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Conceptualising praxis, agency and learning: A postabyssal exploration to strengthen the struggle over alternative futures
Educational Philosophy and Theory
... Perhaps it can support their development as agentic beings. In this regard, we can recognize learning as not exclusively one; it is more than one (Many) simultaneously for border-crossing the preferred labels and posing a threat to the dominant power and the injustices of the status quo (Hopwood, 2024) embedded in science education. ...
As STEAM scholars (both the authors) and a science teacher educator (the first author), we recognize that traditional teacher-centric methods of prospective science learning cultures have improved and transformed towards authentic, inclusive, and meaningful learning. In this regard, the driving question of this article is: How has Pratima experienced the empowering and disempowering cultures in her science learning journey from her perspective, and how has this nurtured transformative learning? As an autoethnographer, she viewed her prospective science learning-related narrative through a transformative lens to address the spirit of our research question and methodology. She generated three key themes: (i) enriching teacher-student communication, (ii) conceptualizing science as everyday phenomena rather than as facts and figures, and (iii) transforming a cookbook-dominated cultural reproduction through narrative analysis and interpretations. Likewise, she proposed deconstructing the disempowering cultures, such as the over-communication of teachers with students, conceptualizing science as facts and figures, and cookbook-dominated cultural reproduction to nurture transformative learning. In this regard, conceptualizing science as an everyday phenomenon, enriching intercommunication between teachers and students, and engaging in open-book science teaching-learning could transform from cultural reproduction to reconstruction. This can contribute to developing prospective science teachers as change agents.
... We can deconstruct the dominant power and the injustices of the status quo by recognizing the learning as not exclusively "One" and simultaneously more than the suite of preferred labels "Many" (Hopwood, 2024). Integrating the cognitive (i.e., what is learned?) and affective domains (i.e., how to do the learner's experience/realize learning activities?) in science research programs supports making a good sense of learning (Taber, 2015). ...
In this methodological paper of my PhD journey, I attempt to showcase the Nepali Cultural Worldview (NCW) grounded transformative praxis for reconceptualizing the conventional approach of scientific literacy that forgets our axio-onto-epistemic roots. Theory, values, and practice are the foundation of transformative praxis (Freire, 1996). Therefore, to counteract the Westo-centric outlook of the science education practice, the primary concern of this paper is: How could Nepali Cultural Worldview support reconceptualizing scientific literacy through transformative action research? I viewed my research question through the lenses of NCW to enrich the NCW grounded on axio-onto-epistemic roots. I made critical discourse based on TAR’s theoretical, philosophical, and practical dimensions. I also offer to engage in TAR projects for post-critical scientific literacy. It could renew our post/positivist “self” to NCW-grounded transformative “self.” In this regard, TAR possibly empowers us to do our Kartabya Karma to strengthen and reinforce our professional Dharma and nurture the researcher and research participants as change agents.
This chapter contributes to the goals of taking stock of, and charting possible futures for, Activity Theory (AT/CHAT) -- by considering its relevance to today’s scholarship and broader sociopolitical contexts, currently in great turmoil and crisis. I address and problematize the legacy of Marx and Vygotsky (and the latter’s collective project) specifically vis-a-vis difficult questions having to do with their affiliation with eurocentric traditions of scholarship and related possible charges of colonialism, racism, and elitism. Given profound social transformations currently taking place in our “world on fire” (Moraga, 1983a, p.3), both literally and metaphorically, I consider such a problematization to be urgently needed. Is it possible to draw on Marx and Vygotsky at such a critical time, as allies in the struggle for a next world – against neocolonialism, hegemony, planetary devastation, and racism? Engaging Audre Lorde’s wise words cautioning that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” my answer is nonetheless positive for a number of concrete reasons. This answer needs to be predicated on a substantive, creative, and above all critical engagement with Marx and Vygotsky. This includes critical analysis of possible implicit connotations (if not overt positions), associated with eurocentrism, anthropocentrism, colonialism, teleology, and other potentially pernicious effects and harmful implications which, if left unaddressed, could put Marx and Vygotsky at odds with the goals of anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-colonialist struggles of today.
