Abstract
Practice has become an increasingly crucial concept in the disciplines that deal with social life. Yet, it is evident that the term practice is typically employed in diverse and ambiguous ways. This is exacerbated by practice frequently being conjoined with a foregoing classifier, for example, legal practice, teaching practice, professional practice and literacy practice. In such cases, semantic attention typically centres on the classifier with the notion of practice being assumed to be unproblematic. This chapter seeks to problematise and defamiliarise taken-for-granted assumptions about practice and their relationship with learning. Five principles for theorising practice are proposed and discussed. These principles are deployed to suggest fresh understandings of learning and change in relation to practices. In turn, this illuminates issues around how practices are made and how they evolve and change.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ball, D. L., & Bass, H. (2000). Interweaving content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to teach: Knowing and using mathematics. In J. Boaler (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 83–104). Westport: Alex.
Baynham, M., & Baker, D. (2002). ‘Practice’ in literacy and numeracy research: Multiple perspectives. Ways of Knowing Journal, 2(1), 1–9.
Billett, S. (2002). ‘Workplace pedagogic practices: Co-participation and learning. British Journal of Educational Studies, 50(4), 457–481.
Billett, S. (2010). Learning vocational practice in relative social isolation: The epistemological and pedagogic practices of small business operators. In R. Poell & M. Van Woerkom (Eds.), Supporting workplace learning (pp. 147–164). Dordrecht: Springer.
Billett, S. (2011). Learning through practice: Models, traditions, orientations and approaches. Dordrecht: Springer.
Billett, S., & Newman, J. (2010). Learning practice: Conceptualising professional lifelong learning for the health-care sector. In H. Bradbury, N. Frost, S. Kilminster, & M. Zukas (Eds.), Beyond reflective practice: New approaches to professional lifelong learning (pp. 52–65). London: Routledge.
Boud, D., & Lee, A. (Eds.). (2009). Changing practices of doctoral education. Abingdon: Routledge.
Braithwaite, J. (1995). Organizational change, patient-focused care: An Australian perspective. Health Services Management Research, 8(3), 172–185.
Brew, A. (2003). Teaching and research: New relationships and their implications for inquiry-based teaching and learning in higher education. Higher Education Research and Development, 22(1), 3–18.
Britzman, D. P. (2009). The very thought of education: Psychoanalysis and the impossible professions. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Carr, W. (2009). Practice without theory? A postmodern perspective on professional practice. In B. Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 57–68). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Contu, A., & Willmott, H. (2003). Re-embedding situatedness: The importance of power relations in learning theory. Organization Science, 14(3), 283–296.
Dahlgren, M. A. (2011). Preparing for working life through higher education in Europe: The examples of Psychology and Political Science over four universities. In L. Scanlon (Ed.), ‘Becoming’ a professional: An interdisciplinary analysis of professional learning. New York: Springer.
Davis, B., & Sumara, D. J. (2006). Complexity and education: Inquiries into learning, teaching and research. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Dreyfus, H. (2001). On the Internet. London: Routledge.
Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over machine: The power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer. Oxford: Blackwell.
Engeström, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Y. Engeström, R. Mietten, & R. Pumanmaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 19–38). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Towards an activity-theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156.
Eraut, M. (2009, April). The role of employers in professional learning. Paper presented at American Educational Research Association Conference, San Diego.
Fejes, A., & Nicoll, K. (Eds.). (2008). Foucault and lifelong learning: Governing the subject. London: Routledge.
Fenwick, T., & Edwards, R. (2010). Actor-network theory in education. London/New York: Routledge.
Fenwick, T., Edwards, R., & Sawchuk, P. (2011). Emerging approaches to educational research: Tracing the sociomaterial. London: Routledge.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gherardi, S. (2008). Situated knowledge and situated action: What do practice-based studies promise? In D. Barry & H. Hansen (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of new approaches in management and organization (pp. 516–525). Los Angeles: Sage.
Gherardi, S., & Nicolini, D. (2000). To transfer is to transform: The circulation of safety knowledge. Organization, 7(2), 329–348.
Green, B. (1991). Reading ‘readings’: Towards a postmodernist reading pedagogy. In C. D. Baker & A. Luke (Eds.), Towards a critical sociology of reading pedagogy (pp. 212–235). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Green, B. (2009a). Introduction: Understanding and researching professional practice. In B. Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 1–18). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Green, B. (2009b). The primacy of practice and the problem of representation. In B. Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 41–56). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Hager, P. (2008). Learning and metaphors. Medical Teacher, 30(7), 679–686.
