically. In responding to the rapidly changing circumstances that such critical times bring, researchers and educators across the globe are fearful of a return to the global capitalism that characterised the pre-COVID-19 world. But, in many respects, hope prevails. In the light of the urgency that a crisis like this pandemic has thrust upon humankind, perhaps what has emerged is a new global power to act, to build new alliances and forms of solidarity, new expressions of agency, and a stronger sense v

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of social activism by which we can pull together to respond to a world impacted by political unrest, the rise of nationalism, the globalised treatment of educational data (e.g. literacy and numeracy testing), the eco-crisis and the climate emergency, threats to personal security and health, rampant social injustice, and the displacement of many groups on grounds of race, culture, gender, (dis)ability, sexual preferences, or socio-economic status. In this light, perhaps the emergence of individual and collective confidence to act will forge new frontiers in educational research paving a stronger united activist way forward to address the other great crisis that throws its shadow over our times: the climate emergency that threatens the extinction of thousands of species in the community of life on Earth, including our own. Education and educators were not immune to the impacts of the pandemic, and there has subsequently been much discussion about what education is and should be in the light of what has been (and still is) an unprecedented global event. The practices of educators, like those of healthcare professionals for instance, have been subjected to closer-than-regular scrutiny and exposure; COVID realities have seen educators grappling with decisions related to “good” practice. And as veils were removed, the practices of educators perhaps have become more appreciated as parents take on homeschooling for example, and what counts as “essential work” is rethought. Teachers have also been among the essential workers who went to school to teach the children of other essential workers, in the face of controversy over the health risks to themselves and their students, and sometimes putting their own health at risk. It is therefore a critical time for education, but, as this book demonstrates, education and the practices of educators are critical regardless of specific events. It is also a timely reminder that while COVID-19 may have generated a sense of uncertainty for those involved in education, many members of our communities—the homeless and unemployed, many indigenous peoples, and refugees, for example—live uncertain lives every day, and they are among the groups that have been more vulnerable to the virus than others. In this crisis, they will be joined by more people whose lives and livelihoods have been fractured by the economic crisis as well as the health crisis; in many ways, the fabric of society, fraying from its core, weighs heavy on the minds of educators. Under such conditions, our responsibilities as educators are intensified, making more pressing, and more relevant, the explicit focus of this book on praxis-oriented education. While we educators have been challenged to consider what education will look like post-pandemic, and regardless of how the world innovates in its response, it is beholden on us as professionals to recognise the broad mandate we have as educators, and ensure that as professionals we take a lead in our communities to help people to live well in a world worth living in. While Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times does not specifically address issues raised as a result of COVID-19, it does provide a timely opportunity to cast a critical gaze on educational research in unstable times. As PEP researchers continue to address complex societal concerns, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, the core of their work will return to understanding the broad complex of education practices—researching, leading, teaching, student learning, and professional learning—and what this means for individuals and societies. These domains of education, as it is argued, cannot be understood without

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considering particular methodological imperatives and perplexities for educational research particularly in times of uncertainty. Moreover, taking up new methodological and practical challenges associated with researching pedagogy, education, and praxis under rapidly changing global conditions, researchers across the globe must wrestle, with agility and flexibility, with the complex ethical, theoretical, and practical concerns confronting individuals and societies. And they must do so, in the light of practising new practices themselves. This tack is necessary since the conditions for education are dynamic—new practices are moving far and fast, quickly springing up and fading away, spanning hybrid online and offline sites, and reaching participants experiencing considerable practical life difficulties. The work presented here provides critical insights into theoretical and methodological approaches through which educators (teachers, leaders, professional developers, researchers) can make sense of the conditions that shape their decision-making and practices, and the impact these can have on learners and communities. Critically, it raises new challenges and new questions for education and reveals possibilities for exploring new practices that have emerged from such times of uncertainty. Thus, the challenge of researching educational practice in an uncertain world means asking new questions and tackling new challenges by considering: What are the new imperatives for education? What is the mandate for pedagogy, education, and praxis in precarious times? How might practice-based research be conceived and constituted as an activist project? How should ethical and political considerations be understood and addressed? What methodological approaches are possible and needed, and which kinds of research collaborations are necessary and appropriate? Which enduring principles of pedagogy, education, and praxis should hold fast? In committing to interrogating such questions, we envisage new directions and impetus in educational research, directions that alert us to re-examine the double purpose of education—to help people to live well in worlds worth living in. Wagga Wagga, Australia Hamilton, New Zealand Wagga Wagga, Australia Borås, Sweden Tampere, Finland Wagga Wagga, Australia

Christine Edwards-Groves Kirsten Petrie Stephen Kemmis Kathleen Mahon Mervi Kaukko Susanne Francisco

Reference Schatzki, T. (2001). Introduction: Practice theory. In T. Schatzki, K. Knorr Cetina, & E. von Savigny (Eds.), The practice turn in contemporary theory (pp. 1–14). London: Routledge.

Acknowledgements

As editors, we warmly acknowledge the work and dedication of all who, participating in the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) international network over the years, have contributed to the findings reported in this book. You have made many contributions, large and small, to the formation and transformation of the theoretical ideas, the practical work, and the strategic aims of PEP. Finally, we pay tribute to everyone, within and beyond PEP, who has honoured the ideas presented in these chapters by reading and critiquing drafts as they were being prepared. With our thanks and appreciation Paljon kiitoksia [in Finnish] Tack so mycket [in Swedish] Tusen takk [in Norwegian] Bedankt en waardering [in Dutch] Gracias y aprecio [in Spanish] Ng¯a mihi maioha [in M¯aori] Kathleen Mahon Christine Edwards-Groves Susanne Francisco Mervi Kaukko Stephen Kemmis Kirsten Petrie

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Contents

1 Education for a World Worth Living In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mervi Kaukko, Susanne Francisco, and Kathleen Mahon

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2 What is Educational Praxis? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kathleen Mahon, Hannu L. T. Heikkinen, Rauno Huttunen, Tess Boyle, and Ela Sjølie

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3 Research that Facilitates Praxis and Praxis Development . . . . . . . . . . . Mervi Kaukko, Jane Wilkinson, and Lill Langelotz

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4 Critiquing and Cultivating the Conditions for Educational Praxis and Praxis Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian Hardy, Kirsten Petrie, Anita Norlund, Ingrid Henning Loeb, and Kiprono Langat 5 Teaching as Pedagogical Praxis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Kemmis, Christine Edwards-Groves, Rachel Jakhelln, Sarojni Choy, Gun-Britt Wärvik, Lisbeth Gyllander Torkildsen, and Charlotte Arkenback-Sundström

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6 Leading as Shared Transformative Educational Practice . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Christine Edwards-Groves, Jane Wilkinson, and Kathleen Mahon 7 Collaborative Professional Learning for Changing Educational Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Anette Olin, Susanne Francisco, Petri Salo, Michaela Pörn, and Gunilla Karlberg-Granlund 8 Critical Praxis for Critical Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Kirsten Petrie, Stephen Kemmis, and Christine Edwards-Groves Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

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Contributors

Charlotte Arkenback-Sundström University Sweden

of

Gothenburg,

Gothenburg,

Tess Boyle Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Australia Sarojni Choy Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia Christine Edwards-Groves Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia Susanne Francisco Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia Lisbeth Gyllander Torkildsen Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden Ian Hardy University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia Hannu L. T. Heikkinen University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland Ingrid Henning Loeb University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden Rauno Huttunen University of Turku, Turku, Finland Rachel Jakhelln Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway Gunilla Karlberg-Granlund Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland Mervi Kaukko Tampere University, Tampere, Finland Stephen Kemmis Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia Kiprono Langat Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia Lill Langelotz University of Borås, Borås, Sweden Kathleen Mahon University of Borås, Borås, Sweden Anita Norlund University of Borås, Borås, Sweden Anette Olin University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden Kirsten Petrie The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand Michaela Pörn Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland xiii

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Contributors

Petri Salo Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland Ela Sjølie Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Gun-Britt Wärvik University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden Jane Wilkinson Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.5

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 8.1

Ecologies of Practices. (Adapted from Kemmis et al., 2014b, p. 52 with permission from Springer Nature) . . . . . . . . . . . The theory of practice architectures. (Adapted from Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 38 with permission from Springer Nature) . . . . . . . Web of conditions forming the practice architectures of “online pedagogy”. (Adapted by Charlotte Arkenback-Sundström, and reproduced, with permission, from Mahon, 2014, p. 306) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zooming in on part of the web of practice architectures of “online pedagogy”. (Adapted by Charlotte Arkenback-Sundström, and reproduced, with permission, from Mahon, 2014, p. 306) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teaching and learning as ecologically connected in a pedagogical practice. (Adapted from Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 165 with permission from Springer Nature) . . . . . . . . . . . A theory of education incorporating the theory of practice architectures. (Adapted from Kemmis, 2013, p. 41 with permission from Stephen Kemmis and the Finnish Education Research Association) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Professional learning for praxis development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theory of education incorporating the theory of practice architectures. (Adapted from Kemmis, 2013, p. 41 with permission from Stephen Kemmis and the Finnish Education Research Association) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49 93

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110 157

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List of Tables

Table 2.1

Table 5.1

A characterisation of educational praxis. This summary is an attempt to distil the key ideas evident in the PEP work (2008–2018) addressing the question, what is educational praxis? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Different kinds of interactional trouble that occur in classrooms, prompting repair (after Edwards-Groves & Davidson, 2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Education for a World Worth Living In Mervi Kaukko, Susanne Francisco, and Kathleen Mahon

Abstract In a rapidly changing world, education is vital for humankind and for the world itself. Education is a contested space. This chapter takes a view of education as being for the good for each person and for the good for humankind. The five broad questions that the book explores are outlined in this chapter, as are key concepts addressed throughout the book, including pedagogy, education, bildung, practice, and praxis. We also briefly introduce the theory of practice architectures. The chapter concludes by providing an introduction to the chapters in the rest of the book.

Introduction Education is a major concern for communities around the globe, not least because of its role in the formation and transformation of societies and the human beings who comprise them. There are important and urgent questions that researchers, educators, and policy makers need to consider and address in order to ensure that education today and for the future meets the needs and challenges of our times. This book asks and attempts to respond to such questions in order to better our understanding of, and capacity to, transform education. Education, as Kemmis, Wilkinson, Edwards-Groves, Hardy, Grootenboer, and Bristol (2014) have defined it, refers to the “process by which children, young people, and adults are initiated into forms of understanding, modes of action, and ways of relating to one another and the world that foster (respectively) individual and collective self-expression, individual and collective self-development, and individual and collective self-determination and that are, in these senses, oriented towards the M. Kaukko (B) Tampere University, Tampere, Finland e-mail: [email protected] S. Francisco Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia K. Mahon University of Borås, Borås, Sweden © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Mahon et al. (eds.), Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5_1

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good for each person and the good for humankind” (p. 26). This calls for scrutinising what it means to educate and study education, recognising the role of education in today’s changing world and striving to discern what the “good” consists in. Yet in an “era of schooling” (Kemmis, 2018), it is not always clear how teaching, learning, researching education, and leading (in) educational institutions lead to “good” outcomes. Indeed, what constitutes the “good” is being increasingly defined by ideologies of neoliberalism and managerialism. It is not clear whether and how the current trend of the systematisation of educational practices will benefit the individual or humankind in the short or long term, or if it will result in irrational, unreasonable, unsustainable, unjust, and undemocratic schooling practices. What is clear is that “the good” is not a fixed construct, nor is it universally agreed upon. Indeed, what is widely agreed upon is likely to change with time. For example, much in our societies is built on illusions of unlimited resources and constant growth, but we now understand that both are false hopes. Education needs to change for changed times and conditions, as the recent coronavirus pandemic has made abundantly clear. Considering what constitutes education for the “good”, and indeed “good” educational practices, in a time of constant change has been explored over the last decade by the Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis (PEP) international research network. This network, established in 2006, has brought together educational researchers from Australia, the Caribbean, Colombia, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The participating researchers share a deep concern about issues such as the bureaucratisation and deprofessionalisation of education, and the erosion of moral, social, and political commitments that inform educational practice and practice development (Edwards-Groves & Kemmis, 2016). They also share a conviction that such commitments need to be revived (EdwardsGroves & Kemmis, 2016). The PEP network has provided a collaborative crossinstitutional and cross-national platform for exploring these issues and other aspects of education practice and practice development through a research program aimed at investigating the nature, conditions, and traditions of pedagogy, education, and praxis, and how they are understood in different settings. Since its formation, the PEP network has been guided by three kinds of aims for its research: 1. Theoretical aims concerning the exploration and critical development of key concepts and associated understandings, from different educational and research traditions, of pedagogy, educational science and educational studies, and social and educational praxis and practice; 2. Practical aims concerning the quality and transformation of praxis in educational settings, including schools, teacher education, and the continuing professional development of teachers in relation to contemporary educational problems and issues as they emerge in a variety of educational contexts; and 3. Strategic aims of (a) encouraging dialogue between different traditions of theory, research, and practice in education;

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(b) enhancing awareness about the origins and formation of our own (and others’) presuppositions and understandings as participants in such dialogues; and (c) fostering collaboration and the development of networks between scholars interested in these problems and issues across traditions. These aims have been addressed through a focus on the following five broad questions: 1. What is educational praxis? 2. How, in different national contexts, is good professional practice (“praxis”) being understood and experienced by teachers? 3. How, in different national contexts, is good professional development (praxis development) being understood and experienced by teachers? 4. How, in different national contexts, are the changing cultural, social, political, and material conditions for praxis and praxis development affecting the educational practices of teachers? 5. What research approaches facilitate praxis and praxis development in different international contexts? The aim of this book is to provide a response to each of these questions based on an integrative review (Torraco, 2005) of publications produced by the network between 2008 and 2018. In doing this, we hope to help extend and deepen current understandings about the most crucial challenges for education in these neoliberal times and thus inform and stimulate forward looking discussions among and between educators, researchers, policy makers, and educational communities about education today, at local, national, and global levels.

A Conversation of Traditions What has transpired within the PEP network, through endeavours to address the questions listed above, is what we might call a conversation of traditions with respect to theory and practice in education. A conversation of traditions is not about supporting a conservative, unchanging state of being, nor a “return to the good old days”. On the contrary, a conversation of traditions, approached reflexively, is an opportunity to raise awareness of how our current thinking about, our research into, and our doing of education through everyday practice and praxis in various settings have been and are being formed and shaped. In other words, it is a means of interrogating the origins and formations of our own understandings, presuppositions, and traditions. When diverse perspectives are put into conversation with each other, there is potential for greater understanding of contemporary educational issues and about how they might be addressed. A greater understanding of different traditions and ways of engaging with the world arguably allows for the development of new, forward thinking approaches,

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and resources for hope that may lead to positive transformations for individuals and for societies. Through the network’s conversation of traditions across our diverse countries, cultural and institutional contexts, and approaches to understanding education, researchers participating in the network have come to appreciate how differently a number of concepts that are central to our work are understood and used in different contexts. Not surprisingly, given the ways concepts and language travel and evolve, words that are commonly used across contexts, such as “pedagogy”, “education”, and “praxis”, have sometimes turned out to mean different things in different contexts, while different words appear to have been used across contexts to capture more or less the same idea or phenomenon. PEP researchers from the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, for instance, have drawn attention to the European intellectual traditions (and internal debates about) concepts like praxis, pedagogy, and bildung (in Swedish, bildning). In the following paragraphs, we briefly introduce some of the concepts that are foundational for many discussions throughout the book.

The Theory of Practice Architectures While a range of theories have informed the research upon which this book is based, the theory of practice architectures features prominently. This theory was developed by Stephen Kemmis with PEP colleagues (see Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014) drawing particularly on Schatzki’s (2002) notion of site ontology (related to the situatedness of practices in time and space). The theory of practice architectures has been used as a theoretical, as well as an analytical, device in much of the research discussed in this book, as a means to better understand practices and the practice architectures that shape them across various educational contexts. This understanding, as demonstrated in some empirical examples provided in the chapters, can inform actions that ultimately lead to the transformation of educational settings and education itself. The theory of practice architectures is an account of what practices (such as teaching, learning, leading, researching) are comprised of, and how they both shape and are shaped by the arrangements (referred to as “practice architectures”) that exist in, or are brought to, or are newly created in, a site of practice. A site can be a physical site, such as a school or a classroom, or a site in space and time, such as the site of a daily morning tea.1,2 According to the theory of practice architectures, practices are composed of sayings, doings, and relatings that hang together in a distinctive project (or end/telos). The practice architectures that are present in a site are combinations 1 See

also Kemmis and Edwards-Groves (2018), Kemmis (2019), Kemmis and Rönnerman (2016), Kemmis and Heikkinen (2012), Kemmis, Wilkinson, and Edwards-Groves (2017), and Mahon, Kemmis, Francisco, and Lloyd (2017). 2 See Schatzki (2002) for a more detailed explanation of the site of a practice.

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of the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements that together prefigure practices by enabling and constraining the sayings, doings, and relatings of the practice. In the semantic dimension, cultural-discursive arrangements in a site prefigure what is said in and about the practices (sayings). For instance, the language used, the issues discussed, and the ideas thought about on a building site are likely to be different to the language used, the issues discussed, and the ideas thought about in a courtroom. In the dimension of physical space-time, material-economic arrangements prefigure what is done in a practice (doings). The material-economic arrangements include physical arrangements in a site (such as a lesson taking place outside under a tree or inside in a lecture theatre); scheduling arrangements such as a school timetable; artefacts such as an assessment task; the availability of resources such as an electronic whiteboard; or staffing arrangements for particular classes. In the dimension of social space, social-political arrangements prefigure the relationships in a site (relatings). Social-political arrangements are realised in relation to issues of power and solidarity. For instance, hierarchical organisations are often marked by the exercise of role-related power. It is important to note that the practice architectures in a site prefigure, but do not predetermine, particular practices and particular actions. In addition to focusing on arrangements that enable and constrain the practices that happen in a site of practice, the theory of practice architectures recognises the agency of individuals and groups to make changes to pre-existing arrangements. In some sites, like prisons and army camps, the practice architectures are such that agency is tightly constrained. In many sites, however, this is not the case, and individuals (and especially groups of individuals) are able to make innovative transformations. Even in sites where pre-existing conditions are tightly constrained, changes can and will be made—consider for instance, the French revolution (1789–1799); the present day “Me Too” movement; or the climate change action protests. Each of these has been started by individuals resisting the way things are arranged in their semantic space, physical space-time, and social space. Many of the arrangements in established, institutionalised spaces have a long history, and they effectively constrain practices that challenge them. Yet they do not necessarily stop the change and transformation of practices completely. For example, while the apparently fixed, harmful, and somewhat hidden arrangements in societies that turned a blind eye to practices of harassment of women, the “Me Too” movement celebrated and encouraged resistance and the overthrow of those old practices, powered by new oppositional practices, enabled by different arrangements like social media. The “Me too” movement transformed from small-scale resistance in local sites into a world-changing practice, at the same time, changing old arrangements and establishing new ones played out in different ways at local sites across the world. On a smaller scale and in the context of education, individuals make changes in their educational settings regularly. For instance, teachers can change the cultural-discursive arrangements by implementing a syllabus differently in their everyday work; change the materialeconomic arrangements by organising the desks in the classroom in a different way; or change the social-political arrangements by facilitating discussions about school values that include previously excluded groups.

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Theorising practices and arrangements through a practice architectures lens is to see them as separate only in theory: in reality, practices and arrangements are intertwined and interdependent. In relation to education, for example, it is easy to see how the practices of (students’) learning, teachers’ professional learning and teaching, leading, and educational researching rely on and make one another relevant. Sometimes, the relationship between practices is more obvious and more designed (e.g. the relationship between teaching and learning), while sometimes the relationship is more implicit and more organic. Moreover, sometimes there might not be a relationship where we expect to find one (e.g. when the student does not learn despite the teachers’ practices of teaching). The interdependence of the practices of learning, teaching, professional learning, leading, and educational researching has been termed the education complex (see Kemmis et al., 2014, pp. 51–52). References to this can be found in Chap. 3 of this volume.

Praxis and Practice The theory of practice architectures highlights, then, that practices are not solely dependent on the experience, intentions, and actions of individuals (or groups of individuals). Practices are also shaped and conditioned by practice architectures and circumstances beyond each person (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). Each person can, through their practices, shape their circumstances and act “rightly” (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). The intentional and morally committed actions taken by individuals and collectives in an endeavour to “act rightly” within these circumstances can be called “praxis”. Consider the climate change protests, for example. The praxis of the children, young people, and adults involved in these protests is shaped by their interpretation of the “good” (or what is necessary) for the survival of a habitable planet now and in the future. Their practices are guided by their commitment to “doing the right thing”—a conception of praxis. Their practices consist of their sayings, doings, and relatings, based on their reasoning and knowledge of the best possible way to act in their current situation amidst the arrangements and circumstances that they encounter. A detailed discussion of the origins and different interpretations of praxis, and specifically educational praxis, will follow in the next chapter. However, here we highlight two points. The first is the critical importance of praxis in the research we are discussing in this book. The word “praxis” appears in each of the five research questions. Praxis has been central to PEP work because it signals a kind of action that is so necessary and relevant in education today: action that is informed and morally committed rather than action that is rule-following or merely technical or instrumental. The second point, as will be elaborated further, is that the way praxis is interpreted and used in the theory of practice architectures carries traces of, but is also distinct from, the various versions of praxis found for example in the writings of Freire (2014), Habermas (1973), and hooks (1994) and other feminist educational research

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(e.g. Fine, 2016; Cahill, Quijada Cerecer, & Bradley, 2010), all of which use the word “praxis” to highlight issues particular for their fields, but also issues shared more broadly, such as questions about social justice. On the other hand, some research texts and languages use practice and praxis synonymously. These dilemmas are further discussed in Chaps. 2 and 3 in this volume.

Education, Pedagogy, and Bildung The field of pedagogy has evolved in a centuries-long, contested intellectual history. In earlier times, classical notions of pedagogy invoked the “cultivation” (or “civilisation”) of the individual person imagined as a person who would play an active role in the life of a society or state. In later times, the elitist connotations of “cultivation” were recognised and extirpated, and pedagogy was conceptualised in more democratic terms, as the formation of individual persons who could play active roles in the cultural, economic, social, and political life of their communities and the state. In both conceptualisations, the notion of “cultivation” or “formation” invoked in pedagogy applied to the upbringing of the child and also the child’s continuing education as a young person and adult. With roots in the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth, the more conservative conception of pedagogy as “cultivation” contested with the more social-democratic conception of pedagogy as “formation”, both in relation to the individual person and to the nature of the community and society being envisaged. Pedagogy emerged as a distinct discipline, separate from philosophy in general (where it stood alongside the field of politics) in the very late nineteenth century, following the enactment of mass elementary education in most Western countries. The separation of pedagogy from philosophy was largely the consequence of its establishment in university departments for the education of teachers; the newly invigorated field of pedagogy was intended to provide the justification for what and how teachers should teach. After mass elementary education was enacted in European countries, gradually from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, states had the problem of finding and preparing teachers to staff the rapidly expanding numbers of schools. Thus, at the very end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, the first professors of pedagogy (in the Anglophone world, “education”) were appointed in European universities, with the task of providing practical answers—in the form of the content of a teacher education curriculum—to the problem of what knowledge, skills, and values teachers need in order to teach. And thus, faculties or departments of pedagogy (or education) emerged as separate from philosophy departments. Although the discipline of education in Anglophone countries has essentially the same history as the discipline of pedagogy, the word “education” has a “high” and a “low” meaning in English. In English, the high meaning of education is similar to what is meant by pedagogy, but the discipline of education (using the high meaning) is often described as “education(al) studies” or “education(al) science” or (in some meanings of) “philosophy of education” to indicate that it is the discipline that is being

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referred to. The low meaning of “education” is similar to the notion of schooling, as in “I sent my daughter to X school to get an education”. The widespread use of the low meaning of education is often confusing to European listeners, who realise that it refers to schooling, rather than to education as a discipline. For those listeners, the low use of the term begins to function as a kind of screen that obscures the more specialist, high meaning of the term as, for example, in the discipline of education studies. In the United Kingdom, the United States, and a variety of other Anglophone countries around the world (including Australia, Canada, and New Zealand), the discipline of education also emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the rise of teacher education through teachers’ colleges and universities. Since the late nineteenth century, there has also been contestation about how education, as a discipline, should be defined. In general, however, it is described in terms of a double purpose for education, aimed on the one hand at the individual, and on the other towards the society. In the PEP network, we have come to highlight this double purpose as the aim of education to help children, young people, and adults to live well in a world worth living in (see Kemmis et al., 2014). The intellectual debates within the disciplines of pedagogy and education in Europe and the Anglophone countries have been similar at a very broad level. Both involve contestation over the extent to which pedagogy or education aims to reproduce or transform society, and whether it should function to retain existing social hierarchies (principally in the interests of the aristocracy or the wealthy as opposed to the mass of people, for example) or to transform them (e.g. to produce more democratic conditions in a society). In Europe, the evolution of the discipline of pedagogy has produced very elaborate pedagogical theories of each kind, with a general trend through the twentieth century towards more socially democratic forms of education. In the Anglophone countries, by contrast, the elaboration of “educational” theories was often “exported” to other so-called foundational disciplines— educational psychology, sociology of education, history of education, philosophy of education—with the consequence that these “foundational” disciplines became unmoored from overarching educational (pedagogical) theory, and frequently subjugated, as inferior sub-specialisms, to those other disciplines (psychology, sociology, history, philosophy). In the Nordic countries in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, ideas of pedagogy have been sustained by the long-standing Nordic ideals and traditions of bildung and folk enlightenment (or folk bildning). Although in most parts, these traditions share a common focus on an organic and evolving relationship between the individual, the community, and the whole of humanity, there are also differences. The folk enlightenment movement has been, from its origin in the late nineteenth century, oriented towards education of the masses and education for citizenship, but its roots in the rationalistic idea of enlightenment (eighteenth century) highlight a set of commonly agreed, more or less universal virtues which individuals should have (Breznika, 2017). The “folk”-addition means that the possibility to be “enlightened” should be available for all, not just an (educated) elite. Bildung, especially allgemeinbildung, also refers to a basic overall education for all but highlights the need

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to strengthen each individual’s own skills and capacities. Both bildung and folk enlightenment aim at providing not only knowledge but education for “sentimental attitudes, fundamental ways of valuing and basic aesthetics, moral and political attitudes” (Breznika, 2017, p. 72). The ideals of bildung and folk bildning have been fruitful in furthering the relationship between the needs of individuals and collective interests (Rönnerman, Salo, & Moksnes Furu, 2008, p. 23). We acknowledge that both have also been criticised to some extent. In particular, conversations about bildung have been criticised for the lack of clarity about what basic education should cover and whose values should be followed. Folk enlightenment has also been criticised, for example, for its exclusive messages: if we educate for citizenship, should we exclude those who cannot, for a range of reasons, live up to the expectations of (contributing) citizens? Traditions of bilding include collaborative practices for learning (study circles, for instance) to support the growth of individuals. As well as supporting the development of relationships of trust between those involved, they also support trust in the state and its institutions (including schools and teachers). The ideals and practices of participation and democracy (Larsson, 2001), characteristic of the arrangements of study circles (horizontal relations, recognition of diverse identities, deliberative communication and action, internal democratic decision-making) are somewhat reinvented in communities of practice (e.g. Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002) and professional learning communities (Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006). It has been argued that these traditions and the practices established within them reflect a trustful attitude towards, and relationship to, human growth and education, schools as institutions, and teachers as professionals (Salo & Sandén, 2016; see Chap. 7, this book). It would be possible to sketch a somewhat similar story from nineteenth century Britain, Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand about the rise of adult, community, workers’, and popular education through various political parties, unions, and workers’ associations. These organisations had their roots in powerful political commitments to the education of workers for participation in the political life of their countries. Certainly, adult, community, and popular education developed under the influence of various kinds of progressive and critical pedagogies (Dewey in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Freire in the mid- and late twentieth), but—in Australia, for example—they were frequently more various and contested, and less securely anchored in institutions supported by the state (by comparison with the Nordic local government departments of bildung, responsible for libraries, art museums and adult education, as well as for schools). It is thus less clear that the Anglophone countries developed a shared practice tradition of adult, community, workers’, and popular education, parallel to the Nordic traditions of bildung and folk enlightenment. It must be said, however, that university departments of adult, continuing, popular, and community education in the Anglophone world frequently aimed to nurture and sustain more coherent practice traditions in these fields.

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Chapters of the Book We referred earlier to the work of the PEP network as “a conversation of traditions”. This book is itself a conversation of traditions—it describes how different ideas (like “pedagogy”, “education”, and “praxis”) are differently understood from the perspectives of the authors’ different intellectual traditions, and it is also a reflexive product of those conversations, aiming to reach beyond our individual horizons towards a larger collective perspective. This includes intellectual, philosophical, cultural, methodological, and educational traditions, both existing and emerging. The book draws on a body of work produced by more than seventy PEP researchers dedicated to examining pedagogy, education, and praxis in eight countries. After more than a decade of researching and conversing in relation to pedagogy, education, and praxis, we felt that the time was ripe to take stock of what had been achieved, to critically reflect on what we have been doing, and to look into the future and consider where our focus should be for the next decade. In other words, this book pulls together the research findings of the various projects comprising the PEP research program and invites new voices to enrich the future conversation. The discussions presented in the subsequent chapters, as alluded to above, are based on an integrative review (Torraco, 2005) of over 200 publications (including articles, books, doctoral theses, and published conference papers). The analytical process involved a group of twenty-three PEP researchers working in small crossnational teams, with each team reviewing work on one of the five research questions above, collaboratively and systematically analysing the publications relevant to their respective question over a two-year period. Along the way, authorial teams shared their analyses with one another and the wider family of PEP researchers, all of whom provided critical feedback. Each chapter represents a culmination of this work; each offers a synthesis of key findings and ideas generated through/in the corpus of PEP research in relation to a specific research question (sometimes going beyond the question), and a discussion of any interesting tensions and new insights and questions that emerged in the collaborative review process. We acknowledge that in any attempt to synthesise ideas and insights across so many studies, it is difficult, try as we might, to avoid glossing over nuanced differences, divergent thinking, and tensions across and within contexts. The next chapter, Chap. 2, lays the groundwork for the book by addressing the first research question, namely, “What is Educational Praxis?” The chapter highlights the importance of the moral-political dimension of educational activity and, taking a phron¯esis-praxis perspective, introduces “educational praxis” as a way of understanding and responding to this. Among other things, the chapter explores the forming, self-forming, and transforming nature of educational praxis and calls for attention to social justice issues in educators’ daily work. After conceptualising educational praxis, the focus of the book shifts to the various theoretical and methodological underpinnings of research approaches that have been used to not only understand but also facilitate educational praxis. These are discussed in Chap. 3, Research that Facilitates Praxis and Praxis Development.

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Chapter 4, Critiquing and Cultivating the Conditions for Educational Praxis and Praxis Development, examines the underlying conditions that impact on praxis and its development. Some of these conditions are general and global, like the impact of neoliberalism, immigration, and responses to climate change, while others are more explicitly educational, such as the impact of educational policy on teachers’ possibilities for praxis. The remaining chapters “zoom in” (Nicolini, 2013, pp. 219– 223) on specific practices in the field of education. Because research related to both teaching and leading has been undertaken in response to the research question, “How in different national contexts is good professional practice (praxis) being understood and experienced by teachers?”, our review findings on these two aspects of good professional practice are presented separately. Chapter 5, Teaching as Pedagogical Praxis, relates to student learning and teaching practices in early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary, and vocational education sectors. Chapter 6 addresses Leading as Shared Transformative Educational Practice in its exploration of the multidimensionality of leading in and for education. Chapter 7 discusses Collaborative Professional Learning for Changing Educational Practices, highlighting the crucial role of collaboration for transforming education in professional learning. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a framework for the development of such professional learning. Finally, Chap. 8, Critical Praxis for Critical Times, provides a provocative reflection on the conditions facing education and educational praxis in contemporary times. Drawing on the key ideas presented across the chapters reviewing the work of the PEP network, it comments critically on local, national, and global conditions that challenge educational practice. It concludes by advocating for critical educational praxis as foundational for living well in a world worth living in. Although all of these chapters are based on an integrative literature review, this book is not a literature review: it can be seen as a story of the exploration of the five research questions listed above, of what is important within these, and of what still remains to be explored. It sheds light on and responds to the present state of affairs regarding education, highlighting both the challenges and possibilities. It shows what praxis, good educational practice, and good professional learning may look like in contemporary times. In light of the constant state of societal change (which has been acutely highlighted for us in the present time of the coronavirus pandemic), it is difficult to imagine what education might look like one hundred years from now. Will there be robots in classrooms? Will there be classrooms at all (during the coronavirus pandemic, many classrooms already look very different from the way they looked even a few months ago)? Will there be equal opportunity for future learners, and will our current choices expand or diminish their opportunities? Will education continue to be mainly aimed at the “good” for humankind, or will the aims be extended to better address the non-human world? Reading the predictions made by futurists years later shows the futility of trying to predict the future. Although we may not be able to answer these questions, we seem to be at the crossroads, metaphorically speaking, in terms of the direction that contemporary societies are taking. We believe and hope that a hundred

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years from now, education will still aim for “good” for the individual as well as for the world (human and non-human) at large, and that the next generations keep questioning the meaning of “good” and “good for humankind”.

References Brezinka, W. (2017). Education and pedagogy in cultural change. New York: Routledge. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9781315110653. Cahill, C., Quijada Cerecer, D. A., & Bradley, M. (2010). “Dreaming of…”: Reflections on participatory action research as a feminist praxis of critical hope. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 25(4), 406–416. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109910384576. Edwards-Groves, C., & Kemmis, S. (2016). Pedagogy, education and praxis: Understanding new forms of intersubjectivity through action research and practice theory. Educational Action Research, 24(1), 77–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2015.1076730 Fine, M. (2016). Just methods in revolting times. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 13(4), 347– 365. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2016.1219800 Freire, P. (2014). Pedagogy of hope. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Habermas, J. (1973). Theory and practice. Boston: Beacon Press. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. Kemmis, S. (2018). Educational research and the good for humankind: Changing education to secure a sustainable world. Keynote lecture at the 50th Anniversary Seminar of the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, 7. 6. 2018. https://ktl.jyu.fi/en/current/news/180524-ed-research-and-thegood_23.pdf. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2017). Roads not travelled, roads ahead: How the theory of practice architectures is travelling. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Exploring education and professional practice through the lens of practice architectures (pp. 239– 256). Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2018). Understanding education: History, politics and practice. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., & Grootenboer, P. (2008). Situating praxis in practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social, and material conditions for practice. In S. Kemmis & T. J. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp. 37–62). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense. Kemmis, S., & Heikkinen, H. (2012). Future perspectives: Peer-group mentoring and international practices for teacher development. In H. L. T. Heikkinen, H. Jokinen, & P. Tynjälä (Eds.), Peergroup mentoring for teacher development (1st ed., pp. 160–186). New York: Routledge. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9780203115923-24. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S. (2019). A practice sensibility. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-98132-9539-1. Larsson, S. (2001). Seven aspects of democracy as related to study circles. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 20(3), 199–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370110036073 Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mahon, K., Kemmis, S., Francisco, S., & Lloyd, A. (2017). Introduction: Practice theory and the theory of practice architectures. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Exploring education and professional practice through the lens of practice architectures (pp. 1–30). Singapore: Springer.

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Nicolini, D. (2013). Practice theory, work, and organization. An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rönnerman, K., & Kemmis, S. (2016). Stirring doctoral candidates into academic practices: A doctoral course and its practice architectures. Education Inquiry, 7(2), 27558. https://doi.org/10. 3402/edui.v7.27558 Rönnerman, K., Salo, P., & Moksnes Furu, E. (2008). Action research in Nordic countries—a way to see possibilities. In K. Rönnerman, E. Moksnes Furu, & P. Salo. (Eds.). Nurturing praxis: Action research in partnerships between school and university in a Nordic light (pp. 21–37). Rotterdam: Sense. Salo, P., & Sanden. T. (2016). Finland: Trust under pressure. In D. Flink (Ed.), Trust and verify. The real keys to school improvement (pp. 101–130). London: UCL Institute of Education Press. Schatzki, T. R. (2002). The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Stoll, L., Bolam, R., McMahon, A., Wallace, M., & Thomas, S. (2006). Professional learning communities: A review of the literature. Journal of Educational Change, 7, 221–258. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10833-006-0001-8 Torraco, R. J. (2005). Writing integrative literature reviews: Guidelines and examples. Human Resource Development Review, 4(3), 356–367. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484305278283 Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Chapter 2

What is Educational Praxis? Kathleen Mahon, Hannu L. T. Heikkinen, Rauno Huttunen, Tess Boyle, and Ela Sjølie

Abstract This chapter explores the question “What is educational praxis?” based on a review of theoretical and empirical research undertaken by the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) international research network over the past decade. A book series produced by the network in 2008 explored this very question in relation to a range of educational sites and national contexts. Six key themes emerging from this work were outlined in the first of the books in the series, Enabling Praxis: Challenges for Education. In short, the themes concerned agents and agency; particularity; connectedness; history; morality and justice; and praxis as doing (Kemmis and Smith in Enabling praxis: challenges for education. Sense, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2008b). Using these six themes as a point of departure, we present a view of educational praxis as a kind of educational practice that is informed, reflective, self-consciously moral and political, and oriented towards making positive educational and societal change; it is context-dependent and can therefore take many forms. We also explore the forming, self-forming, and transforming nature of educational praxis and explain its relevance at a time when instrumental, managerialist, and neoliberal rationalities continue to dominate global and local education narratives.

K. Mahon (B) University of Borås, Borås, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] H. L. T. Heikkinen University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland R. Huttunen University of Turku, Turku, Finland T. Boyle Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Australia E. Sjølie Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Mahon et al. (eds.), Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5_2

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Introduction This chapter addresses the question “What is educational praxis?” by exploring what makes it distinctive as a kind of educational practice. We do this by drawing on a review of publications by the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis [PEP] international research network1 (2008–2018) that have explicitly theorised educational praxis as a phenomenon and as a concept. Our aim in doing this is to contribute to ongoing contemporary debate about important moral and political dimensions of education and educational practice that appear almost to be sidelined in the contemporary world. The notion of “educational praxis” is complex. This is partly because of the varied understandings of the word “praxis” and its relationship to “practice”. Both “praxis” and “practice” are widely understood in terms of human action or activity. And in some languages and contexts today, praxis and practice mean the same, or almost the same, thing in everyday usage. However, in some contexts, “praxis” has come to be understood as a distinctive or special kind of practice that amounts to more than, for instance, habitual practice and routine action in everyday human activity. Understandings of praxis along these alternative “special-kind-of-practice” lines acknowledge the consequential and thus moral dimensions of human social activity. These genealogical lines lead us back, via such authors as MacIntyre, Freire, Arendt, Marx, and Hegel, in various intellectual traditions, to Ancient Greece and the work of Aristotle. Such understandings have been absorbed into different educational discourses, especially in recent times, among those attempting to recapture or evoke a sense of education as a moral, social, and political activity. This has certainly been an ambition of the PEP network. Since the establishment of the network in 2006, the notion of praxis has been central to its research endeavours. The reason for this is twofold. On the one hand, there have been, and continue to be, shared concerns amongst PEP researchers with the direction that formal education has been taking across the globe. These concerns relate especially to de-professionalising and bureaucratising influences within educational institutions (Edwards-Groves & Kemmis, 2015), which have been associated by PEP researchers with instrumental and functional rationality, managerialism, and neoliberalism, among other things. These ideologies or rationalities are highly complex, and we can do only scant justice to them here. For the purposes of our discussion in this chapter, instrumental rationality is regarded as a concern with “finding the most efficient means by which to achieve given ends but unconcerned about the substance of those ends” (Knight, 1998, p. 6). Managerialism is viewed as an ideology bound up with the notion that “efficient

1 The

PEP international research network includes researchers from Australia, the Caribbean, Colombia, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It was established in order to bring scholars together from different national contexts to “engage in dialogues and research that seek to uncover, challenge, extend, understand and study the conditions which enable and constrain the conduct and development of education” (Edwards-Groves & Kemmis, 2015, p. 2). See Chap. 1 this volume for more information about the network.

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management can solve any problem” (Rees, 1995, as cited in Sachs, 2001). Neoliberalism is treated as a “market-centred policy logic” (Connell, 2013); an ideology that foregrounds market-based values and ideals in social relations (Ball, 2012; Giroux, 2010). Concerns also relate to the societal injustices that are often perpetuated by educational systems and practices (e.g. marginalisation of refugee students; discrimination on the basis of cultural, political, or other differences). Chapter 4 in this book explores such conditions in detail. On the other hand, PEP researchers share a belief that the notion of praxis, which captures the moral-political dimension of human activity, is potentially useful for interrogating and rethinking education and educational work and signals alternative possibilities for education. The PEP network has thus been committed to both (a) empirically investigating the nature of educational praxis, from multiple perspectives, and in range of educational contexts, and (b) reviving and reconstructing the classical Aristotelian concept of “praxis” (Smith, Edwards-Groves, & Brennan Kemmis, 2010; Smith, Salo, & Grootenboer, 2010). The aim has been to further our understanding of education in ways that can inform and guide educational actions and decisions, as well as re-focus educational debate on matters of moral, social, and political importance for contemporary society. In this respect, PEP has striven to build on the work of others similarly trying to understand and address contemporary educational and societal concerns (e.g. Apple, 2013; hooks, 1994). “What is educational praxis?” has been an important philosophical and empirical question for the network in terms of these ambitions and commitments.2 The chapter is divided into three main parts. In the first, we contextualise our exploration of educational praxis by discussing various understandings of praxis. In the second, we discuss six themes that emerged from some of the earliest PEP work (see Enabling Praxis: Challenges for Education, Kemmis & Smith, 2008c). The themes are agents and agency, particularity, connectedness, history, morality and justice, and praxis as doing (Kemmis & Smith, 2008b, pp. 7–9). Together they provide a useful framework for tracing how thinking and knowledge about educational praxis has been represented, shifted, and extended by the PEP research over time. In the third part, we attempt to reconceptualise some of the main ideas arising from the publications we have reviewed in a discussion of educational praxis as forming, selfforming, and transforming. The importance of the “critical” in educational praxis is highlighted in this discussion. We also consider what educational praxis is not. This is followed by a summarising argument that educational praxis is practice that takes many forms, but it is, generally speaking, morally-politically informed and oriented, reflective, agentic, context-specific, and transformative; it involves taking a moral stand in educational work, and working towards positive change. Consideration is also given in this part of the chapter to what is yet to be done to further knowledge about educational praxis. The discussion across this chapter, and our response to the question, “What is educational praxis?” forms a foundation for the chapters that follow in this book. 2 This question is the first of five guiding research questions for the PEP network. See Chap. 1, this volume, for the other four questions.

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The notion of “educational praxis” is embedded in the PEP network questions and the research upon which each of the chapters is based. We hope this chapter will also, in itself, be informative for educational researchers, educators, leaders, and policy makers in their ongoing efforts to interrogate, enact, and/or nurture educational praxis in educational settings.

From Praxis and Practice to Educational Praxis Before addressing the question in focus in our chapter, we first wish to elaborate briefly on the concepts of practice and praxis. This will lead us to an introduction of the concept of educational praxis and serve to contextualise the discussions that follow.

Practice and Praxis: A Common Genealogy Generally speaking, practice is associated with people’s everyday lives and can be found in their usual daily routines and actions. It is something happening “in the real world”; it entails doing or human activity (see Chap. 1 of this book). In many contexts and languages, practice (or its equivalent in languages other than English) refers to a usual way to act, habitual social action which follows given patterns, or customs and routines, and, in some languages, the word praxis is construed as meaning more or less the same thing (see Rönnerman, Salo, & Furu, 2008). This is not surprising since both words share a common genealogy: both are derived from ˜ the ancient Greek πραξ˘ις (prâxis). In this book, however, and more generally in the research reviewed for this chapter, the word praxis has been ascribed meanings which distinguish it from ordinary everyday understandings of practice. Much of the work (but not all, as will be evident in a discussion of themes below) is based on an understanding of praxis as action based on deliberation about its potential consequences, and oriented by commitments to contribute positively and meaningfully to society, and to the good of humankind. This understanding is rooted in Aristotle’s philosophy, more accurately in his three-fold classification of human activity: theoria (theoretical action; thinking, especially contemplation), poi¯esis (productive action; making), and praxis (practical action; doing). Corresponding to these activities, there are three types of knowledge: theoretical knowledge, epistem¯e, whose end goal is truth; technical (or poietical) knowledge, techn¯e, whose end goal is the production of something; and practical knowledge, phron¯esis, whose end goal is wise action (Aristotle, NE 1139a27-8). For Aristotle, praxis is a form of human action that is an end in itself, guided by a moral disposition to act truly and rightly; a concern to further human well-being and the good life (Mise, 2018). Praxis is guided and informed by phron¯esis, which is social wisdom in action about what is good or bad for a human being to do (Aristotle, 1947,

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NE 1140b1-6). This view is somewhat captured in Kemmis and Smith’s (2008b) interpretation of praxis as action that is morally committed, and oriented and informed by the traditions of the field. […] Praxis is what people do when they take into account all the circumstances and exigencies that confront them in the particular moment and then, taking the broadest view they can of what is best to do, they act. (p. 4)

A modern example of this might be the treatment of patients by a doctor which accords with her commitment to doing what is morally appropriate, and which is informed by notions of “good” treatment practices in her field (based on practice traditions and the latest medical research), and based on her knowledge of particular patient ailments, circumstances, medical histories, and responses to treatment. The Aristotelian perspective on praxis has been further developed by scholars who have been particularly influential with respect to explorations of praxis. This includes Bernstein (1971), a scholar attributed with having created a sophisticated philosophy of praxis—a phron¯esis-praxis perspective based on Aristotle and Hegel, Marx, Sartre, Dewey, Wittgenstein, and others (Kristjánsson, 2005, p. 456). This phron¯esis-praxis perspective represents a combination, we believe, of: (1) a neoAristotelian view, which is, in simple terms, a reinterpretation of Aristotle’s original ideas; more focused on virtuous action guided by a moral disposition to act truly and rightly to promote well-being and human flourishing; and (2) a Marxian view, oriented towards changing unjust social structures for the better; that is, “socially responsible, history-making action” (Kemmis, 2012b, p. 147)3 ; see also Kemmis’s two views of praxis (2008, 2010a). The PEP network has, over time, largely adopted and extended understandings of praxis based on both Aristotelian and Marxian perspectives, such that praxis is represented in PEP work as both morally informed action (in the Aristotelian sense) and history-making action (in the Marxian sense). A significant proportion of the 3 In

the PEP research literature, the interpretation of praxis as “history-making action”, based on Marx’s ideas, relates to acting to intentionally change history, rather than letting history happen. This interpretation has been systematically called a “post-Marxian” perspective. We (chapter authors) prefer to call this perspective a “Marxian” interpretation of praxis and do so throughout this chapter for the following reason: the “post” in “post-Marxian” can be critiqued on the basis that the idea of praxis as a form of action which changes societies (history-making action) evolved in post-Hegelian philosophy pre-dating Marx. The underlying premise of Hegel’s philosophy is the idea that world history gradually develops towards spiritual and moral perfection, which he called the realisation of the absolute spirit. This perspective started to evolve in Middle Europe in the beginning of the nineteenth century. One of the key advocates of this idea was a Polish philosopher and social activist, August Cieszkowski, who used the term praxis to mean “action oriented towards changing society”. Cieszkowski’s work influenced the young Karl Marx. According to Stepelevich (1974), despite the fact that Marx never quoted Cieszkowski directly, there are good reasons to believe that Cieszkowski had an indirect influence on him. Thus, Marxism has actually been called the philosophy of praxis by the followers of Marx. This interpretation of praxis, emphasising action oriented towards changing society was later adopted by a group of post-Marxian philosophers in Germany in early twentieth century, some of them later known as the Frankfurt School. To conclude, we can call the interpretation of praxis as history-making action both “pre-Marxian” and “post-Marxian” perspectives.

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literature reviewed for this chapter, that is, PEP publications, could be regarded, therefore, as reflecting a phron¯esis-praxis perspective.

Educational Praxis Above, we have discussed praxis at a general level, but what of educational praxis? In more recent times, we have seen “praxis” as a construct being absorbed into education discourses (in some cases as a response to the ways in which education and pedagogy are reduced to technical activity). This is evident in the emergence of expressions such as “pedagogy of praxis” (e.g. Gadotti, 1996), “pedagogical praxis” (e.g. Jacobs, 2008), “educational praxis” (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Small, 1978, 2005), “critical pedagogical praxis” (e.g. Breunig, 2009; Mahon, 2014), and “classroom praxis” (e.g. Braa & Callero, 2006). Understandings of these terms and their uses, like that of “praxis”, vary but are beyond the scope of this chapter to explore further. Some of these different expressions have been used in the literature reviewed, along with alternative expressions such as “pedagogische praxis” (Ax & Ponte, 2010), and “education as praxis” (Hardy & Grootenboer, 2013). However, references to “educational praxis” are more common and usually relate to praxis in educational activity that includes but also extends beyond pedagogical encounters between teachers and students/learners. The term “praxis” has been revived and reconstructed within the literature reviewed, then, to communicate particular ideas and ideals related to education. The notion of praxis has also framed thinking and the asking of questions about the moral-political purposes, nature, and consequences of educational activity. In this sense, “educational praxis” has been adopted as a normative perspective on education; a lens through which to consider and interrogate everyday practices of those involved in education and the complex conditions in which praxis is individually and collectively enacted. What is actually meant by “educational praxis” in this work is discussed in the next section in terms of key recurring themes.

