Life in Practices: Challenges for Education and Educational Research

Abstract

This chapter makes the case that we live our lives in practices—that we engage with other people, other species, and the world in practices. After introductory remarks expressing my profound thanks to the contributors to this volume, the first section of the chapter makes the case that we engage with the world in practices. It does so by describing intersubjective space: the ‘three-dimensional’ medium in which we encounter one another and the world. The next section argues that practices adapt and evolve in relation to practice architectures—arrangements in intersubjective space that enable and constrain how practices unfold. These practice architectures are also conditions that make practices possible. Against the background of the theory of practice architectures, the next section introduces a view of education, not as a process for the distribution of knowledge, but as a process for the distribution of practices. It offers a theory of education which complements the theory of practice architectures, and shows how education has a double purpose of pursuing the good for each person and the good for humankind. The next section sketches a few implications of this view of education for educational research, in relation to curriculum (a curriculum not of knowledge, but of practices), for pedagogy, and for assessment. The chapter concludes by suggesting that, in our time, education has the urgent purpose of distributing practices of sustainable living across the planet.