The Australian education system features considerable socioeconomic inequality and is a frequent source of controversy in Australian public life. Yet meaningful reform to this system has proven elusive. In this article, we examine the public’s fairness perceptions of educational inequality based on parental financial capacity, using an online survey of adults ( N = 1,999) from New South Wales, Australia. We asked about the fairness of inequality in school resources and education quality, and used a scenario in which students from high-income and low-income families had achievement gaps due to differences in educational experiences. Respondents had diverse perceptions about the fairness of educational inequality, but most perceived the scenario as unfair or very unfair. The partial proportional odds models showed that self-interest and neoliberal orientations predicted people’s fairness perceptions of educational inequality. The findings of this study have implications for achieving meaningful reform of the Australian education system that is in line with public opinion.
Public education is not just a way to organise and fund education. It is also the expression of a particular ideal about education and of a par- ticular way to conceive of the relationship between education and soci- ety. The ideal of public education sees education as an important dimension of the common good and as an important institution in securing the common good. The common good is never what individu- als or particular groups want or desire, but always reaches beyond such particular desires towards that which societies as a whole should con- sider as desirable. This does, of course, put the common good in ten- sion with the desires of individuals and groups. Neo-liberal modes of governance have, over the past decades, put this particular educational set up under pressure and have, according to some, eroded the very idea of the common good. This set of contributions reflects on this state of affairs, partly through an exploration of the idea of publicness itself – how it can be rearticulated and regained – and partly through reflec- tions on the current state of education in the ‘north’ and the ‘south.’
The concept of crisis has a long history across disciplines (medicine, history, political economy, political science, sociology, psychology, history, philosophy of science, etc.). This concept has been used in a variety of different ways. Vygotsky employed the concept of crisis in a critique of psychology as a ‘problematic discipline’. Additionally, Vygotsky used the concept of crisis to refer to the specific mechanisms related to psychological development. More generally, the concept of crisis is crucial for the conceptualisation of the process of development of Vygotsky’s project. From a dialectical perspective, a crisis is a critical moment of a dynamic, contradictory, developmental process. The elaboration of the concept of crisis as a part of a broader, dialectical vision of society in the long-term process of its historical development can become a moment of regenerating cultural-historical activity research.
In this invited commentary for the special issue on ‘How built spaces influence practices of educators’ work: An examination through practice lens,’ I discuss how insights from the theory of practice architecture and the theory of practice ontology are helpful in exploring the complexities of educational practices, particularly with reference to the locations within and through which such practices take place. By focusing on the doings, sayings and relatings that take place in such practices and on their material conditions, the contributions add much nuance and detail to the understanding of educational practices, particularly when such practices are ‘in transition’ due to forces that are often beyond the influence of the actors in such practices themselves. The main critical point I make concerns the sayings utilised by the authors themselves. I suggest that references to ‘learning’ are problematic in the study of educational practices. I single out the idea of seeing schools, colleges and universities as ‘learning environments.’ I provide reasons why this way of engaging with educational practices is problematic – both from a research perspective and from a practice and policy perspective – and suggest that the better designation would be that of seeing them as educational practices.
This paper argues for a postcritical praxis in global citizenship education (GCE) and peace education (PE). The paper begins by critiquing the interlocking fields of GCE and PE as problematically framed around the three key pillars of liberal peace. Then, drawing on postabyssal thinking the paper illustrates that the Western-centricity of liberal peacebuilding is not only colonialist/imperialist but that it is an erasure of the other. The paper argues that in light of this realization epistemological pluralism as a transformative response is wanting. Instead new responses must focus on other ontological possibilities grounded in a postcritical response to postabyssal thought. Before concluding, the paper offers some pedagogic possibilities integrating the ontological for a new postcritical GCE and PE.
Fifty years after UNESCO’s publication of Learning to be: The world of education today and tomorrow, the author of this article provides an assessment of this seminal report, commonly known as “the Faure report”. He characterises the educational vision of the report as humanistic and democratic and highlights its emphasis on the need for educational provision throughout the life-course. He demonstrates how the right to education has, over time, been transformed into a duty to learn, Moreover, this duty has been strongly tied to economic purposes, particularly the individual’s duty to remain employable in a fast-changing labour market. Rather than suggesting that Edgar Faure and his International Commission on the Development of Education set a particular agenda for education that has, over time, been replaced by an altogether different agenda, the author suggests a reading of the report which understands it as making a case for a particular relationship between education and society, namely one in which the integrity of education itself is acknowledged and education is not reduced to a mere instrument for delivering particular agendas. Looking back at the report five decades later, he argues that it provides a strong argument for the emancipation of education itself, and that this argument is still needed in the world of today.