Educational Praxis: Recurring Themes In early PEP attempts to understand the nature of educational praxis, a number of themes were found to be recurring in the research and cross-national conversations, and these shed some light on what educational praxis is and how it is understood. Some of these themes were highlighted in the introductory chapter of Enabling Praxis: Challenges for Education (Kemmis & Smith, 2008c) and then woven throughout the book’s remaining chapters. Specifically, Kemmis and Smith (2008b, pp. 7–9) identified six themes that we hereafter refer to as the Enabling Praxis themes:

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

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praxis as doing particularity morality and justice agents and agency history connectedness (adapted from Kemmis & Smith, 2008b, p. 7).4

These themes are still relevant and thus provide a pathway into the various conceptualisations of educational praxis and its nature as represented in the reviewed publications. The themes form the basis of the following sections and serve as a point of departure for considering new insights that have emerged since early PEP work, and what we (educators, researchers, policy makers, society) have yet to learn through ongoing and future inquiries. We consider the themes one at a time, building a picture of educational praxis that we return to at the end of the chapter.

Praxis as Doing Praxis, and, by implication, educational praxis, was described by Kemmis and Smith (2008b) as “a kind of action” (after Aristotle) that is performed/enacted by individual persons—as in “individual praxis”5 —or by people acting together—as in “collective praxis”6 (p. 9). Educational praxis on this view obviously involves something educational being done, not just intentions regarding the doing of something (see also Kemmis, 2008) or dispositions to act in a particular way in educational tasks.7 Recognition of educational praxis as educational action or doing is common to all the work reviewed. The work has diverged, however, with respect to what the doing entails. For example, some wishing to take an emphatically critical stance have invoked Marx’s oft-quoted Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach (Marx, 1888): “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it” (see Mahon, Heikkinen, & Huttunen, 2018). This relates to the themes of history and morality and justice discussed later in this section. The emphasis on doing and action has been widely coupled across the publications reviewed with a positioning of educational praxis as practice or a practice of 4 We

have simplified terms (or groups of terms) used for some themes for the purposes of this discussion. We encourage readers to consult the original text. See also footnote 12 for an example— adaptation of theme 4. 5 Also referred to as “personal praxis” in Smith, Edwards-Groves et al. (2010), and in Kemmis and Smith (2008a). 6 See also Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2015), Kemmis (2010a, 2010b), Mahon (2014), Smith et al. (2010a, 2010b), and Wilkinson, Olin, Lund, Ahlberg, and Nyvaller (2010) on collective (educational) praxis. 7 Alternative expressions have been used to denote dispositions or attitudes associated with praxis, such as the Greek term ‘phron¯esis’ (multiple PEP publications), ‘praxis stance’ (Smith, 2008; Edwards-Groves & Gray, 2008), and ‘praxis orientation’ (Mahon, 2014).

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a special kind, especially in later works. This can be explained by a concentrated engagement with practice theory generally (see Nicolini, 2013; Schatzki, 2001)— especially the work of Schatzki, MacIntyre, and Bourdieu—as well as practice theory development work by Kemmis and colleagues which has generated, and led to the refinement of, the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014). Practice theory has enabled more comprehensive explorations into the nature of educational praxis and its expression in reality than might have been possible with other theoretical resources. The publications reviewed make a distinctive contribution to knowledge about educational praxis in this respect. Many of the authors have built on knowledge about practices—how they are shaped, enabled, and constrained, and how practices mediate, reproduce, and transform other practices and arrangements in sites of practice—to further knowledge about educational praxis. The situatedness of educational praxis, for example, has been informed by Schatzki’s (2002) site ontological focus on the situatedness of practice, while the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014; Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008) has enabled analysis of educational praxis in terms of how the characteristic sayings, doings, and ways of relating of practices are enabled and constrained by practice architectures (combinations of cultural-discursive, material-economic, and socialpolitical arrangements that enable and constrain practices and that may be thought of as forming the conditions of possibility for those practices; Kemmis et al., 2014). See Chap. 3, this volume, for other theoretical resources informing PEP research. Many of the characteristics of educational praxis align with how practice in general is commonly understood, for example, as experiential (Green, 2009), embodied (Lloyd, 2006), consequential (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011, p. 4), emergent (Hager, 2013), open-ended (Schatzki, 2002), uncertain (Green, 2009), and particular.

Particularity8 The theme of particularity captures the notion that educational praxis is “always particular” (Kemmis & Smith, 2008b, p. 7), that is, it is educational action taken in, and in response to, concrete conditions of place, time, material arrangements, and particular circumstances (Kemmis & Smith, 2008b). In this sense, educational praxis is situated (i.e. context-dependent) and responsive. It is shaped by, and also influences/shapes, practices (e.g. teaching practices and learning practices) and arrangements (e.g. classroom set-ups, arrangements of bodies, student solidarities) that exist in and characterise the situation in which the educational praxis is enacted.9 This understanding of educational praxis was theorised by Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008) in their articulation of the theory of practice architectures (see Chap. 1 8 This

theme, in the original articulation of the Enabling Praxis themes, was presented in a cluster of topics with “concreteness” and “materiality” (see Kemmis & Smith, 2008b, p. 7). 9 This could be said of educational practice more broadly and would almost go without saying if educational situations were not often treated as if contextual factors were irrelevant.

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in this volume) and later expanded by Kemmis et al. (2014, especially Chap. 2). The happeningness of educational praxis has also been brought to the fore more, for example, in the writing of Ax and Ponte (2010), Kemmis and Trede (2010), Kemmis (2010a, 2012b), and Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, and Smith (2018). Happeningness relates to the here-and-now unfolding of action in concrete situations. Attention to the responsive nature of educational praxis (that is, responsive to the needs of students, teachers, and communities, for example) has been explored particularly in the work of Brennan Kemmis (2008) and Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2015) (see also Edwards-Groves et al., 2018; Forsman, 2012; Grootenboer & Hardy, 2015; Hardy & Grootenboer, 2013; Henning Loeb, 2016; Kemmis, 2012a; Rönnerman, Furu, & Salo, 2008; Wilkinson, 2008). Brennan Kemmis (2008), for instance, writing about educational praxis in VET education, described responsiveness in terms of adapting and being responsive to the local needs and contexts of students (see p. 208). This is similar to observations made by Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2015), who presented educational praxis as “locally-responsive education” and a way of addressing or responding to “site-based concerns” (p. 155) in their discussion of English education in Australian schools. Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer argued that important insights about how best to respond in a situation can emerge in/from, or be evident in, that situation or site. In other words, local insights can reveal what action is needed to address local concerns, the interests of those concerned, and how people’s lives are affected by the educational activity. This relates to the third Enabling Praxis theme, morality and justice, since responding to site-based needs and interest adds a moral and social justice dimension to the enactment of educational praxis.

Morality and Justice Educational praxis was described by Kemmis and Smith (2008b) not merely as action (or doing) in response to particular conditions and circumstances, but more specifically in terms of morally responsive action. The expression “morally committed action” (after Aristotle) conveys this sense (Kemmis & Smith, 2008b, p. 4). According to Kemmis and Smith (2008b), “educational praxis” is what educators are engaging in when they act in ways that consider “the long-term interests of society and the world at large” (p. 4) as well as their own interests or the interests of a particular group of people. They act for the “good” of students and for the “good” of humanity (Forsman, 2012; Kemmis, 2008; see also Hardy & Grootenboer, 2013; Kemmis 2012a; Wilkinson et al., 2010) even though they know their actions may turn out to have negative consequences. These notions incorporate endeavouring to do what is “ethically wise” or “appropriate” in given situations (i.e. “right conduct”; striving to act justly) guided by phron¯esis (practical wisdom) (Edwards-Groves et al., 2018). They also take into account attending reflectively to the moral consequences of one’s actions (i.e. moral deliberation) and sustaining a moral relation with people in one’s care. This is reflected in Smith’s (2008) references to “maintaining an ethical

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way of being in the world” (p. 79) and discussion of praxis as a “thoughtful and moral mode of action” (p. 79). Work from the Netherlands offers a slightly contrasting position on the theme of morality. Influenced by Marxian ideas, Ponte (2008), and Ax and Ponte (2010) start from a broad position of praxis as acting with moral intentions (“morally informed action”) and action with moral consequences (see Ponte, 2008, p. 184; see also Ax & Ponte, 2008a; or Ponte & Smit, 2013, who draw on Gadotti’s, 1996 view of praxis). On this view, indoctrination can be considered educational praxis, even if the consequences turn out to be untoward, because it is undertaken on the basis of social and moral intentions by the ones doing the indoctrinating (Ax & Ponte, 2010; for a discussion on unintentional indoctrination, see Huttunen, 2017). This means that there can be such a thing as “bad praxis”, which, in this instance, would equate with action that has untoward consequences. Some PEP work explicitly foregrounds social justice-related issues when attending to the moral dimension of educational praxis. Addressing challenges linked to groups who are sometimes forgotten or marginalised, such as students from low socio-economic, refugee and/or immigrant backgrounds (see e.g. Grootenboer & Hardy, 2015; Hardy & Grootenboer, 2013; Kauuko & Wilkinson, 2018; Wilkinson & Langat, 2012; Wilkinson, Forsman, & Langat, 2013) are examples of this. Other examples include related studies about the formation of inclusive school cultures (e.g. Bristol, 2015), and promoting respect for, and awareness of, diversity (e.g. Forsman, 2012), as well as education for sustainability10 research (Kemmis & Mutton, 2012). A complete program of work based on the ideals of “Education for All” focusing on the rights of children (see Ponte & Smit, 2013) has also contributed to the development of the morality and justice theme. A special issue of Professional Development in Education was dedicated to this work (Vol. 39, Issue 4): “Professional development: Education for All as Praxis” (Wilkinson, Bristol, & Ponte, 2013). This social justice-related emphasis could be said to highlight the critical dimension of educational praxis. A critical (Marxian) theoretical grounding for this was provided by Kemmis and Smith (2008b, p. 23) in their discussion of “emancipatory actions” (Habermas, 1972, 1974) that seek to overcome irrationality, injustice, and dissatisfactions. These ideas were later echoed in Kemmis’s (2012a, 2012b) aspirational articulation of a pedagogy of emancipation from suffering, oppression, or domination. In recent discussions, terms such as “critical educational praxis” (Mahon et al., 2018) and “critical pedagogical praxis” (Mahon, 2014, 2016; Mahon & Galloway, 2017) have been used to foreground these ideas and make the “critical” and a social justice orientation more explicit in reference to educational praxis, even though it can be argued that praxis is already inherently critical (Mahon, 2014). For instance, Mahon et al. (2018) describe critical educational praxis as a form of action informed by critical insights and shaped by a critical disposition. It is action that involves critique, and, where necessary, transformation of the taken-for-granted discourses/ideologies, practices, structures, and relationships that shape and characterise

10 Relevant

in terms of justice for future generations.

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educational practices, and which impede people’s capacity for self-determination, selfdevelopment, and self-expression (Young, 1990), both within educational contexts and society more generally. (p. 467)

The theme of morality (and less explicitly, social justice as a part of morality) could be said to constitute a red thread 11 in much of the work reviewed for this chapter, regardless of the slight variations in emphases (e.g. emphases or not on justice, or on “good” and “bad praxis”) and Marxian versus neo-Aristotelian leanings. Education is seen, on all views reflected in the work reviewed, as a moral activity (and in the case of Forsman, 2012, also meaningful). There are many choices and deliberations to be made, since education has moral consequences and is brimming with uncertain situations. It is not always clear what the “right” or “wise” thing to do actually is when there are competing interests, as is often the case. This makes the agency of actors involved in educational activity, discussed next, central to the notion of educational praxis.

Agents and Agency12 Agency is implied in the meaning of educational praxis as doing (first theme) but has seemingly been highlighted in the reviewed work to point out that when enacting educational praxis, actors act in the educational situations or in educational settings in ways that consciously influence or direct what happens (Kemmis & Smith, 2008b). This theme was captured in the reference by Kemmis and Smith to actors in educational praxis as “agents” (people with moral agency) rather than rule-following “operants” of a system (2008b, p. 5). In the context of teaching, this is commonly understood as exercising professional judgement or contributing to the evolution of educational traditions over time, for example, by challenging problematic discourses in school (e.g. deficit or racist discourses, see Wilkinson, 2017) or confronting the widespread practice in higher education of positioning teachers as the only worthy readers of students written texts (see Santos, 2016). Actors are aware of their own role(s) and moral responsibility in shaping unfolding action. Reflexivity and reflection are highly relevant here since it is through reflection and reflexivity that moral and historical consciousness are realised. Agency is related to actors’ self-formation as moral agents whose own being or identity is shaped and oriented by the unfolding action and consequences. Kemmis and Smith (2008b) described this notion of self-formation in praxis in terms of “a process of becoming” (p. 7; see also Smith, Salo, & Grootenboer, 2010, p. 56). More 11 The concept of “red thread” is used in the Nordic context (e.g. “röd tråd” in Swedish) to denote a

theme that runs through something, joining the various elements to create a coherent whole/produce a particular effect. 12 In Kemmis and Smith’s articulation of the Enabling Praxis themes (2008b, p. 7), this theme was included in the list of six themes more as a collection of topics: “1. agency, subjectivity, being, becoming, identity (and difference and otherness), and reflexivity”. We have shortened the list to “agents and agency” to capture the main points made in the original discussion.

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is said about the self-forming nature of educational praxis in a later section of the chapter. The theme of agency has been extended by PEP work since 2008 through discussions about resistance. Although still an undeveloped theme in PEP research relative to others, resistance has been described in terms of “being bold” (Kemmis & Trede, 2010) “‘doing’ trouble-making” (Mahon, 2014), “push back” (Smith, Salo, & Grootenboer, 2010), and “going against the grain” (Wilkinson et al., 2010). It relates to resisting the status quo or certain pressures (e.g. to comply with or conform to particular practice norms, traditions, and expectations). An example is Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer’s (2015) reference to preparedness to resist pressures to direct efforts away from where local insight suggests they are most needed. Another example is provided by Smith, Salo, & Grootenboer (2010) in a discussion of academics’ collective educational praxis as a “push back” to neoliberalism in a constructive, collaborative, positive way. Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional view of justice is relevant here (see Huttunen, 2007). According to Fraser (2010, p. 365), struggle against social injustice consists of a struggle for redistribution (economic injustice), a struggle for recognition (status injustice), and a struggle for parity of political and social participation (against exclusion from political decision-making and social life). Educational praxis is a struggle for justice in all these dimensions. The discussions of resistance and agency associated with educational praxis hint at the risky nature of educational praxis. Riskiness too has been taken up as a theme, not only because of the very real risks associated with “going against the grain” (see Kemmis, 2008; Mahon, 2014; Wilkinson, 2008; cf., Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Grundy, 1987), but also the possibility of getting things wrong, since our doings are “always something more than and different from what was intended” (Kemmis, 2009, p. 465).

History Educational praxis is not just morally committed educational action, but, as alluded to above, also educational action that is historically situated in, and informed and oriented by, people’s biographies, narratives, histories and traditions13 (Kemmis & Smith, 2008b, p. 8). As Russell and Grootenboer (2008) noted, highlighting the obvious perhaps, in their reflections on “finding praxis” in their own work as higher education teachers: “we come to the learning situation with a past and a future that is with us in the present” (p. 120). When teachers, for example, interact with students in a classroom, their praxis is informed and oriented, among other things, by their past experiences of interactions with students, the actions of the students whose subjectivities have, in turn, been formed and shaped by their life histories, and the narratives and traditions about student–teacher relations that characterise the school. This is not necessarily without tension as these things can bump up against each other and quite often do as many reviewed publications attest. However, teachers 13 For

example, traditions of thought and practice in the field of education.

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also interact with students with anticipated and desired future narratives, histories, life trajectories in mind. This points to another contention expounded by Kemmis and Smith (2008b) and echoed in other PEP literature: in praxis, actors are aware of the historical situatedness of what they are doing. They are conscious of their actions in the present being shaped by history (e.g. past actions/events and consequences of past actions/events) and of how they are shaping unfolding action as noted above, that is, how their actions are “making” history (Kemmis, 2008). This evokes the notion of educational praxis as “history-making educational action” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 22; see also Kemmis & Trede, 2010), which links to the aforementioned Marxian notion of praxis. It is also reminiscent of Goodson’s (1992) notion of a “life-historical perspective” where activities and actions are viewed but as part of wider historical continuity. It may be the case, as Edwards-Groves et al. (2018) point out, that in educational praxis, actors consciously “confront past practices” that they have come to see as having unintended or negative consequences. In this way, practices are deliberately changed to bring about alternative futures.

Connectedness The theme of connectedness relates directly to the theme of particularity discussed above. Kemmis and Smith (2008b) suggested that the substance of educational praxis cannot be separated from aspects of social space that pertain in the sites where educational praxis is enacted. Actors, they argued, always exist “in relation to, and in connection with, a variety of kinds of orders and arrangements: orders and arrangements of people, objects, words and ideas, and natural orders and arrangements that form the living environment in which we live” (p. 8). Since this early work on educational praxis was published, there are two ways in which the theme of connectedness has been further explored and developed. The first relates to the explication just summarised. There are notable examples of works illustrating or theorising the connectedness to which Kemmis and Smith (2008b) referred, such as a discussion of “relational architectures” by Edwards-Groves, Brennan Kemmis, Hardy, and Ponte (2010), drawing on the theory of practice architectures. This discussion emphasises the connectedness between the various practice architectures that impact on educators’ daily lives and the importance of interactions and relationships in educational situations. Another example is the collection of chapters in Critiquing praxis: Conceptual and empirical trends in the teaching profession (Ax & Ponte, 2008b): the entire book examines what shapes and enables educational praxis in the Netherlands, including the connection between the decentralisation of schools, managerialist trends, and what Ax and Ponte describe as the “fragmentation or decomposition” of the teaching profession (Ax & Ponte, 2008a). Brennan Kemmis (2008) achieves something similar, although on a much smaller scale, in relation to the interconnected threats to educational praxis in VET Australia. Chapter 4 in this volume presents further illustrations.

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The second way in which the theme of connectedness has been extended constitutes a variation on the theme. It concerns the notion of human connectedness or connectivity (Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2015) as a particular means of sustaining and developing praxis (i.e. intentionally connecting and relating with people in order to both understand and be appropriately responsive to the interests of others). The theme of “community” is an extension of this theme. In Hardy and Grootenboer (2013), for example, the importance of valuing and connecting with community emerged as a central part of the educational praxis described. The study was an inquiry into a school-community project in an Australian school with a high refugee student population and located in a low socio-economic area. It described the processes and benefits of establishing a community garden as a site for learning and connecting, and usefully illustrated the role of partnerships and connecting to community in sustaining a moral relation with people in the educators’ care. Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer’s (2015) study based on a “reading for all” community reading program (p. 156) similarly highlights the link between educational praxis and connectedness. The authors provided an interesting snapshot of how educational praxis can manifest as a “learning partnership” (p. 157) between school and the community. The participants in the project described the project in terms of “reaching outside ourselves and our school into the community” (p. 157). Such connectedness to community made the consequences and effects and interrelationships between salient aspects of the initiative very clear. Henning Loeb (2016) also links educational praxis and connectedness in her examination of the cooperation in a teaching team of a Swedish upper secondary “alternative pathways” program. Henning Loeb particularly demonstrates the importance, in terms of meeting students’ needs, of connections between staff, between staff and students, and between staff, and of partnerships between staff and various stake holders, local workplaces, and local institutions.

Redefining and Characterising Educational Praxis So far, we have noted ways in which the overlapping Enabling Praxis themes have been articulated and extended in the work reviewed. In this section, we move beyond the Enabling Praxis themes and towards an answer to the question in focus in the chapter. We first present a view of educational praxis as forming, self-forming, and transforming action, and then discuss educational praxis as a special kind of educational practice by considering what educational praxis is not. In doing this, we hope to convey a sense of how educational praxis can be an encouraging response to neoliberalism and managerialism.

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Educational Praxis as Forming, Self-forming, and Transforming Educational praxis as a special kind of action or practice, as we have pointed out, is formed by the actor(s) enacting it as well as the conditions and situations in which it is enacted and that precede its enactment. The work we have discussed so far highlights that educational praxis is also inherently forming, self-forming, and transforming.

Forming A key idea emerging from the PEP research collectively is that of educational praxis as forming action. This idea relates directly to how education and pedagogy and their purposes are understood in the various traditions represented in the PEP network. Kemmis, for example, has presented a particular view of education as a process of formation and thus construes educational praxis as “action consciously directed towards forming good individuals and good societies… – educational praxis is doing this forming” (Kemmis, 2008, p. 20). This view corresponds to descriptions of the “double purpose of education” in Kemmis et al. (2014): “to help people live well in a world worth living in” (p. 25). Forming is also relevant to notions of education and pedagogy associated by Ax and Ponte (2008a, 2010) with concepts of pedagogiek and bildung. Education is viewed, in the continental European understanding articulated by Ax and Ponte, as a process of upbringing or intervening in the life of the child or young person; a process of subjectification. Bildung aims at formation of human character through developing the ethical and aesthetic capacities of humans, as well as their abilities for wise deliberation and reflection (Tyson, 2016). Educational praxis (or pedagogische praxis) on this view involves “a socially and culturally embedded situation in which the upbringer purposefully tries to help the child to become an adult” (Ax & Ponte, 2008a, p. 3; Ponte & Smit, 2013). There are obvious overlaps between these ways of thinking about educational praxis (i.e. as formation and upbringing), and over time there has been a blending of these ideas. In addition to these broader views of educational praxis as forming action, a particular but related view is evident in the work reviewed of educational praxis as nurturing praxis or as nurturing the praxis development of others, especially students. This includes creating conditions conducive to praxis (see Mahon & Galloway, 2017), for instance, through opportunities for people to experience and reflect on the consequences of their own actions (Kemmis & Smith, 2008b), to develop awareness of traditions and history and how these shape us as human beings (see e.g. Mahon, 2014), to develop moral reasoning (see, e.g. Brennan Kemmis, 2008), and to act in socially responsible and just ways (see e.g. Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2015). An illustration can be found in Forsman’s (2012) work on learning approaches in an English as a Foreign Language class in a Finnish secondary school. This study explores dialogical and experiential learning approaches as a way of developing

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praxis, especially in terms of promoting respect for, and the embracing of, difference and diversity. Examples can also be found in PEP work that examines praxis in the context of leading (i.e. leading praxis) in educational institutions. For instance, leading praxis has been discussed in terms of fostering conditions for cultivating phron¯esis (Grootenboer & Hardy, 2015) and consciousness-raising amongst staff and students (e.g. Wilkinson, 2017, regarding racist practices). Perhaps leading praxis could be considered a special kind of forming; for other examples, see Chap. 6 of this book.

Self-forming Because of the reflexive and reflective dimension of educational praxis noted above in relation to the theme of agency, it is also a kind of self-forming action according to PEP literature (e.g. Kemmis, 2011, 2012a; Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis & Smith, 2008a; Mahon, 2014; Smith, Salo, & Grootenboer, 2010; Wilkinson et al., 2010).14 It is self-forming in the sense that actors gain knowledge (including selfunderstanding and understanding of their world) as they become aware of the consequences of what they are doing in practice, and this, in turn, orients and informs their ongoing action in a way that shapes their “being” and “becoming” as actors. Edwards-Groves (2008) refers to this as “self-extending” (p. 140). To borrow from Kemmis (2012b), in educational praxis, we experience “the irreversibility of our own actions, and the irreversible consequences of our actions” (p. 154). People’s educational praxis and capacity for educational praxis thus develop experientially, in praxis. A prerequisite for praxis as self-forming action is the autonomy of the person, rooted in rational thought and ethical deliberation. Therefore, educational praxis understood as self-forming action, once again reminds us of bildung. In the German philosophical tradition, bildung can be understood as self-cultivation, in which philosophy and education are intertwined. The outcome of the process of bildung is both personal and social-cultural maturation through an interaction between the person and the cultural tradition (Siljander, Kivelä, & Sutinen, 2012).

Transforming Emphases in the reviewed work on the forming dimension of educational praxis, as well as its critical and history-making dimensions, serve to highlight that educational praxis is also transforming action; not just of people, but also of context. In educational praxis, actors deliberately change the circumstances of the social world, constructing and reconstructing the social world as they act. They set out, through various educational relationships, to effect change from what is towards what ought 14 The idea of self-formation being an aspect of praxis is not new. See, for comparison, Dunne (2005).

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to be (Ponte & Smit, 2013) or what could be (Mahon, 2014) based on whatever historically/culturally formed views they have about what is and ought to be, or could be, at a given time and amidst a particular set of circumstances. There has been an extensive body of PEP literature, for instance, representing action research and similar (e.g. dialogue conferences) in educational contexts as forms of educational praxis because of the aims that often guide such work: to change practices and circumstances for the educational benefit of those involved (see Rönnerman et al., 2008, for a collection of relevant cases). Some work (e.g. Edwards-Groves, 2008; Mahon, 2014; Wilkinson, 2008) also highlights that the change processes involved in self-formation and the transformation of society and social realities are not parallel or separate processes.15 Rather, they are dialectical,16 with each feeding into and emerging from the other. The formation of individuals that occurs in educational activity is also inseparable from these processes. So, educational praxis can be action that is forming, self-forming, and transforming all at once.

A Consideration of What Educational Praxis is Not One way of thinking about the question “What is educational praxis?” is to consider what it is not. This approach has been used by many scholars attempting to define praxis; they have done so by distinguishing praxis from other kinds of action such as poi¯esis or technical action (e.g. Aristotle; Bernstein, 1971; Carr, 2005; Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Dunne, 1997, 2005; Gadamer, 1981; Grundy, 1987; MacIntyre, 1981; Nicolini, 2013). Educational praxis has been depicted in some research (see, e.g. Santos, 2016; Wilkinson, 2008) as something other than instrumental educational practice, that is, other than educational practice imbued with a technical rationality. We might call this “educational poi¯esis” (e.g. where the teacher treats her/his students solely as objects of a series of didactical maneuvres). Kemmis and Smith’s (2008b) description of actors as “agents” versus “operants” in educational praxis is relevant here. This is not to say that educational praxis excludes technical aspects of educational activity or educational work altogether, that is, poeisis. On the contrary, there are situations in which technical action (the following of prescribed procedures or rules to bring about pre-determined ends) and the technical knowledge to carry out the actions are precisely what is demanded (Kemmis, 2012a; Kemmis & Smith, 2008b). What is given prominence in educational praxis, however, is situational insight, and that actors “have a desire to be more than a technician of practices” (Edwards-Groves et al., 2018, p. 141). 15 We

suggest that they cannot be separate processes because actors are part of the social reality in which they act, not separate from it. 16 See Small (1978) for a description, referring to Marx’s notion of revolutionary praxis, of the dialectic relationship between the self-forming processes of the individual in praxis and changes to the social world that happen in praxis.

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Educational praxis has also been referred to as educational practice that is not driven by external goods (e.g. Hardy & Grootenboer, 2013; Mahon, 2014; Mahon, Heikkinen, & Huttunen, 2018). This point is informed by MacIntyre’s (1981) notions of the external and internal goods of practice. External goods are the results or products of action that are enjoyed after or outside of the action (e.g. money or status). Internal goods, by contrast, are related to the intrinsic worth of doing the best one can in the practice (e.g. “the intrinsic worth of acting, pedagogically, for the good of others and society”, Mahon, 2014, p. 216). In this sense, the performance of praxis as a practice is an end in itself, not a means of achieving something else (like economic gain, particular commodities). Educational praxis is linked to internal goods, which are necessarily reviewed in light of the particular circumstances concerned (Hardy & Grootenboer, 2013). Educational praxis, on this view, is thus antithetical to actions driven by the kinds of profit-oriented aspirations/ideals that are today associated with neoliberalism (see Apple, 2013) and offers both a response and alternative to them (see Mahon, Heikkinen, & Huttunen, 2018 for a discussion of this in relation to higher education).

A Synthesis Educational praxis is clearly a complex concept and phenomenon. Examinations of educational praxis by PEP researchers over the past decade have highlighted that there is not one way of understanding educational praxis; nor does it take one form that can be simply and unproblematically described. This is empirically evident in Chaps. 5 and 6 of this book, where living examples of educational praxis are discussed more comprehensively. That said, in light of our analysis of PEP research to date, we are in a position to say something about the combined neo-Aristotelian-Marxian view of educational praxis that has underpinned much of the research reviewed for this chapter, and which has been the most developed view, collectively speaking, in the work over time. Table 2.1 is an attempt to synthesise some of the key ideas that have emerged in the various articulations of this view. In effect, educational praxis is a special kind of action (or practice, as we have argued), but it is not action without thought or moral intentions. It is informed, reflexive, and committed to bringing about the “good”, whatever that might be in the given educational context, for others and humankind, in and through the educational endeavours that go on in that context. Despite the windows into educational praxis that PEP research collectively provides, there is more to be investigated and understood. We suggest that there is room for further exploration of justice, transformation, and resistance in relation to educational praxis and for debate around the contested idea of “the good” in the notion of “the good for humankind”, as well as the “messiness” of, and struggles linked to enacting educational praxis, since being and becoming in praxis are not neat or simple. There is room, too, for clarifying and further exploring what might be meant by “bad praxis”. We also wonder what might be gained from bringing other

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Table 2.1 A characterisation of educational praxis. This summary is an attempt to distil the key ideas evident in the PEP work (2008–2018) addressing the question, what is educational praxis? Educational praxis is a kind of educational practice that is… Self-consciously, moral, and political

Morally-committed and oriented towards fostering the good for individuals (e.g. students/young people) and the good for humankind (as in society), although what the “good” consists in is always contested, and the degree of criticality varies

Informed, context dependent, and multifarious Calls forth (professional) judgement informed and oriented by traditions, history, and situational and local insight; responsive to particular orders and arrangements, conditions and circumstances in the site of practice; takes many forms Reflective, reflexive, and agentic

Actors/practitioners are aware of their moral and historical agency, that their actions have good and bad consequences, and of the need to reflect on actions to determine whether they are morally defensible and justifiable

Forming, self-forming, transforming

Directly or indirectly creates conditions for or allows people to develop/enact praxis; practitioners and the social situation are changed in practice

conceptions of praxis into the conversation, such as feminist praxis and indigenous understandings, or discussions about praxis from disciplines other than education (e.g. nursing or theology). Furthermore, many national contexts are not represented in the research reviewed. There are opportunities here for exploring understandings of educational praxis in relation to traditions beyond the current geographical and cultural scope of the PEP network.

Conclusion The discussion presented in this chapter highlights the complexity and plurality of educational praxis as a concept and as a phenomenon and thus some challenges associated with defining it. Educational praxis is evidently understood in diverse ways across educational settings and traditions. We have nevertheless endeavoured to address the question of “what is educational praxis?” by presenting some themes emerging from the PEP work that together and over time have provided us with a more nuanced picture of educational praxis. This extends to what educational praxis is not, for instance, instrumental forms of educational practice, educational practice driven purely by economic goals, or practice that amounts to following routines and rules without regard for context and consequences. Rather, educational praxis is an

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important alternative to these forms of educational practice. This is not to suggest that educational praxis is like fairy dust, a magical substance that we can sprinkle over contemporary education to solve its problems, nor that the notion of praxis is unproblematic. However, we do suggest that educational praxis, as we have outlined it here, has a role to play in ways that we hope have been clear in this chapter and that will be clear in subsequent chapters in this book. We hope too that this chapter has provided a glimpse of what might be missed if educators, researchers, policy makers, communities do not pay attention to the ways in which possibilities for enacting educational praxis are becoming increasingly eroded in the colonising wake of neoliberal and managerialist educational reforms (see Chap. 4 for elaboration). This constitutes a major concern for twenty-first century education if we think of education as a “thoroughly moral and political practice that requires continuous democratic contestation and deliberation” (Biesta, 2007, abstract). It makes understanding educational praxis so that we might preserve and nurture it, a moral imperative. The conversation about what educational praxis is, therefore, far from over.

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Chapter 3

Research that Facilitates Praxis and Praxis Development Mervi Kaukko, Jane Wilkinson, and Lill Langelotz

Abstract This chapter draws on an integrative literature review of the corpus of Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) publications between 2008 and 2018, examining research conducted in and for praxis, that is, research that helps us to understand and facilitate praxis. The chapter maps some of the central foundations that cut across educational research facilitating praxis and praxis development, including the theory of practice architectures and educational action research. It also touches upon approaches that, despite their connections with praxis, appear to be less common. The chapter also deliberates on the conditions under which research in and for praxis might be conducted, and by whom, in different educational settings and national contexts. The findings show that research in and for praxis is possible via multiple approaches and various positionalities, as long as the aim is to go beyond understanding praxis into realising its possibilities in actual educational sites. These multiple approaches include “insider”, “outsider”, and “in-between” researcher locations. Overall, our review reveals that the rich and varied works on, with, and for praxis discussed in the chapter can provide a powerful armoury with which to speak back to increasingly homogenised and homogenising research approaches in education. It also suggests that the emergence of new ideas and less dominant theories has the potential to further facilitate the (re)imagining of new possibilities for research/praxis development.

M. Kaukko (B) Tampere University, Tampere, Finland e-mail: [email protected] J. Wilkinson Monash University, Melbourne, Australia L. Langelotz University of Borås, Borås, Sweden © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Mahon et al. (eds.), Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5_3

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Introduction In this chapter, we draw together key findings from a review exploring research conducted in and for praxis, that is, research that helps us not only to understand but also facilitate praxis. We do it by exploring studies that focus on praxis and praxis development, rather than practice per se,1 responding to one of the five research questions explored by researchers in the network Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP), that is, What research approaches facilitate praxis and praxis development in different (inter)national contexts?2 In examining this question, a corpus of publications of the PEP research network, from 2008 to 2018, was canvassed, including works published in English, Finnish, and Swedish. Furthermore, to explore the question in more detail, we broke it down into the following sub-questions: 1. What are the key methodological/theoretical ideas informing research approaches facilitating praxis and praxis development? 2. How do different arrangements prefigure research facilitating praxis? 3. Whose praxis is being facilitated (or attempted to be facilitated)? From what position is it being claimed that this praxis is being facilitated? How is it being facilitated? These questions form the organisational structure of this chapter. In order to address these questions, it is important to define some of the central concepts that guided our reading and writing. We have taken the phrase “research approaches” to refer to both the theoretical and methodological lenses that have been employed in terms of facilitating educational praxis and praxis development. In relation to the term, “praxis”, we note that, as explained in preceding chapters, the PEP literature has typically adopted a view of educational praxis from a stereoscopic lens that combines neo-Aristotelian notions of praxis as “right conduct”, with a postMarxian view of praxis as morally and socially responsible, “history-making action” (Kemmis & Smith, 2008, p. 4). In terms of “right conduct”, such praxis has been clearly linked to the Aristotelian concept of phron¯esis, that is, the practical reasoning, practical philosophy, or disposition that guides educators’ wise and prudent action (praxis) (Kemmis, 2012a; Kemmis & Smith, 2008). However, rather than being a method for reasoning, it is noted that phron¯esis is “a moral and intellectual virtue that is inseparable from practice”, constituting the moral consciousness of those who aim to “do the right thing in the right place at the right time in the right way” (MacIntyre, 1981, p. 141, as cited in Carr, 2006, p. 426). Thus, so the argument goes, as a virtue, phron¯esis cannot be transmitted as a form of techn¯e, for example, through an initial teacher education program focusing only on practical skills development, or through ongoing professional development on 1 See Russell and Grootenboer (2008), and Chap. 2 in this volume, for the difference between praxis

and practice. Chap. 1 for more details of PEP, and a full list of the PEP international research program questions.

2 See

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particular techniques prescribing how to cater for different learners’ needs. However, phron¯esis and praxis can be developed by particular forms of research and reflection that support educators to engage with and make judgements about, what the most appropriate and morally right course of action might be in the light of their professional views in their specific site and time. This course of action requires that educators consider their understanding of the possibilities in their local sites, as well as their interpretation of the locally and globally accepted views of the purpose of education (Kemmis, 2012a; Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). Such research can foster the conditions by which educators begin to develop their own praxis, and, through observing and reflecting on the consequences of their praxis, their phron¯esis or wisdom. Our chapter focuses on this kind of research. We now turn to discussing our first set of findings in response to Sub-Question One, that is, what are the key methodological/theoretical ideas informing research approaches facilitating praxis and praxis development in the PEP literature?

Key Methodological/Theoretical Ideas Informing Research Facilitating Praxis In terms of the question of which research approaches facilitate praxis and its development, we note that such research approaches of necessity go beyond understanding praxis (see examples of this research in Chap. 2); or the conditions that render possible praxis and praxis development (see Chap. 4). We also note that the question of how research approaches facilitate praxis and its development presumes that particular key ideas inform such research approaches. The ideas informing the PEP literature in regard to these research approaches are multiple and diverse and need to be explicated. The following section thus examines some of the key theoretical concepts informing research facilitating praxis.

Theories of Social Justice and Change In research literature more generally, a diverse range of theoretical ideas underpins research approaches that claim to facilitate praxis and praxis development (Carr, 2006, p. 422). Many approaches have their roots in ideals of social justice ( Fraser, 2009; Freire, 1969/2000; Rawls, 1999; Young, 1990), which is understandable given the transformative and often critical-emancipatory aims of praxis. Some of these approaches are implied in the PEP corpus of literature, whereas others are foregrounded. For example, Iris Marion Young’s concepts about self-expression, self-development, and self-determination as aims for social justice (1990) are not explicitly used to frame research reviewed for this chapter, but they have been used implicitly to understand the aims of education (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018;

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Mahon, 2014, p. 232). Likewise, Freire’s ideas of justice, “conscientisation”, and conceptualisation of praxis are implicit in much of the research we reviewed (see, for example, Santos, 2016). However, not all research framed within theories of social justice facilitates change. This was noted in Marx’s famous Theses on Feuerbach (1888/2002), according to which (Thesis 11) “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Freire (1969/2000, p. 48) referred to the same problem, using the term “armchair revolution” to describe research which poses critical questions about society, but keeps a distance from the field and stays at a theoretical level. More recently, Biesta and colleagues (2019) have argued that educational research should not only explain problems or even limit itself to solving them; rather educational research should in fact cause problems. Biesta and colleagues’ logic is that because problems are never just “there”, they cannot be understood or solved without first defining why they are important, why they require solving, and from whose perspective. They argue that research into seemingly unproblematic settings should not accept and maintain the status quo but instead, scrutinise and problematise the situation (Biesta, Filippakou, Wainwright, & Aldridge, 2019). Much of the research we examined for this chapter starts from the premise that transformations in society, for example, through changes in schools or preschools, come through changes in the praxis of those involved. Thus, research approaches facilitating praxis tend to be, understandably, participatory and responsive to the historical time and social, political, and cultural circumstances of their site. The theory of practice architectures (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014b) developed in the PEP network over the last ten years has been useful in addressing this need.

The Theory of Practice Architectures The theory of practice architectures sits under the broad umbrella of approaches influenced by the “practice turn” (Savigny, Knorr-Cetina, & Schatzki, 2001) and the notion of site ontologies, informed by the work of the practice philosopher Schatzki (2003, 2005, 2010). A site ontological approach to studying practice draws attention to the specificity of sites and to the connections (or lack thereof) between practices in a site, rather than between participants in a site (Kemmis et al., 2014b). By rendering visible the often taken-for-granted arrangements that enable and constrain specific practices, such as researching to develop one’s praxis, in particular sites, the theory can foreground questions about how to change arrangements to make such researching possible (Kemmis et al., 2014b). In particular, the theory helps us understand how attention to the specificities of the site is required in order to conduct research that facilitates praxis with all its “happeningness” (Kemmis et al., 2014b, p. 29, following Schatzki, 2010), and in ways that are relevant and effective for those involved. The theory of practice architectures is by far the most common theoretical resource drawn from in the PEP literature reviewed for this chapter.

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Less commonly, but nonetheless present, are ideas drawn from the theoretical armoury of Arendt (Langelotz, 2017b; Santos, 2016 ), Bourdieu (Wilkinson, 2008), Foucault (Langelotz, 2014, 2017a, 2017b; Variyan, 2018), Habermas and Honneth (Heikkinen & Huttunen, 2017; Huttunen, 2009; Huttunen & Murphy, 2012), Ricoeur (Olin, 2009), MacIntyre (Mahon, 2014), feminism and postcolonial research (Exley, Whatman, & Singh, 2018; Wilkinson, 2008), and Scandinavian New Organisational Theory (Wilkinson, Olin, Lund, & Stjernström, 2013), to name a few. The emergence of new ideas and less dominant theories facilitates the collective praxis development of researchers and helps to move thinking forward. We will return to this point in the chapter’s conclusion.

Research Practices Facilitating Praxis and Praxis Development In this chapter, we do not make a rigid delineation between theories, methodologies, and methods. Instead, we view research methods as useful to the extent that they contribute to the development of more or less explicit theories about or interpretations of the world. Theoretical terms, such as those employed in relation to social justice or equity, become visible in the empirical world through the use of research methods. Moreover, we note that methods are not neutral tools; they are theory-laden in the sense that they imply a language for describing, interpreting, or explaining phenomena. Hence, we now move from identifying key ideas underlying much of the PEP research facilitating praxis, to the interlinked question of how, in practice, research approaches facilitating praxis and praxis development are employed. As such, we turn first to action research, and then present other, complementary approaches we found to be common in research aiming for praxis or praxis development.

Educational Action Research Educational action research would appear to be one of the most relevant approaches for praxis development across different educational sites and national contexts, which is not surprising, given the clear connection between action research and praxis development. Kurt Lewin, whose name is often associated with the origins of action research (see, for example, 2010), contended that “if you want truly to understand something, try to change it” (Greenwood & Levin, 2007, p. 18). However, early versions of action research were mostly focused in changing the practices of others, rather than facilitating praxis in a participatory manner.

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Rather than providing a comprehensive history of educational action research in the countries of PEP research,3 our purpose in this section is to show, on the one hand, how differing traditions of action research have shaped the current work of PEP, and on the other hand, how PEP scholars have contributed to the field of action research. Educational action research in today’s PEP research has influences from John Dewey’s work dedicated to education, teachers’ work, democracy, and pragmatism; Rapoport’s (1970) early ideas of action research and organisational development, which spread gradually to education; as well as the work of Lawrence Stenhouse, John Elliott, and Clem Adelman (Kemmis, 1993). The epistemological and ontological ideals of these early action researchers are prominent especially in the PEP research conducted in Anglophone countries and in approaches highlighting the importance of “teachers-as-researchers”. Carr and Kemmis (1986), both of whom, especially Kemmis, have influenced the development of intellectual resources of the PEP network have highlighted that action research is not only a research method but also a way to facilitate educator’s learning. Action research can help education return to its roots in philosophy, history, and theory, and, as such, research and practice should be combined to develop educational practice and praxis in a critical way (Carr & Kemmis, 1986). This insight, brought to wide audiences in their classic book Becoming Critical—education, knowledge and action research, has strengthened the stance of action research in education. The development of action research in the Nordic Countries with North Germanic languages (mostly Swedish and Norwegian) has developed through slightly different routes, providing Nordic Action Research with arguably its own strand of action research4 (see Chap. 7). As in Anglophone countries, the history of action research in the northern PEP-countries of Sweden, Norway, and Finland formed in relation to local societal needs, in particular, the need to educate the “common” people and use their knowledge to develop industry as well as democratic society. Nordic traditions of folk enlightenment and workers’ education at the end of the nineteenth century culminated in major social change programs of the 1960s and ’70s. These included the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Project of the 1960s (Thorsrud, 1970) and the Swedish shipbuilding projects employing “research circles” in the 1970s (e.g. Holmstrand & Härnsten, 2003). These, and other like projects, have marked important moments in the history of action research in the Nordic nations (Greenwood & Levin, 2007; Wiebe, 2015), sharing a revolutionary idea that practitioners (such as ship builders or factory workers) were not “expendable spare parts” (Greenwood & Levin, 2007, p. 23). Rather, they were a valuable resource who, as participants in work processes and practices, could play a key role in improving work conditions and productivity. This aspiration clearly aligns with ideals of praxis and especially phron¯esis. Early action research projects like these created and continue to

3 For

comprehensive histories of action research, see, for example, Hendricks (2019). dominant languages of Sweden and Norway belong to the Nordic Germanic group, whereas Finnish does not. Thus, action research in Finland differs from the “Nordic tradition” by drawing more heavily on English sources (Heikkinen et al., 2007).

4 The

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foster connections between work research, the union movement, and adult education throughout Scandinavia. Drawing on their own languages and Nordic traditions of action research such as study circles, Anglophone approaches such as Carr and Kemmis’s critical traditions, and to a lesser extent, Central and South American traditions such as those pioneered by Fals Borda (cf., Santos, 2016), PEP researchers have utilised action research to a significant degree to explore educational practices and praxis of their national contexts. In Finland, the most cited Finnish action research source was written by PEP researcher Heikkinen, Rovio and Syrjälä (2007). In Sweden, Karin Rönnerman’s action research studies, conducted over more than 20 years, are widely known and used as reference points (see, for example, Rönnerman, 1998). Doris Santos’ research on critical participatory action research (2016) has been influential in building action research communities in Central and South America. Much of this literature, especially that which has been written in English, has reached wide audiences internationally (e.g. the revised Action Research Planner, updated by Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014a, from the 1986 Kemmis & McTaggart edition), thus impacting the global action research field.

Collaborative Research Practices The ongoing commitment to consistent and systematic collaborative research across different national contexts has been crucial for the PEP network (Edwards-Groves & Kemmis, 2016). In the Nordic context, democracy and research as a democratic practice are recurring themes and highlighted in relation to action research within and between varying national contexts. For example, Olin, Karlberg-Granlund, and Moksnes Furu (2016) explore academic action researchers’ double role when facilitating school teachers’ professional learning projects in Sweden, Finland, and Norway. They reveal multifaceted ways of working democratically in partnership with teachers and the importance of the act of recognition when forming and reforming teaching practices. Furthermore, the researcher’s ability to spend time in order to gain trust within a site is emphasised in several cross-national publications, such as a special issue around partnership and recognition in education edited by Australian, Swedish, and Finnish researchers (Edwards-Groves, Olin, & Karlberg-Granlund, 2016). A similar point is explored when working with vulnerable populations across educational contexts such as Canada, Australia, Sweden, and Finland (see, for example, Reimer, Kaukko, Dunwoodie, Wilkinson, & Webb, 2019). Further examples are Pennanen, Bristol, Wilkinson, and Heikkinen (2017), who examined the practice architectures of collaborative research between Finnish, Australian, and Caribbean educational research contexts, and Sjølie, Francisco, and Langelotz (2018/2019), who explored “communicative learning spaces” in Norway, Australia, and Sweden. These parallel or comparative projects create opportunities not only to understand or facilitate praxis in researchers’ own national contexts, but

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also to broaden thinking into the diversity of ways in which praxis can be understood in varying educational contexts across nations. Specific methods and tools within and outside action research have also found their way into research facilitating praxis. These changes can be seen in the changing field of educational research in general and more specifically in the corpus of work reviewed for this chapter. Ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EdwardsGroves & Davidson, 2017) have enriched the analytical armoury of research facilitating praxis. Fast development of technological tools such as phones and cameras has changed the way we generate data in praxis research (see, for example, EdwardsGroves & Davidson, 2017; Wilkinson & Lloyd, 2017). This development has the potential to contribute to making research more collaborative and participatory as educators and students can document and explore their own work. Methods like student poetry writing (Edwards-Groves & Murray, 2008), teacher-made videos, and transcripts (Edwards-Groves & Davidson, 2017), drawings, photo elicitation and photo-voice (e.g. Kaukko & Wilkinson, 2018; Edwards-Groves & Murray, 2008), and participant-data sharing through for example blogging (Edwards-Groves & Davidson, 2017) are also used for this purpose. Dialogue cafés and dialogue circles where professionals engage in research and experience-based discussions are methods used especially in the Nordic countries (see, for example, Lund & Moksnes Furu, 2014; Rönnerman & Salo, 2014). Similar methods have developed in Australia, where university teachers engage in research conversation that facilitates their praxis (e.g. “Teacher Talk Groups”, see Hardy, 2010, 2013; Mahon, 2014). These are examples of research which aim to facilitate praxis and praxis development. These methods have the potential to make research by professionals more accessible and more relevant for their praxis. Thus, they may contribute simultaneously to deepening of the knowledge base and changing praxis of those involved, as well as widening participation of practitioners in research.

