A New View of Practice: Practices Held in Place by Practice Architectures

Abstract

This chapter conceptualizes change in education or any field as the transformation of social practices. It introduces a new view of practices as composed of distinctive sayings, doings and relatings that “hang together” in the project of the practice. It shows how practices are made possible by practice architectures that provide their content: how the characteristic sayings of a practice are made possible by cultural-discursive arrangements (in language, in semantic space), how its characteristic doings are made possible by material-economic arrangements (in work and activities, in physical space-time), and how its characteristic relatings are made possible by social/political arrangements (in relationships of power and solidarity, in social space). Changing a social practice like education, therefore, depends not only on understanding and changing educational practices but also the practice architectures that hold those practices in place. This chapter shows how critical participatory action researchers can transform both their practices and the practice architectures that make their practices possible.