Christine Edwards-Groves

• PhD. M Phil, Grad Dip Ed Studies (Literacy), Dip T
• Professor at Griffith University

The role of middle leaders in Australian schools as influencers on classroom practice has been the focus of increased attention in recent years. Although there is recognition of the importance of middle leaders, there are gaps in what we understand about their practices and the nuances of practice that occur due to site-based conditions, or practic...

Use of reported thoughts in research interviews has rarely been examined although research interviews are a major source of data in qualitative research. This paper considers a conversation analytic examination of reported habitual thoughts, produced by twelve teachers during research interviews addressing their participation in a three-year action...

The theory of practice architectures has been emerging in common parlance in qualitative research investigating the nature and conduct of education (and other) practices since it was first introduced in 2008. The theory was developed to capitalize on “the practice turn” in social life and organizational activity. Since its inception, the theory of...

School systems in Australia, and internationally, are focused on improving classroom teaching and learning to enhance student outcomes. Middle leaders (MLs) are increasingly required to lead school-based development initiatives to improve classroom practices. Informed by previous research on middle-leading and the theory of practice architectures,...

This chapter addresses an important aspect of research—the dissemination of findings. Reporting practice-based research assists in sharpening understandings and developing deeper insights about the significant and influential dimensions of practices as they are experienced in different practicescapes. Since practices have an indissoluble relationsh...

This chapter addresses the study of practice within a practice paradigm that suggests the legitimacy of the evidence and, according to the theory of practice architectures, the interpretation of it must centre on practices and their practice architectures. This idea is necessary since the basic unit of analysis is practices. Specifically, the chapt...

This chapter describes the characteristic interconnections between practices by specifically outlining the theory of ecologies of practices that accounts for how practices are ecologically arranged (in practice arrangement bundles) amid broader exigencies and locally encountered contingencies. This is an important conceptual resource that makes it...

In this chapter, we expand on ideas about the critical importance of understanding and accounting for the locally situatedness, and so site ontological nature, of practices as a key foundation of the theory of practice architectures. According to the theory, understanding the nature of practices demands attention to the realities of the kind of nua...

This chapter presents the theory of practice architectures as a social practical and critical theory for understanding practices, practice architectures, and practicescapes. The theory is located in a broad family of practice theories which typically seek to explain society, culture, and human interactions within the social, material, and semantic...

This paper presents an examination of identity in and as practice as it relates to a group of educational practitioners known as middle leaders. Drawing on the theory of practice architectures as a site‐ontological approach for conceptualising educational leading, the paper considers an individual's identity as being informed by, and accomplished a...

While educational institutions are increasingly acknowledging the importance of middle leaders for improving teaching, there is little research on middle leaders’ specific leading practices compared with, for example, principals. Evidence delineating and describing specific middle leading practice is scant. Drawing on practice theory, this article...

Dialogic pedagogies, contrasted with more monologic approaches to teaching, constitute a broad field of study concerned with classroom talk and interaction and its influence on student learning, knowledge building, and disciplinary competence. Classroom talk and interaction matter, and what constitutes their efficacy in the dialogic classroom has b...

Concerns about supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners to reach their potential endure in contemporary Australian education and society. Moreover, supporting these Aboriginal learners to have a sense of self-worth, self-awareness and personal identity that enables them to manage their emotional, mental, cultural, spiritual and phy...

This article traces the philosophical and theoretical roots of Action Research to rescript its promise for site-based educational formation, reformation and transformation. The process of historicising Action Research through an extensive review of the extant literature, enabled us to establish seven cornerstones that captured the essence of the cr...

In this paper, a site ontological approach to practice seeks to understand how educational development can be accomplished through the practices of ‘middle leaders’ - educators who exercise their leading ‘between’ the principal and the teaching staff. Analysis of two vignettes of leading in extraordinary circumstances untangles the web of interrela...

Critical action research is a praxis-oriented professional learning practice. Such practice requires a move beyond viewing action research as simply a technical or practical method for teacher development; instead, it strives for critical and participatory research. When action research is reduced to a technicist process for professional learning,...

Creativity has been identified as an increasingly important graduate attribute for employment in the 21st century. As sites of significant development of disciplinary specialization, universities seem to be the natural place for creativity to be fostered. However, there remain contestations and ambiguities in the ways creativity is theorized, and t...

Creativity is recognised as an essential twenty-first century skill. Despite the significant volume of research on creativity, there remains considerable ambiguity in the way it is conceptualised within education. This study uses a qualitative approach to explore primary educators’ (n = 9) perceptions of creativity in English, science, and history....

This paper argues for reconceptualising an educational curriculum that locates its primacy in practices. The argument is framed around the core purpose of education: to help people ‘live well in a world worth living in’. Living well and learning about what this means is typically guided by epistemologically based curricula, and conversely, school c...

How do classroom exchanges shape the developing forms and functions of literacy learning and teaching as students transition across the years of schooling? We explore this question using excerpts from literacy lessons from primary and secondary classrooms, showing how lesson exchanges develop as trajectories connecting different forms of ‘knowing’...