Arrangements Enabling Research Facilitating Praxis Our second sub-question relates to different arrangements that prefigure (enable or constrain) research facilitating praxis. We have already noted that histories and traditions make an impact. There are, of course, other arrangements that enable such research. Language (cultural-discursive arrangement), time, technological resources and money (material-economic arrangements), and relations (socialpolitical arrangements), to name but a few, are also crucial. In this section, we discuss how these arrangements emerge in the reviewed literature. Among the most obvious arrangements that enable or constrain research facilitating praxis are the several languages spoken in a site, and the kinds of topics discussed. For example, the literature review we conducted for this chapter was predicated on selection criteria based on key words or titles employing language such as “praxis”. However, our multilingual review revealed that research can facilitate praxis without necessarily using the word praxis. This applies to research written in Finnish

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and Swedish, but also to research conducted in other non-English contexts, written in English. For instance, in the anthology Lost in Practice: Transforming Educational Action Research (edited by Rönnerman & Salo, 2014), the development of action research in Nordic countries is outlined, and the authors note that action research is a practical science. The chapters in the book elaborate on Nordic traditions and theories without using the concept of praxis. The book discusses dialogue and conversations as a means of enhancing practitioners’ reflexivity and self-knowledge, in order to enable practitioners “to identify and eliminate the inadequacies and limitations of the practical knowledge sustaining their practice” (Carr, 2006, p. 427).Rather than calling this “praxis” or “praxis development”, the authors from Finland, Norway, and Sweden refer to this as practice development (e.g. Aspfors, Pörn, Forsman, Salo, & Karlberg-Granlund, 2015; Wennergren, 2014). Hence, in some texts, the praxis dimension is not explicit but interwoven in the concept of practice. In other texts, writers have maintained a balance between explicit and consistent use of terms. For example, in Finnish, “practice” can be translated as käytäntö, which means not only practice but also a custom or way that things are done (Itkonen, 1992). The word “praxis” (or praksis) is rarely used. In the small body of PEP literature in Finnish found for this chapter, only three (Heikkinen, Kiilakoski, Huttunen, Kaukko, & Kemmis, 2018; Heikkinen & Huttunen, 2017; Kaukko, 20175 ) used the word “praxis” or “praksis”. In some texts (such as the above-mentioned Heikkinen et al., 2018), the authors attempt to overcome the conceptual confusion by making a distinction between käytänne (common practice) and käytäntö (multiple common practices together), but the distinction between these words has not become common in spoken or written Finnish. In Swedish, the word praxis has more or less the same two meanings as Finnish käytäntö. To muddy the space further, Swedish and Norwegian-speaking Nordic countries have introduced the concept of “praxis-near research” (Mattson & Kemmis, 2007), which has later evolved into “practice-based research” (praktiknära forskning). It might also be noted that, in English and in Swedish, the noun “practice” can also refer to customary ways of doing things, or an organisation (as in a “legal practice”, or a “medical practice”), as well as a social practice more generally. Moreover, in English, the verb “to practise” can also mean a kind of exercise (as in “practising scales on the piano”) as well as enacting or conducting a kind of social or professional practice (like teaching or caring). These examples show that concepts such as praxis or practice can be used interchangeably, sometimes confusingly, across different language groups and national contexts. Research needs to be communicated in a shared language in order to make it understood or to make an impact. The way concepts are used in research reflects not only the language but also the philosophies, histories, and intellectual and practice traditions of the (inter)national contexts of research examined in this chapter. The PEP research reviewed for this chapter does not simply repeat the traditions of their contexts. Instead some studies aim to recreate them in critical and dynamic ways. For instance, in the Nordic PEP literature, we find an emphasis on the culture and traditions of the Germanic concept of “bildung” (in Swedish: bildning) and “folk bildung” 5 Later

published as Kaukko, Kielinen, and Alasuutari (2019).

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(in Swedish: folkbildning), the latter of which has roots in work science and adult education (Hardy, Salo, & Rönnerman, 2015; Langelotz, 2014; Rönnerman & Salo, 2012). However, such ideas are also problematised, for a range of reasons such as their possibly elitist and individualist connotations. One example is Langelotz’s research on Swedish teachers’ peer group mentoring (Langelotz, 2014, 2017a, b), with clear traces from adult education such as study circles (i.e. “folkbildning”). Combining the theory of practice architectures with Foucault’s concepts of the power/knowledge nexus and discourse, Langelotz found tensions amongst the peer group mentoring participants and a risk that individuals might be stigmatised (Langelotz, 2014, 2017a, b). Another example of the power of research to problematise taken-for-granted concepts is Doris Santos’s (2016) action research in Colombian higher education, drawing on her immersion in the Latin American action research approaches of Freire and Fals Borda, as well as Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality (Champlin, 2013). Santos examines the problematic assumptions of participation that sit beneath notions of participatory action research (i.e. the “P” in PAR). She suggests that PAR be re-signified on the basis of six imbricated “P” notions: people, plurality, publicity, participation, power, and politics (Santos, 2016, p. 635), rather than limiting its meaning to only participation. She argues that PAR understood as participation only carries simplistic and often unproblematised assumptions of people’s universal and equal possibilities to participate in ways that are meaningful for them (Santos, 2016). What we have discussed above are examples of how, on the one hand, research facilitating praxis has been prefigured by the different arrangements (such as languages and ideas or traditions) found in or brought to different national sites, and, on the other, when this research has also shaped those arrangements, for example, by problematising the use of certain concepts. At least as significant is the climate in which research is conducted. The way research approaches are used reflects the individual histories, interests, and viewpoints of researchers in this chapter, as well as their historically and socially constructed ways of understanding education and educational research. Furthermore, the social-political climate of the parts of the world in which PEP research is conducted influences what kind of research is possible and viewed as valued or worthwhile. This variation also reflects the changing world and the key differences between the social-political arrangements of our contexts. For example, addressing issues of discrimination and inequity, in educational efforts to create “world[s] worth living in” (Kemmis et al., 2014b) may look different in the Nordic social-democratic nations compared to Colombia or the Caribbean. Research from Latin America, for example, addresses issues of civil war and attempts to build reconciliation between stakeholders as part of critical participatory action research projects in Colombian tertiary education (Santos, 2016). What enables research that facilitates praxis in these different locations is that “[t]he knowledge that guides praxis always arises from and must always relate back to practice” (Carr, 2006, p. 427), and the achieved change is beneficial for that context.

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Whose Praxis is Being Researched, and from Where? In the preceding sections, we have discussed how research facilitating praxis has been shaped by—and has shaped—the historical and geographical contexts in which it has been conducted. We now move to discuss the third and last sub-question of this chapter, “Whose praxis is being facilitated (or is attempting to be facilitated), and from which position?”. It allows us to explore not only who the research is about, but also where praxis is located within the education complex (see Fig. 3.1 below), whose praxis matters, and from which positionalities it is explored. Our review of the PEP literature reveals that in most cases, research aiming to facilitate praxis starts from an assumption that praxis and praxis development are desirable and should be promoted. Typically, the findings suggest that the chosen research approach has worked to facilitate praxis, and that the participants, more often than not, have benefited from this development. There is a danger, however, that the question used to guide the literature review reported in this chapter (what research approaches facilitate praxis and praxis development?) might steer us to find “success stories” of praxis development and hide some contesting voices of those whose praxis may not have been facilitated, or whose praxis was not in focus. Not everybody views their praxis development the same way and not all research approaches can capture this diversity. There are some studies in the literature that look reflexively at the challenges of conducting particular kinds of research, focussing on, for example, power dynamics in research teams or the complexities of conducting research with colleagues as co-participants (see, for example, Mahon, 2014, 2017; Zhang et al., 2014). The question of whose praxis is being facilitated and by whom may reveal assumptions about whose praxis is worth facilitating, and whose knowledge is viewed as valid, but

Fig. 3.1 Ecologies of Practices. (Adapted from Kemmis et al., 2014b, p. 52 with permission from Springer Nature)

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more than that, it reveals where the research focus of the network has traditionally been located. As discussed elsewhere in this book, educational practices are sometimes (but not always) ecologically interdependent (see Fig. 3.1., above). Thus, exploring how research facilitates the praxis of teachers, for example, cannot ignore the development of praxis of others at the same site, such as students or educational leaders. As shown below, all dimensions of the educational complex are acknowledged in the PEP literature collectively, but with a particular emphasis placed on the praxis of teachers.

Educators’ Praxis at the Centre The insistence on including the practitioners’ praxis and their site-specific knowledge in research is clear in our review of literature (e.g. Groundwater-Smith, Mockler, Mitchell, Ponte, & Rönnerman, 2013; Forsman & Hummelstedt-Djedou, 2014; Sjølie et al., 2018/2019). This speaks back to the deprofessionalisation of educators’ practices, particularly apparent in nations such as Australia (see Chap. 5 for greater elaboration on the site-based conditions for educators’ practices). It also speaks back to research which, often unintentionally, can disempower and downgrade educators’ knowledge with research or interventions done from the outside, in the hope of a “quick fix”. Ideally, research for praxis avoids asking simply “what works?”, but instead asks how do things work, and for whom? Attempts for “quick fixes” may look like good ideas from a distance and in theory, but they do not trust that professional, involved educators can indeed contribute to the development of practice in their own settings. A push to include teachers’ professional knowledge in school development projects has justified the use of action research and impacted, for example, local educational development work in Sweden (in Swedish lokalt utvecklingsarbete; Rönnerman 1998); earlier moves towards school-based curriculum development in Australia in the 1970s; and the process of educational delegation and deregulation in Finland (Johnson 2006). This is illustrated in PEP research which originates from these countries. For example, Edwards-Groves, Bull, and Anstey (2014) employed action research with clusters of Australian primary teachers to facilitate the use of oral language and dialogue as a means of enhancing pedagogical practices. Some studies have focused the examination of praxis in the disciplines, for example, in the mathematics curriculum (see Grootenboer & Edwards-Groves, 2014) and in the English teaching (see Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2015). Other examples of teachers facilitating their own praxis through research include Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Australia (e.g. Hardy, Rönnerman, & Edwards-Groves, 2018; Heikkinen, de Jong, & Vanderlinde, 2016; Rönnerman & Salo, 2014). Societal support for “teachers as researchers” can be seen as creating enabling conditions for researching praxis in our national contexts, although in some cases, there is a risk that teachers can be

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“hijacked” and misused in an instrumental rather than an emancipatory way (Carr & Kemmis, 1986). A considerable emphasis in PEP literature has been placed upon educators’ praxis, with educators encompassing adult learners such as teachers, trainers, preschool teachers, tertiary educators, principals, professional developers, and researchers, which is understandable, as the role of the teachers is strongly emphasised in the five research questions framing the work of PEP (see Chap. 1). Consequently, it is most often the educators’ voices that are heard. Less commonly is there a focus upon the praxis of students, community members, or families. This is a limitation not of the body of research, which has been successful in capturing the educators’ voices, but a limitation of what can be said about this question based on the reviewed literature. Given the original aims of the PEP network, it makes sense that its research has focused on studies with teachers as researchers (often with external researcher partners) investigating and transforming their own practices, understandings, and sites of their practice. However, the emphasis on teachers’ praxis (and teaching) should not overrule a parallel focus on the other practices in the education complex: students’ learning, researching, professional learning, and leading as they also contribute important knowledge to the project of developing education. As Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2015) argue in their examination of teachers’, principals’, and students’ voices and perspectives on teaching practices, “understanding English teaching practices must also be re-envisioned to account for an ontological practical perspective that gives pre-eminence to praxis” (p. 160). Indeed, as noted in Chap. 5, learning does not always need a teacher, but teaching always needs a learner. The need to more carefully address the students’ voices has been responded to with a small but growing focus on students’ learning practices (see, for example, Edwards-Groves et al., 2013; Forsman & Hummelstedt-Djedou, 2014; Kaukko & Wilkinson, 2018; Smit, 2013). Our review shows that the use of the research approaches differs depending on whose praxis was in focus. Hence, the third key finding in our literature review was that particular research approaches were seen as facilitating praxis in three ways: from an “outside”, “inside”, and “in-between” research position. We do not make judgements as to whether some locations facilitate praxis more effectively than others, but we argue that the location does matter. “Where you sit determines what you see”, noted Westoby (2009, p. 13), and this seems to be the case also in the PEP literature. We also note that the analytic method impacts what the researcher considers to count as praxis (see, for example, Edwards-Groves & Davidson, 2017). The “real” impact relies on the participants/researchers whose praxis is the focus and in how they use research to facilitate it. In some of the literature reviewed, a researcher viewpoint was deliberately chosen and discussed. For example, Zhang et al. (2014) explore their own research praxis in a retrospective analysis of their own PhD work and compare the different national settings and possibilities to relate as a researcher to participants in the research. They use the concept of “communicative space” and emphasise the importance of inviting the “practitioners” or the “researched”, such as school teachers, physiotherapists and so on, to participate (p. 14). They argue that.

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M. Kaukko et al. being grounded in the intimacy of the lived experience of the researcher and the researched has offered us hopes to make stronger emotional connections with action research and the ‘researched’ in a stance of empathy and receptivity (Zhang et al., 2014, p. 16).

Thus, the research from the “inside” reported in this study may foster a development of the authors’ own ethical and respectful research praxis in the future, which can be used from other subject positions. The role and practice of the researcher are explicitly problematised in some literature (e.g. Aspfors, Pörn, Forsman, Salo, & Karlberg-Granlund, 2015; Kemmis, 2010; Langelotz, 2014; Mahon, 2017). Langelotz (2014) discusses the delicacy of her role as a “storyteller” in her research into peer group mentoring practice in Swedish schools. In these sites, she was invited to be part of teachers’ “confession” practices, which positioned the teachers as particularly vulnerable. Langelotz refers to this practice as peer group mentoring through a “Foucauldian lens” (2014). Similarly, as a doctoral student conducting research into a Teacher Talk collaborative research group of which her supervisors were members, Mahon (2014) examines both her and her supervisors’ challenging roles in collaborative research inquiry. In other publications drawing on Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish contexts (Rönnerman, Furu, & Salo, 2008) or Australia (Groundwater-Smith et al., 2013), the viewpoints of researchers are implied. Whether the research viewpoint was discussed or not was a matter of whose praxis was is focus, as well as the chosen research method. In the remainder of this section, we explore these different researcher locations in the reviewed literature through a tripartite lens—considering whether the point of view of the researcher is “outside” or “inside” the point of view of the practitioner, or “in between” the perspectives of the researcher and the practitioner/s.

Research Facilitating Praxis from the “Outside” Perhaps surprisingly given the emphasis upon action research, many of the PEP publications reviewed were about or on educational praxis, drawing on research exploring the praxis of others’ (teachers, leaders) practices. For example this, was the case in Changing Practices, Changing Education, in which Kemmis et al. (2014b) used ethnographic methods of observation, focus groups, and interviews, and a hermeneutical approach to explore the education complex—the practices of teaching, learning, leading, professional learning, and researching that hang together in several distinctive sites across two Australian states. In the beginning of their study, the methods positioned the researcher “outside” the practices they studied, that is, observing these practices rather than working as action researchers with the practitioners. However, this outside position changed over time in some educational sites. To find praxis within the practice, the researchers aimed to understand what the actions meant for the people performing the practices. Furthermore, the researchers explored how people involved in these practices, that are students, teachers, leaders, and professional leaders, understood these practices. By doing this, the researchers gained

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access to educators’ self-understandings through a range of methods: interviews, focus groups, pre-lesson interviews, classroom and staff meeting observations, and post-lesson debriefing interviews. Moreover, the researchers wrote their emerging findings and returned to the schools to share these drafts and invite discussions about them. In so doing, they explored praxis within educators’ practices through a process they described as “philosophical-empirical inquiry”, which combines “observations and eliciting descriptions of practices (particularly about the talk, actions, and relationships which characterise these practices)” with “contemporary practice theory and philosophy to explore how practice theory [can be used] to interpret the empirical circumstances [they] encountered, and how [their] interpretations could also prompt development in practice theory” (Kemmis et al., 2014b, p. 13). This approach was based, on the one hand, on practice theory and philosophy, and, on the other, on observations of the empirical realities of practice as revealed in the classroom and other settings studied, utilising observation, interviews, document analysis, interaction analysis, and discourse analysis. In other words, the researchers made observations and elicited descriptions of practices while engaging with literature on contemporary practice theory and philosophy. This helped them to employ practice theory to “interpret the empirical circumstances they encountered and to understand how their interpretations could prompt new developments in practice theory” (Kemmis et al., 2014b, p. 13). Hence, rather than testing or validating existing theories in the field or creating new knowledge inductively, based purely on observations of practices, this study combined theory and practice in a dialogic manner. In other words, it utilised a form of abductive (sometimes called retroductive) analysis, that is, “reasoning through the phenomenon in focus, considering its parallels to other observations and existing theories, resulting in an inferential creative process of producing new knowledge” (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012, p. 171). As such, this approach aims to facilitate a form of praxis for both the educators and the researchers involved in the dialogue. This dialogic approach is common across PEP research (e.g. Edwards-Groves & Hoare, 2012; Kaukko & Wilkinson, 2018). The outside perspective, be it more or less dialogic, allows a choice of a variety of methods. For example, Heikkinen and Huttunen (2017), Kemmis (2012a) and Carr (2007) write about the rationale of education on a theoretical level but still aim to facilitate praxis. Rönnerman and Langelotz (2015), Boyle, Grieshaber, and Petriwskij (2018) and the book you are now holding review educational research literature. Although the subject position of such desk-based research (reviewing literature or writing theoretical texts) appears to be very much outside the practice the research discusses, this kind of research arises from practices and can build the body of knowledge which educators can use to develop their praxis. Moreover, it can help to build conditions for praxis.

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Researchers “In Between” A second research location identified in our review of the literature lays somewhere between insider and outsider approaches. We have termed this an “in-between” research location. Many studies use the theory of practice architectures to explore the site-based and national conditions that shape the ways practices unfold and participants’ understandings of their practices. Researchers in these studies do not claim to facilitate praxis by exploring primarily their own practices, but the researchers are also not fully spectators, exploring somebody’s praxis completely from the outside. Hence, the researchers may have started as “invited guests from the outside” (Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 269) but, with time, have progressed closer towards an insider perspective. For instance, Langelotz’s (2014, 2017a, 2017b) study with a teacher team employing peer group mentoring describes this move as sliding from the subject location of a guest to that of a recognised “storyteller”—the one who co-creates and carries the story of the teachers’ professional learning. The teachers had the professional knowledge, which they shared to inform research, which in turn facilitated their praxis development. The changing power relations in play enhanced the teachers’ mentoring and the researcher’s practice, producing a “collaborative practice” where more democratic discussions and decisions were made possible (Langelotz, 2014, 2017a, 2017b). Another example is a study conducted by Aspfors et al., (2015), in which the authors engaged in collaborative professional development projects for teachers in Swedish-medium schools in Finland. Although the research was situated within projects for teachers’ professional development, the researchers were (outsider) negotiators “concerning the cultural-discursive arrangements, the material-economic arrangements, and the social-political arrangements” (2015, p. 407) of the professional development projects. The aim was quite deliberate: to facilitate teachers’ praxis (from the outside), while learning about their own researching practice and praxis (from the inside). The authors note that “an outsider such as a researcher with an authentic and professional interest in teachers’ tasks always seemed to be welcomed and highly needed. Here, the researcher might serve as a catalyst” (Aspfors et al., 2015, p. 408). More examples of researchers as facilitators in teachers’ professional learning projects include an action research initiative by Swedish teachers and leisure-teachers (Tyrén, 2013) and Gyllander Torkildsen’s (2016) study of collaborations with Swedish junior high school teachers and students to explore and enhance assessment praxis. The studies reported in Gyllander Torkildsen (2016) are examples of the researcher’s position shifting alongside the changing cultural-discursive, materialeconomic, and social-political arrangements of the research sites. For example, despite the researchers’ shared ambition to enhance collaboration and interaction between Swedish comprehensive school (in Swedish, grundskola) teachers and the researchers, Gyllander Torkildsen (2016) notes how the material-economic arrangements of time available for teachers changed, constraining the teachers’ possibilities for collaboration with the researchers and thus positioning the researchers

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further to the outside. Forssten Seiser (2017) conducted a critical participatory action research initiative on Swedish comprehensive school principals’ professional learning, leading, and school development. Her study reveals how the action research process developed in three phases: the establishment stage, the testing stage, and the critical stage. These stages, she contended, gradually enhanced trusting relationships among the participants, which proved necessary in order to unpack and understand these principals’ pedagogical leadership. Forssten Seiser (2017) argues that her previous experiences as an “insider”, that is, a former Swedish comprehensive school principal, having inside information about the complexity of the role of the principal, gave her insights into the research process, which she otherwise would have not achieved. In Aspfors et al. (2015), Gyllander Torkildsen (2016), and Forssten Seiser (2017) studies, the researchers’ positions were “sliding” because of the arrangements in their sites. Gyllander Torkildsen was pushed outwards, but the movement can be also in the opposite direction. In the preceding study by Kemmis et al. (2014b), the extended periods of time the authors spent in schools brought the “guests” (researchers) closer to their participants (teachers and various kinds of school leaders), developing their understanding of the happeningness of practices into which they were invited (Kemmis, 2012a). Likewise, Kaukko and Wilkinson (2018) started their research as outsiders in a multicultural primary school located in the outskirts of a major Australian city, interviewing children, teachers, and the leadership team. Over time, the children and staff became more familiar and at the same time, keen to participate in deciding how the research should progress, thus changing the relatings of the research practices. Consequently, the researchers were invited to continue with a follow-up study, collecting video data from “inside” the everyday teaching and learning practices of the school. In such cases, the researchers gradually lose their “outsider” status and become accepted as co-participant researchers, or “co-researchers”, with the school participants—in this case, the teachers and leadership team. These examples show changes in the intersubjective spaces between the researchers and participants and illuminate the happeningness of practices, as well as the praxis within them.

Facilitating Praxis from the “Inside” Both outsider and in-between subject locations afford the opportunity for researchers to gain insights into educators’ praxis. They can also help, at least indirectly, to facilitate the praxis of both researchers and educators. However, we acknowledge that exploring praxis (rather than solely practice) and its development is most easily accessible from the inside, through a first-person perspective (Kemmis, 2012a). Examples of this approach are apparent in the reviewed research, although perhaps surprisingly, they are not as common as one would have assumed. There are a few studies exploring and facilitating praxis in higher education, framed by the concept of “Teacher Talk” (e.g. Edwards-Groves, 2013; Hardy, 2010; Mahon, 2014). Edwards-Groves, Hardy, and Mahon examined, in three different

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studies at their respective Australian universities, communicative arenas of reflective practices of higher education scholars, groups in which the researchers were participants, observers, and on occasion, facilitators. In Mahon’s study (2014), seven scholars created a communicative arena of reflective conversation practice, simultaneously conducting a collaborative inquiry with elements of critical participatory action research, institutional ethnography, and self-study. This study provides an insider-view of higher education praxis, and how praxis can be enabled and constrained by the conditions within their setting, and how the academics negotiate tensions between the conditions and their praxis-oriented goals. Hardy (2010) argues that the findings from his study validate the use of collaborative inquiry as a form of praxis in university settings. The Edwards-Groves (2013) study showed how creating communicative space for critical and transformative dialogues enables teacher educators to research for praxis and ultimately redefine their roles, sense of agency, and professional identities. In addition to these research outcomes, the Teacher Talk group became a platform for researchers to explore and facilitate their own praxis. Further examples of insider-research include that by Pennanen et al. (2017), who conducted a reflexive examination of their transnational research practice as research collaborators in Finland and Australia. Their study provides a further example of an insider view into praxis and praxis development. Kaukko (2018) wrote an autoethnographic account of action research with a vulnerable group of children, that is, unaccompanied asylum-seeking girls. Kaukko’s text was written as a practical guide for doctoral students, but the process of writing provided opportunities to explore how such research practices had influenced her as a researcher, educator, and mother. Wilkinson, Rönnerman, Bristol, and Salo (2018) examine the different ontological conditions for researching leadership in their varied national sites of Sweden, Australia, and Finland, and Kaukko and Kiilakoski (2018) focus on ethical and methodological conditions for action research with vulnerable groups of young people. Overall, the notions of “outsider”, “in-between”, and “insider” research locations in the study of educators’ praxis are not fixed but dynamic and continually shifting. PEP research has demonstrated that researchers can research practices from the outside and find praxis within them. Researchers also can develop their own phron¯esis or wisdom by “praxising” (Kemmis, 2012a; Russell & Grootenboer, 2008; Smith, Salo, & Grootenboer, 2010). Moreover, the possibilities of facilitating praxis are not limited to learning about one’s individual actions, for praxis can also be developed by studying the rationale and consequences of other people’s actions. The ways in which researchers initially enter the research site and navigate their way through it illustrate researchers’ subject locations as part of a praxis continuum.

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Conclusion In this chapter, we have reviewed not only the PEP literature written in English by researchers from a particular range of cultural backgrounds, but also a smaller but equally important corpus of literature written in Swedish and Finnish. Given our authorial team is composed of Finnish, Swedish, and Australian authors, this has allowed us to understand more deeply the varying traditions that underpin approaches to research across our different cultural contexts, particularly in terms of action research. A key omission has been the presence of a South American author in the team, as well as authors writing in other European languages (such as Dutch or Norwegian). We have attempted to at least partially make up for this lacuna by including all English research written about and for research approaches conducted in contexts in PEP, which are not present in our authorial team. In examining what research approaches facilitate praxis and praxis development in different (inter)national contexts, our review reveals that praxis can be conducted from a variety of research locations (inside, outside, in-between), but typically many of the studies reviewed explore praxis from the “outside”. If research was conducted from an “inside” perspective (e.g. when educators reflected on or researched their own praxis or research process through action research), it may have helped educators to develop a sensitivity to the local, immediate consequences of their teaching practice. Such sensitivity assists educators to become more aware or attuned to the wider consequences of their work for the learner and society over the long term (Kemmis, 2012a; Mahon, 2014). If research was conducted from the “outside” or what Kemmis has termed a “spectator” perspective (Kemmis, 2012b), for example, when a university researcher conducts research on an educators’ teaching practices, and reports the findings to the educator research may facilitate praxis by changing the conditions for teaching, or enabling educators to look at their own praxis differently. Furthermore, between the “insider” and the “outsider” positions, there is a spectrum of positions in between. Exploring researcher locations is fruitful for it assists us in understanding whose praxis is seen as worth facilitating, and whose knowledge about praxis may be viewed as valid. However, this division into “insider”, “outsider”, and ‘in-between” raised questions about what the researcher is an outsider or insider to the whole education complex, i.e. student learning, teaching, professional learning, leading, researching—or the various interrelated educational practices in that complex? Our main focus when considering the research location of researchers was the practice at hand, the actual focus of research, but a more holistic analysis could have interpreted this from the broader point of view of the whole education complex. This later interpretation would be justified, as most PEP researchers come from a professional background as educators, that is, teachers, principals, adult educators, and are quite well acquainted with the practices they are researching. Nonetheless, foregrounding this question is an important part of rendering explicit researchers’ praxis in the future.

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Addressing the question, “what research approaches facilitate praxis and praxis development in different (inter)national contexts?” affords opportunities to understand how praxis may best be facilitated in a range of different national and sectorspecific contexts. It also opens the door for dialogue and cross-fertilisation of differing research traditions and understandings to be fostered and shared. However, writing this chapter also pointed out that perhaps unintended normative underpinning to the way in which the question is worded, suggesting that certain research approaches do facilitate praxis and praxis development while others do not. Yet we also acknowledge that all research, knowingly or unknowingly, expresses normative commitments, and there is no pure “non-normative” perspective or location from which any research in any field can be conducted. The way the question is asked points our attention to certain things when aiming to answer the question. The normativity is therefore not a problem of the question per se, but of what can be done with the question. As discussed earlier, Biesta et al. (2019) challenge research to cause problems rather than fix them. Hence, a question to ask in the future may be: What research approaches challenge and/or facilitate praxis and praxis development? This form of the question would lead to different answers and open up possibilities for new research-generated knowledge. The examples of research facilitating praxis used a range of methods from “traditional” methods of interviews, observations, focus groups, and case studies, to emerging methods such as “blogging”, video research, or poetry writing. Many of the examples were action research, which arguably links well with the ideas of praxis and praxis development. The reviewed literature was almost purely qualitative; mixed methods or quantitative approaches were missing. There may be a useful place in future research for mixed methods and/or quantitative approaches that have the potential to raise educators’ awareness and begin a process of “conscientisation” (Freire, 1969/2000). In conclusion, the rich and varied texts on, with and for praxis provide a powerful armoury to speak back to increasingly homogenised and homogenising approaches to education. The findings presented in this chapter suggest possibilities for research approaches that can further contribute to the rich corpus of work emerging from the literature reviewed in this chapter.

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Chapter 4

Critiquing and Cultivating the Conditions for Educational Praxis and Praxis Development Ian Hardy, Kirsten Petrie, Anita Norlund, Ingrid Henning Loeb, and Kiprono Langat Abstract This chapter addresses how, in different national contexts, the changing cultural, social, political, and material conditions for praxis and praxis development are affecting the educational practices of teachers and other educators. Through the corpus of PEP research (2008–2018), the chapter explores the broader conditions within which educators undertake their work—conditions that enable and constrain educators’ working lives. At a more macro level, the chapter elaborates changing conditions of educational policy and practice, especially regarding the nature and effects of neoliberalism, that have had a significant impact on educators’ possibilities for praxis. At more micro levels, the impact of neoliberalism is felt through a myriad of significant issues—including educators’ professional practice, refugee education, and responses to climate change. The chapter shows that, while these issues are problematic, there are also grounds for hope. Through specific examples, the chapter concludes by identifying practices that cultivate conditions that serve as resources for hope, enabling educators to sustain and foster educational praxis.

Introduction Since 2006, researchers in the Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis (PEP) international research network have examined the local, national, and global conditions that shape I. Hardy University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia K. Petrie (B) The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] A. Norlund University of Borås, Borås, Sweden I. H. Loeb University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden K. Langat Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Mahon et al. (eds.), Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5_4

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educational practices, praxis, and praxis development. This chapter provides insights into how researchers in the network have sought to highlight both the problematic conditions within which educators’ practice is enacted (and the implications for praxis and praxis development), and how educators have sought to take these circumstances into account in meaningful and productive ways. Drawing on a review of the literature produced and generated by members of the PEP network between 2008 and 2018, this chapter foregrounds how the changing cultural, social, political, and material conditions for praxis and praxis development have affected educational practices in different national contexts including Australia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Trinidad and Tobago, and Colombia. When we talk about conditions, we focus on (local, national, and transnational) cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements that shape educational practice. We help to make sense of these conditions using practice theory perspectives based on the work of such researchers as Theodore Schatzki (2002) and the theory of practice architectures developed by, for example, Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008), and Kemmis et al. (2014a). Such conditions are always “in the making”, however, and some can be changed by people taking action to change them. They are expressed through a variety of “architectures” that are manifest in society, that shape, and are shaped by particular practices. In our understanding of conditions, in this chapter, we particularly consider the relationship between enacted pedagogies and praxis, and especially the circumstances that enable and constrain praxis development. The examples outlined in this chapter provide an understanding of the situatedness and expression of educational practice in society, including how global policy ideas exert influence within and across nations, with sometimes significant effects within different educational sites. As noted in Chap. 1, this book, and this chapter in particular, also help us understand how the theory of practice architectures has been deployed to make sense of the changing conditions and circumstances that influence educational praxis. We begin the chapter by outlining some macro-conditions currently influencing education, particularly in relation to processes of neoliberalism. Specifically, we turn our attention to the cultural, material, and social conditions that follow from neoliberalism—what we describe, after Peck (2010), as “neoliberalisation”. These processes of neoliberalisation are expressed in terms of: managerialism and performance management; accountability as performativity, and; various kinds of categorising, labelling, numbering, and differentiating. Importantly, however, these processes do not go unchallenged. Even as the conditions for educational practice are influenced by processes of neoliberalisation, alternative practices and paradigms are also evident. While some of these alternative approaches and foci are outlined in relation to the specific examples described in the first half of the chapter about neoliberalism and neoliberalisation, we elaborate further on these possibilities towards the end of the chapter. These more productive practices and conditions constitute “points and places” of hope and possibility. They include counter-hegemonic kinds of professional practice, for example, in response to issues of immigration and to climate change.

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Neoliberalism and Neoliberalisation At a variety of spatial scales (global, national, regional, local) and across a range of traditional and alternative media (including social media), changing conditions are often characterised as the product of some variation of neoliberal ideology, values, and governing. However, the research of the PEP network shows how the notion of neoliberalism is far from uniform, that it differs under different circumstances, and how it is enacted differently in different countries and contexts. Nevertheless, PEP researchers have also used the term neoliberalism to discuss enabling and constraining conditions for practices while collectively recognising that it is a contested notion. Neoliberal practices, with their emphasis upon market-based practices as an ethic in themselves (Harvey 2005), encourage individualism, and in educational terms, foreground a conception of the individual learner, rather than learning as a collective enterprise. This is evident in policy imperatives formulated in transnational bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission, which review and make recommendations in relation to national education policies and the educational practices of teachers. This increased focus on individualism, and the “individual learner” is also evident during recent decades in key policy-steering documents in the Nordic countries, as well as in the Anglophone countries where these ideas were seen to have originated. The progression of such ideas can be seen as part of what might be understood as broader “neoliberalisation” processes. We find Peck’s (2010) notion of “neoliberalisation” particularly fruitful for understanding processes of neoliberalism and the ways in which neoliberal ideas and ideals come to be expressed in practice. Neoliberalisation connotes the active processes by which more market-oriented practices and processes come to be promoted in domains in which they were not previously ascendant. As will become evident through this chapter, the research undertaken by PEP researchers has shown how the rise of education “reforms” driven by marketoriented policy and competitive gains have shifted conditions for educational practice. However, and importantly, neoliberalisation is not a fait accompli but an active process which is enacted and contested by real people in real time. As Peck (2010) puts it, “the never-inevitable ascendancy of neoliberalisation, as an open-ended and contradictory process of politically assisted market rule” (p. xii), is always subject to change. Sometimes, neoliberalism is expressed as some form of New Public Management (NPM). “New Public Management is a general concept denoting a global wave of administrative reforms… that have similar goals: to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the public sector; to enhance the responsiveness of public agencies to their clients and customers; to reduce public expenditure; and to improve managerial accountability” (Christensen & Laegreid, 2011, p. 16). Across their different countries, PEP researchers have endeavoured to identify processes of neoliberalisation and NPM at work in their national contexts. Their research has shown that these processes have been significant in shaping the conditions for praxis and praxis development in our multiple national and local contexts. Neoliberalism arising through processes of neoliberalisation has been shown to

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be understood in different ways and enacted differently in different countries and contexts. As will become more evident throughout this chapter, the research has revealed how neoliberalisation and the rise of education “reforms” driven by marketoriented policy and competitive gains have changed the cultural, material, and social conditions in which educators live, work, learn, and seek to “educate”. Practices arising from processes of neoliberalisation have substantively reconstituted the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political conditions under which teachers and other educators work and learn, and, in doing so, have challenged more praxis-oriented approaches to education (Hardy & Grootenboer, 2013). If we understand praxis as both individual and collective development and will formation, both for individual development and for a better world, then we conclude that, under neoliberalisation, the conditions for praxis have been significantly diminished. Educators also seek to challenge more reductive conceptions of their work and constructions of their work that do not adequately account for the specificity and particularity of the cultural, material, and social-political conditions within which their work occurs. They promote more contextualised, site-based conceptions of practice, and endeavour to make decisions that are relevant to their students at particular moments in time. In short, they engage in praxis-oriented practices that do not seek to eviscerate the particularity of the happening of their educational work and the circumstances under which it occurs but instead seek to respond positively and responsibly to these circumstances. In practice, these educators, and others who influence the conditions of their work, remain open and willing to engage with, and, where necessary, challenge, critique, and transform the conditions which shape their work. In the interests of educational praxis, teachers are open and willing to change the sayings, doings, and relatings that constitute their practices and the practice architectures (cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements) that enable and constrain those practices. PEP researchers have found much evidence of changes to educational practice brought about by changing conditions produced by education “reforms” driven by market-oriented policy and competitive gains; at the same time, though, they have also shown how alternative conditions, more conducive to educational praxis, have been and can be brought into being (see the section below, “Sustaining and Cultivating Educational Praxis”). So, on the one hand, the corpus of PEP researchers has consistently examined the broader conditions associated with managerialism and performance management, accountability as performativity, and labelling and numbering. We will shortly give examples of each of these. However, and at the same time, such processes are enmeshed with more educational practices. While practices arising from processes of neoliberalisation have substantively reconstituted the cultural, material, and social conditions for students, teachers and other educators, this has not simply happened by chance, nor without contestation. In the following sections, we elaborate some of the specific conditions generated by and associated with the processes of neoliberalisation and the effects these have on and in educational practices in different national contexts. We also seek to reveal how specific practices both reflect and are reflective of processes of neoliberalisation and performance management. This serves as a precursor for more optimistic reflections in the concluding part of the chapter.

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Managerialism and Performance Management Student and professional learning in institutional settings—schools, universities, vocational college settings, workplaces—has increasingly become framed by reductionist conceptions of “managerialism”, and “performance management” (Ball, 2003; Gerwitz, 2001; Forrester, 2011). The systemic introduction of the managerialism during the 1980s was characterised by a set of beliefs and practices that when adopted social services, such as education, could be reshaped in order to improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and organisational performance (Zifcak, 1994). In line with such an approach, a culture of “performance management” intensified. As Forrester (2011) highlights “performance management can be regarded as a form of control by which school ‘managers’ increase surveillance and monitoring of teachers work as they translate organisational objectives into individual goals” (p. 6). The language, work, and power relations of “performance management” and “managerialism” provide striking examples of how particular cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political conditions affect educational practices in different contexts. As in the case of NPM and neoliberalism, there is no converging globalised model or set of prescriptions of “managerialism” or of “performance management”. Rather, the logics of managerialism are expressed differently in different national and local fields, and the practices within these fields need to be studied and analysed in order to understand the specific conditions that have given rise to such processes, and how they might be contested in different contexts. Research on how changing managerial policies and performance management in educational practice are taking form and how managerialism is affecting praxis development have been conducted by PEP researchers and addressed in different ways. PEP researchers have revealed how, under neoliberalising conditions, learning is reduced to an individual activity that can be technically administered and monitored. This management, administration and monitoring is expressed in the increasing abstraction of learning. This occurs in various ways, including metrification of educational practice (e.g. in league tables of school performance based on standardised literacy and numeracy tests, and of the performance of universities on various standardised metrics), and, particularly in Anglophone countries, the dominance of reductive approaches to notions of “core competencies” (e.g. in vocational education), or a myriad of other “technologies” designed to keep “account” of, and to “audit” educational practice. In one of the first books produced in the Sense Publishers Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis series, Ax and Ponte (2010) collected a number of studies of the impact of Dutch policy on teachers and teacher education. Mirroring empirical research in relation to the continental European pedagogy tradition and core concepts connected to “pedagogiek”, they conclude that as governments sought “meta-control of education and schools”, conditions for practice shifted toward a focus on effectiveness and efficiency. This included reducing the input to policymaking from educators whose educational focus brought moral intentions and consequences to the fore. Under such conditions, educational praxis became fragmented, and teachers were

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no longer respected as important actors in education. Rather, they were positioned as invisible “members of the school team”, “employees”, and “people to whom policies are addressed” without adequate consideration for teachers’ specific educational knowledge and capabilities, or the varying circumstances in which they and their students learn. Teachers’ scope for morally informed action was curtailed by the influx of other actors, especially administrators, managers, and co-ordinators, who determined school policy, and in doing so, constrained educational practice in schools and classrooms. Similarly, Hardy and Rönnerman (2011) revealed the significant impact of managerial influences on the global modes and content of continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers in the context of Swedish school system. In decontextualised “what works” approaches, the learning of teachers was “managed” and those current approaches to CPD involved, as they put it, “acting on” teachers (e.g. for school improvement, improved student outcomes, improved use of ICTs.) rather than “working with” teachers to improve their engagement with students through better understanding their practice in their local settings. In a schooling setting in Australia, Hardy (2008) revealed how the work of a group of teachers in Queensland, referred to locally as “The Curriculum Board”, was both enabled and constrained by the broader policy conditions within which their work was undertaken. Situated as it was within a policy setting influenced by more managerial concerns about how (increasingly restricted) funding was to be expended, and calls for innovation and economic improvement as part of the Backing Australia’s Ability initiative at the time (a 2001 initiative of the Australian Commonwealth Government led by Prime Minister John Howard), teachers’ learning was increasingly influenced by managerial and economic prerogatives. However, the more productive aspects of teachers’ work were also evident in the ways teachers collaborated and sought to be responsive to the needs of their students. As it turned out, the more managerial imperatives of Backing Australia’s Future (a 2002 Commonwealth Government Review of Universities) were contested by impulses from the contemporaneous Commonwealth Government Quality Teacher Programme, which served as a set of practice architectures that encouraged alternatives to more managerial foci and fostered more sustainable, ongoing, teacher learning. Several empirical studies in the different national contexts of the PEP network highlight the intensified managerial orientations of educational leadership, which include different kinds of formal administration roles and various quests for leadership performance. Bristol, Esnard, and Brown (2015), for example, provide a rich picture of the complex roles that school principals in Trinidad and Tobago are expected to handle. Amongst conditions framed by Ministry of Education policy reformers, there was increased emphasis on leading as school transformation and student achievement. Coupled with this, principals in Trinidad and Tobago were required to manage the expectations of historical and local institutions such as the church and the community, as well as those expected by “new” stakeholders, including the district/regional educational office, which oversaw the performance of schools, and the learners themselves. And yet, at the same time, the agency of principals was also evident in such circumstances, contributing to the conditions for

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reflective practice as a form of professional learning, even though this was difficult work in an impoverished school community. Such efforts were described as instances of “leading practices” under these conditions (Bristol, Esnard, & Brown, 2015). This included efforts to transform teachers’ teaching practices and community perceptions of schooling. In a Swedish context, Wilkinson et al. (2010) explored how conditions for nurturing leading praxis were threatened by domineering global market-driven reforms. They found that the discursive, material, and social conditions created by these reforms constrained and diminished the communicative spaces that foster praxis development in schools and local government areas. The reforms encouraged a move away from the pedagogical leadership of educators and towards more managerial practices that evidenced reduced trust in teachers. The study also highlighted the domesticating effects of more performative responses to the compulsory deployment of particular practices, such as collaborative learning in schools. And yet, amongst these problematic practices, more productive practices were also generated, for example in the form of new, more participatory arrangements for the principals to learn together, the encouragement of learning amongst teachers in their own schools, and of academics to engage in more inclusive practices. Henning Loeb and Lumsden Wass (2011) also provide evidence of the contested conditions affecting Swedish educators, including challenges to more performative practices. Their work focused on how a teacher team in a Swedish upper secondary school responded to calls to account for their practice and mobilised to defend their pedagogic activity for pupils ineligible for regular upper secondary education. Through contesting and re-articulating performance management and accounting practices, they created possibilities to intervene in the future of their educational setting in more productive ways. The teachers produced lists of their students’ emotional disorders, cognitive distortions, and pedagogical needs in a template that was in accordance with the accounting request from the municipal upper secondary school administration. But they did so in ways aimed at enhancing possibilities for their students, even though, as teachers, they internalised the demands of the performance management processes imposed on them. Thus, the study showed how teachers’ performance management has become increasingly dominant, even as teachers seek to defend their students in an educational setting. This example shows how the practices of the teachers can still be positive and transformative alongside changing conditions framed in relation to performance management agendas. In university settings, the increasing influence of managerial practices is also evident, even as they are challenged. Hemmings, Kemmis, and Reupert (2013) revealed the variety of discursive, material, and social conditions that influenced university lecturers’ teaching practices, and the extent to which they felt able to respond to diverse student needs in their classes, to engage more broadly in inclusive educational practices. For example, assessment regulations, the nature of tiered lecture theatres, and the positioning of particular learners as “exceptions rather than as part of the ordinary” student body, impacted on lecturers’ abilities to model inclusive learning practices. Lecturers felt constrained by institutional infrastructures and conditions (including administrative guidelines of state educational authorities and

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physical infrastructures of universities). At the same time, however, many lecturers did adjust their teaching to accommodate students with particular, diverse needs, and “create the circumstances that allow them to teach as they hope to do. For example, some [were] able to arrange field visits, accommodate students’ needs and make, ‘reasonable adjustments’ to assessment items to model inclusive education practices in their university courses” (p. 485). Managerialism was also evident in the competing demands relating to universities’ research productivity (accountability and efficiency). Turunen et al. (2014) found that institutional culture and teaching demands placed pressures on PostDoctoral Research Fellows (PDRFs) in an Australian university faculty of education and impacted on their feelings about their role, the institution, and their practices. The PDRFs’ practices were shaped by constant negotiations about their research contributions (to other people’s projects versus their own work), teaching demands, and structural power relations. These all mediated their relations and possible activities. PDRFs felt the expectation that they would change the culture to one that was more research oriented challenged their expectations of staying true to their own core principles of education and of personal praxis as kindness and empathy. In fact, the demands of administration and management challenged their ways of practising as educational researchers. Even the name “PDRF” mediated how they were perceived and their practice roles. And yet, at the same time, rather than increased accountability being perceived solely as a constraint, access to highly respected scholars and peer mentoring acted as support networks to enable the practices of the post-doctoral research fellows.

Accountability as Performativity In Enabling praxis: Challenges for education, Kemmis and Smith (2008) emphasised that “praxis in education today is endangered” (p. 5). They argued that praxis and praxis development are “slowly being wedged aside… by that form of practice that amounts simply to following rules” (p. 5). In a climate framed by rule-following, conformity, prescriptive programs, comparisons (whether between individuals— teachers or students—or educational institutions), and reputational concerns, practice becomes more performative. Evidence of an increased focus on accountability, together with reduced trust in educators, raises the key question about how such conditions are enabling or constraining educators’ praxis and praxis development and what the implications are for student learning. A key aim of PEP researchers has been to understand how heightened accountability is affecting the educational practices of educators in different national contexts. According to Hardy (2014a), writing about accountability pressures in schooling, simply following rules for the sake of accountability is evidence of deprofessionalisation in action, and deficit positioning more broadly. Hardy (2015a) asserts that “the domination of broader political and policy pressure for ever-improved test outcomes—“numbers” —significantly affects educational practice” (p. 355). As the

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focus of assessment has become more about comparison and reputation at national, local, and even class levels, educational practices in schools and the work of teachers have been compromised. For example, in some schools, funding for “coaches” to help teaching quality has been appropriated to increase class time for test preparation, learning programs focused on test-readiness, and practices of grouping and streaming of students to enhance test outcomes. The focus on test-centric logics of practice, as opposed to assessment for learning itself, shifts the nature of curriculum planning (the sequencing and scaffolding of learning) as a practice. Deleterious effects of the National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) on education practices are clearly evident (Hardy, 2015a), even as educators have sought to mitigate some of these problematic effects to enhance student learning (Hardy, 2014b). Panoptic practices of prioritising results rather than pedagogical leadership have also led to educators questioning the “authenticity” of numbers and the use of numbers as an indicator of student learning (see Hardy, 2015b, in relation to the Australian case of NAPLAN, and associated measures). Educators have raised concerns about how the “trust” in numbers is shaping their practices. That is, numbers have come to be seen as dominating schooling practices. Moreover, numbers have been used as critical indicators of student attainment—“a cascade of numbers” (global, national, regional, school), have been drawn upon to influence decisionmaking. Regimes of accountability through quantification of education have viewed students as numbers and have become central, while educators’ practices of teaching and learning have become more peripheral (Hardy, 2015b). Issues of increased accountability are also elaborated in the earlier volume Critiquing praxis in which Dutch educators Ax, Elte, and Ponte (2008) reflected upon the changing circumstances in which their work was undertaken. In the context of increased diversity and complexity in the population of the Netherlands, policymakers and bureaucrats engaged in practices of promoting more standardised approaches to education aimed at making it easier to keep abreast of student learning outcomes. Ax, Elte, and Ponte (2008) referred to how Dutch policy-makers had adopted a more restrictive conception of professionalism, characterised by more “routine” and “local” conceptions of professional work (understood as focused on a narrow range of responsibilities in schools), rather than broader more “cosmoprofessional” and “improvising” conceptions of professionalism that would seek to extend and expand the work of teachers as responsive and responsible to the broader Dutch polity. Under such conditions, the control of education, and the contrast between Hoyle’s (1974) more “extended” and “restricted” forms of professionalism, seemed particularly stark. The centralisation of educational policy making in the Netherlands, and increased standardisation and bureaucratisation of schooling, meant that the broader conditions of educational policy and administration in the Netherlands were increasingly restricting opportunities for teachers’ professional learning. And this is occurring when, in the view of Ax, Elte, and Ponte, more reflective practitioners are needed for education in the twenty-first century, especially given the increasingly multicultural nature of student populations in schools. Increased accountability is also leading to increased conformity and increasingly prescriptive teaching practices in the tertiary arena. An overview of VET policy in

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Australia, Denmark, and Sweden by Brennan Kemmis and Wärvik (2013) revealed an increased emphasis across these countries on VET as principally concerned with the acquisition of skills, enhanced productivity, and enhanced competitiveness in global markets, under increasingly prescriptive forms of regulation, reporting, and compliance. The policy climate thus engendered affects what is valued in each context and reveals the potency of these broader processes, even though local manifestations of this climate are always inherently vernacular. In practice, in Sweden, this means vocational learners may not receive the opportunity to participate in programs that enable them to undertake other forms of higher education (such as university studies), should they wish to do so into the future. In Australia, it means these learners may not have the opportunity to engage in complex, multifaceted work beyond the rationalised regulatory framework. And, in Denmark, these young people’s opportunities may be constrained by how transitions from school to work have become increasingly complex and prolonged, with high rates of attrition. Despite this trend, more reductive accountability logics have not gone unchallenged in different national contexts, and actual educational practices within and across various regional, national, and international jurisdictions. Educational practices are always more complex than is portrayed in more binary arguments, and research undertaken has helped both reveal these binaries, as well challenging reductive accountability. For example, Kemmis, Heikkinen, et al. (2014a) explored the contested approaches to mentoring in (the state of) New South Wales (Australia), Sweden, and Finland. The conditions in each context contrasted, with clear differences between mentoring as support versus mentoring as supervision. In the New South Wales context, after the introduction of the NSW Institute of Teachers, there was an increased focus upon teacher evaluation processes, particularly for new teachers. In Sweden, by contrast, mentoring was generally in the form of professional support for novice teachers. At the same time, mentoring as collaborative self-development was down-played in the Swedish case. However, it was also noted that legislation away from the more evaluative components was introduced in 2014 which was expected to make for more inquiry-focused practices of mentoring. In Finland, and with support of unions, teacher educators, the Ministry of Education and municipalities, the focus of mentoring was oriented towards peer group mentoring (PGM) as a more collaborative approach to the self-development of novice teachers. There were some signs, however, of PGM coming under fire in the Finnish context, where it was thought that cuts to education budgets might signify reduced attention to the resourcing of educational provision for novice teachers.

