How tutor-practitioners conceptualised and enacted their practice-based knowing in a Higher Education Fashion School: a Teaching and Learning Regime approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines how tutor-practitioners conceptualised and enacted their practice-based knowing (PBK) in a Higher Education Fashion School (HEFS). It adopts a qualitative insider-researcher methodology composed of oral biographies, dialogic interviews and participant observations. Social practice theory (SPT) is utilised as the analytical framework; composed of Trowler’s Teaching and Learning Regime (TLR) theoretical construct and Schatzki’s conceptual relationship between viewing practice as a connected entity and practice as performance. Tutor-practitioner vignettes are employed to integrate the presentation, analysis and discussion of the qualitative data. They illustrate that the tutor-practitioners’ PBK was conceptualised as a combination of: learning rules and techniques, bringing contextualised working methods into the HEFS, acknowledging tacit knowing including sensible knowledge, having contemporary and historical perspectives alongside accrued experiences and applying theory in relevant contexts to make connections with Fashion Industry practices. Its enactment was composed of dialogical, collaborative, modelling and mentoring processes in conjunction with demonstrating and simulating such practices. Tutor-practitioners also exhibited hybridised and fluid identity formation in the enactment of these practices. The paper concludes by explaining the implications of the research outcomes for the possible enhancement of the TLR heuristic when applied in Higher Education (HE) research contexts where tutor-practitioners teach.