The complex nature of transition has interested educators for many years. While it is acknowledged that experiences of schooling during times of transition are often challenging, very little is known about the day-to-day actions of accomplishing transition. This article examines transition-in-action by employing ethnomethodology and conversation an...

Research to date is rich in its claim that practice development in schools, and the leadership and professional learning that it demands, requires relational trust. However, reasonings for, and understandings about, relational trust are described mainly in general terms, leaving its complexity and multidimensionality implicit. Much trust research i...

This chapter considers the need for broader policy-driven systemic investment in professional learning and action research. We have argued across this book that action research, that is critical and participatory, is practice of promise and possibility. Investing in action research is an investment in the development of the educational practicescap...

The expression ‘the red thread’ has had artistic, mythological and practical uses in history and in everyday life. We use this phrase in this book felicitously as a deliberate (and poetic) metaphor for recognising the interdependent and interconnected nature of educational practices that link practices historically, ontologically and ecologically....

In this chapter the distinctive conditions for creating what we have described as “generative leadership” are examined. Describing and understanding transformational practices in education—and the conditions that make it possible—has been a significant driver urging decades of work towards finding that characterising kernel that identifies, encapsu...

This chapter focuses on middle leading and how it evolved through the professional life journey of a group of teachers who had participated in action research. Leading professional learning in schools is a professional education practice that involves both teaching students in classrooms and leading school-based professional learning, often through...

Questions concerning the formation and development of education (and so the practices of education) have been at the centre of political, social and economic discussion and debate for centuries. For practitioners in many nations, fields and circumstances, the search for understanding and improving their work sets in motion endeavours to change thei...

This book is about the generative nature of leading practices when teachers, as learners, participate in long term action research projects for the purpose of professional development. This book also shows how practices of professional learning and practices of leading can be understood as related (and developed) in ecologies of practices; the auth...

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 renew...

This book critically explores urgent questions that researchers, educators, and policy makers need to consider and address in order to better our understanding and capacity to transform education. Focusing on areas that underpin the empirical, theoretical, and strategic research of the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) International Research Net...

This chapter examines the practicesPractices of leadingLeadershipleading, as an important facet of the extended professionalExtended professionals work and experience of educators. It employs a site ontological lensSite ontologysite ontological lens to examine the duality of leadingLeadingin and foreducationEducation. The chapter conceptualises lea...

This chapter reports findings of researchresearch into the practicepractices of teaching conducted by members of the Pedagogypedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) international research networkPedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) international research network, much of it using the theory of practice architecturestheory of practice architectures as...

An enduring problem in English curriculum and pedagogy is that listening and speaking, as intricately interconnected interactional practices, are often treated separately. In classroom discussions, attention is predominantly drawn to vocalisation as the key element of dialogue. Furthermore, listening as a silent embodied activity, is often taken to...

The Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) talk sequence dominates whole-class talk in school lessons but frequently provides limited talk options for students. This article examines a variant of the sequence produced by young children and their teacher in an early years’ classroom. The multiple-response sequences were identified in classroom recording...

Uncovering the hidden imperative of communicative spaces: Negotiating uncomfortable truths through action research Critical action research is a praxis-oriented professional learning practice. Such practice requires a move beyond viewing action research as simply a technical or practical method for teacher development; instead, it strives for rese...

Uncovering the hidden imperative of communicative spaces: Negotiating uncomfortable truths through action research Critical action research is a praxis-oriented professional learning practice. Such practice requires a move beyond viewing action research as simply a technical or practical method for teacher development; instead, it strives for rese...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how Catholic district offices support school leaders’ instructional leadership practices at times of major reform. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs the theory of practice architectures as a lens through which to examine local site-based responses to system-wide reforms in two Australian...

Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) requires communicative space to develop shared understandings and decisions. We examine the interactional accomplishment of such a space between a classroom practitioner and an academic researcher when meeting to reflect on a lesson and agree on future action to bring about change in the practitioner’s...

This article presents a practice perspective of mathematics pedagogy and mathematics learning, by considering the interconnections between how developing a mathematics identity is bound up with the sayings, doings and relatings one experiences in classroom mathematical encounters. Broadly, mathematics education is fundamentally about stirring stude...

Educational researchers have invested much in isolating the specific ‘drivers’ that influence school change and teacher professional development. In this vein, this article draws attention to necessarily situated understandings of practice development through research into the nature of ‘middle leading’ for site based education development in one p...

Proponents of dialogic teaching argue for changes to classroom interaction to promote student language use and higher-order thinking. An under-researched aspect of dialogic approaches is the way students initiate and manage disagreement during their talk with each other. This article examines interaction in whole-class talk during a literacy lesson...

Det har länge varit känt att ledarskap är viktigt för utveckling av förskola och skola och att ett bra ledarskap är en nyckelfaktor för en lyckad utbildning. Att ledarskap gör skillnad i utbildningssammanhang, och har betydelse på alla nivåer och för alla skolformer, är ett påstående grundat i många års forskning från olika länder och kontinenter....

What are the possibilities for education in an era of schooling? This is a persistent question and indeed challenge, for educators and educational researchers in contemporary times. At its core, education is always a promise for and process of renewal, growth and change; thus, the job of renewal, growth and change too must work to fulfil its promis...