Categorising, Numbering, Labelling, and Differentiating Changing cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political conditions takes a variety of forms. This includes the dominating habits of categorising and numbering which occur in various ways, including through the metrification of educational practice, (e.g. various league tables of school performance based

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on standardised literacy and numeracy tests, and various standardised metrics of university performance), as well as via the dominance of various forms of “core competencies” (e.g. in vocational education), and a myriad of other “technologies” designed to “monitor” and “audit” educational practice. Reviewed PEP publications have shown that the phenomenon of “categorising”, (and often-associated processes of “numbering”) is a prevailing feature played out in a range of contexts, including countries as diverse as Trinidad and Tobago (Brown et al., 2013), Australia (Hardy, 2015b; Kemmis, Heikkinen, et al., 2014a; Turunen et al., 2014), Finland (Pennanen et al., 2015), Denmark (Brennan Kemmis and Wärvik, 2013), and Sweden (Henning Loeb and Lumsden Wass, 2011, 2015; Brennan Kemmis and Wärvik, 2013; Norlund, 2011). Not only are such conditions evident in a variety of countries but also at multiple levels—including at the (Australian) state/regional level (Kemmis, Heikkinen, et al., 2014a; Hardy 2015a; Hardy, 2015b), university level (Turunen et al., 2014), school level (Brown et al., 2013; Hardy, 2015a; 2015b; 2015c), and the level of programs and student tracks (Henning Loeb & Lumsden Wass, 2011, 2015). That processes of categorisation are principally connected to performance, and often in relation to deficit discourses associated with “ranking” systems, schools, teachers, and students have been extensively discussed in the reviewed research. As a representative example, we saw evidence of the discourses of categorising (and numbering/ranking) extending into the sayings of a teacher-librarian who spoke about how her state (Queensland) performed poorly against all the other major states in Australia and hence was “at the bottom of the tally” (Hardy, 2014b, p. 9). Similar to this, Brown et al. (2013) provide evidence of how Trinidad and Tobago schools are labelled as “Performing Enhancement Programme” schools (that is, low-performing) and “Non-Performing Enhancement Programme” schools (higher performing), while students in these same contexts are categorised in accordance with four performance levels, from “below proficient” to “advanced proficiency” based on their results in national testing. In other words, the tendency of categorisation and associated processes of enumeration and ranking have led to a deficit attitude towards particular groups of students (and often their teachers and schools). In addition, the culture of categorisation relates to processes of differentiation. Categorisation and labelling seem to narrow the curricular content that certain vocationally oriented student groups are able to access. In 2007, Sweden introduced policy that meant only students from academically oriented upper-secondary programs were able to gain access to higher education, and in doing so, more unifying ambitions were broken. In essence student groups became strongly locked into context-bound and skills-oriented knowledge work. This had significant long-term implications for VET students who chose pathways that closed down access to higher education. (Henning Loeb & Lumsden Wass, 2015). Additionally, it was identified how such tendencies led to a more highly differentiated system of upper secondary schooling in Sweden (cf., Norlund, 2011). This was similar to the findings of Brennan Kemmis and Wärvik (2013) regarding the ideologies and policies that underpinned changes to VET practices in Australia, Denmark, and Sweden. This was the case despite important historical differences between these countries, with Anglophone countries like Australia having engaged in streaming practices in various iterations over time,

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whereas countries like Sweden traditionally sought a more unifying approach that would allow both academically and vocationally oriented upper secondary students opportunities to qualify for higher education. More recent processes of neoliberalisation have challenged these efforts and encouraged more homogenising processes of differentiation, limiting the opportunities of the most disadvantaged students. Labelling also contributes to the culture in which various kinds of intellectual, physical and other kinds of “special needs” come to be “differentiated” as “deficits”. Norlund and Strömberg (2018) followed two Swedish municipal projects aimed at improving conditions for students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The authors found that the emphasis on diagnosing led to an increased neurological gaze on pupils and the emergence of teaching practices based on neuromythical measures, for example, student health teams and teachers partly designing their practices based on “myths” about the brain, such as the myth of learning styles. Such neuromythical approaches are part of the broader ecology of educational practices that narrow educational opportunities for all students. This has repercussions especially for the most vulnerable students. In relation to inclusive schooling, for example, the culture of diagnosing and subsequent categorising makes it possible to advocate for “regular” schooling, when what is needed are not “regular” schools— which are inherently prejudicial against disabled and other students who do not conform to “mainstream” criteria—but “irregular schools” (Slee, 2011) which are more genuinely inclusive. However, this is incredibly difficult given the lack of political will to do so; indeed, Slee (2013) asks, “How do you make inclusive education happen when exclusion is political predisposition?” (p. 895). This section has shown how different kinds of educational practices have been shaped, not without contestation or resistance, by practice architectures of neoliberalism and neoliberalisation including processes of managerialism and performance management; processes of accountability as performativity; and processes of categorising, labelling, numbering and “differentiating”. These practice architectures may be ubiquitous, but they do not represent shared “truths” about education and the conditions necessary to support education; they are not ideas or activities or forms of relationship in education that need not, or cannot, be questioned. The public discourses of neoliberalism and neoliberalisation constitute a set of culturaldiscursive arrangements that affect national and local educational practices, but they are not the only discourses that shape education and educational practice. The material-economic arrangements of neoliberalism and neoliberalisation include contestable funding, league tables, national tests, and other controlling technologies that influence educational practice at all levels, but they are not the only materialeconomic arrangements that support educational practice. And the social-political arrangements of neoliberalism and neoliberalisation, like testing, national assessments, and increasingly intrusive forms of educational policy aimed at prescribing local educational practice in early childhood education, schools, universities, and vocational education and training similarly narrow educational practice, but they are far from the only forms of relationships that influence how educational practices are enacted in those settings. The research reviewed has shown how those policy prescriptions frequently amplify injustice and undermine democratic relationships

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within and between institutions. Such research has indicated how the rise of education “reforms” driven by market-oriented policy and competitive gains has shifted conditions for educational practice.

Sustaining and Cultivating Educational Praxis As suggested earlier, neoliberalisation is not a fait accompli, but an active process, enacted by real people in real time. As Peck (2010) puts it, “the never-inevitable ascendancy of neoliberalisation, as an open-ended and contradictory process of politically assisted market rule” (p. xii), is always subject to change. To counter more performative effects on professional practice and rebuild pedagogical trust “beyond numbers” and reductive forms of categorising, labelling, differentiating, and naming and shaming, the theory of practice architectures can serve as a stimulus to help identify and describe alternative practices of morally informed educators who rethink their approach to education and educational leadership within the current, and changing, conditions. Mahon, Kemmis, et al. (2017) refer to educators using the theory of practice architectures as “a transformational resource for finding ways to change education and professional practice, where current practices and conditions are…unreasonable, unproductive or unsustainable” (p. 2). We elucidate the nature of some such possibilities in this final section. In line with the ontological perspective of the theory of practice architectures, “people’s dispositions, intentions, and sense of agency as well as their practices are shaped intersubjectively, as people encounter each other in shared, and often contested, semantic spaces, physical space-time, and social space” (Mahon et al., 2017, p. 17). Several studies by researchers in the PEP network flag practices informed by processes of contestation and resilience and show how the collective nature of praxis and praxis development in particular educational sites can shape the practice architectures that influence learning. This is foregrounded in other chapters in this book (especially Chapter Two), but we also provide some glimpses into more agentic standpoints here and show how these instances of agency as praxis help forge alternative conditions. In spite of the challenges that attend the conditions under which contemporary educational practices are enacted and the policy settings that contribute to these conditions, there is evidence of more hopeful responses and the generation of alternative conditions that provide the scope for more substantive and praxis-oriented educational practices. One way to create hope in challenging sites of practice is to consider moral actions that are both “product and productive of the broader circumstances or conditions within which they are enacted” (Hardy & Grootenboer, 2013, p. 701). Across education settings, researchers in the PEP network have highlighted how educators have “cultivated conditions” (Hardy & Grootenboer, 2013) as resources for hope that have supported educators to grapple with problematic circumstances and to work towards overcoming these in order to enhance teaching practices and promote substantive student learning in all its variability and complexity.

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Issues of immigration, and particularly in relation to refugees, have been a key focus of research amongst members of the PEP network. The need to cultivate practices that are responsive to the unprecedented number of people that have been displaced throughout the world is clearly apparent. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR, 2017), for example, about 68 million people were displaced in 2016. An important aspect of the PEP network has been to explore actions that improve the well-being of affected people; these actions help to create alternative conditions. Taking this kind of action is an expression of solidarity and agency and includes focusing on praxis and praxis development through research via crossnational collaborations. Kaukko and Wilkinson (2018), for example, outline how children from refugee backgrounds, living in Australia, can be supported through collective informal learning settings in the community. Three such sets of practices in community settings are “practices in nature (e.g. learning about the natural environment through excursions into the local rainforest with a parent); survival practices (such as learning to take care of siblings at home); and social activist practices (learning about the importance of treating others with respect and care)” (p. 8). Major, Wilkinson, Santoro, & Langat (2013) show how out-of-school networks and practices generated resources contributing to intercultural competence, successful acculturation and educational success for a group of former refugee youth who settled in regional areas; these constitute enabling practices that help foster enabling conditions for praxis and praxis development for teachers and for students. Some of these out-of-school networks included local neighbourhoods, youth groups, sporting affiliations, and church- or faith-based activities. At the same time, Doris Santos has worked extensively with higher education colleagues, using Participatory Action Research (PAR) approaches, to help build peace in several territories affected by the armed conflict in Colombia. For example, in the Guaviare Province, a region bigger than Switzerland located in the south-east of Colombia, Santos, with an interdisciplinary team, has worked with communities that colonised this territory in the 1970s as they fled from the armed conflict in their remote homelands and as they begun growing coca plants as a way of survival. Throughout the different stages of the implementation of the Peace Agreement signed in 2016, Santos and colleagues have run different types of PAR projects with new communities formed from a combination of “ex-combatants” (ex-guerrillas and exparamilitary members) and the displaced people inhabiting the region, in order to promote the creation of new socio-political conditions for sustainable peace. Through projects focused on the co-construction of knowledge and solutions associated with designing inclusive communities in new built environments, with common goals linked to enhancing food security (growing fish and crops), they have challenged the cultural-discursive conditions that reinforced civil unrest. Through this work, they have encouraged those involved in these communities to imagine different practices that would enhance their own lives and those of their wider community (Santos, 2018). As higher educators based at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, they continue to enact “praxis as political action”, amongst employment conditions that have required Santos and her colleagues to prioritise action as academic survival

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tool, over publications which at times are view to have more value in parts of the world where conflict is less life threatening. Research by Blue and Grootenboer (2017) focused on financial literacy practices in an Indigenous community in Canada revealed challenges and complexity in firstnations’ educational settings in the Canadian context. Issues relating to disadvantage, poverty, unemployment, health and well-being, education and identity were all identified as enabling and constraining the financial literacy capabilities of members of these communities. Deficit assumptions embedded in traditional financial literacy practices were flagged as problematic for cultivating enhanced financial literacy in the Indigenous community and as contributing to the failure of programs to become established. In contrast, however, site-based practices proved more productive as vehicles to build participants’ financial literacy practices and contributed to more socially just practices in these settings. Such practices helped constitute new conditions for further praxis development. At a more localised level, and in relation to schooling and curricular practices more broadly, Grootenboer (2013) explored how effective mathematics teachers cultivated strong and confident mathematical identities amongst their students. Effective mathematics teachers responded to student’s emotions, attitudes, and values in relation to learning maths. The conditions created in these classrooms enabled the learning of acceptable behaviours when engaging with others, protecting mathematical identities whilst encouraging engagement with uncertainty as a vehicle for growth, and endeavouring to cater for all learners. Particular structures were put in place (group work, but also more traditional class layouts) and used in ways to develop such confidence and engagement amongst students. Research by Lange and Meaney (2013) in mathematics curriculum also demonstrated the potentiality that surrounds the work and practices of professional development providers (in this case, university academics), and how such providers can foster more productive sayings, doings, and relatings to help forge alternative practice architectures for new practices. More conservative dispositions (such as teachers’ deficit beliefs about student learning) were challenged by more hopeful dispositions, such as those experienced when teachers saw successes in their students’ learning as a result of alternative teaching practices. In relation to leadership for teacher learning, the discourses of accountability with regard to leadership practices are not all negative and also help cultivate alternative conditions for more productive learning. Mattsson et al. (2008) sought to focus attention upon issues of assessment and knowledge construction in teacher education in the local government area of Upplands Väsby, on the outskirts of Stockholm. The use of an assessment framed around student voice, when final-year teacher education students presented the results of their research projects in the form of public seminars (open to anyone who wished to attend), enabled student teachers to better understand and develop their practice. This work also contributed to knowledge development for the teachers with whom they worked and that of others willing to learn from their experiences. The use of public seminars as a form of assessment generated both a change in the conditions of practice whilst also becoming a vehicle to communicate about pedagogical issues with a wider community of interested people in local sites. In a similar way, a cross-national study undertaken by Grootenboer et al. (2014)

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looked at how the development of leading practices in Australia and Sweden helped to give voice to teachers as middle leaders. In their study, changing practices through “middle leading” were captured as a way to influence the impact on teacher learning. Although teachers’ educational practices were affected by the “intricacies of middle leading” (p. 520), they restored optimism in their practices through their collective voices. The enablement of professional communicative spaces gave educators hope. In other words, their accountability through middle leading shaped and was “shaped by the arrangements” with which educators were “enmeshed” in their sites of practice (Mahon, Kemmis, et al., 2017, p. 6). Of course, education extends beyond schools, early childhood settings, VET, and universities, as is evidenced in relation to praxis development through broader social movements. One of the most significant social movements reported by PEP members is in relation to climate change Adlong (2008) worked with a local group in Wagga Wagga, Australia, advocating for and taking part in social action initiatives addressing climate change and sustainability. This work centred on working with communities to change conditions to enhance praxis development. Adlong (2008) also flagged how education for environmental sustainability, specifically the facilitation of climate change mitigation, contributed to enhanced understanding and action on the part of members of this community in the Riverina region of New South Wales. Two collaborative inquiry groups, the “coffeehouse group”, and the “campus climate care group”, became established as vehicles to think differently and act differently in relation to climate change in Wagga Wagga. From the practice of establishing these groups, the “Climate Rescue of Wagga” (CROW) initiative evolved and engaged in a number of activities, including lobbying local councillors and federal members of parliament to push for greater action on climate change. At the same time, this work was part of a broader array of similar practices emerging in other communities and broader processes of informing citizens (most obviously through the mass-media) about the nature and effects of climate change. These broader efforts helped give meaning to the more localised practices of groups such as CROW. What also needs to be underscored from these studies is the collective nature of praxis and praxis development. Cultivating praxis through interrelationship requires educators to consider a broad understanding of practice which embraces the individual actions and community activities aimed at supporting all, including vulnerable members of the community. In order for these practices to be socially just, “an enabling learning culture needs to be built based on nurturing positive interpersonal relationships with peers, teachers and support staff in the wider community” (Naidoo, Wilkinson, Adoniou, & Langat, 2018, pp. v–vi). By seeking alternative practices, educators can not only disrupt the often deficit discourses used in relation to achievement or lack thereof among vulnerable groups but more importantly create counter-discourses—counter conditions—to the individual performativity demands brought about by more neoliberal logics.

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Conclusion This chapter offers both caution and hope in relation to the conditions that currently influence practices in the educational settings studied by PEP researchers. It foregrounds the challenges associated with individualism, metrification of educational practice, and accountability and audit cultures for their own sake. It foregrounds how technicist “solutions” to individualised differences through processes of labelling and “differentiating” have become prevalent. The work of the PEP network has revealed significant insights into the nature of the constraints that attend the cultural, material, social, and political conditions for praxis and praxis development. There are clearly areas in which further and substantive work is required, with particular attention on conditions associated with the needs of the most marginalised members of our communities (e.g. Indigenous people, refugees, people with disabilities, and people living in poverty), and those living in low- and lower-middle-income countries. However, these are not the only practices that exist under current conditions. That is, the research of the PEP network also reveals alternative, more productive practices, and how such practices cultivate the conditions for further reformed practices. These alternative practices and approaches reflect the capacity for educators to contest dominant neoliberal discourses, exert agency, and generate influence in the contexts in which they live, work, and learn. These conditions help bring into being alternative forms of practice. We have argued that neoliberalisation is occurring globally and affecting a diffuse range of educational policies and practices. Frequently, neoliberal conditions are described as “dominant” or “hegemonic” in the research literature. Research undertaken across in the PEP network has acknowledged the widespread, diffuse impact of neoliberalisation, but has also shown that it is and can be resisted, contested, and challenged. Indeed, recognising the impact of neoliberalisation has prompted research and action by teachers, school leaders, and others to mitigate its effects and to renew and restore pedagogical practices aimed at the good for individual persons and the good for humankind. In these ways, the work of members of the PEP network continues to promote and/or act based on a commitment to contribute to historically significant change that revitalises educational practices and helps create a better world, even though this is often challenging work.

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Henning Loeb, I., & Lumsden Wass, K. (2015). ‘Clear educational routes’. An example of conservative modernization in Swedish upper secondary school. Policy Futures in Education, 13(7), 854–869. Hoyle, E. (1974). Professionality, professionalism and control in teaching. London Education Review, 3(2), 13–19. Kaukko, M., & Wilkinson, J. (2018). ‘Learning how to go on’: Refugee students and informal learning practices. International Journal of Inclusive Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/136 03116.2018.1514080. Kemmis, S., & Grootenboer, P. (2008). Situating praxis in practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social and material conditions for practice. In S. Kemmis & T. J. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp. 37–62). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Kemmis, S., Heikkinen, H., Fransson, G., Aspfors, J., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2014a). Mentoring of new teachers as a contested practice: Supervision, support and collaborative self-development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 43, 154–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.07.001. Kemmis, S., & Smith, T. J. (2008). Personal praxis. In S. Kemmis & T. J. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp. 15–36). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, l. (2014b). Changing education, changing practices. Singapore: Springer Education. Lange, T., & Meaney, T. (2013). Professional development facilitators: Reflecting on our practice. Professional Development in Education, 39(4), 531–549. Mahon, K., Francisco, S., & Kemmis, S. (Eds.). (2017a). Exploring education and professional practice—Through the lens of practice architectures. Singapore: Springer. Mahon, K., Kemmis, S., Francisco, S., & Lloyd, A. (2017b). Introduction: Practice theory and the theory of practice architectures. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Exploring education and professional practice—Through the lens of practice architectures (pp. 1–30). Singapore: Springer. Major, J., Wilkinson, J., Santoro, N., & Langat, K. (2013). Regional and rural Australia as a site of settlement for young African background refugees: A double-edged sword? Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 23(3), 95–105. Mattsson, M., Sandström, B., & Johansson, I. (Eds.). (2008). Examining praxis: Assessments and knowledge construction in teacher education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Naidoo, L., Wilkinson, J., Adoniou, M., & Langat, K. (2018). Refugee background students transitioning into higher education: Navigating complex spaces. Singapore: Springer Education. Norlund, A. (2011). The interplay between subject recontextualizers: Social reproduction through critical reading. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(5), 659–678. Norlund, A., & Strömberg, M. (2018). En kritisk in- och utzoomning av ett hjärnbaserat synsätt på elever. Nordisk tidskrift för allmän didaktik, 4(1), 18–33. Peck, J. (2010). Constructions of neoliberal reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pennanen, M., Bristol, L., Wilkinson, J., & Heikkinen, H. (2015). What is “good” mentoring? Understanding mentoring practices of teacher induction through case studies of Finland and Australia. Pedagogy, Culture and Society. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2015.1083045. Santos, D. (2018). Participatory action research in contested spaces: Transforming while researching in the on-going peace-building process in Columbia. Paper presented at the Pedagogy: Education and Praxis International Meeting, Monash University, Melbourne. Schatzki, T. R. (2002). The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Slee, R. (2011). The irregular school: Exclusion, schooling and inclusive education. London: Routledge. Slee, R. (2013). How do we make inclusive education happen when exclusion is a political predisposition? International Journal of Inclusive Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2011. 602534. Turunen, T. A., Wong, S., Bristol, L., & Ho, S. Y. (2014). Developing ‘the wings to really fly’: The experiences of four post-doctoral research fellows within an Australian university faculty of

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education. Education Research International, 1–11 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/edri/2014/ 217974/. UNHCR. (2017). UNHCR statistical yearbook 2016. Downloaded June 18, 2018, from: https:// www.unhcr.org/en-au/statistics/country/5a8ee0387/unhcr-statistical-yearbook-2016-16th-edi tion.html. Wilkinson, J., Olin, A., Lund, T., Ahlberg, A., & Nyvaller, M. (2010). Leading praxis: Exploring educational leadership through the lens of practice architectures. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 18(1), 67–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681360903556855. Zifcak, S. (1994). New managerialism: Administrative reforms in Whitehall and Canberra. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Chapter 5

Teaching as Pedagogical Praxis Stephen Kemmis, Christine Edwards-Groves, Rachel Jakhelln, Sarojni Choy, Gun-Britt Wärvik, Lisbeth Gyllander Torkildsen, and Charlotte Arkenback-Sundström

Abstract This chapter reports findings of research into the practice of teaching conducted by members of the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) international research network, much of it using the theory of practice architectures as an analytical framework. Examples of teaching practices are given across education sectors from early childhood education and care, to primary and secondary schooling, to vocational education and training, and university education, as well as from community education. The theory allows us to see different kinds of teaching practices as they unfold in intersubjective space (semantic space, physical space-time, and social space) to engage learners in different ways and to produce different kinds of opportunities for learning. Much of the research on teaching presented in this chapter used close interaction analysis to show how teaching practices unfold in synchrony with learning practices, to give new insights into the interconnected ways learning drives teaching while teaching (also) drives learning. The chapter also suggests that, in many cases, teachers’ teaching and students’ learning are jointly necessary parts of a combined pedagogical practice.

S. Kemmis (B) · C. Edwards-Groves Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia e-mail: [email protected] R. Jakhelln Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway S. Choy Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia G.-B. Wärvik · C. Arkenback-Sundström University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden L. Gyllander Torkildsen Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Mahon et al. (eds.), Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5_5

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Introduction This chapter draws on the corpus of publications of the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) international research network, 2008–2018, to present key findings about the practice of teaching. It focuses principally on good professional practice as it is made manifest in the practice of teaching, noting that good professional practice extends beyond the practice of teaching. In the next chapter (Chap. 6), therefore, the focus is on good professional practice in relation to leading. The second section of the chapter briefly explores the nature of teaching as a professional activity requiring professional judgement and discusses teaching practices as pedagogical and dialogic, to show how the teachers studied deploy a variety of different kinds of teaching practices for different kinds of purposes and to provoke different kinds of learning practices and student learning. The “doubleness” of teaching in neoliberal times is also briefly discussed. The next section focuses directly on the practice of teaching, exploring what teaching practices are composed of (sayings, doings, and relatings held together in the project or purpose of the practice), and how they are channelled in their course by practice architectures (composed of cultural-discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements). The section gives examples of how teaching practices are composed and channelled, across a range of educational settings from early childhood education and care, through primary and secondary schooling, to vocational education and training, university education, and community education. In this section, we describe teaching as a practice of designing and enacting practice architectures to enable and constrain1 students’ practices, and thus what, and how, students learn. The section also shows how teaching practices unfold in intersubjective spaces (semantic space, physical space-time, and social space) to create particular kinds of opportunities for learning. It emphasises the ontological perspective of the theory of practice architectures that allows researchers to interrogate how practices unfold in actuality, as against the more usual epistemological perspective on practices that focuses principally on the knowledge that orients and guides practices. The section that follows addresses the ways in which the practice of teaching is, or can be, ecologically related to student learning practices: how teaching and learning can be interdependent as they unfold in sequences of interaction (although learning very frequently occurs in the absence of teaching, and teaching does not always secure learning). The section also shows that the ecological relationship of teaching and learning practices in classroom interaction can be understood as the “co-production” of teaching and learning. The section suggests, moreover, that, in many cases, teachers’ teaching and students’ learning are jointly necessary parts of a combined pedagogical practice.

1 We note that “enabling” is not solely positive, and that “constraining” is not only negative. Enable-

ment and constraint both happen, and both can be positive or negative. For example, enablement might allow a class to be distracted by bad behaviour, and constraint might be positive in the sense of discipline, control, management, repair, or doing what you intend.

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The next section very briefly notes that specific practices of teaching can be in ecological relationships with other practices, particularly leading, teacher professional learning, and researching and reflecting. The penultimate section returns briefly to question about praxis examined in detail in Chap. 2, but here draws on empirical evidence of the PEP research to make some brief observations about teaching practice, praxis, and, importantly, critical pedagogical praxis. The final section presents a brief conclusion.

The Character of Teaching The practice of teaching, especially “good” teaching, is not merely the enactment of routines, or the following of scripts or protocols. It responds to educational aims, and it is alert and responds to the diverse and changing needs and interests of learners and their communities. It also balances the needs and interests of individual learners with the needs and interests of others, and the needs and interests of a community or society as a whole. Yet teachers are also obliged to be accountable for their performance against non-educational criteria imposed by the administrative and economic systems of schooling (at every level from early childhood education to vocational education and training and university education). Teaching does not unfold just as a teacher intends; it unfolds in a shared intersubjective space in which others also influence its unfolding; it happens in flows shaped not only by teachers or systems, but also in relation to the immediate and local conditions of the school, the class, and teacher–student and student–student relationships. And it unfolds as a conversation, in which the talk moves of students may be as decisive as the moves made by teachers in shaping what happens next. Teaching is thus a practice that requires the exercise of considerable professional judgement, not only in planning and preparation, but also as it unfolds moment by moment. In the subsections that follow, we comment on just three aspects of the character of teaching: the pedagogical or educational commitments that inform it; the dilemmas posed when teachers aim to act pedagogically (or educationally) in contemporary neoliberal school systems (at every level); and the liveliness of teaching as an encounter, in which moment-by-moment moves in talk-in-interaction can decisively influence what happens next in the encounter.

Teaching, Pedagogy, and Education As indicated in Chap. 1, the Introduction to this volume, the notion of pedagogy is very differently understood in the different historical, educational, and intellectual traditions of PEP researchers. The educational philosophy of many researchers in the PEP network is influenced by continental European traditions of Pedagogik

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(Dutch; Swedish; cf., German: Pädagogie)—the discipline that parallels the discipline that is in English called “Education”. The European discipline of Pedagogik considers pedagogy as a human science (what in Anglophone countries is known as “the humanities”) connected to the education and upbringing of children, including, but not limited to, teaching. Pedagogik is distinct from the Germanic concept of Didaktik, which refers to planning and performing instruction (Ponte & Ax, 2009). In the tradition of Pedagogik, the central framing concept is bildung (German) or bildning (Swedish); this notion refers to the central purposes of education, variously described over the centuries as “cultivation” (in Hegel, for example) or, in more recent writings, as “formation”—referring to the formation of both persons and societies. Bildning is a central concept in, for example, the Scandinavian tradition of folk enlightenment in education. The perspective of Pedagogik understands pedagogy as manifest in a dynamic relationship between the known and the unknown, and between the knower and the novice, considered necessary for the formation of individuals able to participate fully in a civil society (Rönnerman & Salo, 2014, p. 2). By contrast, many Anglophone researchers understand pedagogy from the perspective of Anglophone traditions that treat pedagogy as the art or science of teaching, or, even more narrowly, as “methods” of instruction. This Anglophone tradition points in the direction of what the Germans call Didaktik (rather than Pedagogik) and it may obscure the deeper educational philosophy that may (or may not) orient particular practices of teaching. We therefore acknowledge that the term “pedagogy”, as used in this chapter, often leans towards the Anglophone meaning, which emphasises the conduct of teaching (as in Bernstein’s [1975] three “message systems” of the school: curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment) and less in the sense of an underlying philosophy that informs a form of educational practice. Informed by the European view, however, Anglophone researchers recognise clearly how pedagogy (Pedagogik) may or may not make itself manifest in pedagogy (teaching as “method”), and thus allow us to see more clearly whether and how educational praxis makes itself manifest in teaching practice.

The Doubleness of Teaching in Neoliberal Times According to various PEP researchers, many teachers today experience a kind of “doubleness” in their views of their work and their workplaces. On the one hand, they are committed to progressive and constructivist views of education, grounded in ideas like those of educational theorists like John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky. Such ideas are powerful influences in the everyday lifeworlds (Habermas, 1984, 1987) that many, perhaps most, teachers inhabit. On the other hand, in many countries, the economic and administrative systems that teachers also simultaneously inhabit in their workplaces oblige them to submit their students to regimes of national testing that also result in the teachers’ teaching being under state surveillance. In some countries, moreover, national curricula and professional standards for teachers oblige them to teach, to a greater degree than they might choose, what the state requires, in

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the ways the state requires it, rather than being principally guided in their teaching practice by their own views about the nature and purposes of education, and by the needs and interests of their own particular pupils and their families and communities. This tension is experienced by teachers as a kind of doubleness, of having to operate simultaneously in lifeworld relationships shaped by educational commitments, and also in accordance with the demands of the neoliberal administrative and economic systems (Habermas, 1984, 1987) prevalent in schooling in many parts of the world today. The competing imperatives of lifeworld and system impose contradictory obligations upon teachers, which they experience as a kind of identity—splitting, forcing them to choose when to be, and to practise as, a professional educator, and when as a compliant employee. The tension is particularly acute for early career teachers as they settle into the profession, and into contemporary schools and school systems, as Jakhelln has shown. Jakhelln’s work pays particular attention to the emotional experiences of early career teachers as they navigate the conflicting claims of educational theory and systems administration in their schools (Jakhelln, 2010, 2011). The theme of schooling in neoliberal times is the central concern of Chap. 3 in this volume: “Critiquing and Cultivating the Conditions for Educational Praxis and Praxis Development”.

Teaching as Dialogic It is important to note that teaching as a practice and performance occurs in the lived experience of settings like classrooms and workshops. It frequently unfolds in talk-in-interaction between teachers and students. In this sense, it is dialogic in character. Focusing on classroom talk-in-interaction, Edwards-Groves, Anstey, and Bull (2014) consider lessons as discursively produced activity and relational spaces, and show how lessons function as practice architectures that enable and constrain student learning. Using transcript analysis as a research technology, they showed the distinctive and dynamic dimensions of classroom talk and how it influences student learning as it unfolds discursively, in activities, and through relationships. Particular patterns of interaction, or teacher talk moves (Edwards-Groves, 2014), generate dialogic pedagogies that form practice architectures which open up the communicative spaces in classroom lesson exchanges in ways that enable a more explicit and transparent focus on learning. This research specifically shows how dialogic pedagogies are explicit, deliberate sequences of talk moves that enable or constrain interactive opportunities for students to sustain and extend their thinking and conversational turns about a topic, to respond to the ideas of others, or to question and challenge the thinking of others. Edwards-Groves (2014) showed how these talk moves shape teacher–student encounters in lessons and how they can create more inclusive interactive classroom environments. The environment becomes more inclusive and interactive when talk moves generate relationships; build student power and agency; enable sustained, substantive learning conversations in classroom lessons;

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create a shared responsibility for establishing and managing the classroom community; and develop, display, and secure the substantive practices to be learned and the learning practices by which they are learned. On this view, teacher talk moves are consciously constructed practice architectures that shape students’ learning practices and their learning, enacted in the moment-by-moment sequences of teacher-student interactions. Much of the PEP research focused on teaching has considered teaching as a practice that opens up communicative spaces for students to be “stirred in” to practices (e.g. Grootenboer & Edwards-Groves, 2014; Mahon & Galloway, 2017). The nature of this communicative space has been the focus of fine-grained analysis by EdwardsGroves and Davidson (2017) of the sequential talk-in-interaction which constitutes everyday classroom lessons. Their conversation analysis illustrates, in detail, the specific, highly localised, and ontological nature of these everyday encounters by focusing on the nature and influence of classroom talk and how it works—and what it affords—in the moment-by-moment unfolding of questioning, listening, metatalk, and management of student–student talk in whole class, small group, or paired discussions that occur in lessons. They show how dialogic pedagogies foreground the ways in which talk is a fundamental pedagogical practice that mediates teaching and learning in distinctive, sometimes routine, ways in its primary endeavour to secure education for students. This work gives prominence to the particular pedagogical dialogues that are displayed discursively in talk-in-interaction, in activities, and in interrelationships in classroom lesson practices.

The Practice of Teaching Studying Teaching Through the Lens of the Theory of Practice Architectures The theory of practice architectures has offered PEP researchers an innovative theoretical perspective on pedagogy and its relation to teaching. Much of the PEP research focused explicitly on teaching has emphasised the central importance of moving beyond a view of pedagogy as method to a view that regards pedagogy as dialogically formed in the language and communication that occurs in particular times and places. This extended view acknowledges that pedagogy is accomplished in realtime happenings, that is, in a real-time sequential flow of discourses, activities, and interrelationships (2018, p. 121). Underpinning this perspective is the knowledge that all classrooms share one thing in common: they are all unique social sites in which teaching and learning activities happen, and in which the roles and relationships between teachers and students are constructed. The practice architectures in these sites also evolve as changing conditions that enable and constrain what is more and less likely to happen when students participate in lessons.

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Classrooms provide different kinds of semantic, physical, and social spaces that channel practices of teaching and learning differently. The theory of practice architectures provides a new perspective by showing how particular practices of teaching and learning are simultaneously constituted in the cultural, physical, and relational spaces afforded by particular lessons. It offers a way to describe and analyse pedagogies as they are enacted in practice, allowing us to “zoom in”2 on the particularities of a performance of teaching as it unfolds in a particular site, and also to “zoom out” to understand how this performance of teaching aligns (or does not align) with a larger pedagogical perspective, for example, following the progressivism of John Dewey, or the social constructivism of Lev Vygotsky. Understanding the nature of particular pedagogical spaces depends upon understanding the particularities of the language, activities, and relationships which enter and exist in the space, and how they relate to broader discourses, patterns of activity, and modes of relationships in use in the site, and the extent to which they are (or are not) informed by different pedagogical practice traditions (Kemmis et al., 2014).

Learning and Teaching The notion that teaching is dialogic may suggest that practices of teaching and learning are also in dialogue with one another. As it happens, however, many PEP researchers do not take this view. A number of PEP researchers (e.g. Kemmis et al., 2014, 2017) take the view that learning is “being stirred in to practices” (although noting that a person can also be stirred in to a practice without needing someone else to do the stirring); that is, what people learn is practices, not just knowledge. Speaking more broadly of education, Kemmis (2018, p. 1) remarked that. As educators – when we come to develop a new course, or plan a lesson, or write a lecture, for example – we frequently focus our attention onthe knowledge to be taught. British educational philosopher Richard Peters (1964, 1966), for example, defined education as an initiation into forms of knowledge.3 By contrast, I want to encourage you to think that education is an initiation into practices. That doesn’t mean we give up on the idea of teaching or learning knowledge; it is to say that we want to see knowledge in its context of use. For me, the critical point is that “all of what is conventionally called ‘knowledge’ arises from, recalls, anticipates, and returns to its use in practices (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 58; see also Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018, p. 116)”.

So: if learning is being initiated into practices, then perhaps teaching is a practice of initiating learners into practices—a practice of stirring learners into practices. Moreover, on the view referred to in the last sentence of the quotation above, one might also say that all of what is conventionally called “knowledge” about teaching arises from, recalls, anticipates, and returns to its use in practices of teaching. 2 On

“zooming in” and “zooming out”, see Nicolini (2013), for example, pp. 219–223, 230–235.

3 For a review of some critical receptions of Peters’ view, and a renewal of his central idea, see Waks

(2013).

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Teaching as a Practice While learning often occurs in the absence of a teacher, teaching does not occur in the absence of a learner. The practice of teaching is thus constructed in sayings, doings, and relatings (the things of which practices are composed, according to the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014; see also Chap. 1 in this volume), related both to the substantive content to be taught, and to the practice of “stirring learners in” to the (knowledge and) practices they are learning. For example, as Kemmis et al. (2014, pp. 69–70) report, a teacher, “Kendra”, teaching a Grade 5 primary school class about “forces changing the Earth”, used words including specialist terms that appeared in a vocabulary list on her classroom wall. This specialist lexicon included words like “tsunami”, “pesticide”, “earthquake”, “extinct”, and “energy”. These were among the sayings of Kendra’s teaching practice, and Kendra aimed to initiate students into using this language. The unit of work Kendra was teaching involved the students learning to write an explanatory text; thus, the activities she enacted with her students were intended to initiate them into this particular kind of practice of writing, helping them to put together a persuasive argument by deploying relevant evidence to make a case. Such activities constituted the doings of Kendra’s teaching practice. And, of course, Kendra was in the role of teacher vis-à-vis her students in their roles, in a network of relationships with others in and around the classroom, the school and the community—manifested in the relatings of her teaching. But Kendra’s teaching also aimed to initiate her students into ways of relating to “the Earth” and “forces changing the Earth”, so they would see themselves as parts of the community of life on the planet, and as beings whose practices are among the “forces changing the Earth”. Together, Kendra’s sayings, doings, and relatings hung together in the projects of her practice: among them, the project of initiating her students into the practice of writing explanatory texts, and perhaps also the project of “living lightly on the planet”. Recently, Kemmis (2018) defined a practice as. a form of human action in history, in which particular activities (doings) are comprehensible in terms of particular ideas and talk (sayings), and when the people involved are distributed in particular kinds of relationships (relatings), and when this combination of sayings, doings and relatings ‘hangs together’ in the project of the practice (the ends and purposes that motivate the practice).

As the example of Kendra’s teaching shows, teaching is this kind of practice. Kemmis et al. (2014, pp. 55, 78–79, 100) make a distinction between substantive practices to be learned by students and the learning practices (processes and procedural arrangements like small group work, or project work) by which learning occurs in classrooms and other institutional settings of teaching. Practices that are, from the perspective of the learner, “learning practices” are, from the perspective of the teacher, in fact “teaching practices”. That is, to return to the definition of

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teaching proposed by Kemmis et al. (2014), teaching practices are practice architectures constructed by teachers to enable and constrain the practices of students, to stir them in to the substantive practices to be learned—like “writing explanatory texts”, in the case of Grade 5 teacher Kendra.

The Practice Architectures that Enable and Constrain the Practice of Teaching As indicated in Chap. 1 of this volume, the practice architectures that enable and constrain a practice like teaching are composed of combinations of cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangementsfound in or brought to a site—those arrangements that channel the unfolding of the practice of teaching in semantic space, physical space-time, and social space. These conditions include things like the specialist lexicon and discourses of a subject being taught; the objects and “set-ups” (Schatzki, 2002) in the material space where the teaching occurs; and the system roles and lifeworld relationships between the teacher, students, and others. The practice architectures that enable and constrain a particular practice of teaching include all of the conditions that shape how that practice of teaching unfolds in a particular site, with this particular teacher and those particular students. Figure 5.1 presents a schematic outline of the theory of practice architectures. PEP researchers have described practice architectures shaping the practice of teaching in several countries and across a wide variety of educational settings

Fig. 5.1 The theory of practice architectures. (Adapted from Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 38 with permission from Springer Nature)

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(including early childhood education, school education, vocational education and training, university education, and adult, popular, and community education.

Teaching in Universities Based on observation of, and interviews with, university teachers, Mahon (2014) describes in detail a great variety of practice architectures that enabled and constrained practices of teaching in an Australian university, including practices of online teaching, preservice teacher education, and doctoral supervision. She presents a series of diagrams to show how these kinds of teaching practices are simultaneously shaped by multiple practice architectures. Mahon’s observations and interviews allowed her to compile lists of conditions the teachers (and she) identified as enabling and constraining their teaching. She then clustered these influences and drew diagrams that showed how webs of very different kinds of conditions formed the practice architectures for complex practices like “online pedagogy”, “preservice teacher education”, and “doctoral supervision”. Figure 5.2 (Mahon, 2014, p. 306) depicts the web of conditions forming the practice architectures for “online pedagogy” identified by Mahon in her interviews and observations about the particular site she studied. Towards the middle of the picture, a central balloon depicts the practice of online pedagogy. From the empirical evidence, Mahon identified major influences conditioning online pedagogy, depicting them in a series of balloons radiating out from the central one: teaching itself (the performance of teaching under particular conditions pertaining on each occasion), university mission and ethos, management systems and policies, the subject and course being taught, technology, research, relationships with staff, students and student engagement, and personal influences affecting the teacher as a practitioner. These balloons have others radiating out from them in turn; thus, for example, the “students” balloon has other balloons radiating around it (Fig. 5.3): the students’ skills, their backgrounds, their confidence with the technology used in the online pedagogy, the nature of the student cohort, and their feedback and responses to the teachers. Each of the balloons in the inner circle (like “students”) also has lines radiating out to balloons listing other influences. The whole set constitutes the practice architectures for “online pedagogy” in this particular site, as revealed in Mahon’s observations and interviews with the teachers involved in her study. Mahon’s study thus revealed a variety of practice architectures that enabled and constrained teachers’ practices of online pedagogy. The teachers were striving for critical educational praxis in their pedagogy, and Mahon’s study identified a number

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Fig. 5.2 Web of conditions forming the practice architectures of “online pedagogy”. (Adapted by Charlotte Arkenback-Sundström, and reproduced, with permission, from Mahon, 2014, p. 306)

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Fig. 5.3 Zooming in on part of the web of practice architectures of “online pedagogy”. (Adapted by Charlotte Arkenback-Sundström, and reproduced, with permission, from Mahon, 2014, p. 306)

of conditions that enabled and constrained the achievement of critical educational pedagogy. The study thus threw light on the kinds of conditions that do and do not nurture what this PEP Research Question described as “good professional practice (praxis)”.4

4 PEP

researchers have reported on other studies of teaching in higher education settings. Kemmis and Mahon (2017) describe some of the large-scale practice architectures shaping university teaching in their experiences of Australian universities in 1964, 1987, and 2016. Rönnerman and Kemmis (2016) describe practice architectures like transnational online meetings and faceto-face workshops built into the design of the PEP research network doctoral school, enabling and constraining the practices of doctoral candidates participating in the course over the years 2008– 2013, offered variously in either Swedish, Norwegian, or Australian university settings. EdwardsGroves (2016) describes a variety of practice architectures, including how different restrictive and flexible course structures for professional placement arrangements, enable and constrain initial teacher education in Australian universities and school-based practice teaching settings. Hemmings, Kemmis, and Reupert (2013) investigated the structures of various university courses ininclusive education for Australian preservice teacher education students, describing these in terms of different practice architectures that shape teacher education students’ learning about inclusive education in different ways. Sjølie (2014) describes the practice architectures that shaped the ways teacher education students in a Norwegian university encountered and—more or less successfully—learned educational theory as part of their teacher education curriculum.

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Teaching in Vocational Education and Training (VET) Choy and Hodge (2017) describe the practice architectures of teaching in vocational education and training (VET) settings in Australia, showing that some of those practice architectures are given by the occupational settings in which apprentices and trainees work, and by regulatory frameworks governing VET, as well as the more fine-grained local arrangements in sites where VET learners meet VET teachers. They note, first, that occupations are themselves composed of practices, and that VET students aim to learn those occupational practices; they describe the “intricate connection [of VET teaching practices] with occupational practices” and “occupational spaces” (p. 165). The practice architectures that enable and constrain VET teaching practices include large-scale institutional arrangements like those produced by various Australian training reforms, including the institutional changes that followed the policies introduced in “the Kangan era” (the 1970s), the ongoing changes in industry regulatory practices, and the requirement to attune the VET curriculum to the needs of the economy. Furthermore, VET teaching is expected to help learners make transitions into multiple, related occupations so that workers are well prepared for contemporary as well as emerging occupations. These and other more immediate, fine-grained arrangements enable and constrain the day-to-day teaching practices of VET teachers. For instance, an “industry-led” system with greater involvement of employers (through their representatives) shifted teachers’ practice from acting as autonomous professionals to acting as implementers of prespecified curriculum (Choy & Hodge, 2017). Johansson, Wärvik, and Choy (2018) argue that, in the VET context, teaching initiates learners into “becoming” and forming identities as workers for particular occupations. This happens as students become enmeshed in practices, engage and interact with the practice architectures that shape practices, cross-boundaries and thresholds between practices and the sites where they happen, and learn how to function in a vocation. Arkenback-Sundström (2017) describes how the teaching practices of vocational teachers within municipal adult education changed when upper secondary-level apprenticeship programmes were introduced in Sweden in 2013. In the Swedish model of adult apprenticeships, a minimum of 70% of the education has to be workplace-based. The vocational teachers have full responsibility for assessing the students’ workplace-based learning and grading the vocational knowledge and skills they have acquired. Continuous student admission was a practice architecture that had a significant influence on how different schools chose to design the Sales AssistantApprenticeships Program (SAAP). The vocational teachers had to re-evaluate and reshape their prior teaching practices to support students’ learning. In one school, the central part of the vocational teachers’ teaching practice was restricted to a conversation that took place once every five weeks between a single apprentice, the teacher, and the workplace supervisor. The teacher led these discussions and used course-specific checklists to confirm and direct the apprentice’s workplace-based learning practice. In this version of the programme, the principal

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practice architectures shaping the apprentices’ learning were those of the workplace itself, supplemented by the teachers’ visits and the guiding course materials. Apprentices in this programme reported that they felt more like new employees than apprentices, since they never participated in lessons alongside classmates. Instead, it was supervisors and colleagues at the workplace who stirred them into the vocational practices of sales assistants. Their teacher was more like a mentor who showed up regularly to monitor the apprentices’ knowledge development vis-à-vis programme goals. A consequence of these arrangements for the apprentices was that the teaching practices in school and at the workplace appeared to be separated. A second school designed the SAAP differently. As a middle leader and math teacher, Arkenback-Sundström was involved in the planning and implementation of the apprenticeships. Based on a previous action research study (ArkenbackSundström, 2013), a new teaching practice was introduced with the intention of linking workplace activities with school activities. This was done by regular group supervision in the school on the theme “Learning to learn at work”, based on a structured apprentice logbook. The pedagogical idea was to let the students’ workplace experiences form the starting point for teaching and learning at school. The logbook notes formed the basis for group discussions about work activities referring explicitly to course content and objectives. Since Arkenback-Sundström did not have the vocational teachers’ professional experiences of retail, the group supervision setting became a setting for shared learning practice about sales assistants’ activities in retail workplaces. The designing and enacting of practice architectures in the group supervision enabled student learning, and thus what they learned. Choy and Wärvik (2019) report on how aged care teachers help refugee and migrant students to navigate the practice architectures in a VET institute and in aged care facilities in Australia and Sweden, with each country exhibiting its own distinctive practice traditions. Furthermore, since the practice of aged care in these countries is socially and culturally foreign to that in countries where the refugee and migrants come from, both teachers and students need to harmonise their understandings and practices to align with what good aged care practice is in the new country and the particular aged care worksite.

Teaching in Early Childhood Education and Care Salamon (2017) describes relationships between infants’ practices and early childhood educators’ practices in which the practices of each become practice architectures for the other. Thus, for example, early childhood educators’ practices, shaped by architectures including the educators’ presuppositions about the capabilities of infants, shape the opportunities of infants, and thus, the infants’ practices. Conversely, however, the practices of infants are among the conditions that shape the practices of educators. And, of course, the practices of both are shaped by a variety of other cultural, material, and social conditions in Australian early childhood

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education settings. Among other research on teaching practices in early childhood settings, Boyle, Petriwskij, and Grieshaber (2018) describe the practice architectures of transition from prior-to-school settings to primary school.

Teaching in Primary Schools Kemmis et al. (2014), Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2017), and EdwardsGroves (2017) describe many different kinds of practice architectures that construct the semantic space, physical space-time, and social space of teaching practices in some Australian primary school settings. These studies show that, like other teachers, primary school teachers develop a repertoire of teaching practices that involve constructing various kinds of learning opportunities for students—that is, the teachers construct different kinds of practice architectures that enable and constrain the practices of students. Kemmis et al. (2014) suggest that some of these practice architectures become routinised as “learning practices” that shape what students can do. These “learning practices” constructed by teachers should not be confused with the “substantive practices” that the students are learning to do—the substantive practices students are being “stirred in to”. Hardy and Grootenboer (2013) describe the practice architectures shaping student learning in a primary school community garden setting where refugee community members and their children interact with teachers. In such a case, the practices of community members, some of whom are parents of the students, also function as practice architectures shaping what students can do, while the practices of the students and the teachers are among the practice architectures in the site that enable and constrain the learning of the refugee community members. Petrie (2016) similarly delineated some of the practice architectures that characteristically enable and constrain teaching and learning in Physical Education in some New Zealand primary school settings.

Teaching in Secondary Schools Green, Brennan Kemmis, Choy, and Henning Loeb (2017) describe various practice architectures of vocational education and training in secondary schools (VETiS), including practice architectures of teacher education that shape the way VETiS teachers interact with their students in ways that are different from the ways other secondary teachers interact. There is contestation between the two groups of teachers about how they interpret good teaching, with VETiS teachers having a greater focus on initiating learners into the practices characteristic of various trades and occupations, in the hope that the students will experience their learning as an authentic initiation into the work that will be expected of them in work situations (appropriating practices from the workplace, and applying those practices in the learning situation as a workplace). These VETiS teachers seemed to take “good teaching” to refer to

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the extent that their teaching initiates their students into future work practices, while other secondary school teachers seemed to take “good teaching” to mean initiating students into knowledge.

