Praxis, Practice and Practice Architectures

Abstract

In this chapter, a view of praxis and practice is outlined that allows us to re-imagine the work of teaching, learning and leading. It does so, first, by reconnecting with a lifeworld perspective on practice as a human and social activity with indissoluble moral, political and historical dimensions. Practice always forms and transforms the one who practices, along with those who are also involved in and affected by the practice. On a second meaning of praxis, praxis is always ‘history making action’ that transforms the world in which the practice is carried out. The chapter introduces our theory of practice and practice architectures, showing how the sayings, doings and relatings that constitute practices are made possible by (respectively) cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements found in or brought to the sites where practices are carried out. Taken together, these arrangements—the preconditions for practices—are the practice architectures that enable and constrain practices. Finally, the chapter shows how the theory of practice architectures offers a way of theorising education. By doing so, it reconnects practice with individual and collective praxis as a way of expressing the double purpose of education: to help people live well in a world worth living in.