What is higher education praxis in a world beset by crises? Sjølie et al. (2020) explore this in relation to academics’ learning during the, using the theory of practice architectures, to highlight key responses and adaptations to the Coronavirus pandemic. I offer a re-reading of their cases of changing practice, challenging a sense of being accepting of, resigned to, and unfolding ‘under’ given circumstances. Instead, I highlight agentic, transformative praxis, where people act individually and collectively towards alternative futures. Drawing on Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance, I point to ways the theory of practice architectures might be put to work ‘dangerously’, as part of a struggle for a better world. Envisioning a reinvigoration of a politically charged theory of practice architectures, I argue the it offers particular value through the concept of learning as coming to practise differently, sharpened through a notion of contribution rather than participation.
Some critical perspectives about neoliberal trends in higher education have resulted in exploring different types of collaborations aimed at creating spaces for academics to promote pedagogical practice as praxis. Drawing upon a case study informed by a Latin American intellectual tradition of dialogue as praxis and praxis as political action, as well as by practice theory, it is argued that it is difficult to understand and address what enables and constrains pedagogical practices as praxis if academics fail to put themselves at the centre of a feeling-based reflection process. From this perspective, this study revealed two enablers and four constraints of five pedagogical practices as ‘feeling-thinking’ praxis, which emerged from dialogue as praxis in a group of eight academics from four Colombian universities. Feelings of exhaustion, sadness, disappointment, indignation, annoyance, gratitude, anxiety, confusion, and relief were key so that their ethical-political actions could contribute to rehumanise higher education.
The present article presents data of the multiyear research that confirms the fact that the system of teaching younger students based on the method of learning activity creates conditions for a successful cognitive, social and personal development of children in primary school. Students aged 10—11 years old show a higher level of the mastery of key competencies than their peers whose learning is based on traditional methods and techniques of the educational work. It is reliably established that the “developing educational environment” enables children to achieve higher indicators of learning ability. It is an ability to tell apart the known from the unknown and ask questions about the unknown. The indicators of the development of the basic theoretical thinking (content analysis, the degree of planning, reflection) in these children are higher than in those in the traditional school. In contrast to traditional schools, the “developing educational environment” contributes more to an efficient development of children’s social competencies: the ability for interaction, overcoming cognitive conflicts and for the mutual control and evaluation of actions performed.
The recent scholarship on agency is mostly centered around a relational (also known as situative, contextual, distributed, and ecological) approach that draws attention to agency being situated in context and contingent on sociocultural interactivities and contextual dynamics. My central argument is that there is a residue of passivity in these conceptions. Illustrative of this are the works by Bietsa and colleagues which I analyse to reveal conceptual flaws that need to be addressed. To overcome these flaws, it is important to reconstrue no less than the very basic premises about human development, context/reality, and teaching-learning to foreground a more radical view of agency conducive to combatting inequalities and injustices in education. In the alternative approach, termed the Transformative Activist Stance, human development is posited to be not only fully immersed in the world and its contextual dynamics but, more critically, realized by each individual's agentive contributions to communal practices, whereby these practices are changed as a whole every time a person acts as an active member of community. The emphasis is on the nexus of people changing the world and being changed in this very process of them changing the world—as two poles of one and the same, bi-directional and recursive, co-constitution of people and the world in a simultaneous self- and world-realization. People never merely react or respond to what exists but agentively act in co-realizing both the world and themselves. Agency in this account is accorded with a formative role in the processes of co-realizing both human development, the overall sociohistorical dynamics, and the world itself. Importantly, agency development is contingent on access to cultural tools that need to be provided by society and agentively taken up by each individual. There are starkly contrasting sociopolitical conjectures and implications geared to the issues of inequalities and injustices in education. The notion of a radical-transformative agency is deployed in order to expose and overcome ideologies of passive adaptation to, and acquiescence with, the existing order of things and the world as it presumably “is.”