Teaching in Community Education Settings Kemmis and Mutton (2012) analysed teaching and learning across a range of different school and community settings where new practices of Education for Sustainability (EfS) were emerging in Australia and identified a range of practice architectures enabling and constraining EfS as a practice. This study identified that the practice of EfS involved webs of different, interdependent practices that Kemmis and Mutton called ecologies of practices—a key moment in the development in the theory of practice architectures. Examples of the kinds of interdependent practices they identified included students’ practices of collecting seeds of plants indigenous to a locality, germinating the seeds, building the shade-house in which the seeds were germinated, transferring more advanced seedlings to larger pots, and planting the young plants in degraded landscapes. Other studies using the theory of practice architectures were able to extend the usefulness of the notion of ecologies of practices to show how different kinds of practices in the Education Complex of practices can become interdependent (although it remains an empirical question to discover if and when they do)—particularly students’ substantive practices of enacting what they are learning, teaching practices, teachers’ professional learning, leading, and practices of researching and reflecting. Kemmis et al. (2014) systematically explored interdependencies between these different kinds of practices in a study of primary schools in two different school districts. In short, the evidence found in these and other PEP publications shows how practices of teaching are shaped by a very wide range of practice architectures found in each of the sites where these particular practices of teaching took place. Given this evidence, it comes as no surprise that Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 98) place the notion of practice architectures at the heart of their definition of teaching: teaching is a practice of designing and enacting practice architectures that will enable and constrain the practices of students, in ways that initiate them into a substantive practice being taught.

Teaching Practices Unfold in Intersubjective Space Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2017) analysed how each particular practice of teaching (like other practices) constructs its own characteristic shape in intersubjective space, that is, it forms a particular space in which teachers and learners encounter one another as interlocutors in a semantic space (among particular cultural– discursive arrangements), as embodied beings in a particular physical space and time

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(among particular material–economic arrangements), and as social beings in a particular social space (among particular social–political arrangements). In one example, they described a reading lesson in a Year 1 classroom (a class of six-year-olds), in which teacher and students encountered one another as interlocutors using language about reading (e.g. about “characters”, “meanings”, and “illustrations” in a book), as embodied beings with the teacher sitting on a low chair with the children gathered around her, sitting on the floor, and as social beings in their roles as teacher and Year 1 students (e.g. with the students “following the rules for reading”, listening to other speakers, complying with teacher question-and-answer routines, and the like). In a Year 5 Social Studies lesson (a class of ten-year-olds), by contrast, EdwardsGroves and Grootenboer (2017), also observed in the same study students following an established classroom routine to form an “inside–outside circle”, where one group of students in an inside circle faces outwards to other students in an outside circle, with students in the inside circle reporting one-by-one on their learnings to students in the outside circle, with the inside circle rotating from one student to the next until all have reported. This use of the physical space forms a particular kind of egalitarian social space in which each student takes turns to play the role of reporter and reported-to in relation to every other student. PEP research has shown the ways that practices can be conceptualised discursively, materially, temporally, socially—and, thus, ontologically—as they are enacted in the different intersubjective spaces which “lie between” people in spaces located in time and place (2018). These different kinds of intersubjective spaces enable different kinds of opportunities for teachers and students in their interactions with one another. Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2017) show that some teachers use a wide repertoire of different intersubjective spaces in their teaching, for different purposes, while others use a more limited range. VET teachers, meanwhile, draw on their rich industry experiences to create intersubjective spaces for learning akin to authentic work situations (Green, Brennan Kemmis, Choy, & Henning Loeb, 2017; Choy & Wärvik, 2019). The research on teaching in the corpus of PEP publications surveyed for this chapter has thus enabled us to conclude that different kinds of teaching in schools, universities, or workplaces create rather different kinds of intersubjective spaces and opportunities for student learning, initiating learners not only into different kinds of knowledge but into different kinds of practices, and stirring them into those practices in different ways. Examples of these different kinds of teaching include online pedagogies versus face-to-face; “traditional” classrooms versus a community garden setting; a physical education outdoor class versus a community coaching program; or workplace learning versus classroom learning in vocational education and training. Moreover, the researchers have observed that different teachers develop different repertoires of teaching practices that crystallise into particular kinds of learning practices that shape learners’ learning opportunities—learning practices like small group work, students working in pairs, “inside–outside” student circles in which students share their ideas, whole class teaching, working serially with individual students as they produce objects in workshops in VET in schools and in other VET settings, or games and other activities in Outdoor and Physical Education settings.

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An Ontological Perspective on Teaching Practices Many PEP researchers (e.g. Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 99) have striven to demonstrate the power of the ontological view of practices embedded in the theory of practice architectures. Practices studied from an ontological perspective focus on practices as they happen, moment by moment, and as they unfold in relation to the discursive, material, and social conditions that exist in particular concrete sites. The ontological view contrasts with an epistemological view of practices that focuses principally on the knowledge participants need to engage in a practice. For example, Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, and Smith (2018) explored the moment-by-moment decision-making in the practice of Grade 1 teacher Mr Moro as he kindly supported non-English speaking background student Theo to write a sentence in the ending of a story about an escaping cow. Referring to part of the transcript of the lesson, the researchers say, Reading across this extract shows the ways in which lessons are formed by practices that are constituted socially (among people like teachers and students, like Mr Moro and Theo), temporally (through time, like in this small segment of the Grade 1 writing lesson), spatially (in places, like sitting at a desk in a classroom and using resources and materials such as pencils and books) and discursively (through the talk, interactions and relationship between Mr Moro and Theo) in moment-by-moment exchanges and happenings. (p. 145)

We human beings have a powerful desire to see things in the abstract—for example, to say things like “the sayings, doings, and relatings of practices are enabled and constrained, respectively, by the particular cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements present in or brought to a site”. Against such abstractions, close analysis of a lesson transcript allowed EdwardsGroves et al. (2018) to show how Mr. Moro’s practice—what Mr. Moro actually did (e.g. putting his hand on Theo’s shoulder, and kneeling by Theo’s desk to come down to Theo’s eye level)—was in fact enabled and constrained in particular ways by Theo’s hesitance; Theo’s tapping of his pencil as he sits, frozen, unable to begin writing his sentence; and his tears when Mr. Moro comes to his aid. Moreover, through the analysis of the transcript, much is revealed not only about Mr. Moro’s practice, but also his praxis—Mr. Moro’s moral and humane response to Theo’s frustration, that informs the gentle way he prompts Theo towards success in his writing, so that, at the end of the interaction, Theo remarks “I can do it on my own”. Through the close analysis of cases of practice, the ontological perspective draws attention to the particularities of the ways in which practices are enabled and constrained by the particular arrangements that exist in a particular site at a particular time. The ontological perspective thus invites us to see teaching not only as a general kind of practice, as an entity, but also to see particular acts of teaching as unique performances shaped by the particular conditions under which they occur (see Shove, Pantzar, & Watson, 2012, pp. 7–8, on the distinction between practices as entities and as performances). Exploring this tension allows us to see more deeply into the practice of teaching as informed by a repertoire of identities and capabilities deployed (Grootenboer & Edwards-Groves, 2019), especially by experienced and

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expert teachers, in ways that allow teachers to respond in fine-tuned ways to the changing responses of students in their mutual teaching–learning interactions, as well as to changes in other conditions in the site. The ontological perspective on teaching as a practice also throws light on how the chains of interactions that occur in teaching-learning encounters are—or are not— responsive to one another, and may thus help to reveal how and why some students in a class learn the substantive practices a teacher is aiming to teach while others do not, for example, by showing how some students stay “connected” in the chains of action and reaction between students and teacher, while (for a variety of reasons) other students do not.

Teaching and Learning as (Sometimes) Ecologically Related in Pedagogical Practice As already noted, learning in everyday life often takes place without a teacher being present; practices of teaching do not need to be present for learning to occur. In classrooms and other educational settings, however, a teacher’s practices of teaching usually shape the learning practices available to students, and thus shape the learning achieved by learners (sometimes described as “learning outcomes”5 ). A teacher’s teaching practices refer not only to their performances “on the day” in the classroom, of course; they also include lesson preparation before the performance, and assessment that may occur during and after the twin performances of teaching and learning in the classroom. Lesson preparation is frequently (but not always) a powerful prefiguring force in shaping the practice architectures that students encounter in a lesson when the teacher begins the performance of teaching in the classroom; assessment is sometimes (but not always) a powerful force in shaping students’ future learning. Thus, we might say that the performance of teaching has beginnings and endings that frequently occur in the absence of learners. Sometimes, but not always, teaching practices and student learning in classrooms are ecologically interdependent. When they are, the actions of the teacher prompt actions by the students, and the actions of the students prompt actions by the teacher. As the earlier section on dialogic pedagogies showed, this is in the nature of interaction. When the outcomes of the action of one of the interaction partners do indeed prompt a new action by the other(s), we can say that the actions are ecologically dependent. 5 It

seems redundant to speak of “learning outcomes” to refer to what is learned. We could simply speak of “what is learned” or the noun “learning”, as in “X’s learning”. (The verb “to learn” and the gerundive “learning” refer to the process of learning). We believe that “learning outcomes” is a relatively recent neoliberal linguistic coinage that has colonised the lifeworlds of teachers, forcing their attention not to the whole harvest of what their students learn, but rather to those parts of their learning that are singled out in national or state-wide curricula, and especially those elements sampled for measurement and auditing by standardised national or state-wide assessment tests, or by other major examinations and assessments.

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This is not always the case in classrooms, however. A student may not act on the promptings of the teacher, and the teacher may not act on the promptings of the student or students. For example, if a teacher chooses to ignore a student’s action, the teacher’s apparent non-action may in fact be a quite deliberate reaction to the student although it might not appear to an observer to have shaped the teacher’s practice. Moreover, it may not be clear to the student, or to the teacher, at any particular moment in the unfolding talk-in-interaction of a classroom what it is appropriate to do next in response to the other’s apparent prompting: that is, the action may or may not prompt a corresponding reaction. Fine-grained conversation analysis shows that, in such cases, teaching practices and learning practices may become disconnected from one another, and new steps in the interaction may be needed to repair the “interactive trouble” in the interaction (Edwards-Groves & Davidson, 2017, p. 64)6 —that is, to reconnect the stream of action and reaction in the interaction between the teacher and the students. In such cases, the teaching and the learning might not be ecologically interdependent, but if one or both of the interaction partners successfully act to repair the interaction, then it will be clear that the teaching and learning are interdependent, since the actions to repair the interaction demonstrate a shared commitment to maintaining the interaction and its flow of actions and reactions. Research by Edwards-Groves et al. (2014, p. 65) and Edwards-Groves and Davidson (2017, p. 64) has revealed that, when teachers (and students) learn specifically to delineate the particular source of their interactive trouble (or “problem spot”), so they know what sort of trouble it is, then teacher and students in the interaction can more readily find ways to manage and repair the trouble so that the learning focus is clarified and enhanced. For example, more sensitively attuning teachers to the interactions taking place in their lessons assist them to identify if the trouble is about sayings, doings, or relatings. Table 5.1 lists the kinds of trouble identified by Edwards-Groves and Davidson (2017). Edwards-Groves et al. (2014) and Edwards-Groves and Davidson (2017) have shown that, once they identify the source of their interactional trouble, teachers and students can learn to repair the trouble more effectively in the moment-by-moment flow of interaction in the classroom. They have also shown that repairing interactional trouble is co-produced by teachers and students in the flow of interaction. The interplay of action and reaction in the interaction between teaching and learning takes place simultaneously in the three dimensions of intersubjective space: the semantic space in which the partners respond to each other as interlocutors, the material space–time in which they respond to each other as embodied beings, and the social space in which they respond to each other as social beings. As interaction partners, teachers and students respond to each other, simultaneously, in each of these three dimensions, among cultural–discursive arrangements (language, 6 Interactive

trouble was identified and described in Freebody, Ludwig, and Gunn’s (1995) seminal study on everyday literacy practices in disadvantaged schools; also, for a full description, see Edwards-Groves et al. (2014, p. 64).

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Table 5.1 Different kinds of interactional trouble that occur in classrooms, prompting repair (after Edwards-Groves & Davidson, 2017) Trouble related to Kind of trouble Sayings

Doings

Relatings

Source of the trouble: when students…

Epistemological • Have not understood the content • Do not know the answer to the question Reasoning

• Misinterpret the topic • Use a logic appropriate to another situation (such as home) rather than the logic preferred by the teacher

Theoretical

• Answer in ways the teacher deems unacceptable or rejects because they draw upon a dispreferred theory of learning

Stylistic

• Display certain forms of expression or word choice which the teacher regards as inappropriate

Cultural

• (From difference cultural backgrounds) do not cue into the cultural idioms, expressions, routines, or events used in the everyday language and social practices of others present

Organisational

• Display uncertainty about what to do

Pedagogical

• Disrupt the teacher’s preferred progression, and the lesson management breaks down

Relational

• Do not cue into, enact, or understand the preferred ways of relating defined by the teacher

specialist discourses), material–economic arrangements (physical objects and setups, in time), and social–political arrangements (relationships of power and hierarchy, and of solidarity and inclusion or exclusion)—found in or brought to the site in which they are interacting. That is, in the talk-in-interaction in classrooms, the practices of students and teachers become practice architectures that enable and constrain the flow of one another’s practices. Thus, for example, Hardy and Grootenboer (2013) show how teaching creates conditions (practice architectures) under which learners can learn. In one case, they describe a community garden setting in which a teacher and a school community liaison worker encourage refugee parents to grow food for communal use, creating a learning community which constitutes practice architectures orienting both the parents and their children in English language literacy learning. Similarly, Kemmis and Mutton (2012) describe a secondary school Education for Sustainability (EfS) initiative, in which students collect seeds of locally indigenous plants, germinate the seeds in a greenhouse, transfer seedlings into larger pots, and take established seedlings to degraded landscapes in their community to revegetate these landscapes with ecologically appropriate plants. The teacher’s actions, the farm from which the students collect the seed, the greenhouse (which the students themselves constructed), and the community landscapes are among the practice architectures that enabled and constrained these students’ practices of learning about the substantive practices of revegetating degraded landscapes, and otherwise living sustainably.

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Co-production Another way to describe teaching and learning as (sometimes) being ecologically related is to say that they are “co-produced”. While one might think that the teacher orchestrates the practices of the students in her classroom, it is nevertheless equally true that the students also orchestrate the practices of the teacher. As Edwards-Groves et al. (2018), Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2017), and Edwards-Groves (2018) point out, what the teacher does next in an interaction, at any given moment, is informed by what the students do, and what the students do next is informed by what the teacher does: thus, the interaction is co-produced, not the result of the influence of one of the parties alone. Salamon and her collaborators (Salamon, 2015, 2017; Salamon & Harrison, 2015; Salamon, Sumsion, Press, & Harrison, 2016) have shown that the same is also true for infants with early childhood educators; while some might think that it is largely the adults who direct the flow of interactions in early childhood settings, these researchers have shown convincingly that infants also have a powerful influence on how interactions unfold, effectively communicating (often non-verbally) their desires, wants, and needs to educators and thus shaping (although not determining) how educators respond to them. This co-production happens at the granular, moment-by-moment level within a particular chain or sequence of interactions, and it also happens at the more molar level of planning of next day’s lesson in a unit of work, and at the even larger level of designing programs that respond to the reactions of previous cohorts of students to earlier offerings of a unit of work or a course. To speak of co-production, then, is to recognise the agency of the living partners in an interaction, not to privilege just one of the partners (usually, the teacher). It is to recognise that these living actors are agentic in shaping the flow of interactions, in ways that are distinct from the other kinds of practice architectures that shape practices in less fluid and dynamic ways, like material conditions (the floor or ceiling, for example) or the cultural– discursive and social–political arrangements that are part of an educational policy or a curriculum statement. Whether there is equality of influence between teachers and students is always an open question, but ordinarily it would be true to say that the power of teachers generally gives them more influence, although students’ contestation and resistance may also dislodge teachers, temporarily or for more prolonged periods, from their dominant position. Sometimes, too, a student’s intervention in the stream of interactions in the classroom is sufficiently interesting, constructive, and compelling that the teacher’s influence over the unfolding direction of the practice in a lesson is effectively ceded to the student or to a group of students. Another way to say this (presaged by the Kemmis et al., 2014, definition of teaching cited earlier in this chapter) is to say that while teachers’ teaching practices are among the practice architectures that enable and constrain learners’ practices, it is also true to say that learners’ classroom practices are practice architectures that enable and constrain the unfolding of teachers’ teaching practices.

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Fig. 5.4 Teaching and learning as ecologically connected in a pedagogical practice. (Adapted from Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 165 with permission from Springer Nature)

As stated, in classroom talk-in-interaction, teachers’ teaching interacts with students’ learning across the three dimensions of semantic space, physical spacetime, and social space. Figure 5.4 is a schematic representation of this interaction, drawing attention to the way it happens across these three dimensions simultaneously. Teacher’s teaching practices, manifested in their sayings, doings, and relatings, and oriented by the projects of their practice of teaching (their intentions, purposes, and objectives), prompt responses from the students, in the form of their sayings, doings, and relatings, oriented by the projects of their classroom practices (their intentions, purposes, and objectives). This is evident in the stream of conversation taking place in the room, which is a stream of actions and reactions by the interaction partners, helping the partners to maintain (or depart from) their respective roles and relationships in the setting. In the light of the argument that teachers’ teaching practices and learners’ classroom practices are generally (but not always) co-produced in classroom interaction, we thus come to the important conclusion that teachers’ practices of teaching and students’ classroom practices are jointly necessary parts of a combined pedagogical practice. In pedagogical practice, the different participants play different parts to jointly construct a pedagogical practice as a whole; teachers play their part through the sayings, doings, and relatings that constitute their teaching and students play their part through their sayings, doings, and relatings in response (or provocation) to the teacher’s practice. The complexity of Fig. 5.4 (although much abstracted from the vastly more complex particularities of concrete interactions in real classroom settings) suggests that there are a number of dimensions and directions in which interactions can “go wrong” and need repair; for example, apparent contradictions between what is said

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and done, or mistakes by the interaction partners in “reading” one another’s actions, or conflicts over intentions, or because there are absences or flaws in the arrangements available to the partners (like one drawing on language the other does not understand, or hanging onto objects the other needs, or acting in some way inappropriately towards the other under the circumstances).

Good Teaching and Good Pedagogical Practice When we ask what constitutes “good” professional practice in teaching, then, we come to recognise that teachers are not the sole authors of their teaching practices. Seen in the broader context of pedagogical practice, teachers teach under conditions given by others (e.g. policies imposed by a school or the state, and using the resources made available to them), and their interactions with others, including students, shape the way their practices unfold—what happens in the classroom or other institutional setting for teaching and learning. Whether the good for each person and the good for humankind will come out of any particular occasion or performance of teaching, then, is not something teachers alone determine. It also depends on many other people, including those who make the laws and policies teachers must follow, those who allocate and deploy the resources teachers need to do their work, those who lead and provide professional learning for teachers, and, of course, the students with whom they work. This proposition may be obvious, but it seems not to be so to those who believe that state-wide assessments yield measures of the success or failure of a teacher or a school. Only when teachers are well-supported, including by appropriate laws and policies for education, and by the provision of appropriate resources, do teachers have a realistic chance of actually doing good teaching. The possibility of good pedagogical practice depends not just on teachers but also on students’ lived experiences and conditions of life; what students bring to the classroom from their homes and communities influences their relationships with schools and teachers, and students’ readiness to participate in the life of the classroom changes from day to day and can change from moment to moment. The quality of the relationship between each student and the teacher is something teachers and students negotiate and renegotiate, but it is a background condition over which teachers sometimes have limited control, even though they may be able to “manage” an unruly student or a volatile class. Good pedagogical practice depends on the willingness and readiness of students, as well as teachers, to enter the talk-in-interaction of the classroom with optimism, authenticity, a willingness to engage constructively in the work of the classroom, and a sense of relational trust. As Kemmis et al. (2014) and Kemmis, Edwards-Groves, Wilkinson, and Hardy (2012) show, the practice of teaching can be in ecological relationships with other kinds of practices in addition to students’ practices. It is always an empirical question whether or not one practice is ecologically interdependent with another. Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 82) describe the “education complex” of practices crucial to contemporary

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education institutions: (1) students’ practices, (2) teaching, (3) teacher professional learning, (4) leading (including local leadership and also educational policy-making and administration practices), and (5) researching and reflecting. Some of these practices are the focus of other chapters in this volume (particularly, leading in Chap. 6; teacher professional learning in Chap. 7; and researching in Chap. 3). To note these ecological relationships, however, is to note that the practice of teaching is not sui generis; it is itself shaped by other practices in addition to students’ practices—by practices of professional learning (both preservice teacher education and professional learning throughout the career), practices of leading, and practices of researching and reflecting.

From Practice to Praxis and Critical Pedagogical Praxis Chapter 2 in this volume specifically addressed the notion of praxis. In this chapter, we want simply to make two points. First, many researchers have focused on praxis in teaching as “doing the right thing” or “morally informed, committed action” (Kemmis & Smith, 2008), or “history-making action” (Kemmis, 2012), seeing teaching as a form of praxis because it aims towards the good for each person and the good for humankind (see also Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2015; Kemmis & EdwardsGroves, 2018). Grootenboer has focused on praxis in education in a number of publications, for example, in mathematics teaching in schools and in university teacher education (Grootenboer, 2013, 2018; Grootenboer & Rowan, 2017; Rowan & Grootenboer, 2017). The relationship between practice and praxis is also evident in research by Rowan and Grootenboer (2017) and Grootenboer and Rowan (2017) who explored the affective dimension of teaching, to show the importance of rapport in supporting student engagement in higher education, including (in Grootenboer & Rowan, 2017) rapport among teachers in university settings. Grootenboer (2013) similarly describes how praxis in mathematics teaching in university preservice teacher education—in the form of a teacher’s explicit concern for the good for each student and the good for humankind—helped to support the development of preservice teachers’ mathematical identities. Second, some PEP researchers have focused on critical pedagogical praxis, which is manifested in teaching practices that aim not only towards the good, but also to overcome or ameliorate unreasonable, unproductive, unsustainable, and unjust conditions in educational institutions and in communities and the wider societies in which they exist. This focus is at its strongest in the work of Mahon (2014, 2016, 2017; Mahon & Galloway, 2017), who studied the conditions for critical pedagogical praxis in higher education, identifying (as noted earlier) many conditions which enabled and constrained the possibilities for critical pedagogical praxis in university teaching. Critical pedagogical praxis emerges in practices of teaching in any university subject that takes a critical view of how knowledge is used for (or against) the

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good for individual people and for humankind. As Kemmis expresses the aspirations of education, First, [education] promotes and enhances individual and collective self-expression, and thus it works to secure a culture based on reason.7 Second, education promotes and enhances individual and collective self-development, and thus it works to secure a productive and sustainable economy and environment. And third, education promotes and enhances individual and collective self-determination, and thus it works to secure a just and democratic society. These, it seems to me, are three crucial elements of the good for humankind, and ‘a world worth living in’. (Kemmis, 2018, p. 8; see also Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018, pp. 17–18).

This view of education is represented in Fig. 5.5 above. It depicts a theory of education which incorporates and expands the theory of practice architectures.

Fig. 5.5 A theory of education incorporating the theory of practice architectures. (Adapted from Kemmis, 2013, p. 41 with permission from Stephen Kemmis and the Finnish Education Research Association)

7 By “reason” here, we do not mean a narrow rationalistic view of knowledge or reasoning, but also

the reason of the heart. As the French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) put it (in his Pensées [Meditations], 1670/1958, §277), “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know”. On this view, we should include reasonableness and reason-giving as part of what is meant by “a culture based on reason”.

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Conclusion The corpus of research into teaching as a practice presented in this chapter demonstrates how teaching practices are composed of sayings, doings, and relatings, held together in the project or purpose of the practice, and how they are channelled in their course by practice architectures composed of cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements found in or brought to the sites in which teaching occurs. Bringing this work together, it can be concluded that teaching is a practice of designing and enacting practice architectures that enable and constrain students’ practices of learning, and thus what and how they learn. Moreover, the studies presented have shown how teaching practices unfold in intersubjective space (simultaneously in semantic space, physical space-time, and social space) to create particular kinds of opportunities for learning. It also has been shown how teachers deploy a variety of different kinds of teaching practices for different kinds of purposes, and to provoke different kinds of learning practices and learning; some research has emphasised that teaching practices are pedagogical and dialogic, engaging learners’ learning practices to shape their learning, and unfolding in managed classroom talk-in-interaction in ways that stimulate students’ active engagement in their learning. This chapter has explored and unpacked the ecological relationships that come into existence between such practices of teaching and students’ classroom practices and shows how teaching and learning are co-produced in the flow and sequence of interactions in classrooms and other learning settings. It also noted that teaching practices are sometimes shaped by other practices, including teacher professional learning, leading, and research and reflection. A key conclusion reached in the chapter is that teachers’ teaching practices and students’ classroom practices may jointly constitute pedagogical practices. A body of work in the corpus of PEP research on teaching as a practice also shows how praxis—morally informed, committed action that aims to “do the right thing”, and that is self-aware about its role as history-making action—can be manifested in practices of teaching. Some of this research also explores the conditions that enable and constrain critical pedagogical praxis in contemporary times, particularly in university education, but also in other educational settings. The research also shows teachers’ awareness of the “system-lifeworld doubleness” of their lives and work in neoliberal times, when their lifeworld actions are committed to the education of their students, even while, in many countries, system demands towards compliance to standard curricula, professional standards, and national assessment increasingly regulate and constrain teachers’ work. Returning to the PEP Research Question that oriented this body of research and publication, “How, in different national contexts, is good professional practice (‘praxis’) being understood and experienced by teachers?” we conclude that what counts as “good” professional practice, in relation to the practice of teaching, is a matter of (professional) judgement. It is “good” when it is deliberately sensitive to what is likely to constitute the good for each person—especially students—in a

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particular situation, as well as what counts as the good for humankind in the situation. In neo-Aristotelian terms (see Chap. 2 in this volume), this means that acting for the good is always a matter of practical deliberation, expressing itself in a judgement about what it is best to do under the circumstances that exist at this moment, in this situation. The practical action that teachers take in teaching shapes both the teacher—the one who acts—and the local and wider history that follows from that action. In much of the research surveyed here, teaching as a practice can also have a critical purpose—to act, through what and how we teach, against unreasonableness, unproductiveness, and unsustainability, and against injustice and in the interests of democracy. To take this practical and critical view of what counts as “good” in the professional practice of teaching is to reject the view that good teaching is entirely a matter of technique—of following technical rules about how teaching should be done. There is a large body of research on teaching that takes this view (e.g. Hattie, 2008, who proposes that teachers should employ the techniques that produce the greatest “effect sizes” in terms of accounting for variance in students’ achievements on various kinds of assessments). The corpus of PEP research includes zero studies of this kind. On the contrary, the PEP research on teaching over eleven years has shown that teachers can and do make their practices more reasonable, productive, sustainable, just, and democratic through studying and varying their own practices of teaching to achieve site-based education development (e.g. Kemmis et al., 2014)—that is, the development of education in their own settings. The PEP corpus of research has shown that large numbers of teachers in the studies surveyed succeeded in their aspiration to make their teaching more educational, not just to achieve gains in predefined “student learning outcomes”. There is a place for technical skill in teaching, and PEP research has observed teachers, good teachers, displaying and developing their technical skills. The educational purpose of their teaching practices is not limited to the technical aim of achieving gains in students’ learning outcomes; however, their purpose is to educate students and also to educate the communities and societies in which they live and work. It is to educate children, young people, and adults so they can live well in a world worth living in.

References Arkenback-Sundström, C. (2013). Grupphandledning i matematik. Dialogen en väg att utveckla vuxnas matematikkompetenser. (Degree of Master of Science (60 credits) with a major in Education with Specialization in Special Education), University of Gothenburg, Retrieved from https:// hdl.handle.net/2077/32489. Arkenback-Sundström, C. (2017). Mathematics? – No, It´s all about common sense and the right attitude. A study of mathematics containing activities in adult retail apprenticeships (Licentiate in Pedagogical Work), University of Gothenburg, Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/2077/ 52126. Bernstein, B. (1975). Towards a theory of educational transmissions (Vol. 3). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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Boyle, T., Petriwskij, A., & Grieshaber, S. (2018). Reframing transitions to school as continuity practices: The role of practice architectures. Australian Educational Researcher. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s13384-018-0272-0. Choy, S., & Hodge, S. (2017). Teaching practice in Australian vocational education and training. In P. Grootenboer, C. Edwards-Groves, & S. Choy (Eds.), Practice theory perspectives on pedagogy and education: Praxis, diversity and contestation (pp. 157–173). Singapore: Springer. Choy, S., & Wärvik, G. (2019). Integration of learning for refugee and migrant students: VET teachers’ practices through practice theory lens. International Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 71(1), 87–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2018.1518921. Edwards-Groves, C. (2014). Talk moves: A repertoire of practices for productive classroom dialogue. PETAA PAPER 195. Newtown, Sydney: Primary English Teaching Association Australia. Edwards-Groves, C. (2016). Reconceptualising first year professional experience: Enacting a repertoire of learning focused talk for efficacy in teaching practice. In R. Brandenburg, S. McDonough, A. Burke, & S. White (Eds.), Teacher education: Innovation, interventions and impact. Singapore: Springer. Edwards-Groves, C. (2017). Teaching and learning as social interaction: Salience and relevance in classroom lesson practices. In P. Grootenboer, C. Edwards-Groves, & S. Choy (Eds.), Practice theory perspectives on pedagogy and education: Praxis, diversity and contestation (pp. 191–213). Singapore: Springer. Edwards-Groves, C. (2018). The practice architectures of pedagogy: Conceptualising the convergences between sociality, dialogue, ontology and temporality in teaching Practices. In O. B. Cavero & N. L. Calvet (Eds.), New pedagogical challenges in the 21st century: Contributions of research in education (pp. 119–139). Rijeka, Croatia: InTech Publishing. Edwards-Groves, C., Anstey, M., & Bull, G. (2014). Classroom talk: Understanding dialogue, pedagogy and practice. Newtown, Sydney: Primary English Teaching Association Australia. Edwards-Groves, C., & Davidson, C. (2017). Becoming a meaning maker: Talk and interaction in the dialogic classroom. Sydney: Primary English Teaching Association Australia. Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2015). Practice and praxis in literacy education. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 38(3), 150–161. Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2017). Learning spaces and practices in the primary school: A focus on classroom dialogic. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Exploring education and professional practice – Through the lens of practice architectures (pp. 31–47). Singapore: Springer. Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Smith, T. (2018). Knowing pedagogical praxis in 21st Century education. In C. Edwards-Groves, P. Grootenboer, & J. Wilkinson (Eds.), Education in an era of schooling: Critical perspectives of educational practice and action research—A festschrift for Stephen Kemmis (pp. 135–150). Singapore: Springer. Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Wilkinson, J. (2018). Education in an era of schooling: Critical perspectives of educational practice and action research—A festschrift for Stephen Kemmis. Singapore: Springer. Freebody, P., Ludwig, C., & Gunn, S. (Eds.). (1995). Everyday literacy practices in and out of schools in low socio-economic urban communities (pp. 185–372). Brisbane, Australia: Griffith University. Green, A., Brennan Kemmis, R., Choy, S., & Henning Loeb, I. (2017). Using the theory of practice architectures to explore VET in Schools teachers’ pedagogy. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Exploring education and professional practice—Through the lens of practice architectures (pp. 121–138). Singapore: Springer. Grootenboer, P. (2013). The praxis of mathematics teaching: Developing mathematical identities. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 21(2), 321–342. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2012.759131. Grootenboer, P. (2018). The practices of school middle leadership: Leading professional learning. Singapore: Springer. Grootenboer, P., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2014). Mathematics teaching as praxis. In J. Anderson, M. Cavanagh, & A. Prescott (Eds.), Curriculum in focus: Research guided practice (pp. 271–278).

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Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia. Sydney: MERGA. Grootenboer, P., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2019). Learning mathematics as being stirred into mathematical practices: An alternative perspective on identity formation. In Special Issue “Identity in Mathematical Education”, ZDM Mathematics Education, 5, 1–12. Doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11858-018-01017-5. Grootenboer, P., & Rowan, L. (2017). Building rapport with university students: Building rapport among university teachers. In L. Rowan & P. Grootenboer (Eds.), Student engagement and educational rapport in higher education contexts (pp. 131–151). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave. Habermas, J. (1984). Theory of communicative action, Volume I: Reason and the rationalization of society (trans. T. McCarthy). Boston: Beacon. Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of communicative action, Volume II: Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason (trans. T. McCarthy). Boston: Beacon. Hardy, I., & Grootenboer, P. (2013). Schools, teachers and community: Cultivating the conditions for engaged student learning. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(5), 697–719. https://doi.org/10. 1080/00220272.2013.809151. Hattie, J. (2008). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge. Hemmings, B., Kemmis, S., & Reupert, A. (2013). Practice architectures of university inclusive education teaching in Australia. Professional Development in Education, 39(4), 470–487. https:// doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2013.796293. https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/critical-pedagogical-praxis-in-higher-educat ion-3. Jakhelln, R. E. (2010). Early career teachers’ emotional experiences and development – A Norwegian case study. Professional Development in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2010. 517399. Jakhelln, R. E. (2011). Alene - sammen. Nyutdannede læreres profesjonslæring i veiledning og kollegial samhandling. Doctoral thesis, University of Tromsø (UiT The Arctic University of Norway). https://hdl.handle.net/10037/3690.. Johansson, M. W., Wärvik, G., & Choy, S. (2018). Vocationalising concepts for identify formation: Contributions of feedback. Vocations and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-018-9204-4. Kemmis, S. (2012). Researching educational praxis: Spectator and participant perspectives. British Educational Research Journal, 38(6), 885–905. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2011.588316. Kemmis, S. (2018). Educational research and the good for humankind: Changing education to secure a sustainable world. Keynote address for a seminar ‘Education, Fatherland and Humanity’ held on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, July 7. Available via: https://ktl.jyu.fi/en/current/ news/fier50-keynote-kemmis-7-6-18 (A version of this address appears as Chapter 16 (pp. 239– 254), ‘Life in practices: Challenges for education and educational research’, in Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, and Wilkinson, 2018. Kemmis, S., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2018). Understanding education: History, politics, practice. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., Edwards-Groves, C., Lloyd, A., Grootenboer, P., Hardy, I., & Wilkinson, J. (2017). Learning as being ‘stirred in’ to practices. In P. Grootenboer, C. Edwards-Groves, & S. Choy (Eds.), Practice theory perspectives on pedagogy and education: Praxis, diversity and contestation (pp. 45–65). Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., Edwards-Groves, C., Wilkinson, J., & Hardy, I. (2012). Ecologies of practices. In P. Hager, A. Lee, & A. Reich (Eds.), Practice, learning and change (pp. 33–49). London: Springer. Kemmis, S., & Mahon, K. (2017). Practice architectures of university education. In P. Grootenboer, C. Edwards-Groves, & S. Choy (Eds.), Practice theory perspectives on pedagogy and education: Praxis, diversity and contestation (pp. 107–141). Singapore: Springer.

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Kemmis, S., & Mutton, R. (2012). Education for sustainability (EfS): Practice and practice architectures. Environmental Education Research, 18(2), 187–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622. 2011.596929. Kemmis, S., & Smith, T. J. (2008). Praxis and praxis development: About this book. In S. Kemmis & T. J. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp. 3–14). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer. Mahon, K. (2014). Critical pedagogical praxis in higher education. PhD diss.: Charles Sturt University. Mahon, K. (2016). Creating a niche for critical pedagogical praxis. In B. Zufiaurre & M. Perez de Villarreal (Eds.), Positive psychology for positive pedagogical actions (pp. 7–22). New York: Nova. Mahon, K. (2017). Negotiating democratic relations in a doctoral project examining university conditions and pedagogical praxis. Educational Action Research, 24(1), 71–87. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/09650792.2016.1138870. Mahon, K., & Galloway, L. (2017). Provoking praxis amidst a faculty restructure: A practice architecture perspective. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Exploring education and professional practice – Through the lens of practice architectures (pp. 183–199). Singapore: Springer. Nicolini, D. (2013). Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peters, R. S. (1964). Education as initiation. London: George Harrap and the London Institute of Education. Peters, R. S. (1966). Ethics and education. London: Allen and Unwin. Petrie, K. (2016). Architectures of practice: Constraining or enabling PE in primary schools. Education, 3–13, 1–10. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004279.2016.1169484?jou rnalCode=rett20. Ponte, P., & Ax, J. (2009). Action research and pedagogy as science of the child’s upbringing. In S. Noffke & B. Somekh (Eds.), Handbook of educational action research (pp. 253–261). London: SAGE. Rönnerman, K., & Kemmis, S. (2016). Stirring doctoral candidates into academic practices: A doctoral course and its practice architectures. Education Inquiry, 7(2), 93–114. https://www.edu cation-inquiry.net/index.php/edui/article/view/27558. Rönnerman, K., & Salo, P. (Eds.). (2014). Lost in practice: Transforming Nordic educational action research. Rotterdam: Sense. Rowan, L., & Grootenboer, P. (2017). Rapport in higher education: Researching and developing relationship-centred education. In L. Rowan & P. Grootenboer (Eds.), Student engagement and educational rapport in higher education contexts (pp. 1–23). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave. Salamon, A. (2015). Conceptions of infants’ capabilities: The nexus between conceptions, practices, and infants’ lived experiences. PhD diss., Charles Sturt University. https://researchoutput.csu.edu. au/en/publications/conceptions-of-infants-capabilities-the-nexus-between-conecptions-3. Salamon, A. (2017). Infants’ practices: Shaping (and shaped by) the arrangements of early childhood education. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Exploring education and professional practice – Through the lens of practice architectures (pp. 83–99). Singapore: Springer. Salamon, A., & Harrison, L. (2015). Early childhood educators’ conceptions of infants’ capabilities: The nexus between beliefs and practice. Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development, 35(3), 273–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2015.1042961. Salamon, A., Sumsion, J., Press, F., & Harrison, L. (2016). Implicit Theories and Naïve Beliefs: Using the Theory of Practice Architectures to Deconstruct the Practices of Early Childhood Educators, 14(4), 431–443. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718X14563857. Schatzki, T. R. (2002). The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Shove, E., Pantzar, M., & Watson, M. (2012). The dynamics of social practice: Everyday life and how it changes. London: SAGE. Sjølie, E. (2014). Pedagogy is just common sense: A case study of student teachers’ academic learning practices. PhD. diss. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Faculty for Social Sciences and Technology Management, Programme for Teacher Education. https://brage. bibsys.no/xmlui/handle/11250/270341. Waks, L. (2013). Education as initiation revisited: General rituals and the passage to adulthood. Philosophy of Education, 133–141. Urbana, Illinois: Philosophy of Education Society.

Chapter 6

Leading as Shared Transformative Educational Practice Christine Edwards-Groves, Jane Wilkinson, and Kathleen Mahon

Abstract This chapter examines the practices of leading, as an important facet of the extended professional work and experience of educators. It employs a site ontological lens to examine the duality of leading in and for education. The chapter conceptualises leading as a co-constructed, socially situated practice, and focuses on the “happeningness” of leadership, making the actual practices of leading its main emphasis. In particular, questions about the nature and particularity of professional practice as it is enmeshed in different local, national, and international education sites are explored. In so doing, it addresses the following question in relation to leading, that is, how, in different national contexts, is good professional practice (“praxis”) being understood and experienced by teachers, and educators, more broadly? By drawing on the theory of practice architectures, the chapter explores (1) leading as a practice, (2) leading from, within, and beyond the middle, and (3) leading as a democratic practice. Analysis of these interrelated elements aims to contribute to a broader inquiry concerned with understanding, practising, and changing educational leadership by establishing the dynamism of leading as a practice for orchestrating conditions that enable shared educational transformations. The chapter concludes by reorienting leading as being a shared transformative educational practice.

C. Edwards-Groves (B) Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia e-mail: [email protected] J. Wilkinson Monash University, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] K. Mahon University of Borås, Borås, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Mahon et al. (eds.), Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5_6

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Introduction Leading is a vital feature of the professional work and experiences of all persons entangled in education. This chapter examines how leading and leadership form a critical part of professional education practices. Specifically, it considers the question: how, in different national contexts, good leading as professional practice (“praxis”) is being understood and experienced by teachers and educators.1 It deals foremost with understanding, practising, and changing practices of leading in education. These three foci are considered in relation to the purposes of leading as it is connected to other education practices (like teaching, student learning, professional learning, researching, and community engagement). The chapter considers Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis (PEP) research that has sought to broaden conceptualisations of the nature of educational leading as a professional education practice as it unfolds in the everyday endeavours of people. It extends knowledge about how leading is shaped—enabled and constrained—by conditions or practice architectures2 that exist in particular educational sites. To complement this focus, PEP research investigates the notion of “the good” in and of leading, the “good for whom?” and the “good for what?”. To consider these questions more comprehensively, the chapter draws on a systematic review of the PEP literature focused on leading and the practices that enable and/or constrain its activity within and across different local, national, and international contexts.

The Systematic Review The work reviewed has drawn predominantly on practice theories including those of Schatzki (2002, 2003, 2012), Bourdieu (1990, 1998), and, most extensively, the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014). The theory of practice architectures provides theoretical scope to understand and describe how leading is constructed (discursively in, and through, culturally “relevant” language), conducted (in doing or performing particular leading activities in the material physical world), and cooperatively and collectively realised (in and through social relationships variously reflecting power, solidarity, and agency). 1 In

this vein, the question to be answered in this chapter extends the focus beyond teachers’ understandings and experiences to encompass considerations of and by principals, system leaders, and even students. We address the original question guiding the work of the Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis (PEP) research network in a way that also recognises that its focus has evolved over more than a decade, to present a dynamic view of professional practice as it relates to the work of leading. For this chapter, we acknowledge that PEP research in leadership understands leading as it is experienced in and across the different national contexts where the PEP researchers are situated; that is, in Australia, the Caribbean, Colombia, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the UK. 2 The theory of practice architectures is introduced in Chap. 1 (this volume) and explained further in subsequent sections (this chapter).

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Guided by Gough, Oliver, & Thomas (2012), the logic of the review involved the following steps: (i) forming the evidential database for review, including all relevant PEP literature addressing leading and leadership, 2008–2018; (ii) surveying the corpus to elicit key concepts or themes for closer examination; (iii) synthesising and refining these themes; and (iv) selecting key examples to illustrate major ideas. Through this process, three key bodies of work were identified. These were research examining: (1) leading as a practice, (2) leading from, within, and beyond the middle, and (3) leading as a democratic practice. A practice view of leading is outlined first.

A Practice View of the Professional Practice of Leading: Practices and Practice Architectures Since the formation of the PEP network, much research has investigated educational leadership with a social practice lens in an attempt to understand the role of leading in and for educational advancement in particular sites (Schatzki, 2002; 2003). This research has considered sites such as early childhood settings, schools, vocational education and training, universities, and the systems that organise their work.3 The practice view taken in this chapter provides six central characteristic resources as follows: 1. First, it foregrounds the actual practices of leading as sayings, doings, and relatings enacted or encountered by persons. It is a position opposed to more normative notions of what leading can or should be, or what a leader can and should be (Kemmis et al., 2014; Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015). 2. Second, it seeks to understand the conditions or practice architectures (the cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements) that both shape and are shaped by particular leading practices occurring in specific educational sites at particular times (Kemmis et al., 2014). 3. Third, it argues that understanding the particular arrangements that enable and constrain education practices is a crucial first step in being able to transform conditions for educators to lead, conditions that may be socially unjust and irrational (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). 4. Fourth, it requires considering the happeningness (Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2017) which locates the site as the locus of realisation of educational leading. 5. Fifth, it asserts that leading is co-created in practices; it is always social and multidirectional (Rönnerman, Edwards-Groves, & Grootenboer, 2018). 6. Sixth, it is informed by the theory of ecologies of practices (Kemmis et al., 2012) which invites researchers to explore the interconnectedness between education 3 According

to Schatzki (2003), a site of practice is “that realm or set of phenomena (if any) of which it is intrinsically a part” (p. 176). Sites can include forums and spaces within educational institutions such as classrooms, staffrooms, staff meetings, playgrounds, and educational settings more broadly (see Kemmis et al., 2014; Wilkinson, 2017a; Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015).

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practices (like teaching, learning, professional learning, leading) and how such practices can (but may not) be interdependent in living systems such as schools.4 These resources provide a lens that differs from more dominant trends in educational leadership scholarship. Rather than focusing on leaders (the practitioners as sovereign beings), or alternatively, on the systems that role-incumbents occupy by virtue of their position in an organisation (Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015), the corpus of research presented examines leading as a practice that attends to what leaders say, how leading is done, and the distinctive ways of relating in occasions of leading. To highlight this significant point of departure, the verb “leading” is adopted instead of the noun “leadership”.5 Accordingly, taking a “practice turn” to the professional practice of leading shifts understandings of leadership beyond descriptions that characterise persons in adjectival terms (e.g. the charismatic leader), or accounts of forms of leadership (e.g. distributed leadership, Gronn, 2000, Spillane, 2006). Such descriptions often eclipse understandings about the actual practices of leading that people experience (enact or encounter), although adopting a practice perspective does not underplay the role practitioners have in practising practices.

Leading as a Practice Resources provided by practice theory generate insights into how leading practices are mediated, the impact of leading on the educational practices with which leading connects, and the ways in which “good professional practice” in the form of leading is experienced and understood by teachers. This section begins with an elaboration on such insights. First, a leading practices perspective is explained as it relates to education. Second, the view of leading as a “practice-changing practice” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 177) is expanded. Next, some key themes that have emerged regarding how “good” leading practices are experienced and understood—that is, as enabling, shared, and praxis-oriented—are discussed.

4 According

to Kemmis et al. (2014), since the rise of mass compulsory education in the nineteenth century in many nations, leading is among five interrelated practices that together form the “education complex”: leading, teaching, student learning, professional learning, and researching and reflecting. In particular sites, practices of these kinds may (or may not) be or become interdependent (it is a matter for empirical investigation) and thus form ecologies of practices. 5 This shift is considered in, for example, Wilkinson et al. (2010), Wilkinson et al. (2013), Kemmis et al. (2014), and Wilkinson and Kemmis (2015).

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Leading Practices in Educational Sites In the literature reviewed, research into leading practices has typically focused on leading as a practice,6 which highlights the doing of leading (Kemmis et al., 2014; Rönnerman et al., 2017; Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015). On this view, leading is constructed as something that people do, or enact (Bristol, 2015). For studies which draw on the theory of practice architectures, what people do is described not only in terms of their actions (doings), but also in terms of what they say (sayings), and ways in which they relate to others and their environment (relatings). In explorations of leading as a practice in educational sites, leading is not, however, automatically equated with “doing the principalship” (Kemmis et al., 2014), although some research examines the leading of school principals (e.g. Bristol, Esnard, & Brown, 2015; Forssten Seiser, 2017). Instead, leading is constructed as a practice enacted by a range of participants in any educational institution (Kemmis et al., 2014). Examples include students’ leading practices (Edwards-Groves, 2012; Wilkinson, 2017) and the leading practices of teachers working with their peers (Grootenboer, 2018; Rönnerman & Olin, 2015; Rönnerman et al., 2017). Drawing on Schatzki’s site ontological position (2002), the theory of practice architectures, and the theory of ecologies of practices, several empirical studies have highlighted how leading practices are situated (Rönnerman et al., 2015), that they unfold in actual time, in social space, and in interaction with other education practices. They are also constructed as relational (Wilkinson, 2017). To say that leading practices are situated and relational is to contend that they are both: 1. prefigured by and prefiguring7 arrangements (discourses, resources, and relationships) in educational sites, and that they are prefigured by, and prefiguring, other educational practices (like teaching, student learning, professional learning, and researching/evaluating) enacted in those sites; and 2. prefigured by and prefiguring practices and arrangements that extend beyond the immediate educational setting (see, e.g. Boyle & Wilkinson, 2018; Bristol, 2015; Bristol et al., 2015; Rönnerman & Olin, 2015) for instance, through school engagement with regional or municipal offices (Wilkinson et al., 20198 ) or 6 There is a small but growing body of leadership research that attends to leading practices as units of

analysis. See, for example, Raelin [Ed.] (2016) and earlier work on, for example, transformational leadership (Burns, 1978), and distributed leadership by Peter Gronn (2006) and Andy Spillane (2006). As this chapter is focused on the PEP corpus of work, it does not provide a synthesis of these other bodies of work. However, distributed leadership in particular still ultimately focuses on participants in the practice of leading rather than the practices themselves (Kemmis et al., 2014; Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015; for an alternative position see Rönnerman and Olin, 2015—both the notion of distributed leadership and a practice perspective are employed in their work). 7 Schatzki’s (2002) notion of prefiguration refers to how arrangements channel “the flow of activity by qualifying the possible paths it can take” (p. 44). 8 This paper was first presented in a symposium in 2016 at Australian Association for Research Education (AARE) conference, Melbourne, now published in: Wilkinson et al. (2019). District offices fostering educational change through instructional leadership practices in Australian Catholic

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through state or national initiatives and policies (like national testing in Australia, or national quality assurance initiatives in Sweden). The theory of practice architectures gives crucial importance to the notion of the site. Much of the research reviewed provides detailed accounts of the sites of leading within their national contexts and interrogates leading in relation to other practices in the education complex.9 The study reported by Kemmis et al. (2014) particularly highlights the complexity of relationships—especially interdependencies and reciprocities—that can exist between leading and other educational practices. Their study highlights that, in addition to (and due to) being situated and relational, leading is dynamic (not static—Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2013, p. 132) and open-ended (see Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015).10 The second and third parts of this chapter provide examples to illustrate these characteristics of leading practices and their implications for education. The work reviewed has collectively provided a picture of how leading practices are socially constructed and shaped by contextual factors. A focus on practices of leading and their relationships to site-specific arrangements and other educational practices, however, “does not dismiss the role of personal agency” (Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015, p. 167). Indeed, research that has taken a site ontological perspective has simultaneously emphasised the crucial role of sites and practitioner subjectivities and agency.11

Leading as a Practice-Changing Practice Insights into the relationships between leading practices and other practices in educational settings have given rise to the question of what kind of practice leading is. Collectively, the research reviewed suggests that leading as a practice may have as its central project12 (aim or telos; Kemmis et al., 2014) the enabling, transforming, or reorienting of other practices, or the creation of conditions conducive to such change. Leading is thus constructed as a practice that orchestrates conditions in which a range of actors participate (Kemmis et al., 2014), for example, students’ leading practices (Edwards-Groves 2012; Wilkinson 2017), or the leading practices of teachers with their peers (Grootenboer, 2018; Rönnerman et al., 2017). This view is explicitly

secondary schools. Journal of Educational Administration. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-09-20180179. 9 See specific examples in Boyle and Wilkinson (2018), Grootenboer, Rönnerman, and EdwardsGroves (2017), Kemmis et al. (2014), Wilkinson (2017a), Wilkinson and Kemmis (2015). 10 See Wilkinson and Kemmis (2015) for a discussion of how leading practices can also be stable and open−ended. 11 See Wilkinson (2017a) for an example of practitioner subjectivities and agency. 12 See Chap. 1, this volume, for an explanation of “project” in the context of the theory of practice architectures.

