School transformation in minoritized settings: a practice architectures lens

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines school transformation for students from minoritized backgrounds in a highly disadvantaged Australian elementary school. Employing the theory of practice architectures and ecologies of practices, it analyses the educational practices and arrangements that enable and constrain the fostering of a more holistic educational approach for the school’s diverse and highly impoverished school community. Furthermore, it examines how these practices and arrangements connect to one another in ways that foster enabling conditions for a more holistic approach to educating to emerge. A practice approach to the study of change is crucial for schools in highly disadvantaged circumstances. It foregrounds the non-human, material elements of school transformation, rejects the reification of practices found in adjectival accounts of leadership and acknowledges the funds of knowledge that minoritized communities bring to schooling. In so doing, a practice approach speaks back to the materiality of power in the making. The article concludes by discussing the implications for socially just educational leadership practice, particularly in minoritized school communities experiencing the challenges of highly performative, marketized systems.