The world is experiencing a particularly tense moment which asks for a project that goes beyond the limiting situations posed by immediate reality. This condition considers the critical immersion of individuals in their known realities and broad emersion in multiple contexts of understanding, which may broaden their horizons of perception. Vygotsky and recent followers offer us a basis for rethinking our reality in a collaborative and critical search for forms of development beyond who we are. This article brings about projects developed with schools from very poor and wealthy communities of São Paulo, where participants act together to transform their life conditions.
This article explores and conceptualises the emergent and historic presence of a feminised pedagogical praxis in Australian Enabling (university access) programs. Analysing a participatory project at a regional university that sought to map these pedagogies, it specifically aims to visibilise the complexities of careful pedagogical practices which challenge deficit and assimilationist renditions of equity and inclusion, and which foster the possibilities for re-narrativisations of self, community and other. Such pedagogical practices not only develop ethics and practices of care but foreground careful recognition of the epistemological contributions of subjects from non-traditional backgrounds. These pedagogies of difference and other pedagogical subjectivities are situated within a broader context in which hegemonic careless masculinities render these transformative feminised pedagogies invisibilised, devalued and denigrated. Our paper concludes with suggestions for the ways in which these pedagogies of care and other caring subjectivities might be nurtured and rendered powerful within our current context.
The core argument in this paper is that all research schools and theoretical frameworks carry with them – and, importantly, also within them, as their inherent dimensions – particular ethical orientations (systems of values and ethical endpoints) tailored to and derivative from socio-political and ultimately, practical projects in which research uniquely gains its concreteness and meaning. These projects can be differentiated along the axis either of supporting (explicitly or implicitly) the status quo by taking it for granted and not challenging its reigning assumptions or, alternatively, aiming at transcending it through resistance and social transformation. These systems of values and orientations, or a sociopolitical ethos, indelibly color all other elements and dimensions of inquiries such as their ontologies and epistemologies, forming a unified ethico-onto-epistemology. Cultural-historical theory, under certain expansions and upgrades, is a paradigmatic case for advancing this position, with Hedegaard's works seen as sharing Vygotsky's broadly defined sociopolitical ethos which sheds light on her approach's significance and promise. To establish the centrality of ethico-onto-epistemology, a revision of the constitutional framework that could enable it, away from assumptions of passivity, accommodation, and adaptation, is required. A Transformative Activist Stance paves the way to understand knowledge production as always embedded within activist pursuits of broad social projects beyond the narrow confines of academia while embracing transformative agency grounded in political imagination and commitment to resistance and radical social transformation.
This chapter introduces the theory of practice architectures and locates it within the theoretical terrain of practice theory. It highlights what is distinctive about the theory as a practice theory, and discusses its affordances as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource for practitioners and researchers. We argue that, to create new possibilities for practice in our disciplines and professions, and/or to challenge unsustainable or untoward practices in education and professional practice more broadly, our current practices must be interrogated. The theory of practice architectures can inform such interrogative work. This chapter provides a foundation for the case chapters in this book which variously illustrate the kinds of insights yielded by exploring education and professional practice through the lens of practice architectures.
The problem of culturally decontextualised mathematics education faced by Nepali students, teachers and teacher educators has often been oriented by the view of the nature of mathematics as a body of pure knowledge, which gives rise to an exclusive emphasis on an ideology of singularity, epistemology of objectivism, language of universality and logic of certainty whilst developing curriculum, conceiving pedagogies and implementing assessment strategies in school mathematics education and mathematics teacher education programmes. With epistemic referents of dialectical logics and performative imagination, an alternative view of the nature of mathematics as an impure knowledge is discussed with its possible disempowering features, such as essentialism, hegemony and dualisms. Finally, an inclusive view of the nature of mathematics as im/pure knowledge system is articulated with the help of various forms of dialectics.
This book displays the striking creativity and profound insight that characterized Freire's work to the very end of his life-an uplifting and provocative exploration not only for educators, but also for all that learn and live.