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discussed in research focused on middle leading, addressed in the second part of this chapter. The notion of leading as a practice-changing practice (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 17713 ) has been expressed in varying ways. Examples include “creating the educational conditions under which transformed learning and teaching practices may flourish” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 157); “remolding the intersubjective space14 ” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 161); transforming (and being transformed by) the sitespecific arrangements with which the practices concerned are enmeshed and “the deliberate orchestration … of practices” in order to change student and staff practices (see also Forssten Seiser, 2017; Wilkinson, 2017a, p. 171); leading “as a practice of intervention” (Wilkinson, 2008, p. 27615 ); “practice modification” (Bristol, 2015, p. 802); and leading as a change process (Wilkinson, 2008). This body of research suggests that educational practices can be changed through leading practices that shape—and perhaps transform—the various arrangements that make those educational practices possible. This shaping is a process of enabling and constraining (prefiguring) other practices. Beyond the central project of shaping practices and educational conditions in relevant sites of practice, however, leading practices may also be bound up with other more site-specific projects, that is, projects that emerge as important within particular sets of conditions and circumstances. Some examples include • making a shift from prescribed forms of work to innovative and site-responsive practices (Rönnerman, Edwards-Groves, & Grootenboer, 2015); • “transform[ing] staff meetings into collective spaces for professional learning and practice” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 160); • “building inclusive school communities” (Bristol, 2015, p. 810); • breaking down barriers between school sectors (e.g. early childhood centres and primary school) to better support students’ transition to school (Boyle & Wilkinson, 2018).

‘Good’ Leading Practice—As Understood and Experienced by Educators Leading means enabling and constraining other educational practices via changes to site-based arrangements to make certain educational activities and outcomes possible. What emerges as critical is the extent to which, and how, professional practice related to leading is experienced and understood as “good” and, in turn, becomes a question of how leading practices are experienced and understood as working to enable and constrain interrelated educational practices like teaching, student learning, and teacher professional learning. To consider this notion of the 13 See

also Grootenboer, Rönnerman, & Edwards−Groves, (2018), and Wilkinson (2017a). Chap. 1, this volume, for an explanation of “intersubjective space”. 15 See also Bristol et al. (2015). 14 See

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“good” in leading practice in more detail, this section is organised into three overarching themes that appear to have been relevant in all the national contexts represented: leading as enabling, shared leading, and praxis-oriented leading/leading as praxis.

Leading that Enables “Good” leading, it would seem, is foremost experienced and understood as enabling of other educational practices in a way that has positive educational effects. Examples of particular kinds of “good” leading practices are explored, although, how this happens varies depending on site-based arrangements, and local and national needs and priorities. Particularly common are stories related to the professional learning of teachers (e.g. work by Rönnerman & Edwards-Groves, 2012, Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2013 on generative leadership, and the work on middle leading below). For example, a key way in which leading professional learning speaks to the “good” in practice is through the creation (or co-creation) and nurturing of communicative spaces among staff for their professional learning activities, such as “teacher talk” (e.g. Bristol, 2015), action research (e.g. Rönnerman & Olin, 2015), and regular professional learning dialogues based on professional reading (e.g. Edwards-Groves, 2008; Rönnerman et al., 2015; Rönnerman et al., 2017). Other ways in which professional learning is enabled include changes to material–economic arrangements, such as reorganisation of teacher timetables to allow time and space for professional learning, or changes to how staff meetings are organised to focus on professional learning instead of information dissemination (Kemmis et al., 2014; Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015). Further examples are “fostering safe spaces” in which staff can collaboratively and “critically interrogate” their practice and challenge problematic (i.e. non-inclusive) practices (Bristol, 2015, p. 810). Leading as enabling other practices extends to enabling the generation of leading practices themselves. This has been shown to occur through the kinds of communicative spaces noted above (e.g. Rönnerman et al., 2015). Sometimes, the enablement of leading occurs through direct engagement of teachers and students in activities that shape the direction of the educational institution. For example, Bristol, Esnard, and Brown (2015) describe the practices of a primary school principal in Trinidad and Tobago fostering the leading practices of teachers (“teacher leaders”) by involving them collectively in shaping the “vision and direction of educational development at the school” and “taking responsibility for developing school policy” (p. 219). Wilkinson (2017a), focusing on student leading practices, describes the designation by the school executive team of students of refugee origin on a student representative council as part of a strategy to make more inclusive an Australian school with a relatively high percentage of students of refugee background. In this way, students were given the opportunity to be part of what might be called “shared leading”. Similarly, Edwards-Groves’ study (2012) examining the learning practices of students working together to produce multimodal texts provides important insights into the

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notion of shared leading among students in their group work.16 Interviews among 10-year-old students drew out the role they considered leading practices to have on their learning. In unsolicited accounts, students attributed their learning to leading as facilitated by the opportunities the teachers created for it in their lessons. Specifically, they highlighted sharing the load, working collaboratively, producing quality and efficient work, cooperating with and considering the points of view of others, and collective problem-solving. Their perspectives explicitly validated these particular influential leading practices required for producing “teamwork”, which at the same time, were considered by informants as essential for sharing the responsibility for leading in their group activity. Thus, in their view, shared leading in groups is related to productive classroom learning. More is said about leading enabling leading in the discussion on middle leading below.

Leading as Shared Responsibility The enabling of leading is a by-product of a particular way of constructing leading; that is, as a shared practice (Rönnerman et al., 2015; Wilkinson, 2017a) and as a shared responsibility (Kemmis et al., 2014) rather than as a bureaucratic responsibility or something undertaken by the “sole up-front crusader” (Rönnerman et al., 2017, p. 3) in a formal leadership position. The theme of shared responsibility is highlighted extensively in the literature reviewed, irrespective of national context, although it has been described in different ways. For instance, Wilkinson (2017a) showed how leading practices were part of a “whole school leadership project” (p. 172), while Boyle and Wilkinson (2018) described a form of “participatory leadership” (after McDowell Clark & Murry, 2012) that reflected “a flexible and responsive approach that involves formal and informal leaders from all levels of the organization” (Boyle & Wilkinson, 2018, p. 327). Others have described this sense of shared leading in terms of “collaborative” leading (Kemmis et al., 2014) or the dispersal of leading practices across an institution (Wilkinson, 2017a). Shared responsibility and leading are linked in the literature to teachers, in particular, having a sense of ownership (Bristol 2015), and also to trust and openness (e.g. Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, & Rönnerman, 2015; Forssten Seiser, 2017; Kemmis et al., 2014; Rönnerman et al., 2017). It is also associated with a democratic ethos (Kemmis et al., 2014)— to which we return in the last part of this chapter—and praxis.

16 Authors acknowledge that although the Edwards-Groves study revealed student leading, and the value they attributed to it in their learning, leading per se was not the original aim of the study. Rather in student accounts, leading practices emerged as critical for their learning. Including this point in this section highlights the enablement of leading and the strong interrelatedness and connectedness between educational practices.

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Leading as Praxis-Oriented The theme of praxis-oriented leading or leading as praxis captures the themes already discussed and relates directly to leading as a practice-changing practice (see above) and leading for social justice explored in detail later. It also links to the question, what is educational praxis? (the focus of Chap. 2 of this book). This theme captures the idea of leading as a practice that is morally informed (Wilkinson 2008b) and oriented towards the dual purpose of education outlined by Kemmis and Edwards-Groves (2018)—helping people to live well and creating a world worth living in (p. 18). The enactment of leading as praxis recognises that there is a moral responsibility bound up with changing and influencing educational practices: leading as a practice situated in social interaction and activity has moral and social consequences (Wilkinson, 2017a). Those engaged in leading have a moral responsibility, it is suggested, to the people in their care or with whom (and for whom) they work and the broader community, to be cognizant of the consequences of their practice (as “history-making action”17 ) and to act in ways appropriate for the circumstances and the people involved or implicated. This might be conceived, as Wilkinson (2008b) did, as a moral use of power or “acting with integrity, humanity and morality” (p. 176). This is reflected in references to reflective and reflexive leading practice (Bristol, 2015; Bristol, Esnard, & Brown, 2015), being “sensitively responsive” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 161) to the site (individuals’ needs and circumstances) (Grootenboer et al., 2017) and engaging in ongoing self-development as leading practitioners (Bristol, 2015; Edwards-Groves, 2008). But more than this, leading as praxis implies acting in ways that challenge practices, traditions, and conditions that are anti-educational, unjust, or deprofessionalising for teachers, or that are deemed negatively to affect people’s capacity to live well. This social justice orientation and conscious acting with morality and integrity sets leading as praxis apart from “managerialist notions of leading as a technicist activity” (Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015, p. 343) that have been prominent at least in Anglophone leadership practice and scholarship. What is foregrounded, rather, is that “good leading” is enabling, shared, praxis-oriented, and responsive to local conditions, needs, and circumstances. These features of leading are critical for considering “leading practices as situated in an overall project of education development” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 158), as demonstrated in the next section.

Leading from, Within, and Beyond the Middle In the broader education field, the emergence of middle leading has been arisen as a locally situated response to global pressures on education. These pressures brought about by neoliberal agendas of surveillance and control, along with the changing face of the world’s geopolitics through forced migration and climate change, continue to 17 After

Kemmis and Smith (2008). For an additional explanation, see Chap. 2, this volume.

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have profound implications for education—its enterprise, its telos, and its complex of practices, including the role and practice of middle leading. And, as noted by Edwards-Groves et al. (2019),18 these pressures have provoked a renewed emphasis on site-based education development in schools. As a consequence, educationists and researchers worldwide have invested much in isolating the specific “drivers” that support and inhibit school change and development. Edwards-Groves et al. (2019) go so far as to say that middle leading is “the real driver of education development” (p. 316). This section draws on an increasing body of research that directs attention to the leading practices of a category of school-based educators described as middle leaders. The section theorises how middle leading, as a professional practice, is a practice architecture that enables and constrains changes in the practices of teachers in the interests of encouraging changes in teaching practices and changes in students’ learning. The practice of middle leading subsists partly to transform education conditions by leading education development in specific sites, like early childhood settings (preschools in Sweden), schools, vocational education and training, universities, and the systems that support them. Although not a new insight, some PEP research has paid particularly close attention to how these transformed conditions can be created as locally responsive and generative through the practice of middle leading. Across the body of work examining the practices of leading from the middle, four key themes have been identified: (1) the practice of leading from, within, and beyond the middle, (2) middle leading as relational work, (3) middle leading as pedagogically oriented, and (4) leading as generative of leading: how practices of leading are translated and travelled. Before addressing these themes, definitions of the term “middle leading” and the concept of “leading from the middle” are examined.

Middle Leading The terms “middle leading” and “middle leader” are becoming more prominent in educational leadership literature worldwide. However, the term “middle leader” is contested, being used to refer to two broad groups of practitioners. The first aligns with Hargreaves and Ainscow (2015) who use the term “middle leader” to refer to leading and managing work undertaken at, and from, a regional level in largerscale reforms. In this vein, Wilkinson (2018) considers principals to also be middle leaders since their leading work and school-based development practice are generally positioned between systemic reform initiatives and a school’s development agenda. Viewed as part of a systems strategy (Fullan 2015), Swedish researchers Nehez, Gyllander Torkildsen, and Olin (2018) also affiliate with a view of the middle leader 18 Note,

this work was first presented in a symposium “Driving Change from the Middle” at the Australian Association Research in Education (AARE) in Melbourne 2016, now published as part of a special issue on Middle Leading in School Leadership and Management, hence forms a valid part of this review.

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(also called a “process leader” or “development leader” in Sweden) as a form of leadership distributed by the principal to trusted others like experienced or more expert teachers (Spillane, 2006). Nehez et al. (2018) describe ways process or development leaders, as highly trusted teachers, exercise their middle leading within and beyond the immediate site of the school or preschool, often acting as intermediaries between system initiatives and local school implementation. Their ultimate aim is to support school development of these initiatives which periodically incorporates the analysis of school data and teacher professional learning through facilitating collegial dialogues. At times, their support is more indirect since it is mediated through the practices of head teachers. Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves, and Rönnerman (2014) also conceptualise middle leading as complementary to, but not the same as, the leadership practised by the principal or non-teaching school executive members. Alternatively, in their research (since 2012), “middle leaders” are regarded as those teachers in schools who have both an acknowledged leading position and regular classroom teaching responsibilities, defining the middle leader as a having some positional (and/or acknowledged) responsibility to bring about change in their schools, yet maintain close connections to the classroom as sites where student learning occurs. In one sense, middle leaders bridge the educational work of ‘classrooms’ and the management practices of the administrators/leaders. (2014, p. 509)

Although there are distinct points of difference, both positions consider leading from a middle vantage point. This middleness, as Edwards-Groves et al. (2017) put it, sensitises us to a relational positioning whereby middle leaders and their teaching, leading, and professional learning practices provide an unparalleled opportunity to impact the pedagogical practices entering and existing in classrooms.

The Practice of Leading from, Within, and Beyond the Middle Middle leading, as professional practice focused on education development, has been positioned as leading practised from (Grootenboer, 2018; Grootenboer, EdwardsGroves, & Rönnerman, 2014), within (Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2013; Rönnerman & Edwards-Groves, 2012; Wilkinson, 2018), and beyond (Lund et al., 2018; Nehez, Gyllander Torkildsen, & Olin, 2018; Wilkinson, 2018) the middle tiers of schools and systems.19 These three concepts, leading from, within, and beyond the middle, derived from over a decade of research, extend the current literature on middle leading and delineate the differences. After researching the practice of leading from the middle in Australia, Canada, and Sweden at different education levels (early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary), Grootenboer et al. (2017) distilled three simultaneously occurring pairings that illustrate how the practice of leading from the middle can be understood: leading and 19 Note, much of the reviewed PEP work on middle leading predominantly focuses on school-based

middle leading rather than as part of leading at a systemic or institutional level.

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teaching; managing and facilitating; and, collaborating and communicating. For them, the practice of teachers leading from and within the middle involves engaging in simultaneously interrelated practices—leading and teaching by managing and facilitating educational development through collaborating and communicating to create communicative spaces for sustainable future educational action. (Grootenboer et al., 2017, p. 248)

Leading within the middle is identified in Wilkinson’s research (2018) that found that collective staff agency in a small rural school was afforded by middle leading practices, vis-á-vis the principal. Middle leading was central in producing schoolwide consensus for implementing mandated system initiatives. Wilkinson found that the principal deliberately repositioned herself in the middle so “a richer sensed shared responsibility (rather than authoritarian or bureaucratic responsibility) for leading and learning to be facilitated amongst executive teams, teachers, students, and communities” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 158) was possible. In this instance, the principal’s position shifted to leading within the middle to be alongside teachers in her smaller rural primary school; this move created a practice arrangement that enabled a shared responsive “education dynamic that no amount of national and international testing can and should obscure” (Wilkinson, 2018, p. 30). Wilkinson concluded that conditions for teacher learning and development were enabled by the principal as a co-participant learning in the middle with teachers. Leading within the middle facilitated a shared commitment to working together, collective agency, and school-wide solidarity that provided scope for radical action among the staff. Leading beyond the middle has been theorised more specifically by Lund et al. (2018) who reported on a Norwegian study on the leadership of dialogue conferences for teacher learning across Norway. Likewise, Nehez et al. (2018) reporting a Swedish case, distinguish between leading in the middle through building communities of practice in “middle leaders” existing spheres of responsibility, and leading beyond the middle as a broader system-wide enterprise was implemented, a distinction noted also by Day and Grice (2019).20 Here, middle leading extends beyond the local to the spaces between systemic, national, and international policy and curriculum initiatives, and school-based implementation. Like the Norwegian and Swedish studies, Day and Grice (2019) reporting on an Australian study suggested that regardless of the form and function of a development initiative, navigating, mediating, and implementing systemic agendas in local school sites rely on the capacity for middle leaders to shift from leading within the middle to leading from the middle to leading beyond the middle (p. 11). This extended view points to the need to understand the professional practice of middle leading as being influenced by conditions that radiate beyond but return to the site as it is being practised and mitigated by individual, societal, systemic, organisational, and policy contexts (Day & Grice 2019). This position aligns with research conducted by Grootenboer et al. (2014) that found that middle leaders, themselves, understand their leading practices as extending from managing the curriculum 20 A

2018 draft version of this report was used for the purposes of the review underpinning this chapter.

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delivery task to leading people from, within, and beyond their traditional spheres of influence (i.e. their students and their teaching peers) and traditional spheres of action (i.e. leading learning in their classrooms, leading the professional learning of teachers in their schools). This work points to how traditional spheres of influence and action necessarily and explicitly respond to conditions (practice architectures) made by others (e.g. differing government policy contexts, national system agendas, or requirements handed down by the principal or senior executives).

Middle Leading as Relational Work Leading site-based education development is principled relational work that creates conditions for bringing about effective, democratic, and respectful relationships (Kemmis, 2009). Inspired by Habermas’s (1987) theory of communicative action, Edwards-Groves et al. (2010) remind us of the critical need to attend to the relational work of education in and for leading professional learning and development; they state: Professional learning and teacher development are compromised wherever the relational dimension in educational practice is not properly attended [to]; that indeed, failure to attend to the relational may empty education of its moral and social purpose. Not only does failure to attend to the relational threaten the values expressed in educational (as opposed to antior non-educational) practices, but it 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) [emphasis added]. (p. 43)

Examining how the “relational” enters and exists in school-based education development was considered by Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, and Rönnerman, (2016) who studied how teachers and principals understood and experienced the professional practice of middle leading. Their study elaborated relational trust (Kemmis et al., 2014) as a practice architecture for professional learning by identifying five interconnected realms of trust: interpersonal trust, interactional trust, intersubjective trust, intellectual trust, and pragmatic trust. For teacher and principal informants, the relational practices of middle leaders were instrumental in nourishing the realms of trust and mutual respect necessary for facilitating pedagogical change.

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Middle Leading as Pedagogically Oriented Grice (2017)21 argues that middle leading can be described as pedagogical leading since it is ultimately tied to student learning in classrooms and to the teaching practices that enables it (see Chap. 5 this volume for an elaborated presentation on pedagogical practice). With pedagogy (its enactment and development), middle leaders are uniquely positioned as pedagogues, first and foremost as teachers in classrooms, and then as leaders responsible for supporting teachers and the principal to bring about school-based change and development. Grootenboer (2018) goes further to propose that middle leading is pedagogical leading with a compelling commission in schools that falls outside traditional descriptions of principals and middle managers.

Leading as Generative of Leading: How Practices of Middle Leading Translate and Travel In their cross-national research conducted in Australia and Sweden studying the longer-term impact of professional learning through action research, EdwardsGroves and Rönnerman (2013) identified ecological interdependencies among particular constellations and iterations of leading. Drawing on the theory of ecologies of practices (Kemmis et al., 2012), their analysis established distinctive relationships between the conditions and circumstances generated by leading for teacher learning and the subsequent development of teacher leading practices. Thematic analysis of interviews with middle leaders (held after a decade of participating in professional learning in their school or preschool sites), Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman (2013) traced ways that particular leading practices generated leading practices as middle leaders later began to facilitate professional development in their own sites. What was striking about their findings were the strong interrelationships between the leading practices of the middle leader who facilitated the professional learning and the next generation of leading practices that travelled across time and space to emerge in the work of those teachers who became middle leaders (some years later). Leading, it seems, extends the leading practices of others as leading practices travel over time and geographical sites. The concept of leading as a travelling practice was also considered by Wilkinson et al. (2013) who showed ways middle leading practices travel across schools and preschools via process leaders (Sweden), teaching principals (Australia), and professional development leaders (Norway). Such examples from different national contexts (Australia, Norway, and Sweden) illustrate how

21 This work was presented as a paper “Spies, surveillance and distributed leadership: for the good of the empire of education” at the Australian Association of Research in Education (AARE) in Canberra in 2017. It has since been published as an article: Grice (2019). 007 Spies, surveillance, and pedagogical middle leadership: for the good of the empire of education. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 51(2), 165–181. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2019.1583173.

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historicising practices (Hardy and Edwards-Groves 2016) reveal the ways practices of leading professional learning travel (Hardy, Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, 2012). Work by Lund et al. (2018), Nehez et al. (2018), and Wilkinson (2018) draws on translation theory (Rovik, 2016) to describe how middle leaders (principals, process leaders, and leading teachers) are translators of practices, responsible for bringing particular system initiatives and policy imperatives into schools. The process of translating works through middle leaders shaping and reshaping knowledge as a process of transference (Lund et al., 2018). For example, the ability to facilitate collaborative learning or dialogue conferences became a significant practice being “translated” or “transferred” into new sites in Norwegian schools (Lund et al., 2018). Nehez, Gyllander Torkildsen, & Olin, (2018) showed how middle leading involved translating and embedding new practices and policies in the sites. Wilkinson (2018) presents empirical data that showed how leading teachers along with the principal (as a middle leader) in one primary school translated a district-wide coaching initiative into site-based collegial coaching conversations. The idea of translating practices was also considered by Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman (2013) who found that teachers developed as middle leaders, first as translations, as individuals responded to site-based needs and circumstances (by becoming more accomplished in teaching), then as transformations (by becoming accomplished in middle leading). For teacher leading, they suggested, there appear to be stages of translating practices with traces of previous experiences being taken up in new practices of teaching and later in leading. This section revealed the multidimensionality of leading. How leading is practised from within the middle, but also how it extends from and beyond the middle was illustrated, as educators lead the practices and practice development of others (their students, other teachers, the principals, even the district administrators, and their policy agendas). In this sense, “good” middle leading was shown to be generative of other practices, thus enabling the potential for shared transformation.

Leading as a Democratic Practice Another crucial feature of the reviewed PEP research is its emphasis on leading as a democratic, collegial, and shared form of collective practice/praxis. Invariably, notions of leading as democratic practice also link to the question of “the good” as it reveals what constitutes socially just practice/praxis. Taking this view, to examine leading as democratic practice in a separate section from leading as a socially just practice, creates an artificial divide. However, the chapter does so in order to highlight the breadth of themes discussed, while simultaneously foregrounding their interrelatedness. Feminist scholars have long drawn attention to distinctions between power over, power with others, and power to (Brunner, 2005). Power over others is a typical characteristic of masculinist and Anglo-American constructions of the principalship and educational leadership more generally (Wilkinson, 2017a; Wilkinson, 2018), with

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power denoted as a form of “dominance, control, authority and influence” over others in the organisation or the lifeworld of educational sites (Brunner, 2005, p. 126). The English term to describe the principalship, headship, denotes this form of power. In contrast, notions of power with others, be it the human and/or material world, suggest a “synergistic, co-active, collective melding of common being or action” (Brunner, 2005, p. 126). The term is often employed by Indigenous scholars of leadership to describe a “participatory, community-based, holistic and interconnected process” (Wilkinson, 2018, p. 9). It suggests the building of mutual support, solidarity, and collaboration. The Nordic term for school principals, which translates as first among equals (from the Latin primus inter pares) gestures towards a notion of power with, for it connotes someone who is of equal status to others but may have more informal influence due to their age or seniority. The notion of what constitutes “good” leading in the research reviewed here is largely premised on constructions of leading as a practice that engages with notions of power with and power to in different sites and national contexts. As mentioned earlier, there is less emphasis on the principal or formal leader as the ultimate authority figure but rather on the orchestrating of conditions that enable and/or constrain nurturing educational praxis. For instance, in Wilkinson’s (2008b, p. 180) study of female academic leaders, it was noted that leading practice was a form of praxis embodied in a “moral disposition towards egalitarianism”. Crucially, this disposition was not solely an individual enterprise but rather was experienced intersubjectively in a variety of sites. For example, “Ruth”, an Indigenous woman academic and senior university figure noted that, in contrast to her work in the Indigenous land rights movement, the Australian university site in which she was employed gave her far less freedom to engage in the egalitarian traditions of her Indigenous community. Instead she identified a form of neoliberal capture of the modern university which severely constrained possibilities for collective social action and more democratic forms of decision-making. Crucial to “Ruth’s” story is her identification of both the site-specific conditions that enabled and/or constrained more collectivist notions of leading as practice and her understanding of how these practices are deeply embedded in differing cultural and historical traditions. Leading as a democratic practice is enmeshed in these traditions and cannot be understood without reference to them. This is exemplified in Rönnerman, Edwards-Groves, and Grootenboer’s (2015, 2017) exploration of the emergence of democratic leading practices in Swedish preschools. They examined the role played by a university-facilitated action research program in opening up communicative spaces for “democratic dialogue” among early childhood educators—a program which explicitly drew on the social–democratic traditions of Nordic nations (Rönnerman et al., 2015, p. 73). This dialogue was characterised by a range of practices including: “dialoguing for democracy” (p. 73), facilitating “a space for democratic action” (p. 74), and positioning participants as “equal contributors” (p. 74). As noted in a later paper, “middle leaders emphasized the importance of having all voices heard and managed the process to enable all to speak in turn around a table” (Rönnerman et al., 2017, p. 13).

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In the Australian educational context, the notion of leading as a form of democratic practice in a range of educational sites including schools and early childhood settings has been examined. For example, Wilkinson (2017a) studied the leading practices of a regional high school which had shifted from being highly monocultural to a far more ethnically diverse student demographic. This was as a result of the regional town becoming a preferred resettlement location for largely Sudanese refugee background families. In the study of the school transformation that occurred as a result of this change, Wilkinson noted how “traditional hierarchical distances between students and large high school leadership teams were deliberately subverted through the democratizing practices of the Principal and Deputy Principal … this had a significant effect on the relatings between students of refugee origin and the executive team” (p. 172). She gave specific examples of how the school leadership team cooked a barbecue for the new students, their families, and Anglo-Australian friends as part of an initiative to welcome the students into the school and break down racial and class barriers. Other examples included consultative practices such as the deputy principal responsible for the welfare of the students meeting regularly in a focus group with learning support officers and key members of the refugee community “in order to discuss the key issues for students of refugee origin arriving at the school” (Wilkinson, 2017a, p. 176). Bristol’s study of teaching team leaders in a cluster of rural schools examined how recent developments in Australian education had “emphasised the importance of stakeholder involvement and advocacy in the promotion of student outcomes” (2015, p. 802). Her study drilled into the practice architectures that co-constructed the ways in which educational leaders drew “on the potential for teacher talk as a vehicle for practice modification” (Bristol, 2015, p. 802). A crucial aspect of these democratic leading practices was a shift in the team leaders’ positional presence “from centre to periphery, assuming collaborative rather than authoritative stances” (p. 814) and hence, “fostering a sense of … (collective) … ownership” (Bristol, 2015, p. 814). The nurturing of more democratic leading practices in both Wilkinson’s (2017a) and Bristol’s (2015) studies was particularly noteworthy given the traditional centre– periphery and command and control structure of New South Wales state education leadership structures. In a contrasting site of educational practice, Boyle and Wilkinson (2018) studied the building of a professional learning community between an early childhood setting whose students transitioned to a particular local primary school. They noted that one of the major ways in which the early childhood educators and primary school participants began to open up communicative spaces for dialogue was through the empowering of all members to “participate as equals” (Boyle & Wilkinson, 2018, p. 331). This occurred, for example, through negotiating a set of norms which articulated the conditions of the communicative space such as an agreement that hierarchical language to denote the primary and early childhood sites (e.g. “big school”, “little school”) would not be employed (Boyle & Wilkinson, 2018). As Boyle and Wilkinson’s (2018) work implies, asymmetrical relations of power characterise individual educational sites, for, as Schatzki reminds us, schools, universities, and early childhood settings are invariably “sites of the social” (Schatzki,

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2002). We now turn to the final section which foregrounds questions of the power and politics of leading as a form of socially just practice/praxis.

Leading as a Socially just Practice/Praxis There is a large body of scholarship that examines educational leadership for social justice. Less prevalent, however, is scholarship that focuses on the practices and/or praxis of socially just leadership, as opposed to the praxis of individuals who may act as bridge builders or mediators, often between troubled communities and school learners. The notion of leadership as both power with (others) and power to (Brunner, 2005) draws our attention to the potential of all individuals to shape their own life course, albeit under conditions that are not purely of their own making. It foregrounds the importance of paying attention to those who may lack the power to realise their full life potential. As such, mutual support and advocacy are crucial components of realising individual and collective power to accomplish individual and social goals. Leading for socially just practice/praxis frequently focuses on the “end game” of what leading is for. For instance, Bristol’s aforementioned (2015, p. 186) study examines ways leading as a practice works towards “design[ing]… communicative spaces (teacher talk)” and embedding “inclusive practices which encourage shared responsibility and ownership for inclusive action, critical listening”. In the study, there is a clear emphasis on the notion of leading as power with others; that is, forming a collective sense of solidarity in regard to teachers’ work. Crucially, what Bristol also draws attention to is the question, what is such leadership for? What is its key purpose? In response, Bristol contends that not only do inclusive practices foster a sense of belonging and community (2015, p. 817) but that they are a form of “leading-for-inclusion” as schools struggle to cater for the “increasing dynamism” of rural Australian schools, “socially, cognitively, economically, linguistically and culturally” (p. 802). In his examination of professionalism and leadership in Dutch education, Karstanje (2008) also focuses on enhancing student learning as a key goal of the “measuring sticks” for inclusion. He argues that a range of developments in the Dutch education system necessitates new forms of practice in regard to teaching professionalism. One possible form of leading that may support this move is transformational leadership as an “alternative to transactional leadership”, for transformational leadership “supports teachers in transcending their self-interest for a greater good … enhance[ing] student learning” (Karstanje, 2008, p. 122). However, he concludes that studies of transformational leadership in nations, such as Australia, reveal that this enhancement was not realised, for teachers were too busy caught up in the corporate imperatives of the school (Karstanje, 2008, p. 122). What precisely counts for “enhancing student learning” and the role that leading practices may play in fostering such outcomes is not spelled out. A key aspect of leading as a socially just practice is consciousness raising of participants as a part of an ongoing debate about how to connect their educational

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practices, “what is”, to normative questions of what may be in child’s best interests, “what ought to be” (Ponte, 2013, p. 459). As Bristol (2015) notes, reorienting schools and school communities through teacher talk to make them more inclusive is no easy matter. Creating a professional learning space for staff that goes beyond the performativity of “teacher training sects” requires a range of practices including sharing of stories as well as interrogating and questioning existing practices (Bristol, 2015). Encouraging such reflexivity is a risky business. Wilkinson’s (2008b) study of the praxis of women academic leaders from diverse ethnic backgrounds revealed that fostering more dialogical intersubjective spaces requires cultivating a habitus that challenges stereotypes and “asymmetrical power relations that have inflicted … wrongs” (p. 184). In Wilkinson’s (2017a) case study of a rapidly changing, ethnically diverse regional secondary school, a key leading practice that challenged these kinds of asymmetrical power relations including interrogating essentialising discourses about newly arrived, refugee background students. The school leadership team did so in order to raise teacher reflexivity and transform the communicative spaces of the classrooms and playgrounds in which leaders, teachers, and students encountered one another. For example, the principal recounted how important it was to “rais[e] staff awareness of the effects of homogenising and essentialising students of refugee background as ‘African’” and “thus flattening out the rich cultural, linguistic, and historical diversity between the students’ nations” (Wilkinson, 2017a, p. 170). He did so through a range of awareness-raising activities conducted at staff meetings led by himself along with a range of educators including the Sudanese elder who worked as a school support officer, and the deputy principal, whose childhood in the racially segregated USA had heightened his consciousness of the ills of racism. This brief summary of the PEP corpus on leading as a democratic and socially just practice foregrounds the importance of cultivating a critical and reflexive understanding and disposition in terms of the practice architectures of leadership—an understanding of the cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements which prefigure leading. It suggests that leading as a socially just practice is an ongoing process, not an end point. It is a constant coming-to-be in the endless happeningness that characterises our material world. It is also historically and culturally constructed (Wilkinson & Bristol, 2018). The literature reveals that these constructions prefigure, enable, and/or constrain, the intersubjective spaces in which participants in the practice of educating encounter one another. They reveal that practices of leadership are never “innocent” and/or politically neutral. So, what is new? Much of the research in this area has drawn similar conclusions. However, the chapter has contended that what is different is how the theory of practice architectures allows researchers to drill down at a “granular level” to the actual arrangements in specific sites that prefigure the conditions for socially just educating to emerge and/or be silenced. It opens up possibilities for educational transformation that moves the leadership field beyond a moribund and ultimately “dead end” focus on the “turnaround” leader or the efficient management of educational systems. It

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insists on the praxis of such practice and the arrangements that hold them in place. In the iron cage of relentless performativity that passes as “good” educating and leading in this day and age, this is a promising way forward.

Conclusion This chapter presented a practice view on leading as an approach to consider how, in different national contexts, it is understood and experienced (practised and changed) by teachers and educators. Capitalising on key themes emerging from the review of PEP leading literature, the role that leading plays in enabling and constraining educational transformations was illustrated. The chapter showed the ways leading practices shape the conditions for praxis-oriented, morally informed, and reflexive educational practices when enacted as enabling, shared, democratic, and dialogic, and enacted in socially just collective ways. It also revealed that what constitutes “good” leading as professional practice (“praxis”) is invariably contested and imbued with tensions and contradictions depending on sites and circumstances. Thus, leadership in and for achieving shared transformation is not seamless, but part of an ongoing project of struggle and negotiation. The chapter provided empirically substantiated conceptions of leading as a practice, specifically the ways “good” leading practices may be experienced and understood by others. “Good” leading, it is contended, is a practice that positively extends, and so transforms, education in sites, by extending the practices and responsibilities of others (after Stenhouse, 1975). The practice of “good” leading is found in the ways in which individual and collective teacher and student capacity, power, and agency (manifested in their sayings, doings, and relatings) are extended. Ways that leading, as a “practice-changing practice”, extends other practices were explored. This means that practices of leading can bring into being changed or new conditions in educational sites where it is practised. These conditions bring about changed or new discourses that are more reasonable in terms of how people understand their educational work, changed or new activities, and work that are more productive and sustainable, and changed or new system and lifeworld relationships between people that are more just and more democratic. The practice view, taken here, authenticates the site and the affordances that “good” leading, as an embodied practice, has in and for educational transformation. As a shared endeavour, leading is a practice of possibility; one that makes it possible not to deny education and its occupants of its critical, generative, and transformational potential. Finally, the socially formed, practice-centred, site-based approach to leading presented in this chapter provides a template for the kind of solidarity educational leaders need to speak back to popularised neoliberal, managerial, and centralised tendencies that dominate the work of educators across the constellation of Anglophone countries and emerging increasingly in Northern Europe.

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Chapter 7

Collaborative Professional Learning for Changing Educational Practices Anette Olin, Susanne Francisco, Petri Salo, Michaela Pörn, and Gunilla Karlberg-Granlund

Abstract This chapter explores professional learning and professional development of teachers, principals, and other educators. It initially identifies our understanding of the terms professional learning and professional development and various national political ideologies and policies that have influenced the work in this area. In particular, the chapter explores some key themes that researchers in the PEP network have addressed related to professional learning and development. Firstly, we explore three broad themes: action research for professional learning, professional learning for social justice, and leading for learning. Secondly, we examine more specific themes of professional learning at different stages of a teacher’s career. The concepts of praxis and bildung are highlighted as important understandings that guide our work. The chapter discusses the contribution that this research makes to the professional learning and professional development literature more broadly and concludes with a reflection on what we have achieved. We also present a composite theoretical framework for understanding professional learning as praxis development.

Introduction This chapter aims to answer the following question: How, in different national contexts, is good professional development (praxis development) being understood and experienced by teachers? The answer is formulated based on empirical studies of professional learning and professional development in various national and crossnational settings conducted by educational researchers in the Pedagogy Education and Praxis (PEP) international research network. During the process of reviewing A. Olin University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden S. Francisco (B) Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia e-mail: [email protected] P. Salo · M. Pörn · G. Karlberg-Granlund Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Mahon et al. (eds.), Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5_7

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this corpus, the authors firstly identified key themes within their own national corpus of PEP research. After that, these studies were discussed collectively, in the light of contemporary research relevant to the theme, both within the national contexts and in regard to international studies. As a result, the key themes were divided into two main groups. The first describes broader themes of professional learning and development, including studies of action research for professional learning, professional learning for social justice, and leading for professional learning. The second group relates to professional learning at different stages of the teaching career. This group includes four sub-themes or aspects of teachers’ professional learning: initial teacher education, mentoring and workplace learning, site-based professional learning and development (including didactics), and higher education. Before discussing the PEP literature, we first ground this literature in some of the relevant key issues in the broader professional learning and professional development literature. There are a range of understandings of the terms and practices of professional learning (PL) and professional development (PD) in the broader literature in the educational research field. Research on these concepts and practices expresses various ideals, ambitions, and approaches for enhancing teachers’ professional development, learning, and growth. Kennedy (2014) identifies the outcomes of research on continuing professional development (CPD) as fragmented and focused on reporting individual models or approaches used in particular contexts. The field of research lacks coherence regarding use of concepts and theories. Cumulative findings and conceptual tools informing purposive improvement of professional practices are rare. Policy constructs are mixed with pedagogical aims and ambitions. Various forms and contexts for professional learning are handled interchangeably (Langelotz & Rönnerman, 2014, pp. 75–76). Further, research rarely acknowledges teachers’ learning as embedded in organisational and working conditions, nor as being a part of their professional lives (Opfer & Pedder, 2011, p. 376). The various and ambiguous understandings of the two concepts PL and PD, as well as practices and policies related to them, are recognised within the corpus of PEP research. Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman (2013, p. 122) identify a shift in the meaning of CPD, from “in-service training” for individual teachers to “professional development/learning”, with emphasis on site-based initiatives for collective and collaborative forms of capacity building and shared responsibilities for teacher learning within professional learning communities. This also follows an international trend, which has led to a changing terminology (O’Brien & Jones, 2014). Focusing on the Australian, Canadian, and English contexts, Hardy (2012) depicts the traditional, short-term, state-sanctioned approaches to professional development (PD) as individualistic, psychologistic, technicist, and prescriptive. Such approaches are unable to relate to and affect the complexity of PL practices, in which agency and collective–reflective engagement are crucial. Forsman et al. (2014) characterise Finnish PD practices as instrumental and momentary, consisting of mandatory, delivery-oriented, and content-focused in-service training days. These activities aim at updating and sustaining individual professional undertakings, rather than enhancing the capacity of a professional community to be engaged in site-based and collaborative practices

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of systematic inquiry and meaning-making: that is, furthering professional learning for transforming practices. In the light of the centrality of the concept of educational praxis in the research undertaken in the PEP network, understood as “morally-politically informed and oriented, reflective, agentic, context-specific, and transformative” (Chap. 2, this volume), we clarify our conceptualisation of professional learning and professional development. In our conceptualisation, professional development mainly relates to the resourcing and structuring arrangements established to explicitly support the development of teachers’ knowledge and competence related to their teaching task. Opfer and Pedder (2011) urge that PD understood according to a process–product logic has limited explanatory power. It relies on actions structured regarding time, space, content, support, and aims. These actions are programmatic, defined, planned, provided, and delivered, from top-down, by the educational authorities on national, regional, and local levels, in accordance with educational policies. PD in this sense focuses on updating of individual teacher’s competences, in specific subject areas, regarding individual aspects of teacher’s work (e.g. evaluation and digitalisation) or teaching methods, and is organised as momentary training days/hours or workshops. Opfer and Pedders (2011) argue that PD and PL research should not focus on causal effects of professional development activities, but rather seek to expand the general understanding of how and when different contexts, situations, and combinations of elements within these mediate professional learning and change. Our understanding and use of the term professional learning reflects the view apparent in most PEP research on the theme. We use the term to refer to dynamic, organic and open-ended, individual, and collaborative learning processes, inspired and informed by the conditions characteristic to a certain educational site. In addition to access to learning activities, the site affects the ways in which participation, experimentation, and application of learning activities are formed (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002, p. 963). PL relies on interaction, dialogue, and collaboration. Collaboration includes identifying needs, reflecting on these, formulating aims, choosing topics, methods, and arenas for professional learning. Practices are developed on site, in a collegial, reflective, and inquiry-oriented manner, in professional learning communities (Stoll et al., 2006). Action research, mentoring, and shadowing represent systematic and goal-oriented actions for PL. Kemmis et al. (2014c) see educators as being “stirred in” to practices through taking part in them: it involves coming to learn the practices through participating. This concept of being stirred in does not require others to do the stirring in, as teachers can stir themselves into new learning. For instance, challenging classroom events can result in teachers experimenting, reading literature, observing, collaborating, and sharing resources with colleagues. Professional learning occurs in various contexts and takes various forms throughout the teaching and leading career. Beginning teachers tend to be oriented towards practical skills in teaching and managing the classroom; midcareer teachers aim at refining and diversifying their teaching practices; experienced teachers have the ambition of learning new teaching methods (e.g. Kyndt, Gijbels, Grosemans, & Donche 2016, p. 1113, 1138). Some experienced teachers also lead development work together

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with their colleagues through collaborative professional learning (Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, Hardy, & Rönnerman, 2018; see also Chap. 6 this volume). Neoliberal policies affect conceptualisations of teachers’ professional development and learning in various ways (Hardy, 2012, see also Chap. 4, this volume). Mockler (2013) notes that professional development is often framed around the notion of teacher (rather than teaching) quality. Performative neoliberal accountability processes focus on teachers’ ability to make their pupils reach learning outcomes measured through ranking systems such as NAPLAN (ranking schools in Australia) or PISA (ranking nations). Even if teachers question the practices and outcomes of testing, research shows that they comply and are willing to engage themselves in the professional development offered to them in order to support success of their students and schools (Hardy, 2018). In the Nordic countries, the long-standing traditions of “bildung” and folk enlightenment have formed professional development towards trustful involvement of teachers’ knowledge and competences. These traditions rely on an organic and evolving relationship between the individual, the community, and humanity more broadly. The folk enlightenment movement has been oriented towards education for citizenship and further development of a fruitful relationship between individual needs and collective interests (Rönnerman, Salo, & Furu, 2008, p. 23). Various forms of collaborative practices for learning, such as study and research circles, enable people to learn and grow as human beings. They also function as arenas for establishing trustful relationships between citizens and for developing trust in institutions and professionals. The practices of participation and democracy (Larsson, 2001), characteristic of the arrangements of study circles, have been somewhat reinvented in communities of practice and professional learning communities (Stoll et al., 2006). These Nordic traditions reflect a trustful attitude towards, and relationship to, human growth and education, schools as institutions, and teachers as professionals (Salo & Sandén, 2016). We recognise that the research question guiding this chapter is a normative one. The “goodness” of PD and PL is dependent on various aspects and layers of contexts. In the neoliberal performance discourse, “goodness” is tightly coupled with measurable learning outcomes, no matter if the actions are individual, instrumental, and content-oriented, or collective, participatory, and reflection-oriented (Stewart, 2014). In PEP research, “goodness” coincides with “praxis”, which implies actions to be judged on the basis of their consequences for individual persons and for humankind. Praxis development focuses on if and how the actions aim and result in good for those involved and for humankind more broadly. Professional learning for praxis enables educators to become informed by the traditions within education and morally committed to educational action. Educational action relates to forms of understanding, modes of action, and “ways of relating to one another and the world” that extend both educators’ and students’ individual and collective powers of self-expression, self-development, and self-determination (Kemmis et al., 2014c, p. 26).

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Broader Themes of Professional Learning and Development Within PEP Literature In the following sections, we outline research on professional learning and development within the PEP network exploring the themes of action research for professional learning, professional learning for social justice, and leading for professional learning.

Action Research for Professional Learning Action research is grounded in site-based theoretical and practical traditions (Somekh & Zeichner, 2009; see also Chap. 3 in this volume). This means that also among PEP researchers located in different countries around the world there are variations in the way action research is conceptualised and practised. Two theoretical traditions have been most influential, coming mainly from Australian and Nordic research contexts. From one standpoint, action research is viewed as critical educational science and furthers a conceptualisation of teachers’ professional learning for praxis development as participatory and self-reflective inquiry (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014b). Based on teacher’s understandings of their professional practices, the aim is to improve the practices in a well-considered and just manner. From a Nordic “bildung”-tradition, ideals and practices of folk enlightenment in the Nordic countries serve as resources for hope, underpinning collaborative and transformative approaches to professional learning among teachers and researchers (Hardy, Salo, & Rönnerman, 2015). Jointly, action research as critical and participatory as well as collaborative and transformative undertakings have been characterising collaborations between educators and researchers within the PEP network. Action research provides a space for teachers’ and researchers’ participatory and collaborative praxis development, close to everyday educational practices, which are characterised by difficult situations due to conflicts of aims and values. Bristol and Ponte (2013) describe action research concerned with the development of socially just strategies in classrooms, in schools, and across educational systems. They argue that action research for professional learning is a process constructed within competing claims for rightness. Since education in itself is essentially a moral endeavour (Ax & Ponte, 2010), the social practices that the educators undertake must be judged in terms of “what, how, and why” questions. The way in which the action research is undertaken is informed by the purposes for the research. The reviewed research indicates that in the Australian context, action research as a participatory research approach for teachers aims at developing a “world worth living in” (Kemmis et al., 2014c). In Nordic countries, action research is often conceptualised as a democratic process (Olin, Karlberg-Granlund, & Furu, 2016) with emphasis on building trusting relationships between teachers and researchers for mutual learning. Letting

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everyone’s voice be heard, combined with open-minded listening for common knowledge production, underpins the practices of professional learning through action research. Action research is characterised by partnerships between university and schools, researchers, and teachers, involving mutual recognition that forms enabling “relational architectures” as necessary conditions for transformation of practices (Edwards-Groves, Olin, & Karlberg-Granlund, 2016a, b). Despite differing ways of conceptualising and undertaking action research for professional learning and development, there are similarities concerning the fundamental aspects of the working process of action research. Three kinds of activities characterise what action researchers do: inquiry, dialogue, and dissemination of knowledge. Since action researchers study practices that they themselves are involved and engaged in, a main issue is how to create distance to these close-up practices. Rönnerman (2012) presents a framework for action research explaining how the action researcher can acquire distance for knowledge creation in their work. Her argument is that the aim of action research is refining knowledge for professional learning, leading to praxis development, and that a distancing mode is essential to achieve this. She relates different tools for reflection to the three activities action researchers do, when aiming for different kinds of knowledge. (1) Inquiries have to be undertaken in a self-reflective way (distancing mode) leading to new personal insights (knowledge). The tools for this can be logbooks, interviews, and other observation methods followed by analyses and reflections. (2) Dialogue creates distance through the interaction with someone else’s understanding. This can happen, for example, in mentoring or collegial meetings (tools). Dialogue leads to collegial or collaborative knowledge, which is situated in the place and the people who created it. 3) Research aims not only for personal or collegial knowledge contributions, but also for dissemination of knowledge (distancing mode) which may lead to communicative knowledge for the whole profession. Tools for this include documentation and communicative spaces where results can be presented, discussed, and scrutinised. In the PEP network, the first and second activities of self-reflective inquiry and dialogue in different forms are being undertaken and described in most studies, both in teacher education and in site-based development in schools and preschools (e.g. Edwards-Groves & Hoare, 2012; Kemmis et al., 2014c; Langelotz & Rönnerman, 2014). The third activity, to disseminate knowledge to a wider audience, is specifically being developed through dialogue conferences, which present an arena for communication of ongoing research and development among educators, both teachers and researchers (Lund, 2008; Rönnerman et al., 2016). All together, these activities support the development of an activist approach for educators and nurture professional learning for transformation of professional practices.

Professional Learning for Social Justice Striving for social justice lies at the heart of the research conducted by PEP researchers, expressed in the overall purpose of “creating a world worth living in”.

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Although it is not always explicit, PEP research is largely framed by this purpose. Social justice, including the aim of education for all, is not something that some people/pupils should “get” but an overall approach to education work that should involve and include everyone, always. Social justice is not something that someone does to someone else; it is a worldview about the possibility of collaboratively creating a world worth living in. Also, social justice is not a state that will ever be fully achieved since living together as human beings will always involve conflict and disagreement. Striving for socially just ways of living together is an ongoing process which involves professional learning for transforming practices to become more inclusive and built on constructive relatings. Much of the reviewed literature identifies that making changes to teaching and learning that increase social justice often involves contestation; such changes are not straightforward. Each site has its own pre-existing historical and cultural context. The site-based practices for social justice are political and contested and include leading practices, professional learning practices, teaching practices, and learning. Professional learning to support such changes cannot be one-off happenings. Sitebased changes require ongoing discussion, development of shared understandings, and ongoing collaboration between teachers. Where there is outside intervention, it is important that the researchers are working with the teachers—researchers cannot be seen (by themselves or by the teachers) as those with all the knowledge and understandings. This has been described as moving away from a “saviouring pattern” (Bristol & Ponte, 2013) to another kind of research practice where the learning is done together with the professionals who are accountable for their own decision-making in their sites. Developing shared understandings is critical and involves ongoing negotiation and collaboration. PEP research related to professional learning for social justice focuses primarily on approaches used to support teacher learning in schools where the student cohort changes from being largely monocultural to being multicultural (Wilkinson, 2017; Wilkinson & Langat, 2012; Wilkinson, Forsman, & Langat, 2013). This research highlights that even in schools where there was a strong focus on leading professional learning for social justice, the approaches (especially those that were of a “one-off nature”) were only partially successful. The research identifies the positive impact of some whole-school approaches and overt valuing of a multicultural approach from the school leadership. Wilkinson, Forsman, and Langat (2013) identify the importance of a whole-school approach to multiculturalism, noting that the practices both inside and beyond the classroom are important. They argue for using a praxis-oriented approach to teacher professional learning.

