Teaching: Initiation Into Practices

Abstract

In this chapter, we focus not on teachers but on teaching as a practice. We show how teaching practices bring practices of learning into being, how teaching creates practice architectures for practices of student learning, and how teaching initiates students into practices. We also show that nurturing the practice of teaching requires seeing it not only in relation to student learning, but also in relation to practices of professional learning, leading and researching that can transform, nurture and sustain teaching. We argue that that changing teaching requires more than just changing teachers—it also requires changing the practice architectures that make teaching possible and the ecologies of practices within which practices of teaching exist. Like other practices, the practice of teaching always exists in some particular site, at some particular time. Like other practices, the practice of teaching is thus enmeshed with the local and particular practice architectures of that site, and the ecology of practices to be found at the site. This ontological perspective understands a practice like teaching not just in terms of the behaviour or the actions of teachers, but as a living practice that survives—and can thrive—only in the ecology of practices to be found in a site.