This chapter brings together an ensemble of recollections and reflections recognising the work and educational life across Stephen’s career. These reflections are reminiscences that stretch from his days at Graduate School at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the USA in the early 1970s, to his work at the Centre for Applied Research...

There are always perennial and critical questions to be asked about the nature, conduct and study of education. Who is it for? What is its purpose? Is it just? How does it happen? How does one educate? What is education? Such questions lead us into the complex territory of interrelated educational practices involving student learning, teaching, lea...

Teaching mathematics involves a lot of talking, and dialogic practices are central to most pedagogical practices in mathematics classrooms. Furthermore, for mathematical processes such as ‘reasoning’, ‘explaining’ and ‘mathematical thinking’ to be developed, there is a need for rich and robust dialogic interactions in the classroom. In this paper w...

This chapter contributes understandings of how a young child constructs her simultaneous use of multiple technologies so that her orientation to one occasions and informs her use of another. It illustrates the interplay between technologies as they are used by the child to socially organise and produce a pretend telephone call. Data are drawn from...

In this final chapter, we conclude that the most fundamental task of a teacher is, and always should be, to change lives, through initiating people into practices. We present a theory of practice, showing how practices are shaped by practice architectures. We argue that teachers change lives by giving students an education, rather than just schooli...

In this chapter, we argue that education has a double purpose: the formation of individuals and the formation of societies. We examine how these educational aspirations were formed in antiquity, in Aristotle’s views about education outlined in his NicomacheanEthics and in his Politics. We argue that these views are still relevant today and that any...

In this chapter, we explore the roles of education and schooling in reproducing and transforming our shared social worlds. What aspects of a society schools should reproduce and what aspects they should transform are political questions, about which reasonable people may disagree. We discuss Lundgren’s theory of curriculum, and we examine two kinds...

This chapter describes the evolution of educational institutions through a number of stages: the philosophical schools of ancient Greece; schools established and overseen by the Christian Church; the era of the town school (and the advent of universities); the emergence of guild schools; and, finally, the rise of mass compulsory education in the mi...

This short book provides an introduction to the study of education, outlining the dual purpose of education – to help people live well and to help develop a world worth living in. It argues that education initiates people into forms of understanding, modes of activity, and ways of relating to each other and the world that not only help individuals...

This book is a Festschrift for Emeritus Professor Stephen Kemmis, who has a long and eminent career as an educational researcher and academic spanning over 40 years. His work in curriculum, evaluation, critical practice, action research and practice theory has been influential across all continents of the world. The book examines critical perspecti...

Learning in primary schools is typically located in the province of a classroom. Classrooms provide the cultural, linguistic, physical, and relational space for student learning. One way to understand the nature of this space – the learning space – is to reach beyond the boundaries of the four walls of the classroom (as a type of container object)...

This chapter asks how the theory of practice architectures is travelling, in terms of the way it has been used, primarily in this volume. The chapter (1) clarifies some key terms in the theory including (a) the relationship between practices and practice architectures, (b) the ideas of ‘enabling’ and ‘constraining’, and (c) the relationship between...

The development of Early Childhood Education in Sweden is a central concern for national and local government, and for school districts and preschools. While principals have the responsibility for, and a particular role in, leading education in the preschools, they are somewhat removed from the core work of teachers. In this article, we argue that...

Pedagogy, Education, and Praxis (PEP) network is a cross-institutional, collaborative research program, which brings together researchers from Australia, Columbia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Caribbean, the Netherlands, and the UK. Since 2005, PEP researchers have been investigating the nature, traditions, and conditions of PEP and how they are un...

The concluding chapter of the Handbook was written and shared in the Rundbriefe (round letters) form circulated among six Handbook authors active in the leadership of key international action research organizations whose history and ongoing action research efforts are reported upon in the Handbook. Each author responded to three questions after rea...

This article seeks to extend current understandings of educational action research, particularly how teachers’ actions, talk and ongoing relatings can serve as a vehicle for transforming their learning, including under current global conditions of more performative accountability. The research is grounded in Noffke’s (2009) understandings of the na...

Educational leadership has long been a focus of research and scholarship that focuses on effective education and school improvement. This has usually centred on the important practices of principals; but here we focus on the leading of those who are closer to the classroom—middle leaders. Middle leaders are those who have an acknowledged leadership...

There has emerged, since the turn of the century or so, a cohesive body of work centred on theorising education as practice. These practice theories come from a range of theoretical and philosophical traditions, but collectively they draw attention to the sociality of practices, and the ontological nature of practice. A ‘practice turn’ also emphasi...

To understand the accounts of practice and the theories that draw attention to the sociality and situatedness of practices presented in this volume, we take up the challenge of reflecting critically and concisely on the present state and the relevance of practice theory in education research. We do this by writing the chapter in the form of a Rundb...

Teaching and learning is intrinsically a social practice. By drawing on social theory, specifically the theory of practice architectures as a conceptual framework, the chapter inquires into the enduring question about the social happeningness of what goes on in classrooms (Heap 1985); and in particular, what happens in the moment-by-moment unfoldin...