A response to Variyan and Edwards-Groves

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article responds to ‘The theory of practice architectures and its discontents: disturbing received wisdom to make it dangerous again’ by George Variyan and Christine Edwards-Groves, published in Critical Studies in Education in March 2024. The authors use Foucault’s genealogical approach to explore the theory but do not show that or how the theory leads to misunderstandings of social realities, in the way that Foucault’s critiques did. I address the authors’ doubts about whether the theory is characterised by a ‘flat ontology’; whether it has a dualistic or dialectical understanding of the relationship between individuals and societies; and whether the visual depictions of the theory ‘reify and mystify’ social realities. I also consider the authors’ speculation about whether the theory has lost the critical and self-critical capacities necessary for its continuing development. I argue that, in general, researchers using the theory have not lost those capacities, although Variyan and Edwards-Groves are right that, in some hands, it has been used descriptively rather than critically or transformatively (with an emancipatory intent). The article concludes that the critique by Variyan and Edwards-Groves is a sceptical rather than a critical exploration of the theory and the empirical findings it has generated.