Leading for Professional Learning Leadership practices both enable and constrain professional learning. The interplay between positional and informal leading is of interest, especially for collaborative forms of professional learning. Kemmis et al. (2014c, pp. 157–177) and Wilkinson

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and Kemmis (2015) illustrate how changes to the preconditions governing leading transform staff meetings from arenas of administrative matters into pedagogical spaces for educators to engage themselves in inquiry into, and development of, teaching practices. Leading professional learning appears as an informal collective practice within a learning community. Formal leadership practices are responsive to the history and context of the specific school site (Grootenboer & Hardy, 2017; Salo & Sandén, 2016). Wilkinson et al. (2010) drew attention to the risks of professional learning being led as a shared responsibility. Dispersed leadership can become yet another technology for surveillance of teachers’ professional practices, rather than a vehicle for genuine transformative practice for teacher learning. They identify three implications for leading professional learning as praxis: firstly, it ought to be related to as a process of professional self-formation; secondly, it is intrinsically political, contested, and dependent on context; thirdly, the educational policy context is of great importance. A practice perspective opens up possibilities for teacher leadership and middle leadership, which is leading beyond formal positions and established roles (see also the discussion of middle leading in Chap. 6, this volume). Both forms of leadership build on teachers’ professional learning. Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman (2013) show how professional learning practices shape and are shaped by leading and teaching practices, enabling, and sustaining conditions for each other. They describe how teacher leaders can create conditions for pedagogical development, and how these conditions are informed by their experience of long-term professional learning programmes. The reciprocity between these accomplishments forms a precondition for generative learning and leading capacities; “learning and leading take form in, and are formed by, living the practice in ‘the site of the social’” (Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2013, p. 138). Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves, and Rönnerman (2015) identify four interconnected middle leading practices relevant to collaborative professional learning: managing and facilitating, collaborating, and creating communicative spaces, negotiating the teaching–learning nexus, and relational positioning. They identify positional, philosophical, and practice dimensions of middle leading practices. Data on middle leading (Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, & Rönnerman, 2016a, b) is used to study the significance and multidimensionality of relational trust in professional learning. Relational trust is identified as critical for conducting action research and an overall enabling condition for sustainable change. Middle leaders stand out as critical agents for facilitating a culture of relational trust in its five dimensions, formed interpersonally (empathy, respect, confidence), interactionally (safe spaces for collaboration and democratic dialogue), intersubjectively (with-ness, shared language, activities, and community), intellectually (self-confidence, professional knowledge, and wisdom), and pragmatically (change being practical, relevant, realistic, and achievable).

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Professional Learning Through the Teaching Career A second overarching theme identified in the research reviewed has to do with professional learning through the teaching career. This theme consists of four sub-themes: initial teacher education; mentoring and workplace learning; site-based professional learning and development (including didactics); and higher education. The final subtheme is somewhat different from the other sub-themes in that it focuses specifically on teachers working in higher education, which is not the pathway that most teachers take.

Initial Teacher Education Historically, teacher education programmes were seen as educating a teacher, and then very little further input was required during the teaching career. This idea has been challenged by the concept of a continuum of teacher education, where initial teacher education is seen only as a foundation for continued learning to be a teacher (Dolan, 2017). The reviewed literature identifies that fostering a culture of collaborative professional learning in initial teacher education creates an important base for teachers’ sustainable continuing professional development. Teacher education, however, occurs amidst practice architectures composed of combinations of culturaldiscursive arrangements (like specialist discourses that guide educational work), material-economic arrangements (like resources, curriculum materials, and timetables), and social–political arrangements (like the system and lifeworld relationships between teacher educators and their students, and between the students). These practice architectures enable and constrain students’ practices as they progress through an initial teacher education programme, and also shape the ways they will teach after they graduate from the programme. Of course, initial teacher education programmes are primarily intended only to be a foundation for the student teachers’ future practice, enabling them to learn and grow as human beings, and as professionals, throughout their teaching careers (cf., Hemmings, Kemmis, & Reupert, 2013). In many of the Nordic countries, subject didactics (or didactics more broadly) aims to develop the quality of teacher education by educating teachers to have solid practical subject knowledge and a personal relationship to the educational material and the students (Sjöholm et al., 2011, p. 67). In Central Europe and in the Nordic countries, the meaning and division between “pedagogik” and “didaktik” are different from the Anglophone educational context. Simplified, this division could be interpreted in the way that pedagogics contains theory and knowledge about education, while the didactic knowledge base underpins teaching (Kansanen, 1996). Within the European tradition, didactics and subject didactics have the status of an independent scientific discipline, whereas comparable Anglophone research frequently follows models borrowed from educational psychology (Sjöholm, Kansanen, Hansén, & Kroksmark, 2011, pp. 59–60). Subject didactics within the Nordic countries has been

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strongly influenced by German subject didactics philosophy, primarily the work of Herbart and more recently by Klafki (cf., Kansanen et al., 2011). In English-speaking countries, teacher education curricula frequently involve three different streams of study. The first, educational studies, generally includes overall educational philosophy and theory, sometimes complemented by “foundation studies” in educational psychology, sociology of education, and history of education. In some ways, these are parallel to the teaching of pedagogik in the European traditions. A second area of study, especially in the education of secondary teachers, focuses on teaching “methods” (e.g. mathematics teaching, history teaching, literacy, and literary education). These in some ways parallel the teaching of didaktik in the European traditions. A third area of study, described as “professional experience”, includes practice teaching (practicum) in schools, usually under the supervision of a schoolteacher, but also under the oversight of teacher educators in the university. In the reviewed PEP literature from the field of initial teacher education, many of the studies rest on action research in some form. The ideals and values of democratic action research and action learning may not be easy to fully translate into a teacher education context, where the teacher educators have the role of being not only course leaders, tutors, and facilitators, but also assessors (Jakhelln & Pörn, 2018; cf., Van Swet, Smit, Corvers, & van Dijk, 2009). When facilitating trustful dialogues, where the student teachers’ own questions and experiences are guiding the collaborative exploration of teaching dilemmas, Karlberg-Granlund et al. (2016) argue that the teacher educators need to serve as learners together with the student teachers. As with collaboration between researchers and teachers, the teacher educator–researcher is not the one with all the knowledge. By learning to be reflective and analytical through involvement in action research (cf., Rönnerman, 2012), student teachers can develop an approach and understanding of what it means to be and become a professional and autonomous teacher who makes well-defined choices in everyday life to promote pupils’ learning and well-being. When student teachers engage in action learning and action research, they face similar challenges to experienced teachers who engage in action research, of being both a teacher and a researcher. Through an active shift between these different perspectives, however, the student teacher can learn more about pupils’ learning (Eilertsen, Furu, & Rørnes, 2011; Furu & Kristoffersen, 2016). Bridging the gap between pre-service teachers and experienced teachers through mentoring dialogues can promote a strong practice theory base (Edwards-Groves, 2014; Edwards-Groves & Hoare, 2012). Connections between student teachers and pupils, for instance through online interaction, can also bring consistency between teacher education and professional practice (Aspfors & Valle, 2017). Becoming aware of the distinctions as well as the bridges between theory and practice may be a key to promoting student teachers’ meaningful professional learning (Sjølie, 2014; 2017).

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Mentoring and Workplace Learning Everyday learning in the workplace often overlaps with other conceptualisations of professional learning, and the boundaries between them are sometimes blurred. For instance, much of the professional learning undertaken during action research projects can be characterised as everyday learning in the workplace. Mentoring and other work-based learning of teachers has been understood through a number of theoretical lenses by PEP researchers. This includes the theory of practice architectures as well as the Nordic conceptualisation of the “practical knowledge regime” (PKR). Eilertsen and Jakhelln (2014) argue that “The collective, participatory views of teachers as learners can be traced to the larger framework of Nordic educational traditions and the democratic values they are built on” (p. 14). The practical knowledge regime grounds much of the Scandinavian understanding of learning in the workplace (Eilertsen & Jakhelln, 2014). From a teacher perspective, it involves reflection and associated action related to professional decisions in and on educational practices. These decisions are based on theoretical and practical considerations, as well as value-based ethical justifications (Eilertsen & Jakhelln, 2014, pp. 17–19). Mentoring has been used to support the induction of new teachers, as well as the ongoing development of more experienced teachers. Mentoring of teachers has been investigated in a number of research projects1 using the theory of practice architectures. The concept of mentoring is understood in a range of ways across this literature. In investigating mentoring, the local site-based conditions are important in better understanding mentoring, including how it is characterised, its purposes, and what it involves (Pennanen et al., 2016). In exploring what “good mentoring” is, Pennanen et al. (2016) concluded that it is site-specific. They also found that in different sites mentoring was used to address different types of problems, and therefore involved different actions and different practices. When comparing different approaches to mentoring, Kemmis et al. (2014a) identified three archetypes: mentoring as supervision, mentoring as support, and mentoring as collaborative self-development. Each involved different mentoring practices shaped by different practice architectures. The Peer Group Mentoring (PGM) programme is a professional learning approach that is used throughout Finland to support teacher induction or teacher transition (Kemmis & Heikkinen, 2012). Kemmis and Heikkinen identified PGM as a “hybrid of practices” that includes peer networking, coaching, memory work, reflecting teams, and study circles, as well as practices that are more commonly understood as mentoring (p. 144). They argue that the traditional approach to mentoring (a more experienced mentor supporting a less-experienced mentee) has not been actively taken up in Finland, and the success of the PGM model could be related to the high academic qualifications and level of autonomy of Finnish teachers (p. 170). Langelotz (2017) reports on a teacher continuing professional development project that used a nine-step peer mentoring approach with a group of experienced teachers. 1 See,

for instance, Francisco (2017), Heikkinen (2015), Heikkinen et al. (2018), Kemmis et al. (2014a), Kemmis and Heikkinen (2012), Langelotz (2017), and Pennanen et al. (2016).

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She found that the peer mentoring increased professional and personal development including development of the communicative skills of the teachers involved. In a longitudinal research project, Francisco (2017) found that work-based learning was important in supporting the learning of novice teachers in Australian vocational education. In some sites, mentoring was interrelated with a number of other practices that support learning (PSLs) such as team teaching and collaborative development of resources. These interrelated practices were identified as together forming a more or less elaborate or sturdy trellis of PSLs. In sites where there was a strong trellis of PSLs that was interrelated with mentoring, teacher learning was well supported. PSLs included a range of substantive practices undertaken as part of the work of being a teacher, and that also supported teacher learning. Sjølie, Francisco, and Langelotz (2018) used case studies to identify and illustrate communicative learning spaces that supported teacher learning in the workplace. They found two important components for the development of a communicative learning space: one was sharing stories, and the other involved relational trust which was influenced by, and which also strengthened, teacher solidarity.

Site-Based Professional Learning and Development Schools as sites for professional learning and development are complex and dynamic, and are influenced by interconnected educational practices (Kemmis et al., 2014c). Professional learning is embedded in productive and problematic conditions and traditions, involving both individuals and schools as organisations. As Hardy, Salo, and Rönnerman (2015) note, collective knowledge production is a process of negotiation. It evolves around broadening and deepening perspectives, and understandings of the conditions and the nature of professional practices at hand. Sustainable professional learning practices have to be protected from the colonisation of the administrative and economic demands of systems, in order not to compromise the efforts of intersubjective meaning-making. Site-based professional learning challenges the organisational logics of process and product (developing teaching practices for improving learning outcomes) characteristic of neoliberal regimes of contemporary school development (see Chap. 4, this volume). A case study presented by Kemmis et al. (2014c, pp. 127–155) exemplifies an overall orientation to site-based professional learning. It illuminates its organic complexity and identifies the ambitions and professional practices characteristic of praxis development in a long-term collective professional learning project. Professional learning practices were built on teachers’ needs, and inclusive and collaborative practices were developed. Site-based circumstances formed a platform for transformative learning projects, with inquiry into teaching and learning practices as both means and ends. Shared experiences, knowledge, and expertise, emanating from critical dialogues, resulted in interconnected professional learning practices. Cultivation of a culture of care and collaboration enabled the transformation of practices. It was promoted consciously and deliberately by nurturing an authentic sense

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of collegiality, inclusion, and solidarity. Relational trust and mutual respect were protected and preserved throughout the project. Practices resulting in sustainable change relied on agentic collegial responsibility. All educators were encouraged to initiate and become involved in co-creating the transformation of practices. Critical reflexive dialogues opened up spaces for collaborative learning, in a manner that included sharing power. Classroom practices were de-privatised, by consciously altering the boundaries of teaching practices (organising staff meetings in classrooms) and making them available for observations and collegial discussions, to be seen and spoken about. Wennergren (2014) shows how de-privatisation of classroom practices becomes a risk-taking enterprise, requiring courage and professional trust. It awakens personal emotions, which, if handled in an appropriate and constructive manner, provides teachers with professional strength (Furu, 2008). Emotional aspects of teaching practices tend to be neglected and poorly communicated, and their potential for professional learning and growth disregarded (Jakhelln, 2011). Aspfors and Bondas (2013) observe how newly qualified teachers’ positive experiences of being included in the school community depend on their experience of being acknowledged and nurtured via recognition and support from colleagues and school leaders. The concept of “expansive reciprocity” characterises the open and welcoming atmosphere identified as crucial for sustainable collaboration. Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman (2013) illuminate how participation in a longterm professional learning programme empowered teachers to facilitate and lead parallel professional learning practices with their colleagues. When favourable external conditions (space, design, pace, and time) coincided with internal conditions (desire and readiness for professional learning) and were supported by collaborative and democratic working methods, teachers embraced a strong praxis orientation to professional learning. A mandate for facilitating colleagues’ professional learning relied on a culture of relational trust and mutual respect (Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, & Rönnerman, 2016a, b). Deliberate and critical discussions on the nature of professional actions enable educators to make meaning of their professional practices. Forsman et al. (2014) focused on the facilitating task and role of researchers in establishing sustainable arenas for communication, shared reflection, and consciousness raising. Aspfors et al. (2015) paid attention to the complex, continuous, and multifaceted role of researcher-as-negotiator of different arrangements for collaborative professional learning. Enhancement of self-reflective and critical inquiry is substantiated by first-hand experiential evidence on the practices to be understood and developed, such as school leaders’ observations of classroom practice. Within the educational tradition of the Nordic countries, research circles represent a social practice of shared responsibility for collaborative professional learning on site, grounded in distributed leadership, with emphasis on relational trust. As Rönnerman and Olin (2014) noted, research circles are communicative and shared spaces for participating, as well as gaining and developing knowledge on being and becoming a teacher. They form an arena and support structure for site-based professional learning. Research circles focus on the challenges and development issues regarding teachers’ day-to-day work and engage researchers as critical discussants

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(p. 97). Teachers involved in research circles deepen their understanding of the professional issues addressed on a day-to-day basis and are supported in “growing as human beings, citizens and co-workers” (p. 110). The PEP studies on professional learning associated with subject teaching are not always framed in the didactics research area, but they deal with what in Europe would be regarded as didactic topics, such as inclusive multicultural classroom practices, literacy education practices (including multimodality, digital literacies, and technology practices), and mathematics teaching (Wilkinson et al., 2013; EdwardsGroves & Hardy, 2013, 2012; Grootenboer & Edwards-Groves, 2013). Professional learning related to didactics interconnects three practices: teachers’ professional learning, teaching, and student learning. Most of the studies illuminate professional learning through different forms of site-based collaboration, from individual teacher– researcher collaboration, collaborative teacher dialogues, to whole-school professional learning projects. They explore how teachers’ professional learning influences their teaching, student learning, and classroom practices.

Higher Education The work done in the PEP network in relation to professional learning in higher education has two different strands. One focuses on academics supporting the continuing professional learning of educators (teachers, middle leaders, principals), and the other on the professional learning of academics themselves. In the Nordic countries and in English-speaking countries like Australia, academics have a history of working with schools to facilitate and support the ongoing professional learning of educators. In many cases, this involves supporting groups of teachers undertaking action research projects, research circles, or peer mentoring. In all cases, it involves collaboration between teachers and researchers. Many of those studies have already been mentioned in previous sections. The PEP literature on the professional learning of academics focuses on the learning as part of collegial and collaborative groups of academics “carving out the time and space to engage in ‘work worth doing’” (Smith, Salo, & Grootenboer, 2010, p. 58) and reflecting on this work as part of their own learning. In collegial groups of academics, sometimes formulated as “Teacher Talk” groups (Hardy, 2010a; b), academics challenge and support each other in their ongoing development. Mahon (2014) more explicitly addresses professional learning as part of this engagement. She notes that a “common theme in the literature pertaining to critical pedagogical praxis in higher education is the key role that a strong learning community plays in fostering praxis” (2014, p. 56). She also identifies trust as an important factor related to the professional learning of academics (2014, p. 218). Mahon notes “nurturing critical pedagogical praxis in terms of provoking praxis puts an emphasis on critical dialogue as a core part of the professional learning of academics” (2014, p. 260).

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Mahon, Heikkinen, and Huttunen (2018) also highlight the value of academics undertaking “rigorous critical dialogue and reflexive conversations” (2018, p. 10) in an environment of trust as being important for ongoing professional learning. Aspfors et al. (2015) create a link between the two strands identified earlier of academics supporting teacher professional learning and the professional learning of academics. They report on a Teacher Talk project where the focus is on different projects with educators in Finland. Using the theory of practice architectures as a conceptual framework, they explore the professional learning of educators across five separate case studies that the authors were involved with. Through regular meetings and discussions, they identified the important role of the researcher as a negotiator within their work supporting the professional learning of educators in schools. They highlight factors commonly encountered in these projects and identify important arrangements that led to success. This included voluntary participation of those involved (also identified by Tyrén, 2017), commitment from school leaders, educator responsibility for decision-making, including issues around supporting educators to take this responsibility (also identified by Forssten Seiser, 2017), and resourcing, especially for teacher time release. Work by Olin, Karlberg-Granlund and Furu (2016) further identifies trust between all involved as important for professional learning. Aspfors et al. (2015) also highlighted collegial reflection and collaborative dialogue throughout the Teacher Talk project as supportive of professional learning for academics. Similarly, Olin, Karlberg-Granlund, and Furu (2016) note that through collegial consideration of their own practices they were able to undertake valuable professional learning.

Conclusion: A Conceptualisation of Professional Learning We return to the question “How, in different national contexts, is good professional development (praxis development) being understood and experienced by teachers?” When analysing the literature on professional development and learning produced in the PEP network, we note that the main focus is on professional learning rather than professional development. This explicates a dynamic and organic understanding of educational practices, an understanding with a focus on and interest in “relatings”. Professional learning that is worthwhile for educators, students, and society as a whole emerges when teachers have agency to act and when this action takes into account teachers’ professional experience, competencies, values, and ethics. This is enabled and constrained by the resources and other arrangements available at the educational sites. Consequently, PEP research has focused on studying arrangements for professional learning based on an agentic view of the participants, such as action research, research circles, and mentoring. Based on the issues explored in this chapter, we can draw some conclusions about the aims of purposive and sustainable professional learning. One aim is to raise consciousness of, and reinforce, social justice as both means and ends for educational development and change. Hence, professional learning aims at praxis

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development, by exploring, articulating, and strengthening professional practices by the use of interaction, collegial dialogues, collaboration, and systematic collective inquiry as means, always with respect to the traditions and practices characteristic to the educational site at hand. It also aims at developing and maintaining morally committed and tradition-informed professional values with broad societal and democratic implications. Traditions and educational practices oriented towards praxis development emphasise collective endeavours for enabling human growth. Throughout the PEP research, the importance of strengthening trust between participants involved in professional learning for praxis development becomes obvious. We identify “relational trust” as an important evolving concept (Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer & Rönnerman, 2016a, b; Salo & Sandén, 2016). The research review has inspired us to elaborate a framework for theorising professional learning. This relates to the weaknesses of broader professional learning literature being fragmented and incoherent regarding the use of concepts and theoretical frameworks. The theory of practice architectures and Nordic traditions of bildung enable us to identify and elaborate on practices and prerequisites for sustainable professional learning. Figure 7.1 shows a diagrammatic representation of professional learning for praxis development. The outer layer of the diagram recognises that all practices are prefigured by the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and the social–political arrangements that are present or brought into a site. These arrangements prefigure, but do not predetermine, the sayings, doings, and relatings of the practices enacted in the site. The next layer recognises the agency of the educator. Professional learning is an integrative process of simultaneously being a teacher and becoming a teacher, building on the versatile understanding of human growth, characteristic of the Nordic educational tradition. Becoming more competent or knowledgeable is not an “external” activity taking place at a certain educational site. It is itself an activity of human growth, captured and expressed in the concept and tradition of bildung. It interacts with histories and traditions (locally, nationally, and globally) and coincides with the cultural, social, and political features of the professional practice in question. It builds on belief and confidence in, recognition of, and reliance on, human beings being able to realise human potential in a social and sustainable manner. In the PEP research, this multidimensional learning process, through participation that transforms the participant, has been described as “being stirred into” a practice (Kemmis et al., 2017). In framing teachers being and becoming, knowing, and acting—professional learning—with the theory of practice architectures, the emphasis has been on identifying, understanding, and explaining how the practices and the arrangements of professional learning function and interact. By talking with and listening to teachers, sayings have opened up for the aims and values underpinning professional learning, such as inclusion in multicultural environments or enhancing one’s own agency together with colleagues. Sayings interconnect with specific cultural-discursive arrangements both at those sites, but also more broadly. We have identified pivotal doings, such as dialogue, participation, and collaboration for engagement, formed by and forming the material-economic arrangements of the educational practices

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Fig. 7.1 Professional learning for praxis development

we have been engaged in. PEP research has highlighted the crucial role of relatings and the social–political arrangements for professional learning, particularly the importance of trust. Through sharing teachers’ lived experiences and emphasising every participant’s contribution in professional learning, this body of research shows how teachers’ ownership and agency, substantiated by mutual recognition, care, feelings, emotions, values, ethics, and moral aspects, form and are formed by teachers’ professional practices for professional learning. Being and becoming are interrelated with knowing and acting in educational practices. We focus on teachers’ professional agency in and for professional learning, as formulated in the Scandinavian “practical knowledge regime” (PKR). PKR anchors professional learning in an intellectual trust of teachers’ autonomy and professional ability to theorise and act systematically in their everyday professional practices and thereby learn in and through them. Educator action forms the centre of the diagram and is influenced by each of the other layers. “Knowing how to go on” (Wittgenstein, 2009) in a professional and sustainable manner builds on complex, implicit, and explicit interactions between the enactment

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of practice- and theory-based reflections, as well as well-grounded ethical justifications considering the educational practice at hand. In PEP research, the aspect of “distancing oneself from the practice” is continuously emphasised, by the means of self-reflection, collaborative inquiry, research/documentation, and participating in communicative spaces. With reference to the body of research reviewed, professional learning is manifested in three complementary manners: as being stirred into, as knowing how to go on in, and as distancing oneself reflectively from the professional practice at hand. Professional learning is anchored in the mutuality of being and becoming a teacher whose agency of knowing and acting is essential for the transformation of educators, educational practices, and education as a whole. To conclude, good professional learning, aimed at praxis development and furthered by various collaborative, reflective, and dialogical professional actions, strengthens educators’ agency in relating to and acting on not only professional issues in schools and classrooms, but also matters in the local community and society at large. Educational sites are integrated into and begin to function as nodes for societal development and change, with emphasis on democratic, equal, and socially just practices for human development in its multiple forms. Good professional learning develops educators’ capabilities of becoming and acting as activists for creating a world worth living in.

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Chapter 8

Critical Praxis for Critical Times Kirsten Petrie, Stephen Kemmis, and Christine Edwards-Groves

Abstract This final chapter recalls the view of education that animates this volume: education to help people live well in a world worth living in. The authors outline some of the challenging historical, cultural, economic, environmental, social, and political conditions of our contemporary times. These are also challenges for education, which must be renewed to confront the challenges of our time. The authors use the theory of education outlined at the beginning of the chapter as a critical framework for finding ways to resist the bureaucratising and deprofessionalising tendencies of education systems locally, nationally, and globally, and to restore hope for forms of contemporary educational practice that can help people to live well in worlds worth living in—and for the practice architectures (conditions of possibility) that make critical educational praxis possible. The authors show that the work of the Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis (PEP) international research network in the years 2008–2018 has included a variety of kinds of research that have contributed to the realisation of educational praxis—research by educators, research with educators, and research for educators. The chapter concludes by encouraging resilience and resistance in the face of an intensely pressurised system of education dominated by performativity, management, and surveillance in our neoliberal times, and resources for a journey of hope in the task of realising education in the form of educational practices that in fact help children, young people, and adults to live well in a world worth living in.

K. Petrie (B) The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] S. Kemmis · C. Edwards-Groves Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Mahon et al. (eds.), Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis in Critical Times, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5_8

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Education for Living Well in a World Worth Living In In the opening of this book, the authors drew on a definition of education first presented by Kemmis et al. (2014) in Changing Practices, Changing Education. Given the centrality of this notion to how we understand education, it is worth quoting again: In our view, education, properly speaking, is the process by which children, young people and adults are initiated into forms of understanding, modes of action, and ways of relating to one another and the world, that foster (respectively) individual and collective self-expression, individual and collective self-development and individual and collective self-determination, and that are, in these senses, oriented towards the good for each person and the good for humankind. (p. 26).

Since 2014, this definition has been refined and extended and is depicted diagrammatically in Fig. 8.1, in a form that incorporates the theory of practice architectures, which has informed much of the research of the Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis (PEP) research network from 2008 to 2018. Drawing on the work of Kemmis (2018, p. 248), Kemmis and Edwards-Groves (2018, pp. 17–18) state: First, [education] promotes and enhances individual and collective self-expression, and thus it works to secure a culture based on reason.1 Second, education promotes and enhances individual and collective self-development, and thus it works to secure a productive and sustainable economy and environment. And third, education promotes and enhances individual and collective self-determination, and thus it works to secure a just and democratic society. These, it seems to me, are three crucial elements of the good for humankind, and ‘a world worth living in’.

This view of education might be thought of simply as an aspiration—a high-flown ideal. But the authors in this volume do not regard it so. For us, this view provides a critical frame against which to interrogate current practices and institutions now said to be “educational”. We make the distinction between “education” and “schooling” (as in the phrase, “education in an era of schooling”, the title of the volume edited by Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, and Wilkinson, 2018a, b) in order to test whether instances of schooling actually do have this educational character. When we use this view of education as a critical lens, much of what is said to be “educational” in fact falls short. For example, while a school or university may initiate students into forms of understanding, it may nevertheless fall short of the intention to foster individual and collective self-expression to secure a culture based on reason. Furthermore, the dominance of focus on formal systems education is often dislocated from being educated (from learning) in everyday circumstances in all facets of our everyday life; for example, in community education programs (e.g. growing vegetables, painting, or 1 By “reason” here, we do not mean a narrow rationalistic view of knowledge or reasoning, but also

the reason of the heart. As the French Philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) put it (in his Pensées [Meditations], 1670/1958, §277), “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know”. On this view, we should include reasonableness and reason-giving as part of what is meant by “a culture based on reason”.

Fig. 8.1 Theory of education incorporating the theory of practice architectures. (Adapted from Kemmis, 2013, p. 41 with permission from Stephen Kemmis and the Finnish Education Research Association)

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amateur ornithology), or being coached sports (e.g. football, or hockey, or wheelchair basketball). This view of education, like the European concept of bildung discussed in Chaps. 1, 2 and 5 in this volume, maintains that education has a double purpose: the formation of persons and the formation of societies. We capture this double purpose of education in the slogan of “helping people to live well in a world worth living in”. On this view, education aims for the good for each person and the good for humankind or, we might now say, the good for the community of life on Earth. Much of what passes as education today does not proceed in ways that respect this double purpose, and many schools (at every level of education) remain deaf or blind to the good for humankind, or the good for the community of life on Earth. Because “the good for each person” and “the good for humankind” are always contested concepts (people take different views of what constitutes these goods), many people, including in schools, simply give up on pursuing them. In our view, giving substance and form to these goods is a professional responsibility for all educators, and they must give these notions substance and form on the basis of deliberating with their peers and others in their communities and societies, including learners, about how to bring these goods to life in everyday educational practice.

The World We Live in is in Danger of Becoming a World not Being Worth Living In At this moment in human history, the Earth is under immense pressure. Since the Industrial Revolution, anthropogenic climate change has produced major transformations. There has been a sharp increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (drought, floods, bushfires, tornadoes, cyclones). Science has shown that the ocean has warmed to such an extent that many marine species struggle to survive; coral bleaching is widespread, for example, but many other ocean species have been unable to find the environmental niches necessary for their survival. In May 2019, the United Nations, Intergovernmental Panel Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), drawing on over 15,000 scientific publications, estimated that around a million species are now endangered, even as human beings remain ignorant about the intricate ecological interdependencies among hundreds of thousands of these species. Human societies are also under immense pressure. Population growth imposes a huge burden on the planet’s capacity for food production, and agriculture needs to be transformed to be sustainable. Climate change is already producing climate refugees moving from low-lying areas, on islands and coastlines, increasingly prone to flooding. Political violence is similarly producing waves of refugees, for example, moving across the Mediterranean Sea from war-torn states in Africa to Europe. These movements of refugees also sometimes exacerbate confrontations between local cultures and the cultures of successive incomers. In some nation states, not

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only in Europe, cultural tensions within increasingly multicultural populations have fostered right-wing activism and increased the popularity of political parties with nativist, anti-immigrant platforms. In many nation states, deep post-colonial tensions divide Indigenous peoples and now-long-settled coloniser populations. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples continues to be an aspiration for many Indigenous peoples; and yet it is not enshrined in state law and everyday social and political practice in those states. As a result, Indigenous peoples across the world struggle to keep their languages and cultures alive and in many instances continue to endure the trauma of practices that perpetuate inequities. Industrial economies are slowly changing, but unrealistic ideas about limitless economic growth persist. New technologies are emerging at unprecedented rates, but most of the world remains in the spell of late capitalism, with divisive economic, social, cultural, and political consequences. Green shoots of new forms of economic activity and relations emerge here and there (like micro-businesses in the Indian subcontinent, for example, or local community barter systems in some countries), but the dominant form of the late capitalist, transnational economy continues its hegemony and sustains and deepens the consequent inequalities. The political life of many states around the world has also been increasingly unruly. Forced migration due to civil unrest or other geopolitical forces has created conditions that are difficult for people to live in, let alone live well in. Under such circumstances, the possibility of education is being eroded under the weight of deeply entrenched views and rusted-on practices that counter the good. Even away from nations where tyrants and warlords struggle to achieve dominance, in their own interests and the interests of their followers, the internal civic life of many leading Western democracies has become increasingly uncivil. In many places, political debate is increasingly polarised. Followers of different political parties seem increasingly unwilling to countenance the possibility that, whichever party is in power, it will govern in the interests of the whole nation. In this context, we are reminded of the words of the Jesuit theologian James Courtney Murray (1960, p. 14, quoted by Richard Bernstein, 1992, p. 339): Barbarism … threatens when [people] cease to talk together according to reasonable laws. There are laws of argument, the observance of which is imperative if discourse is to be civilised. Argument ceases to be civil when it is dominated by passion and prejudice; when its vocabulary becomes solipsist, premised on the theory that my insight is mine alone and cannot be shared; when dialogue gives way to a series of monologues; when the parties to the conversation cease to listen to one another, or hear only what they want to hear, or see the other’s argument only through the screen of their own categories …. When things like this happen, [people] cannot be locked together in argument. Conversation become merely quarrelsome or querulous. Civility dies with the death of dialogue.

We have reached this state—the death of dialogue—and political life in many places is now conducted uncivilly. In addition to the problem of incivility, the world faces difficulties in valuing human life and the community of life on the planet in other-than-economic terms.

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As we saw in Chap. 3 (this volume), in the discussion of neoliberalism and neoliberalisation, the imperatives of national and international administrative and economic systems increasingly colonise the lifeworlds of human communities, obscuring, where they do not obliterate, values other than economic value (on the colonisation of lifeworlds by the imperatives of systems, see Habermas, 1984, 1987). It turns out that administrative and economic systems are unable to value human life (though some economists attempt to put an economic value on a human life), let alone recognise and respect the values that justify the pursuit of cultures based on reason, productive and sustainable economies and environments, and just and democratic societies. We are in a critical space. While these paragraphs were written, an entirely new crisis has erupted to confront humankind: COVID-19. Human lives and forms of life have been savagely transformed; the crises listed above have all been abruptly and massively reframed by the new historical conditions imposed by this pandemic. These challenges, their consequences, and the opportunities that emerge alongside them will be taken up in new research and future writing, as we learn from this to-be-lived experience.

An Education Problem So the world faces immense and testing ecological, cultural, economic, technological, social, and political challenges. Given the problems we face, it seems that we cannot yet say that we live in a world that is, in all respects, “a world worth living in”. These problems are not only problems of ecology, culture, economics, technology, society, or politics, they are also problems of—and for—education. And we must recognise the irony that some of these problems have been produced by education, like the economics education that bred the sophisticated financial instruments whose collapse led to the 2007–2009 Global Financial Crisis of 2008, or the chemical and agricultural education that led to the widespread use of ecologically dangerous herbicides and pesticides that have degraded underground ecologies in soils in and near many farms in Europe, Australia, and the USA. Even as our personal and interpersonal reliance on a technologised virtual world takes hold, we nevertheless valorise the continual innovation made possible by the digital revolution; this, we also know, has had an effect on our treatment of each other, in such untoward activities as cyberbullying, for example, and also manifest in cybercrime or virtual warfare. Education made such consequences possible. The critical task we must tackle today is to re-articulate the problems we face to provide at least the faint outlines of a roadmap that might lead us out of the problems we have now, in part produced by our current forms of education, and promise to lead us towards a better world—a world really worth living in. This is an urgent, critical task—a task of overcoming irrationality and unreasonableness in our knowledges, practices, and cultures; destruction and unsustainability in our knowledges, practices, economies, and environments; and unjust and antidemocratic conditions in our knowledges, practices, and political life.

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In his (1852) Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx remarked that [People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language. Thus, Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789–1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793–95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into [her/his] mother tongue, but [s/he] assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses [him/herself] freely in it only when [s/he] moves in it without recalling the old and when [s/he] forgets [her/his] native tongue. (pp. 15–16).

At this critical juncture in our world, and in education for our world, we must recognise that “the tradition of all dead generations” in education “weighs like a nightmare” on our brains. And we, too, must beware of conjuring up figures of thought from past traditions that might undermine our aspirations for new forms of education for our new, and menacingly critical, times. In our turn, we need to develop and learn new practices of education, justified in new languages, manifested in changed forms of educational work, and conducted in new kinds of relationships of solidarity and power. At this historic moment, however, we as educators are hard pressed to form a clear image of what a culture based on reason might look like for upcoming generations, including having an idea about all the kinds of knowledge and practices needed to attain and sustain such a culture. We have a similarly challenging time imagining what a productive and sustainable economy and environment might look like, and all the kinds of knowledges and practices needed to attain and sustain them. And we have a hard time arriving at an answer about the kinds of knowledges and practices needed to attain and sustain a just and democratic political life for our nations. Moreover, in each case—culture, economy, environment, politics—there is contestation about the knowledges and practices most needed for a sustainable future. On the basis of our own practical deliberation and communicative action with colleagues and communities, it thus falls to each of us educators to make professional judgements about what knowledges and practices are most needed for our own educational sites and our current historical circumstances and situations. Without a clearer idea of the substantive content of knowledge and practices needed for 2030 or 2050, it is difficult to know what curricula ought to include at every level of schooling from early childhood education through to post-secondary higher education and vocational education, as well as for adult and community education. That, nevertheless, is the challenge. In addition, we also need to consider that education occurs across multiple sites (on sports fields, prisons, as “health” promotion at local and national levels, in churches, in homes and community settings, and

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in different forms for many Indigenous communities, let alone the lifestyle “business” model of life coaching/education) and that our formal educational institutions are not solely responsible for curricula that will foster education for living well in a world worth living in. That said, for now, our immediate focus is on the challenges of the formal education settings. The challenge for educators today is not the preservation of the existing, largely industrial, curricula of knowledges at every level and in every species of formal education. It is the challenge of initiating rising generations of children, young people, and adults into the different forms of knowledge and practice needed for a sustainable world. These are not small challenges. Yet the spectre of an unsustainable world sometime after 2030, or perhaps 2050, shows that there is no alternative. Just as “there is no Planet B”, there is no alternative for educators than to prepare children, young people, and adults for a sustainable world—to initiate them into the knowledges and practices that will secure a sustainable world through cultures based on reason, productive and sustainable economies and environments, and just and democratic societies. And there is some urgency: the world needs all of that by 2030, or, at worst, 2050. Yep: we will have to build this plane while we are in the air. As the world responds, locally, nationally, and globally to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently building such a plane. We are learning that massive transformations are needed in health systems, the global economy, cultures, environments, societies, and polities—and thus is an education problem. We might take some comfort from the knowledge that this critical challenge turns out to be the same critical challenge that educators everywhere, for millennia, have confronted: in our own times and in our own local sites, the challenge is to develop the kinds and content of educational experiences that form persons so they can live well in the cultures, economies, and environments, and polities of their societies, and to form those cultures, economies, and environments, and polities so that, together, they constitute a world worth living in. This task takes one form for an early childhood educator, another for a professor of chemical engineering in a university, another for a high school English teacher, another for an IT teacher in vocational education and training, and yet another for an educator working outside formal education settings. Each must work with their current curricula, modes of pedagogy, and ways of doing assessment, and either abandon them to produce new ones, or transform their existing ones so they are more appropriate when judged against the critical framework presented in the view of education with which we began this chapter. Setting aside the totality of education everywhere and for all, we can begin with smaller steps—locally and immediately. Transforming curricula, pedagogies, and ways of doing assessment can thus be, for every educator, a journey of hope. Our critical times may breed uncertainty, anxiety, and even despair, especially among students and other learners, but the tasks of educational transformation needed for these critical times are tasks of building a new future for humankind and the community of life on Earth. Imbued with the spirit of building a new future, transforming education to produce transformative education will be a noble, and perhaps even a joyful task, especially when done “in the company of others” (Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2006, p. 6), including friends, colleagues,

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and communities in collective site-based education development—the development of education for a better world locally as well as globally. In this way, all educators can, in their own ways, become educators for sustainability (not only in terms of the environment, but also in terms of culture, economies, and social and political life), developing curricula, pedagogies, and ways of doing assessment as interdependent practices of education for sustainability in their own sites and communities, in their own fields, among the background of their own and their communities’ historical circumstances. Such a view of education champions critical praxis in critical times—for living well in a world worth living in on all fronts: ecological, cultural, economic, social, and political.

A Focus on Critical Educational Praxis: Pathways to Hope and Resistance Chapter 2 (this volume) discusses various meanings of “praxis”. In the research of the Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis (PEP) international research network, praxis has been understood as having two lineages, and two meanings in the different contemporary intellectual traditions of the Anglophone world and Europe. On the one hand, in the Anglophone world, following a neo-Aristotelian tradition, praxis is understood as morally committed action. On this view, praxis is action that aims to do what is right, for the good of humankind. On the other hand, in Europe, following a post-Hegelian, Marxian tradition, praxis is frequently understood as “history-making action”. On this view, praxis is manifested in actions that have moral and political consequences (some good and some bad), and everyone who acts is aware that, in their actions, they are forming themselves as well as the world they share with others. PEP researchers have come to recognise both understandings of praxis and to use the term conscious of both meanings. These two readings of “praxis” yield criteria for judging whether a practice was or was not praxis. On the first reading of praxis as “right action”, we can ask whether an action was likely or not likely to be for the good for humankind; on the second reading of praxis as “history-making action”, we can ask whether an action did or did not yield untoward moral or political consequences, and, if so, for whom (or for what). These critical criteria allow us to form a view of critical praxis as practice that aims for the good for each person and the good for humankind and that endeavours to avoid untoward consequences. Considering this from the perspective of the view of education we articulated at the beginning of this chapter, we can then form a view of critical educationalpraxis, by asking whether a practice is for the good for the person, and for the good of humankind, and whether it enables or constrains

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• Individual and collective self-expression, to secure cultures based on reason; • Individual and collective self-development, to secure productive and sustainable economies and environments; and • Individual and collective self-determination, to secure just and democratic societies. We can ask these questions not only about global cultures, global economies and environments, or the global polity; we can also ask them about how practices do or do not promote these things locally, in our own local educational institution, our own local community, and our own society. This view of critical educational praxis invites us to interrogate our practice—before, while, and after we act—to determine whether our practice or its consequences will breach these criteria in some way. Examples of practice in education (or schooling) which breach these criteria include such things as follows: • Forms of teaching that constrain learners’ individual and collective selfexpression, or that impose forms of language (including dominant non-Indigenous languages and forms of expression that ignore those celebrated by Indigenous communities) that do not foster the development of a culture based on reason, for example by imposing ideas or discourses without allowing learners to think through whether these discourses are justified and appropriate in their situation and circumstances (e.g. the unreasoned imposition of “correct” ways of speaking or thinking that learners do not have the opportunity to explore, and to determine whether they are justified by reason); • Forms of teaching that constrain learners’ individual and collective selfdevelopment, or that impose modes of action that do not foster the development of productive and sustainable economies and environments, for example by imposing modes of activity or work on learners that learners themselves do not believe to be justified in terms of their contribution to learners’ self-development, or which they (and/or their caregivers or communities) believe to be unproductive or unsustainable; or • Forms of teaching that constrain learners’ individual and collective selfdetermination, or that impose ways of relating to one another and the world that learners themselves do not believe to be justified in terms of their contribution to their own self-development, or which they believe to be unjust or undemocratic, or that simply reproduce current inequities. A critical view of educational praxis does not stop with critique of educational practices alone; it also aims to help learners to take a critical view of their world, and their knowledge and practices in the world. It aims to “call out” those forms of thinking, acting, and relating that have untoward consequences in terms of individual and collective self-expression in a culture based on reason; individual and collective self-development in productive and sustainable economies and societies; and individual and collective self-determination in just and democratic societies. For example:

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• Critical mathematics educators might help learners understand the maldistribution of wealth in societies or globally; • Critical environmental educators might help learners understand how global warming is affecting local ecosystems; • Critical literacy educators might help learners understand how ideologies are woven into ways of thinking and reading and writing, and into different kinds of texts; and • Critical health educators might support learners to recognise that their own state of well-being is not an individual responsibility, but is determined by a wide range of social determinants that they have little control over. In short, critical educational praxis aims to be both reflexively self-critical and to help learners take a critical view of the world around them, using for example, the critical framework offered by the theory of education presented at the beginning of this chapter. So the journey of critical educational praxis is also a journey of hope. It supports the educator’s critical task of discerning, in conjunction with their learners and communities, what “a world worth living in” might be like in their own particular circumstances, community—and in the substantive subject–matter they teach, at their particular level and sector in education. The notion of critical educational praxis also leads us to site-based education development of the kind described in Chap. 9 of Kemmis et al. (2014) Changing Education, Changing Practices—changing what each educator does, in their own historical circumstances, to make the world a better place.

Collective Action to Advance Critical Praxis in Education Collective action is necessary to advance critical praxis in education, and so there is value in forming relationships with colleagues, learners, and communities that help us all, as educators, to advance educational practice for the good of the people involved and for the good for humankind. As evidenced across this volume, the Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis international research network and its Action Research and Practice Theory research program provides an example of such an endeavour. More particularly, as shown in Chap. 3 (this volume), this research program proceeded through some research studies conducted “from the outside”, for example in the mode of ethnographic observation studies of practice in early childhood education settings, schools, universities, vocational education and training, workplaces, and community settings. Other research studies were conducted “from the inside”, for example in the mode of participatory action research in which the researchers studied their own teaching or research practice; for example, in various “Teacher Talk” projects in which PEP researchers studied the ways their own efforts to attain critical educational praxis were enabled or constrained by the working conditions in their own universities. And still another range of research studies was conducted “in

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between”, for example, studies conducted by university researchers in partnership with teachers in early childhood, school, vocational education and training, and other workplace or community settings. In some cases, long-term studies that began in the mode of ethnographic research gradually evolved into action research partnerships between university researchers and, for example, teachers in schools. One of the features of the research fostered by the PEP network has been that it has aimed to open communicative space between participants in the research. It recognises that different participants enter the research with different needs, interests, and perspectives. The critical participatory action research advocated by various PEP researchers also aims to foster communicative action (Habermas, 1987),which is different from the usual strategic action we take when we do the usual things in pursuit of “getting things done” in “the way we do things around here”. In practical situations in everyday life, when things seem to be becoming strange in some way, people interrupt what they are doing and ask “What is going on here?”. They may then enter the mode of communicative action in which they sincerely strive for (1) intersubjective agreement about words and ideas in the language they use, (2) mutual understanding of one another’s perspectives and points of view (without necessarily reaching agreement), and (3) unforced consensus about what to do under the circumstances. In communicative action, they aim to reach across the horizons of their own perspectives and to encounter the horizons of others (who are equally unique as persons, shaped by their own particular life histories, and experiences). This is a dialogic endeavour that generates a form of active listening, with the aim of collaborative practical deliberation. In opening up these communicative spaces across research settings, PEP researchers have encountered diverse people and perspectives different from their own, for example, in many PEP studies with, for and by refugees in early childhood, school, and university settings. At the same time, in coming together to work collectively during international meetings, PEP researchers have encountered profound cultural and linguistic differences. As a consequence, some PEP researchers have begun to grapple with their own responsibility to advocate as, with, and for Indigenous perspectives and colleagues, and support people from low and low–middleincome countries, if we are to really demonstrate our commitment to education to empower individuals and communities to live well in a world worth living in. This requires we all extend our research aims to recognise and respect not only Indigenous perspectives, but also Indigenous research methodologies, and find ways to support the work of Indigenous researchers and educators work. If we take the authors of this chapter as an example, New Zealand PEP researcher Kirsten Petrie recognises and respects the importance premise of kaupapa; M¯aori methodologies which advocate for a M¯aori worldview in all research by M¯aori, with M¯aori, for M¯aori, in contrast to a more traditional and colonial research agenda focused on or about M¯aori people (be it in education, health, or other fields). Similarly, Australian PEP researchers Stephen Kemmis and Christine Edwards-Groves recognise and respect the values of Yindyamarra central to the Wiradjuri nation in the lands on which most campuses

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of Charles Sturt University (Australia) stand: the values of acting slowly and with deliberation, thoughtfulness, deep respect for others and for one’s own connectedness with all things, and profound care for Wiradjuri culture and language, land, and law. Conducting research with and for “others” entails entering partnerships, in which the research also becomes research by these groups. Being self-conscious and self-aware about the need to proceed in the mode of communicative action— seeking intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding, and unforced agreement about what to do—has helped PEP researchers articulate views about how research can be conducted in the mode of partnership and recognition (the name of a former transnational collaborative research group in PEP2 ). Across the PEP network, another strand of work has aimed more directly at transforming educational practice for the good of the people involved and for the good for humankind—or, as we might now say in the light of our arguments above for education for sustainability in every field and at every level of education, for the good for the community of life on Earth. Many of these studies were conducted in partnership with people in schools and other educational settings. Some focused on fostering critical educational praxis aimed at avoiding or overcoming conditions that deform or disfigure educational practice so it produces untoward consequences, culturally, economically, environmentally, or politically. In general, people involved in these studies were principally motivated by a commitment to improve or develop their educational practice—or, as argued in Chap. 5 (this volume), their pedagogical practice. In much the same way, by working as a collective, members of PEP engaged in the Action Research and Practice Theory research program have aimed at elucidating the nature of practice itself—as well as the nature of praxis and critical educational praxis. This strand of work yielded, for example, the theory of practice architectures and theoretical clarifications of the notions of “pedagogy”, “education”, and “praxis” as they are understood in different intellectual traditions. The PEP network, and the diverse range of research studies it has fostered, has demonstrated (1) that teachers can be extremely effective researchers into their own practice, (2) that university researchers can form effective research partnerships with teachers in other settings to transform educational and pedagogical practices for the good, and (3) that incisive research into the nature of practice can inform and educate teachers about what their practices are composed of, how their practices are enabled and constrained by practice architectures, and how to transform their existing educational and pedagogical practices, and the practice architectures that support them, for the good. Through these different kinds of research and partnerships, the PEP network has also demonstrated a deep commitment to the notions of teachers as “extended professionals” (see Chap. 6, this volume) and as “activist professionals” (as described by Sachs, 2000, 2003; Groundwater-Smith & Sachs, 2002).

2 See for example; Edwards-Groves, C., Olin, A., & Karlberg-Granlund, G. (Eds) (2018). Partnership

and Recognition in Action Research: Pedagogy and practice theory. London, UK: Routledge.

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All of this shows us that teachers can and do transform education through sitebased education development and that they need not do it alone. Forming collaborative partnerships with other teachers, and with university researchers (for example), can help them in the struggle to make education today more educational (and less non- or anti-educational), and to develop educational practices that will, indeed, assist learners to live well in a world worth living in.