The book suggests a transition from a relational worldview premised on the socio-political ethos of adaptation towards a transformative worldview premised on the ethos of solidarity and equality. Expansively developing Vygotsky's revolutionary project, the Transformative Activist Stance integrates insights from a vast array of critical and sociocultural theories and pedagogies and moves beyond their impasses to address the crisis of inequality. This captures the dynamics of social transformation and agency in moving beyond theoretical and political canons of the status quo. The focus is on the nexus of people co-creating history and society while being interactively created by their own transformative agency. Revealing development and mind as agentive contributions to the 'world-in-the-making' from an activist stance guided by a sought-after future, this approach culminates in implications for research with transformative agendas and a pedagogy of daring. Along the way, many key theories of mind, development and education are challenged and radically reworked.
The author draws on his Eastern wisdom tradition of Hinduism-Buddhism to narrate his decades-long scholarly journey to expand the mathematics teacher education program of his university, culminating in the establishment of postgraduate programs (MEd, MPhil, PhD) in STEAM Education. The goal of these programs is to empower teachers in schools across Nepal to develop transformative curricula and pedagogies that foster cultural and environmental sustainability.
Theorizing agency is crucial to intervening in social, economic, political, and environmental crises. This paper examines three approaches to agency within cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT): transformative activist stance (Stetsenko), transformative agency by double stimulation (Sannino), and relational agency (Edwards). All three uphold CHAT’s rebellious gist, where our actions are shaped by circumstances but where the possibility of transcending those circumstances always remains. However, the paper finds important differences despite common foundations and apparent similarities in relation to dialectics, mediation, motives, and practice. Bringing these distinctions into relief highlights what each framework offers and nuances that hold them helpfully apart.
As Paulo Freire’s education theory for social change and emancipation is being continually studied and disseminated in East Asia, it has faced skepticism as some educators are unfamiliar with its critical pedagogy or education for freedom concepts. In light of this, scholars have attempted to compare Freirean philosophies with concepts in Chinese philosophy of education as a way of bridging East and West. Diverging from previous studies that use popular Chinese philosophies (such as Confucianism) to connect with Freirean theory, this paper introduces an understudied but compatible Chinese philosophical thought, Mohism, for comparison with Freirean theory. Mohism is a political philosophy for the working class that expanded into grassroots movements for people’s welfare in ancient China. The Mohist bottom-up approach echoes the grassroots emancipatory pedagogy that underlies Freirean philosophy. A comparative analysis of education concepts in both philosophies reveals that despite differences in the educational content of Freirean theory and Mohism, there are similarities in their conceptualization of education for anti-oppression and praxis for social change. Implications for utilizing Mohist philosophy to contemplate Freirean philosophy within the East Asian educational context are also explored. Ultimately this paper revives educational concepts of Mohism that aligns with Freirean philosophy to a broader audience of scholars and educators. © 2022 National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University National Taiwan Normal University. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Theories of agency are often borrowed from psychology and sociology; truly educational theories of agency are rare – theories that not only classify and measure dimensions of agency but enable us to understand how its formation can be pedagogically facilitated. Based on Sannino’s recent work on transformative agency by double stimulation (TADS), a truly educational approach to agency is gaining traction. In double stimulation, a person or group faces a paralysing conflict of motives (first stimulus) which is resolved by identifying a meaningful artefact that is turned into a sign (second stimulus). Today’s critical learning challenges typically do not have obvious or ‘correct’ solutions. They require a pedagogy that allows learners to face conflicts and construct artefacts to help break out of their paralysis. The paradigm of double stimulation, as explored in the articles in this issue, offers as tarting point for a pedagogy of agentive actions and expanding possibilities.
In this article, we present participatory action research (PAR) as a radical act of humanity: a direct response to real dehumanization of vulnerable communities. We argue, as an enactment of critical social theories, that PAR privileges relationships and shared knowledge creations as strategies for transforming everyday worlds. We draw on interviews conducted with nine participants of a 2013 Krueger-Henney, P. (2013). Co-researching school spaces of dispossession: A story of survival. The Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 7(3), 42–53. [Google Scholar] PAR Institute, which aimed to explore and document the ways in which PAR is taken up in the lives, bodies, and thinking of PAR activists and students. Interviews reveal PAR is not an act of imagination, but rather an act of reclaiming and disrupting realities. As a result, PAR fractures an ongoing dystopia/utopia dialectic, and positions horror and hope side-by-side in the material world. It is through and with participant interview narratives that we frame PAR as a site for re-training one’s epistemic core away from Western, Eurocentric standardized and normalized human conduct rooted in historical and ongoing violence towards a fugitive praxis. We conclude that PAR is a radical commitment to guiding social science researchers towards epistemological fugitivity: a moving with and through current, though historically rooted, devastating social realities, as a possibility for a way to be with each other – indeed with the other – in this world. We find that PAR is a way of resisting and rejecting the nastiness of the world, while not waiting for utopia: It is a way of being in this world, a way of life.
