Abstract
In this chapter, we focus not on teachers but on teaching as a practice. We show how teaching practices bring practices of learning into being, how teaching creates practice architectures for practices of student learning, and how teaching initiates students into practices. We also show that nurturing the practice of teaching requires seeing it not only in relation to student learning, but also in relation to practices of professional learning, leading and researching that can transform, nurture and sustain teaching. We argue that that changing teaching requires more than just changing teachers—it also requires changing the practice architectures that make teaching possible and the ecologies of practices within which practices of teaching exist. Like other practices, the practice of teaching always exists in some particular site, at some particular time. Like other practices, the practice of teaching is thus enmeshed with the local and particular practice architectures of that site, and the ecology of practices to be found at the site. This ontological perspective understands a practice like teaching not just in terms of the behaviour or the actions of teachers, but as a living practice that survives—and can thrive—only in the ecology of practices to be found in a site.
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- 1.
“I will define a landscape … as a portion of the wider world around that can be taken in visually where human activity takes place” (Schatzki 2010, p. 98). In four notes to this definition, he also says: (1) “…a landscape is a portion of the world, not a view of it” (p. 98). (2) “[I]t encompasses … assemblages of land, water, built environment, activities and events” (pp. 98–99). (3) “[I]n speaking of the word ‘around,’ I indicate that the person who takes in a landscape is usually in it, even if off to one side” and this person “is in it as acting attuned to it, amid … the entities that compose it. Her activities, accordingly, are among those that make the landscape a site of human activity” (p. 99). (4) “I speak of the ‘wider’ world around to distinguish landscapes from more constricted settings such as rooms, subway cars, and Manhattan street corners” (p. 99); “Landscapes are a type of setting, namely, those that visually fall away expansively from people” (p. 99); and “The geometrical arrangement of the world around is a key determinant of possible landscapes” (p. 99).
- 2.
Many theorists of social practice similarly emphasise the way social life is shaped by people’s encounters with non-human things. Bruno Latour ’s (2007) Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is one; Ian Hodder ’s (2012) material archaeology is another.
- 3.
In the New South Wales education system, Kindergarten is the first year of formal schooling. Children range from four and a half to six years of age at entry.
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Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., Bristol, L. (2014). Teaching: Initiation Into Practices. In: Changing Practices, Changing Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-47-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-47-4_5
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