The Enduring Pursuit of Praxis: Critical Research for Sustaining Strong Educational Futures Across this book, the authors have aimed to contribute to the contemporary literature of education and to recover deeper understandings, and an enriched practice, of “education” in an era of schooling. To take just a few examples, the literature the authors had in mind includes such works as Gert Biesta’s (2005) critique of the language of learning in recent educational writing and policy, his (2013) notion of the “learnification” of education, and Nicole Mockler and Susan GroundwaterSmith’s (2018) critique of the language of improvement and reform in education. Overall, in this volume, the authors have aimed to clarify and re-articulate educational praxis as a key notion for education in contemporary times. They used the notion of praxis as a critical concept against which to interrogate contemporary experiences of education (in relation to teaching and student learning, leading, professional learning, and research and reflection) in a variety of educational settings across our different countries. Centrally in Chap. 4, but also in other chapters, PEP researchers have responded with a forceful critique of the pervasive influence of neoliberal regimes of educational evaluation, research, assessment, management, surveillance, and accountability being imposed on education systems internationally. The critique of neoliberalism presented in this volume is not based on “hidden” assumptions, presuppositions, or values; the aim of producing the critique was an explicit point of departure for the transnational collaborative research endeavours of researchers in the PEP network. As this volume demonstrates, producing this critique has also allowed PEP researchers more clearly to understand how the conditions that have hobbled and constrained educational practice in recent decades can be resisted, opposed, and overcome. And yet, within the everyday lifeworlds of educational practice, the aspiration to and achievement of education persist. Many PEP research studies show that educators have resiliently resisted the blandishments of schooling to sustain the practice of education, even under conditions designed to favour mere schooling—the production of “learning outcomes” measured by state and international education authorities, and the production of domesticated “learners” suited to the needs of contemporary administrative and economic systems in the guises of the “docile citizen” and “workready worker”. The critique presented in this volume has also articulated enhanced

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and enriched understandings of how educational practice is shaped in very different ways by the different kinds of practice architectures that enable and constrain education in different sites, in different sectors of education, and in different countries and internationally. Our enduring pursuit of praxis is part of a conversation of traditions underpinned by critical research focused on sustaining strong educational futures for all learners in all communities. This is a task that requires the collective efforts of all education researchers whose commitment to critical educational praxis binds them in their endeavours and underpins their practices, even when arrangements beyond their control feel overwhelming.

Conclusion The research conducted across the PEP network, 2008 to 2018, has shown that educational practice is at risk of being diminished in the contemporary era of schooling—as schooling is understood by neoliberal policy-makers and administrators, if not by many of the teachers, leaders, students, and communities we worked with in our research studies, at the local level. At the same time, however, there are resources of hope: teachers are indeed resisting and opposing the bureaucratisation and deprofessionalisation of their work, and they are continuing to practise education despite some of the demoralising conditions imposed on them. Teachers nevertheless continue—sometimes covertly—to practise as educators, following their deep values and commitments to educate students, despite the increasingly domesticating conditions imposed upon teachers, students, and school leaders by education systems. After a summer of devastating bushfires in Australia, 2019–2020, where the rain has come, green shoots are once again appearing; where rain has fallen on the scorched ground, it has already begun to germinate seeds hidden in the seed bank in the soil beneath. It is an apt metaphor for considering a forward-looking education: where teachers and leaders and professional learning leaders create new conditions of possibility (practice architectures) for educational practice, educational practice can and does thrive anew—as many examples in the research reported in this volume show. While clearly impelled by the tensions and contradictions between education and schooling, and the ways they erupt into educational practice, policy, and administration, the researchers in the network also maintain a profound hope that education (and other aspects of contemporary life) can avoid or at least minimise the extent to which the imperatives of neoliberal economic and administrative systems deface and disfigure educational practice. The authors in this volume have sought ways to understand and enact educational practice in forms that maintain the commitment of educators, across the different countries in the network, to helping children, young people, and adults to live well in a world worth living in. This is a profound, revitalising, and renewing lifeworld commitment to education and to the lifeworlds in which the practice of education is conducted.

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It is our hope that this volume shows ways to support teachers, through leadership and professional learning, how better to nurture and sustain that lifeworld commitment. And we hope that it also demonstrates the potency and power of different forms of educational research, reflection, and evaluation to nurture educational practice that will, in our challenging times, continue the pursuit of the good for each person, the good for humankind, and the good for the community of life of Earth.

References Bernstein, R. J. (1992). The new constellation: The ethical-political horizons of modernity/postmodernity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Biesta, G. (2005). Against learning. Reclaiming a language for education in an age of learning. Nordisk Pedagogik, 25, 54–66. Biesta, G. (2013). Giving teaching back to education: Responding to the disappearance of the teacher. Phenomenology and Practice, 6(2), 35–49. Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Wilkinson, J. (Eds.). (2018). Education in an era of schooling: Critical perspectives of educational practice and action research. A festschrift for Stephen Kemmis. Singapore: Springer. Edwards-Groves, C., Olin, A., & Karlberg-Granlund, G. (Eds.). (2018). Partnership and recognition in action research: Pedagogy and practice theory. London, UK: Routledge. Groundwater-Smith, S., & Mockler, N. (2006). Research that counts: Practitioner research and the academy. Review of Australian Research in Education [Special issue of the Australian Educational Researcher, 6, 105–118. Groundwater-Smith, S., & Sachs, J. (2002). The activist professional and the reinstatement of trust. Cambridge Journal of Education, 32(3), 341–358. Habermas, J. (1984). Theory of communicative action, volume I: Reason and the rationalization of society (trans. T. McCarthy). Boston: Beacon. Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of communicative action, volume II: Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason (trans. Thomas McCarthy). Boston: Beacon Kemmis, S. (2018). Life in practices: Challenges for education and educational research. In C. Edwards-Groves, P. Grootenboer, & J. Wilkinson (Eds.), Education in an era of schooling: Critical perspectives of educational practice and action research. A festschrift for Stephen Kemmis (pp. 239–254). Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2018). Understanding education: History, politics, practice. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer. Marx, K. (1852). The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, trans. S.K. Padover from the German end of 1869. Chapter 1: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01. htm. Mockler, N., & Groundwater-Smith, S. (2018). Questioning the language of improvement and reform in education: Reclaiming meaning. Oxon: Routledge. Murray, J. C. (1960). We hold these truths. New York: Sheed and Ward. Sachs, J. (2000). The activist professional. Journal of Educational Change, 1, 77–94. Sachs, J. (2003). The activist teaching profession. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. United Nations, Intergovernmental Panel Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). (2019). IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, (May, 2019). https://web.archive.org/web/20190627065419/https://www.ipbes.net/.

Name Index

A Adlong, W., 80 Adoniou, M., 80 Ahlberg, A., 21, 23, 26, 30, 71, 120, 148 Ainscow, M., 127 Alasuutari, H., 47 Aldridge, D., 42, 58 Anstey, M., 50, 89 Apple, M., 17, 32 Arendt, 16 Aristotle, 18 Aspfors, J., 47, 52, 54, 55, 66, 74, 75, 150, 153, 155 Ax, J., 24, 27, 29, 69, 73, 88, 145

B Ball, S. J., 17, 69 Bernstein, R. J., 19, 31, 167 Biesta, G., 34, 42, 58, 176 Blue, L., 79 Bolam, R., 9, 143, 144 Bondas, T., 153 Bourdieu, P., 118 Boyle, T., 53, 99, 121–123, 125, 134 Braa, D., 20 Bradley, M., 7 Brennan Kemmis, R., 17, 21, 23, 27, 29, 74, 75, 99, 101 Breunig, M., 20 Brezinka, W., 8, 9 Bristol, L., 1, 4, 6, 8, 22–24, 27, 29, 42, 45, 48, 49, 52, 53, 55, 56, 70–72, 75, 91– 93, 99, 100, 102, 106–108, 112, 118– 126, 129–131, 134–136, 145, 147, 164, 173 Brown, L., 70, 71, 75, 121, 123, 124, 126

Brunner, C., 132, 133, 135 Bull, G., 50, 89 Burns, J., 121

C Cahill, C., 7 Callero, P., 20 Carr, W., 20, 26, 31, 40, 41, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 53, 145 Champlin, J., 48 Choy, S., 97–99, 101 Christensen, T., 67 Cieszkowski, 19 Clarke, D., 145 Connell, R., 17 Conrad, D., 75

D Davidson, C., 46, 51, 90, 104, 105 Day, C., 129 De Four-Babb, J., 75 de Jong, F., 50 Dewey, 19, 44, 88, 91 Dolan, R., 149 Donche, V., 143 Dunne, J., 30, 31 Dunwoodie, K., 45

E Edwards-Groves, C., 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 16, 17, 21, 23, 26–31, 41, 42, 45, 46, 48–53, 55, 66, 79, 89–93, 96, 99–102, 104–110, 112, 118–133, 142, 144, 146, 148, 150, 153, 154, 164, 174, 175

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180 Edwards-Groves, C. B., 21, 27 Edwards-Groves, C. J., 51, 53, 55, 56 Eilerstsen, T. V., 151 Elte, R., 73 Esnard, T., 70, 71, 121, 123, 124, 126 Exley, B., 43

F Feldman, M. S., 22 Filippakou, O., 42, 58 Fine, M., 7 Forrester, G., 69 Forsman, L., 23–25, 29, 47, 50–52, 54, 55, 142, 147, 153 Forssten Seiser, A., 55, 121, 123, 125 Francisco, S., 4, 45, 50, 77, 80, 151, 152 Fransson, G., 66, 74, 75, 143–147, 151, 152 Fraser, N., 26, 41 Freebody, P., 104 Freire, P., 6, 41, 42, 58 Fullan, M., 127 Furu, E. M., 18, 23, 31, 45, 52, 144, 145, 150, 153, 155 Fyn, D., 49, 51, 52

G Gadamer, H.-G., 31 Gadotti, M., 20, 24 Galloway, L., 24, 29, 90, 109 Gewirtz, S., 69 Gijbels, D., 143 Giroux, H. A., 17 Goodson, I. F., 27 Gough, D., 119 Gray, D., 21 Green, A., 99, 101 Green, B., 22 Greenwood, D. J., 43, 44 Grice, C., 129, 131 Grieshaber, S., 53, 99 Gronn, P., 120, 121 Grootenboer, P., 1, 4, 6, 8, 17, 20–32, 40– 42, 48–53, 55, 56, 66, 68, 77, 79, 90– 93, 99–102, 105–109, 112, 118–131, 133, 144, 148, 153, 154, 156, 164, 173 Grosemans, I., 143 Groundwater-Smith, S., 50, 52, 170, 175, 176 Grundy, S., 26, 31 Gunn, S., 104

Name Index Gyllander Torkildsen, L., 54, 55, 127–129, 132

H Habermas, J., 6, 24, 88, 89, 168, 174 Hager, P., 22 Hansén, S.-E., 149 Hardy, I., 1, 4, 6, 8, 20–24, 27–29, 30, 32, 42, 46, 48–50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 68, 70, 72, 73, 75, 77, 91–93, 99, 100, 102, 105–108, 112, 118–127, 129– 132, 142, 144, 145, 148, 152, 154, 164, 173 Hargreaves, A., 127 Härnsten, G., 44 Harrison, L., 106 Harvey, D., 67 Hattie, J., 112 Heikkinen, H., 4, 21, 24, 32, 43–45, 47, 50, 53, 56, 66, 74, 75, 151, 155 Hegel, 16, 19, 88 Hemmings, B., 71, 96, 149 Hendricks, C., 44 Henning Loeb, I., 23, 28, 71, 75, 99, 101 Hoare, R., 53, 146, 150 Hodge, S., 97 Hollingsworth, H., 143 Holmstrand, L., 44 Hooks, B., 6, 17 Ho, S. Y., 72, 75 Hoyle, E., 74 Hummelstedt-Djedou, I., 50, 51 Huttunen, R., 21, 24, 26, 32, 43, 45, 47, 53, 155

I Itkonen, T., 47

J Jacobs, H. L. M., 20 Jakhelln, R., 89, 150, 151, 153 Johansson, I., 79 Johansson, M. W., 97 Johnson, P., 50 Jones, K., 142

K Kansanen, P., 149, 150 Karlberg-Granlund, G., 45, 47, 52, 54, 55, 142, 145, 146, 150, 153, 155, 175

Name Index Karstanje, P., 135 Kaukko, M., 24, 45–47, 51, 53, 55, 56, 78 Kemmis, R., 21, 27 Kemmis, S., 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 16, 17, 19–27, 29– 31, 40–42, 44, 45, 47–49, 51–53, 55– 57, 66, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77, 80, 91–93, 96, 99, 100, 102, 105–110, 112, 118– 126, 129–131, 143–149, 151, 152, 156, 164, 165, 173, 174 Kennedy, A., 142 Kielinen, M., 47 Kiilakoski, T., 47, 56 Kivelä, A., 30 Knight, K., 16 Knorr-Cetina, K., 42 Kristjánsson, K., 19 Kristoffersen, L., 150 Kroksmark, T., 149 Kyndt, E., 143 L Laegreid, P., 67 Langat, K., 24, 78, 80, 147 Langelotz, L., 43, 45, 48–54, 142, 146, 151, 152 Lange, T., 79 Larsson, S., 9, 144 Lave, J., 9 Levin, M., 43, 44 Lloyd, A., 4, 22, 46, 77, 80, 91, 156 Lönngren, J., 49, 51, 52 Ludwig, C., 104 Lumsden Wass, K., 71, 75 Lund, T., 21, 23, 26, 30, 43, 46, 71, 120, 128, 129, 131, 132, 146, 148 M MacIntyre, A., 16, 31, 32 Mahon, K., 4, 20, 21, 24, 26, 29–32, 42, 43, 46, 49, 52, 55, 57, 77, 80, 90, 94–96, 109, 154, 155 Major, J., 78 Marx, K., 16, 19, 21, 31, 40, 42, 169 Mattson, M., 47, 79 McCorquodale, L., 49, 51, 52 McDermott, R., 9 McDowall Clark, R., 125 McMahon, A., 9, 143, 144 McTaggart, R., 45, 145 Meaney, T., 79 Mise, U., 18 Mitchell, J., 50, 52

181 Mockler, N., 50, 52, 144, 170, 176 Moksnes Furu, E., 9, 46 Murphy, M., 43 Murray, C., 41, 46 Murray, J. C., 167 Murry, J., 125 Mutton, R., 24, 100, 105

N Naidoo, L., 80 Nehez, J., 49, 51, 52, 127–129, 132 Nicolini, D., 11, 22, 31, 91 Nixon, R., 45, 145 Norlund, A., 75, 76 Nyvaller, M., 21, 23, 26, 30, 71, 120, 148

O O’Brien, J., 142 Olin, A., 21, 23, 26, 30, 43, 45, 71, 120, 121, 124, 125, 127–129, 131–133, 145, 146, 153, 155, 175 Oliver, S., 119 Opfer, D. V., 142, 143 Orlikowski, W. J., 22

P Pantzar, M., 102 Peck, J., 66, 67, 77 Pedder, D., 142, 143 Pennanen, M., 45, 56, 75, 151 Peters, R. S., 91 Petrie, K., 99 Petriwskyj, A., 53, 99 Ponte, P., 21, 24, 27, 29, 31, 50, 52, 69, 73, 88, 130, 136, 145, 147 Pörn, M., 47, 52, 54, 55, 144, 150, 153, 155 Press, F., 106

Q Quijada Cerecer, D. A., 7

R Raelin, J., 121 Rapoport, R. N., 44 Rawls, J., 41 Reimer, K., 45 Reupert, A., 71, 96, 149

182

Name Index

Rönnerman, K., 4, 9, 18, 23, 31, 45–48, 50, 52, 53, 56, 70, 79, 88, 96, 119, 121– 133, 142, 144–146, 148, 150, 152, 153, 156 Rørnes, K., 150 Røvik, K. A., 132 Rovio, E., 44, 45 Rowan, L., 109 Russell, H., 26, 40, 56

Thomas, J., 119 Thomas, S., 9, 143, 144 Thorsrud, E., 44 Timmermans, S., 53 Torraco, R. J., 3, 10 Trede, F., 23, 26, 27 Turunen, T. A., 72, 75 Tyrén, L., 54, 155 Tyson, R., 29

S Sachs, J., 17, 175 Salamon, A., 98, 106 Salo, P., 9, 17, 18, 23, 25, 26, 30, 31, 46–48, 88, 50, 52, 54–56, 144, 145, 148, 152, 154, 156 Sandén, T., 9, 144, 148, 156 Sandström, B., 79 Santoro, N., 78 Santos, D., 25, 31, 42, 43, 45, 48, 78 Sartre, 19 Savigny, E. v., 42 Schatzki, T., 4, 22, 42, 66, 93, 118, 119, 121, 134 Shove, E., 102 Shulman, H., 54 Siljander, P., 30 Singh, P., 43 Sjöberg, J., 149, 150 Sjöholm, K., 149 Sjølie, E., 45, 50, 96, 150, 152 Slee, R., 76 Small, R., 20, 31 Smit, B. H. J., 24, 29, 31, 51 Smith, T., 17, 19–27, 29–31, 56, 72, 102, 109, 126, 154 Snyder, W., 9 Somekh, B., 145 Stenhouse, L., 137 Stepelevich, L., 19 Stewart, C., 144 Stjernstrøm, E., 43, 120, 131 Stoll, L., 9, 143, 144 Strömberg, M., 76 Sumsion, J., 106 Sutinen, A., 30 Syrjälä, L., 44, 45

U UNHCR, 78

T Tavory, I., 53

V Valle, A. M., 150 Vanderlinde, R., 50 Variyan, G., 43 Vygotsky, Lev, 88, 91

W Wainwright, E., 42, 58 Waks, L., 91 Wallace, M., 9, 143, 144 Wärvik, G., 74, 75, 97, 98, 101 Watkins, M., 54 Watson, M., 102 Webb, S., 45 Wenger, E., 9 Wennergren, A., 47, 153 Westoby, P., 51 Whatman, S., 43 Wiebe, T., 44 Wilkinson, J., 1, 4, 6, 8, 21–27, 29–31, 42, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 51–53, 55, 56, 71, 75, 78, 80, 91–93, 99, 100, 102, 106, 108, 118–134, 136, 147, 148, 154, 164, 173 Wittgenstein, L., 157 Wong, S., 72, 75

Y Young, I. M., 41

Z Zeichner, K., 145 Zhang, Z., 49, 51, 52 Zifcak, S., 69

Index

A Abductive analysis, 53 Accountability, 66–68, 72–74, 76, 79–81, 87, 144, 176 competitiveness, 74 conformity, 73 productivity, 74 Action research, 31, 43–48, 50, 52, 54–58, 97, 124, 141–143, 145, 146, 148, 150, 154, 155, 173–175 collaborative and transformative, 145 critical participatory action, 45, 48, 55, 56, 174 critical participatory action research, 145 democratic process, 145 educational action, 39, 43, 47 nordic action, 44 PAR, 48 participatory action, 48 stages of, 55 Activist, 146, 158 Activist professionals, 175 Activities, 10, 16–18, 20, 23, 25, 27, 31, 69, 71, 72, 76, 78, 80, 86, 89–92, 97, 98, 101, 118, 121, 123–126, 136, 137, 142, 143, 146, 148, 156, 167, 168, 172 Adult education, 9, 45, 48, 97, 169 Adult, popular and community education, 93 African, 136 Agency, 5, 15, 17, 21, 25, 26, 30, 56, 67, 77, 78, 81, 89, 106, 118, 122, 130, 137, 142, 155–158 collective, 129 collective staff agency, 129 Allgemeinbildung, 9

Analysis, 10, 22, 32, 51, 53, 57, 85, 89, 90, 102, 117, 128, 131, 146 Anglophone, 137 Apprentice, 96–98 Architectures, 66, 68, 70, 76, 77 Aristotle, 16–19, 21, 23, 25, 31, 40 Armchair revolution, 42 Arrangements, 4–6, 9, 22, 27, 40, 42, 46, 48, 76, 80, 92, 96, 97, 100, 102, 107, 119, 121–124, 129, 143, 144, 153, 155, 156, 177 cultural-discursive, 5, 22, 46, 54, 66, 68, 69, 74, 76, 86, 93, 100, 102, 105, 106, 110, 119, 136, 149, 156 material-economic, 5, 22, 46, 54, 66, 68, 69, 74, 76, 86, 93, 100, 102, 105, 110, 119, 124, 136, 149, 156 social-political, 5, 22, 46, 48, 54, 66, 68, 74, 76, 86, 93, 100, 102, 105, 106, 119, 136, 149, 156, 157 Assessment, 5, 54, 71, 73, 76, 79, 88, 103, 108, 111, 170, 176 Asylum seekers, 56 Asylum-seeking, 56 Asymmetrical relations, 134 Australia, 128 Auto-ethnographic, 56 Autonomy, 30

B Being stirred in to practices, 91, 143, 156, 158 Bernstein, 19, 31, 88, 167 Bildning, 4, 8, 9, 48, 88 Bildung, 1, 4, 7–9, 29, 30, 48, 88, 141, 144, 156, 166

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184 Blogging, 46, 58 Bureaucratisation, 2, 16

C Canada, 128 Capitalism, 167 Categorising, 66, 74–77 Catergorisation ranking, 75 Changing practices, 118 Civility, 167 Classroom, 4, 5, 11, 20, 22, 26, 53, 70, 79, 86, 89–92, 100–108, 110, 111, 119, 125, 128, 130, 131, 136, 143, 145, 147, 153, 154, 158 Classroom lessons, 89, 90 Classroom talk, 89, 90 Climate change, 5, 6, 11, 65, 66, 80, 126, 166 Close analysis, 102 Co-construction, 78 Collaboration, 3, 11, 54, 78, 133, 143, 145, 147, 148, 150, 152–154, 156 Collaborative leading, 125 Collaborative learning, 132 Collaborative practice, 9, 54, 144, 152 Collaborative research, 45, 52, 175, 176 Collective, 80 collective problem-solving, 125 collective social action, 133 collectivist notions, 133 Collective action, 173 Collective educational praxis, 26 Collegial, 132 Collegial coaching conversations, 132 Collegial dialogues, 128 Communicative action, 174 intersubjective agreement, 174 mutual understanding, 174 unforced consensus, 174 Communicative learning spaces, 45, 152 Communicative space, 51, 56, 71, 80, 89, 90, 124, 129, 133–136, 146, 148, 158, 174 Communities of practice, 9, 144 Community education, 9, 85, 86, 164, 169 Community education settings, 99 Community garden, 28 Community of life, 92, 166, 167, 170, 175, 178 Community reading program, 28 Community settings, 78, 99, 169, 173, 174 Comparative research, 45

Index Comprehensive school, 54, 55 Conditions, 2, 3, 5, 8, 11, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 29, 30, 39, 41, 44, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 65–81, 87, 89, 90, 93–95, 98, 101, 102, 105–109, 111, 117–119, 122, 123, 126, 127, 129–131, 133– 137, 142, 143, 146, 148, 151–153, 167, 168, 173, 175–177 cultural, 65, 68, 81, 98 material, 65, 68, 71, 81, 98 political, 65, 68, 78, 81 shaped—enabled and constrained, 118 social, 65, 68, 71, 81, 98 Conditions of possibility, 22, 163 Confession, 52 Connectedness, 15, 17, 21, 27, 28 Connections, 27, 28, 39, 42, 43, 45, 96, 128, 150 Connectivity, 28 Conscientization, 41, 58 Contemplation, 18 Contestation, 8, 34, 68, 76, 77, 99, 106, 147, 169 Continuing Professional Development (CPD), 2, 70, 142, 149, 151 Conversation analysis, 46, 90, 103 Conversation of traditions, 3, 4, 10, 177 Co-participants, 49, 55, 129 Co-produced co-created, 119 Co-production of teaching and learning, 86, 105 Coronavirus, 2 COVID-19, 168, 170 Critical, 137 Critical educational praxis, 11, 24, 94, 171– 173, 175, 177 Critical-emancipatory aims, 41 Critical frame, 164 Critical framework, 163, 170, 173 Critical pedagogical praxis, 20, 87, 109, 111, 154 Critical traditions, 45 Cultivated conditions, 77 Cultural, 163 Cultural contexts, 4 Cultural-discursive, 5, 78, 156 Cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements, 5 Culture based on reason, 109, 164, 169, 172 Curricula, 169

Index D Data, 46, 55, 128, 132, 148 Decentralisation of schools, 27 Decomposition, 27 Delegation, 50 Democracy, 9, 44, 45, 111, 144, 167 a space for democratic action, 133 dialoguing for democracy, 133 Democratic, 132 Democratic dialogue, 133 Democratic ethos, 125 Democratic practice, 134 Deprofessionalisation, 2, 16, 50, 72, 163, 177 Deregulation, 50 Dialogic, 174 Dialogic pedagogies, 89, 90, 103 Dialogue, 2, 167 Dialogue cafés, 46 Dialogue circles, 46 Dialogue conferences, 31, 132 Didactics, 142, 149, 150, 154 Didaktik, 88, 149, 150 Differentiating, 66 Discrimination, 17, 48 Diversity, 24, 136 Doctoral supervision, 94 Doubleness of teaching in neoliberal times, 88 Double purpose for education, 8, 29 Drawings, 4, 11, 16, 27, 44–46, 48, 52, 65, 106, 107, 117, 121, 131, 164, 166 Dutch education system, 135

E Early career teachers, 89 Early childhood education, 76, 98, 169 Early childhood education and care, 86, 98 Early childhood settings, 119, 127, 134 Ecological ecological interdependencies, 131 Ecological relationships between practices, 50, 86 Ecologies of practices, 49, 99, 100, 119–121, 131 researching, 42 Economic, 163 Education, 1–12, 15–17, 20, 23–26, 29, 33, 34, 39, 41, 44, 45, 48, 51–53, 57, 58, 65–77, 79, 80, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 101, 108– 111, 117–122, 126–131, 134, 135,

185 137, 144–147, 149, 150, 154, 158, 163–177 adult, 9 community, 9 definition of, 1, 164 double purpose, 166 high meaning, 7 live well in a world worth living in, 8, 29, 112, 163, 166, 174, 176, 177 living well in a world worth living in, 41 low meaning, 7 popular, 9 workers, 9 Educational leadership, 70, 77, 117, 120, 127, 132, 135 Educational philosophy, 87, 88, 150 Educational poi¯esis, 31 Educational practice, 16 Educational praxis, 2, 6, 10, 11, 15–18, 20– 34, 40, 52, 65, 68, 69, 88, 89, 126, 133, 143, 163, 172, 173, 175–177 and justice, 23 and morality, 23 as forming, 15, 29 as self-forming, 15, 30 as transforming, 15, 30 connectedness, 27 critical dimension, 24 critical educational praxis, 24, 163 critical pedagogical praxis, 24 definition of, 15 history, 26 history-making action, 27 nature of, 15 particularity, 22 praxis development, 29 responsiveness, 23 risky nature, 26 Educational science, 2 Educational theory, 89 Education as praxis, 20 Education complex, 6, 49–52, 57, 100, 108, 120, 122 Education for all, 9, 24, 147 Education for Sustainability (EfS), 24, 99, 105, 171, 175 Educators, 1, 3, 10, 18, 21, 23, 27, 28, 34, 40, 46, 50, 51, 53, 55–57, 171 Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, 21 Elitism, 48 Emancipatory actions, 24 Emancipatory research, 51 Emotions, 52, 79, 153, 157

186 Empathy, 52, 72, 148 Enabling, 122 Enabling Praxis–Challenges for Education, 15, 17, 20 Enabling Praxis themes, 20, 22 English teaching, 50, 51 Enmeshed, 68, 80, 97, 117, 123, 133 Environmental, 163 Epistem¯e, 18 Epistemological perspective, 86 Epistemology, 44 Equity, 43 Era of schooling, 2 Ethics, 52, 67, 155, 157 Ethnically diverse, 134 Ethnographic, 173, 174 Ethnographic methods, 52 Ethnomethodology, 46 Extended professionals, 117, 175 External goods, 32

F Factory work, 44 Family, 10, 51, 89, 134 Feminist research, 43 Focus group, 52, 53, 58, 134 Folk bildung, 48 Folk enlightenment, 8, 9, 44, 88, 144, 145 Forces changing the Earth, 92 Fragmentation, 27 Frankfurt School, 19 Freedom, 133 Freire, 16 French revolution, 5

G Generative, 127, 137 Good, 137 Good leading practices, 120, 123 Good life, the, 18 Good professional practice (praxis), 3, 11, 86, 94, 111, 117, 118, 120

H Habitus, 136 Happening, 68 Happeningness, 23, 42, 117, 119, 136 Hardy, 130 Hermeneutical approach, 52 Higher education, 25, 26, 32, 48, 55, 56, 74–76, 78, 109, 142, 149, 154, 169

Index Historical, 163 Historical consciousness, 25 Historical situatedness, 27 Historicising practices, 132 History, 5, 7, 8, 15, 17, 19, 21, 26, 27, 29, 30, 40, 44, 46–48, 109, 111, 148, 150, 154, 156, 166, 169, 171, 174 Human action in history, 92

I Identity, 9, 25, 56, 79, 89, 97, 102, 109 Impact, 11, 27, 46, 47, 51, 65, 69, 70, 80, 81, 120, 128, 131, 147 Inclusive, 71, 72, 76, 78, 89, 96, 124, 135, 136, 147, 152, 154 Inclusive action, 135 Inclusive practices, 135 Inclusive school communities, 123 Inclusive school cultures, 24 Indigenous, 33, 79, 81, 100, 105, 133, 170, 174 indigenous community, 133 indigenous land rights movement, 133 Indigenous peoples, 167 Indigenous research methodologies, 174 Individualism, 48, 67, 81 Indoctrination, 24 Inductive analysis, 53 Industrial Democracy Project, 44 Inequity, 48, 167, 172 Infants’ practices, 98 Initial teacher education, 40, 96, 142, 149, 150 Initiating learners into practices, 91 Initiation into practices, 91 Institutional contexts, 4 Instrumentalism, 16, 31 Instrumentality, 51 Integrative review, 3 Intellectual traditions, 4, 10, 16, 87, 171, 175 Interaction, 26, 27, 30, 53, 54, 85, 86, 89, 101–108, 111, 121, 126, 143, 146, 150, 156, 157 Interactive trouble, 103, 104 Internal goods, 32 Interrelationships, 131 Intersubjective space, 55, 85–87, 100, 101, 105, 110, 123, 136 dialogical intersubjective spaces, 136 repertoire of, 101 Interview, 46, 52, 53, 58, 94, 125, 131, 146

Index J Just and democratic societies, 109, 164, 168, 170, 172 Justice, 23, 26 K Karstanje, 135 Knowing how to go on, 157, 158 Knowledge, 6, 7, 9, 17–19, 22, 30, 31, 44, 46–51, 53, 57, 58, 70, 75, 78, 79, 86, 90–92, 97, 99, 101, 109, 118, 132, 143, 144, 146, 147, 149–153, 164, 168–170, 172 L Labelling, 66, 68, 75–77, 81 Language, 4, 5, 7, 16, 18, 29, 43–48, 50, 57, 69, 90–92, 100, 104, 105, 107, 118, 134, 148, 167, 169, 172, 174–176 Leader process leaders, 131 professional development leaders, 131 turnaround leader, 136 Leadership, 117, 120 educational leadership, 119 educational leading, 118 formal leadership, 125 leading, 117 leading as a practice, 117 participatory leadership, 125 transactional leadership, 135 transformational leadership, 135 Leading, 2, 4, 6, 11, 30, 51, 52, 55, 70, 71, 73, 80, 86, 87, 100, 108, 111, 117–137, 141–143, 145–148, 167, 176 as a democratic practice, 119 as a practice, 119 from, within, and beyond the middle, 119 middle leaders, 127 pedagogical leading, 131 shared endeavour, 137 Leading as change process, 123 enabling, 124 leading-for-inclusion, 135 practice modification, 123 practice of intervention, 123 praxis-oriented, 124 shared leading, 124 Leading from the middle, 127 Leading practices, 71, 80, 119–126, 129– 131, 133–135, 137, 147, 148

187 Leading praxis, 30 Learning, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 22, 26, 28, 29, 44, 45, 51, 52, 54–57, 67, 69–73, 76–80, 85, 86, 89–92, 96–108, 110, 112, 118, 120, 121, 123–125, 127– 132, 134–136, 141–158, 164, 170, 176–178 Learning and teaching, 11, 86, 91, 123, 129, 147, 148 Learning outcomes, 103, 144, 152 Learning practices, 85, 86, 90, 92, 99, 101, 103, 110, 148, 152, 153 Life-historical perspective, 27 Life histories, 26 Lifeworld, 88, 89, 93, 103, 111, 133, 137, 149, 168, 176–178 Live well in a world worth living in, 29, 163 good for humankind, 166 Living well in a world living in good for the community of life on Earth, 166 Local educational development, 50

M Management, 163 Managerialism, 2, 16, 27, 66 efficiency, 72 Managerialist, 126 Marginalisation, 17 Material-economic, 5, 156 Mathematics curriculum, 50, 79 Members or families, 51 Mentor, 97, 151 Mentoring, 72, 74, 142, 143, 146, 149–151, 154, 155 Method, 40, 43, 44, 46, 52, 53, 58, 88, 143, 146, 150, 153 literature, 53 Methodology, 10, 40, 41, 43, 56, 174 Me Too movement, 5 Metrification, 69, 74, 81 standardised, 75 Middle leader, 80, 97, 127–133, 148, 154 Middle leading, 80, 123–132, 148 middleness, 128 Migration, 126, 167 Mixed methods, 58 Mobile phones, 46 Monocultural, 134 Moral, 2 Moral deliberation, 23 Morality, 23–25

188 Morality and justice, 15, 17, 21, 23, 24 Morally informed, 77, 126 Morally informed action, 24, 70 Morally responsive action, 23 Multimodal, 124

N Natality, 48 National curricula, 88 National testing, 75, 88, 122, 129 Nature and purposes of education, 89 Neoliberal, 133, 144, 163 Neoliberalism, 2, 11, 16, 17, 26, 28, 32, 65–67, 69, 76, 168, 176 individualism, 67 neoliberal agendas, 126 neoliberalisation, 66–68, 76, 81 Neoliberal times, 3, 86, 88, 89, 111 Neolineralism neoliberalisation, 168 Networks, 3 Neutrality, 43 Neutral tools, 43 New Public Management, 67 Non-human world, 11 Nordic, 133 Normativity, 58 Northern Europe, 137 Norway, 129 Numbering, 66 numbers, 72 Nurturing praxis, 29

O Observation, 23, 52, 53, 58, 87, 94, 146, 153, 173 Online pedagogy, 94–96, 101 On-line teaching, 94 Ontological, 22, 42, 51, 56, 90, 101 Ontological perspective, 77, 86, 101, 102 Ontology, 44 Operants, 25, 31 Organisational development, 44 Ownership, 125

P Participant-data sharing, 46 Participants, 3, 28, 42, 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 54– 56, 79, 101, 107, 121, 130, 133–136, 155–157, 174

Index Participation, 9, 26, 43, 46, 48, 143, 144, 153, 155, 156 Participatory Action Research, 45, 48, 55, 56, 78, 173, 174 Particularity, 15, 17, 21, 22, 27, 117 Partnership, 28, 45, 146, 174–176 Pedagogic, 71 Pedagogical dialogues, 90 Pedagogical practice, 50, 81, 85, 86, 90, 91, 103, 107, 108, 111, 128, 131, 175 Pedagogical praxis, 20 Pedagogical trust, 77 Pedagogiek, 29, 69 Pedagogik, 87, 88, 149, 150 Pedagogische praxis, 20, 29 Pedagogy, 1, 2, 4, 7–10, 15, 16, 20, 29, 39, 40, 66, 69, 85–88, 90, 91, 131, 170, 171 as dialogically formed, 90 as method, 90 Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP), 118, 163 Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) international research network, 2, 15, 16, 40, 65, 85, 86, 94, 118, 141, 163, 164, 171, 173 Pedagogy of emancipation, 24 Peer Group Mentoring (PGM), 48, 52, 54, 74, 151 People, 1, 6–8, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25–30, 44, 48, 52, 56, 66, 67, 70, 72, 74, 77–79, 81, 91, 92, 101, 102, 108, 109, 112, 118, 120, 121, 126, 130, 137, 144, 146, 147, 163, 164, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173–175, 177 Performance, 32, 69, 70, 75, 87, 89, 91, 94, 102, 103, 108, 144 Performance management, 66, 68, 69, 71, 76 efficiency, 72 evaluation, 74 school administration, 71 supervision, 74 Performativity, 66, 68, 76, 80, 136, 137, 163 Personal praxis, 21 Philosophical-empirical inquiry, 53 Philosophy, 7, 8, 18, 19, 30, 44, 47, 53, 88, 150 Photo elicitation, 46 Photo-voice, 46 Phron¯esis, 10, 18, 19, 21, 23, 30, 40, 41, 44, 56 Phron¯esis-praxis perspective, 19, 20

Index Physical space-time, 5, 77, 85, 86, 93, 98, 106, 110 Physiotherapists, 51 Plurality, 33, 48 Poetry writing, 46 Poi¯esis, 18, 31 Poietical knowledge, 18 Policies, 1, 3, 11, 17, 18, 21, 34, 65–70, 72– 77, 81, 94, 97, 106, 108, 122, 124, 129, 130, 132, 141–144, 148, 166, 176, 177 Political commitments, 2 Political conditions, 69, 163 Population growth, 166 Postcolonial research, 43 Post-lesson debriefing interview, 53 Post-Marxian, 19, 40 Power, 5, 48, 49, 54, 69, 72, 89, 101, 105, 106, 118, 126, 130, 132–137, 143, 144, 153, 167, 169, 178 Power relations, 136 Practical action, 18 Practical deliberation, 111, 169, 174 Practical knowledge, 18 Practical Knowledge Regime (PKR), 151, 157 Practical philosophy, 40 Practical reasoning, 40 Practical science, 47 Practical wisdom, 23 Practice architectures, 1, 4–6, 22, 27, 39, 42, 45, 48, 54, 66, 70, 76, 77, 79, 86, 89– 101, 103, 105, 106, 110, 118, 119, 121, 122, 127, 130, 134, 136, 149, 151, 155, 156, 163, 165, 175, 177 Practice-based research, 47 Practice-changing practice, 120, 122, 126 Practice development, 2, 47, 132 Practices, 1–7, 9, 11, 15–22, 24–34, 39, 40, 42–45, 47, 48, 50–57, 65–81, 85– 94, 96–111, 117–137, 142–158, 163, 164, 166–173, 175–178 as entities vs as performance, 102 definition of, 92 Practice theory, 22 Practice traditions, 9, 19, 47, 91, 98 Practice turn, 42, 120 Practising, 118 Pragmatism, 44 Praxis, 1–4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 16–34, 39–58, 65– 69, 71–73, 77, 78, 80, 81, 87, 102, 109, 111, 120, 125, 126, 132, 133,

189 135–137, 141, 144, 153, 154, 171, 173, 175–177 bad praxis, 24 collective practice/praxis, 132 collective praxis, 21, 43 educational praxis, 66 history-making action, 19, 27, 126, 171 individual praxis, 21 morally committed action, 18, 19, 23, 171 praxis development, 29, 65, 144 praxis-oriented approach, 147 relationship to practice, 16, 18 Praxis as doing, 21 Praxis development Praxis development, 3, 10, 11, 39–41, 43, 46, 47, 49, 54, 56–58, 65–67, 69, 71, 72, 77–81, 89, 141, 145, 146, 152, 155–158 Praxis-near research, 47 Praxis orientation, 21 Praxis-oriented leading, 126 Praxis stance, 21 Prefigure prefiguring arrangements, 121 Prefiguring, 103, 121, 123 Pre-lesson interview, 53 Preschools, 42, 51, 128, 131, 133 Preschool teachers, 51 Preservice teacher education, 94, 108, 109 Presuppositions, 3 Primary schools, 55, 92, 98–100, 123, 124, 129, 132, 134 Principals, 51, 55, 57, 70, 71, 97, 118, 121, 124, 127–134, 136, 141, 154 Productive action, 18 Productive and sustainable economies and environments, 168, 170, 172 Productivity, 44, 72 Professional Development (PD), 3, 24, 40, 51, 54, 79, 131, 141–144, 155 definition of, 143 Professionalism, 73, 135 Professional judgement, 25, 86, 87, 169 Professional knowledge, 50, 54, 148 Professional Learning (PL), 141–144 as praxis, 148 collaborative, 148, 153 definition of, 143 dispersed leadership, 148 higher education, 154 induction of new teacher, 151 initial teacher education, 149

190 leading, 147 mentoring, 151 relational trust, 148 site-based, 142 social justice, 142, 146 teacher learning, 6, 54, 57, 70, 87, 100, 108, 111, 123, 128, 130, 145, 148 workplace learning, 151 Professional learning community, 9, 134, 143 Professional learning dialogues, 124 Professional practice, 47, 65, 66, 77, 86, 111, 117–120, 123, 127–130, 137, 142, 145, 148, 150, 152, 153, 156–158 Professional standards for teachers, 88 Project, 10, 28, 44, 45, 48, 50, 51, 54, 72, 76, 78, 79, 86, 92, 106, 122, 123, 125, 126, 137, 151–155, 173 Project (of a practice), 4, 92, 106, 110, 123 Psychology, 8 Publicity, 48 Q Quantitative research, 58 Quick fix, 50 R Receptivity, 52 Recognition, 9, 21, 26, 45, 146, 153, 156, 157, 175 Red thread, 25 Reflecting, 20, 87, 100, 108, 118, 120, 143, 151, 154 Reflection, 11, 25, 26, 29, 41, 68, 111, 141, 144, 146, 151, 153, 155, 158, 176, 178 Reflexivity, 25, 47, 136 Reform, 34, 45, 67, 68, 71, 77, 96, 127, 176 Refugee, 17, 24, 28, 65, 78, 81, 98, 99, 105, 124, 136, 166, 174 refugee community, 134 refugee origin, 134 Sudanese, 134 Regional, 134 Relational relational positioning, 128 Relational dimension, 130 Relational trust, 108, 130, 148, 152, 153, 156 intellectual trust, 130 interactional trust, 130 interpersonal trust, 130 intersubjective trust, 130

Index pragmatic trust, 130 Relationship between practices, 6 Relationship between teaching and learning, 6 Relationships, 5, 6, 8, 9, 16, 24, 27, 28, 30, 31, 53, 55, 66, 76, 77, 80, 87–94, 98, 102, 105, 106, 108–110, 118, 121, 122, 130, 131, 137, 144, 145, 149, 169, 173 relational work, 127, 130 Repair, 86, 103–105, 107 Research, 2–4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 15–20, 22, 24, 26, 29, 31–33, 39–58, 65, 67, 69, 72, 74–79, 81, 85, 87, 89, 90, 94, 98, 101, 104, 109–112, 118–123, 127– 133, 136, 141–147, 149–158, 163, 164, 168, 171, 173–178 Research approaches, 3, 10, 39–43, 48, 49, 51, 57, 58 Research circles, 44, 144, 153–155 Researchers, 51 Researcher’s position shifting position, 54 Researcher’s role, 45 Researching, 4 Research position, 51 in-between-position, 51 inside-position, 51 outside-position, 51 Research traditions, 2 Resistance, 5, 26, 32, 76, 106, 163 Resources, 2, 5, 22, 44, 46, 78, 102, 108, 119–121, 130, 143, 149, 152, 155, 163, 177 Resources for hope, 4, 65, 77, 145 Responsibility, 124 authoritarian or bureaucratic responsibility, 129 bureaucratic responsibility, 125 classroom teaching responsibilities, 128 moral responsibility, 126 positional (and/or acknowledged) responsibility, 128 shared responsibility, 125 sharing the responsibility, 125 spheres of, 129 Responsive, 127 shared, 129 Responsiveness, 22, 23, 42, 67 cultural circumstances, 42 political, 42 social, 42 Retroductive, 53

Index Retrospective analysis, 51 Revolutionary praxis, 31 Right conduct, 23 Riskiness, 26

S Sales assistants, 97, 98 Sayings, doings, and relatings, 4, 6, 22, 68, 79, 86, 92, 102, 104, 106, 110, 119, 137, 156 Scandinavian New Organisational Theory, 43 School-based curriculum development, 50 Schooling, 164 Schools, 42, 119, 127, 173 Secondary schools, 29, 71, 75, 86, 99, 105, 122, 136 Self-determination, 1, 25, 41, 109, 144, 164, 172 Self-development, 1, 25, 41, 74, 109, 126, 144, 151, 164, 172 Self-expression, 1, 25, 41, 109, 144, 164, 172 Self-formation, 25, 31 Self-knowledge, 47 Self-study, 56 Self-understanding, 30 Semantic, 5 Semantic space, 5, 77, 85, 86, 93, 98, 100, 105, 106, 110 Sexual harassment, 5 Shadowing, 143 Shared transformation, 132 Shipbuilding, 44 Site, 4, 27, 41, 90, 101 sites of the social, 134 Site-based professional learning, 152 Site-based education, 173 Site based education development, 111, 127, 130, 171, 176 school-based change, 131 Site ontology, 4, 42 site ontological lens, 117 site ontological perspective, 122 site ontological position, 121 Site-responsive, 123 Situated, 126 Situatedness, 4, 22, 66 Situational insight, 31 Social, 2, 163 Social-cultural maturation, 30 Social-democratic countries, 48

191 Social justice, 7, 10, 23–25, 41, 43, 126, 135, 141, 145–147, 155 Socially situated practice, 117 Social media, 5 Social space, 5, 27, 77, 85, 86, 91, 93, 98, 100, 101, 105, 106, 110, 121 Societal change, 11 Sociology, 8 Solidarity, 5, 78, 105, 118, 129, 130, 133, 135, 137, 152, 153, 169 Spheres of action, 130 Spheres of influence, 130 Status quo, 26, 42 Stereoscopic lens, 40 Stigma, 48 Stirred in, 90, 91, 99, 143 Stirred them in, 97 Storytelling, 52, 54 Student Representative Council, 124 Students, 51 Study circles, 9, 45, 48, 144, 151 Substantive practices, 90, 92, 93, 99, 100, 102, 105, 152 Surveillance, 69, 88, 126, 131, 148, 163, 176 Sustainable world, 170 Sweden, 128 Systems, 17, 25, 70, 75, 87–89, 93, 94, 97, 111, 118–120, 127–130, 132, 136, 137, 144, 145, 149, 152, 163, 164, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177

T Talk-in-interaction, 87, 89, 90, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110 Talk moves, 87, 89 Teacher education, 2 Teacher professional learning, 87, 108, 111, 123, 128, 147, 155 Teachers, 3 beginning teachers, 143 deprofessionalising, 126 experienced teacher, 143, 150, 151 experienced teachers, 143 midcareer teachers, 143 Teachers-as-researchers, 44 Teacher-student interactions, 90 Teachers’ work, 44, 70, 135, 111 Teacher talk, 46, 52, 55, 56, 124, 134–136, 154, 155, 173 Teacher talk moves, 89, 90 Teaching character of teaching, 87

192 definition of, 93, 100 Teaching and learning as ecologically interdependent, 103 Teaching and learning as ecologically related, 103 Teaching and researching as ecologically related, 57 Teaching as dialogic, 89 Teaching in universities, 94, 109 Teaching in vocational education and training, 96 Teaching practice, 11, 22, 45, 51, 57, 71, 73, 76, 78, 79, 85–89, 92, 94, 96–98, 100, 101, 103, 106, 107, 109–112, 123, 127, 131, 143, 147, 148, 152, 153 early childhood education and care, 85 primary and secondary schooling, 85 repertoire of, 98 tertiary education, 48 university, 85 vocational education and training, 85 Teaching profession, 27, 89 Techn¯e, 18, 40 Technical action, 31 Technical knowledge, 18 Technical rationality, 31 Technician of practices, 31 Technicist, 126 Telos, 122 Tertiary educators, 51 Thematic analysis, 131 Theodore Schatzki, 42, 66 Theoretical action, 18 Theoretical ideas, 40 Theoretical knowledge, 18 Theoria, 18 Theory, 2, 40, 43 validating, 53 Theory of communicative action, 130 Theory of practice architectures, 1, 4–6, 22, 27, 39, 42, 48, 54, 66, 77, 85, 86, 90, 92, 93, 99, 101, 110, 117, 118, 121, 122, 136, 151, 155, 156, 164, 165, 175 Theses on Feuerbach, 42 Trainers, 51 Transcripts, 46, 89, 102 Transform, 127 Transformation, 1, 2, 4, 5, 24, 31, 32, 41, 42, 70, 117, 132, 134, 136, 137, 146, 152, 158, 166, 170 Transformational resource, 77

Index Transformation of professional practices, 146 Transforming, 122 Transition, 123 Translation, 47, 132 translating works, 132 Transnational, 167 Translation theory, 132 Travelling practice, 131 Trellis of PSL, 152 Trinidad and Tobago, 124 Trust, 9, 45, 50, 71–73, 125, 130, 144, 154–157 highly trusted teachers, 128 trusted others, 128

U Understanding, 118 Union movement, 45 Universities, 7–9, 46, 56, 57, 69, 71, 72, 74– 76, 79, 80, 94, 101, 109, 111, 119, 127, 133, 134, 150, 164, 170, 173, 174 Upbringing, 7

V Validity, 56 Values, 5, 7, 9, 17, 48, 67, 79, 130, 145, 150, 151, 155–157, 168, 174, 176, 177 Video, 46 Virtue, 8, 40, 120 Vocational education, 11, 69, 75, 152, 169 Vocational Education and Training in Secondary schools (VETiS), 99 Vocational Education and Training (VET), 76, 85–87, 93, 96, 101, 119, 127, 170, 173 Vulnerable populations, 45

W Waks, 91 Wisdom, 18, 41, 56, 148 Wittgenstein, 19 Workers’ education, 9, 44 Workplace, 28, 69, 88, 97–99, 101, 151, 173, 174 Workplace learning, 97, 101, 142, 149, 151, 152 Work science, 48

Index World worth living in, 8, 11, 48, 109, 126, 145, 146, 158, 163, 164, 166, 168, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176, 177

193 Z Zooming in, 91, 96 Zooming out, 91