Eradicating homelessness is one of the most pressing challenges for efforts aimed at equity and social justice in the world. Many people who experience homelessness have histories of violence, growing up in child protection institutions, involvement in criminal activities, and mental and health problems connected with substance abuse. Homelessness is, therefore, a phenomenon which requires coherent and consistent cross-sectoral service integration and interorganisational service production. The way this challenge has been addressed so far in Finland may be interpreted as enacting a utopia when compared with other realities and the predominant views of impossibility to eradicate homelessness which stem from them. The article drafts an agenda aimed at disclosing how the utopia of eradicating homelessness is being enacted, what learning this involves, and how research on work and learning can concretely mediate and support the enactment processes.
Neoliberalism is invariably presented as a governing regime of market and competition-based systems rather than as a set of migratory practices that are re-setting the ethical standards of the academy. This article seeks to explore the way in which neoliberalism is shifting the prevailing values of the academy by drawing on two illustrations: the death of disinterestedness and the obfuscation of authorship. While there was never a golden age when norms such as disinterestedness were universally practiced they represented widely accepted aesthetic ideals associated with academic life. By contrast, neoliberal academics embrace a new set of assumptions and norms that stand in sharp relief to many of the values that were previously espoused. Practices that might have been regarded as ethically dubious by earlier generations of academics, such as grantsmanship, self-justificatory expressions of interestedness and tangential claims to authorship, are now regarded as legitimate and positive virtues in a more aggressive age of hyper-performativity.
This book centres on a broadened view of complexity that will enrich engagement with complexity in the social sciences. The key idea is to employ complexity theory to develop a holistic account of practice, agency and expertise. In doing so, the book acknowledges and builds upon the relational character of reductive accounts. It draws upon recent theoretical work on complexity, emergence and relationality to develop a novel account of practice, agency and expertise in and for workplaces. Biological, psychological and social aspects of these are integrated. This novel account overcomes problems in current views of practice, agency and expertise, which suffer from reductive, or fragmented, analyses, based upon individuals, groups, or networks. In retrieving the experiential richness of human activity – often esteemed as the basis of generative and creative life – this book shows how complexity both emerges from, and is, a non-reductive feature of, human experience, especially in daily work.
“…an ambitiously wide-ranging volume, questioning the key tenets of respected approaches ….. and offering ….. ‘novel accounts’, which draw on features of complexity thinking…. …But they go further than any of us in their argument that: ‘whatever reductive moves are made, they ‘flow’ from holistic accounts of relationality which have already affectively engaged the purposes of a co-present group.’ This is the intellectual contribution that is built consistently and persuasively across the chapters.”
Professor Emerita Anne Edwards, Oxford University
"Hager and Beckett have written a book that will challenge more commonly held notions of agency, practice, skills, and learning. Centering their argument on complexity theory or, as they prefer, complexity thinking, Hager and Beckett argue that it is through relations that we raise questions about, gather data from, and make working sense of the complexity that surrounds us. Groups then, particularly small groups, hold and implement agentive power. And what the authors call co-present groups—ones in which holistic relationality occurs socially, and affectively in distinctive places—“draw us closer to each other, and harness our normativity by enabling negotiability and reason-giving.” If your field of study involves anything remotely sociocultural in nature or if you are just interested in the complex ways we engage as humans with our worlds, you should find a place for this book in your library."
Bob Fecho, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York NY, USA
This book introduces readers to the theory of practice architectures and conveys a way of approaching practice theory through developing a practice sensibility. It shows that, in order to change our practices, we must also change the conditions that make those practices possible. The book draws on everyday life to illustrate how we can see the world by watching it unfold in practices: it argues that life happens in practices. The theory of practice architectures takes the ontological nature of practices seriously by recognising that practices take place in the real world.