Hager, P. (2011). Theories of workplace learning. In M. Malloch, L. Cairns, K. Evans, & B. N. O’Connor (Eds.), The Sage handbook of workplace learning (pp. 17–31). London: Sage.
Hager, P., & Halliday, J. (2006). Recovering informal learning: Wisdom, judgement and community. Dordrecht: Springer. (Reissued as a paperback in 2009)
Hager, P., & Hodkinson, P. (2009). Moving beyond the metaphor of transfer of learning. British Educational Research Journal, 35(4), 619–638.
Hodkinson, P., Biesta, G., & James, D. (2008). Understanding learning culturally: Overcoming the dualism between social and individual views of learning. Vocations and Learning, 1(1), 27–47.
Hopwood, N. (2010). Dwelling in complexity: Relational-ecological understandings of context, space, place and the body in professional practice. Paper presented at Australian Association for Research in Education annual conference, Melbourne, 28 November–2 December. www.aare.edu.au
Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2009). New learning: Elements of a science of education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kemmis, S. (2005). Knowing practice: Searching for saliences. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 13(3), 391–426.
Kemmis, S. (2009). Understanding professional practice: A synoptic framework. In B. Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 19–39). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Kemmis, S. (2011). What is professional practice? Recognising and respecting diversity in understandings of practice. In C. Kanes (Ed.), Elaborating professionalism: Studies in practice and theory (pp. 139–165). New York: 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. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics. II. Human Relations, 1(2), 143–153.
Luntley, M. (2003). Wittgenstein: Meaning and judgement. Oxford: Blackwell.
Marton, F. (1994). Phenomenography. In T. Husén & T. N. Postlethwaite (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of education (2nd ed., Vol. 8, pp. 4424–4429). Oxford: Pergamon.
Merriam, S. B., Caffarella, R. S., & Baumgartner, L. M. (2006). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mulcahy, D. (2007). (Re)working relations of strategy and spatiality in education. Studies in Continuing Education, 29(2), 143–162.
Osberg, D., & Biesta, G. (2007). Beyond presence: Epistemological and pedagogical implications of “strong” “emergence”. Interchange, 38(1), 31–51.
Reckwitz, A. (2002). Towards a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2), 243–263.
Scanlon, L. (Ed.). (2011). Becoming a professional. Dordrecht: Springer.
Schatzki, T. R. (1997, September). Practices and actions: A Wittgensteinian critique of Bourdieu and Giddens. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 27(3), 283–308.
Schatzki, T. R. (2001). Practice theory. In T. R. Schatzki, K. Knorr-Cetina, & E. von Savigny (Eds.), The practice turn in contemporary theory (pp. 1–14). London/New York: Routledge.
Schatzki, T. R. (2002). The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press.
Schatzki, T R. (2011, July 11). The edge of change. Seminar presented at the Centre for Research in Learning and Change, University of Technology, Sydney. www.rilc.uts.edu.au
Schatzki, T. R., Knorr-Cetina, K., & von Savigny, E. (Eds.). (2001). The practice turn in contemporary theory. London/New York: Routledge.
Shotter, J. (1996). Living in a Wittgensteinian world: Beyond theory to a poetics of practices. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 26(3), 293–311.
Smeyers, P., & Burbules, N. (2006). Education as initiation into practices. Educational Theory, 56(4), 439–449.
Thévenot, L. (2001). Pragmatic regimes governing the engagement with the world. In T. R. Schatzki, K. Knorr-Cetina, & E. von Savigny (Eds.), The practice turn in contemporary theory (pp. 56–73). London: Routledge.
Todd, S. (1997). Learning desire: Perspectives on pedagogy, culture and the unsaid. London: Routledge.
Tsoukas, H. (2008). Complex knowledge: Studies in organizational epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Usher, R., & Edwards, R. (1994). Postmodernism and education. London/New York: Routledge.
Usher, R., & Edwards, R. (2007). Lifelong learning – Signs, discourses, practices. Dordrecht: Springer.
van Manen, M. (1999). The practice of practice. In M. Lange, J. Olson, H. Hansen, & W. Bünder (Eds.), Changing schools/changing practices: Perspectives on educational reform and teacher professionalism. Louvain: Garant.
Vandermensbrugghe, J. (2004). The unbearable vagueness of critical thinking in the context of the Anglo-Saxonisation of education. International Education Journal, 5(3), 417–422.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hager, P., Lee, A., Reich, A. (2012). Problematising Practice, Reconceptualising Learning and Imagining Change. In: Hager, P., Lee, A., Reich, A. (eds) Practice, Learning and Change. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4774-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4774-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4773-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4774-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)