Consequently, the book offers a new perspective on how practices happen amidst a vast world of happenings; on how we participate in the “happening-ness” of the world through our practices. It invites us to consider whether our practices reproduce or aggravate the contemporary environmental crises confronting the Earth, and whether we can transform our current practices to ameliorate these crises. Given its focus and scope, the book will benefit master’s and doctoral students in social and educational theory, early career researchers, and established researchers new to practice theory.
This book was written to help people understand and transform education and professional practice. It presents and extends the theory of practice architectures, and offers a contemporary account of what practices are composed of and how practices shape and are shaped by the arrangements with which they are enmeshed in sites of practice. Through its empirically-based case chapters, the book demonstrates how the theory of practice architectures can be used as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource to generate insights that have important implications for practice, theory, policy, and research in education and professional practice. These insights relate to how practices are shaped by arrangements (and other practices) present in specific sites of practice, including early childhood education settings, schools, adult education, and workplaces. They also relate to how practices create distinctive intersubjective spaces, so that people encounter one another in particular ways (a) in particular semantic spaces, (b) that are realised in particular locations and durations in physical space-time, and (c) in particular social spaces. By applying such insights, readers can work towards changing practices by transforming the practice architectures that make them possible.
A fully-updated and reworked version of the classic book by Stephen Kemmis and Robin McTaggart , now joined by Rhonda Nixon, The Action Research Planner is a detailed guide to developing and conducting a critical participatory action research project. The authors outline new views on ‘participation’ (based on Jürgen Habermas’s notion of a ‘public sphere’), ‘practice’ (as shaped by practice architectures), and ‘research’ (as research within practice traditions). They provide five extended examples of critical participatory action research studies. The book includes a range of resources for people planning a critical participatory research initiative, providing guidance on how to establish an action research group and identify a shared concern, research ethics, principles of procedure for action researchers, protocols for collaborative work, keeping a journal, gathering evidence, reporting, and choosing academic partners.
Unlike earlier editions, The Action Research Planner focuses specifically on critical participatory action research, which occupies a particular (critical) niche in the action research 'family'.
The Action Research Planner is an essential guide to planning and undertaking this type of research.
The neoliberal transformation of the global political–economic system since the mid-1970s has led to profound and increasing inequality and has limited state capacities to tax, regulate and carry out socially supportive public policies. Neoliberalism, or the global institutionalization of laissez-faire economics, has helped to generalize individual and community vulnerability to climate-induced changes and decrease resilience by increasing poverty and thereby limiting options; the global majority face increasingly contingent employment and downward pressure on wages while global economic competition deprives smallholders of their assets. States compete to attract mobile capital by deregulating private activity such as logging and real estate development, increasing climate-related risks to individuals and communities. At the same time, neoliberal limits on the state have inhibited states' ability to fund and coordinate a range of necessary climate adaptations. Finally, neoliberalism undermines social cohesion and thereby limits the potential of civil society to substitute for the diminished state. Reforms to the global neoliberal system are therefore necessary if climate-vulnerable populations are to be protected.
This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions inter-penetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its "iterational" or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a "projective" capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a "practical-evaluative" capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment).
This paper is a contribution to understanding the relationship between agency and learning in the lifecourse. The contribution is mainly of a theoretical and a conceptual nature in that a particular notion of agency is used that enables agency to be conceived as something that is achieved, rather than possessed, through the active engagement of individuals with aspects of their contexts-for-action. We refer to this as an ecological understanding of agency. On the part of the actor, such engagements are characterised by particular configurations of routine, purpose and judgement. The argument is made that learning about the particular composition of one's agentic orientations and how they play out in one's life can play an important role in the achievement of agency, and that life-narratives, stories about one's life, can be an important vehicle for such learning. We explore the potential of this approach through a discussion of aspects of the learning (auto-)biographies of two participants in the Learning Lives project, a three-year longitudinal study of learning in the lifecourse. The paper concludes with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach and an indication of questions for further research.
The neoliberal subject: Resilience, adaptation and vulnerability
- D Chandler
- J Reid
- Chandler D.
Chandler, D., & Reid, J. (2016). The neoliberal subject: Resilience, adaptation and vulnerability. Rowman & Littlefield.