Bill Atweh

Stephen Kemmis

Patricia Weeks

This book presents a collection of stories from action research projects in schools and a university. This collection is more than simply an illustration of the scope of action research in education - it shows how projects that differ on a variety of dimensions can raise similar themes, problems and issues. The book begins with theme chapters discussing action research, social justice and partnerships in research. The case study chapters cover topics such as: * school environment - how to make a school a healthier place to be * parents - how to involve them more in decision-making * students as action researchers * a state system - a collaborative effort between university staff and a state education department * gender - how to promote gender equity in schools * improving assessment in the social sciences * staff development planning * doing a PhD through action research * writing up action research projects.

Partnership for Social Justice in Education

Action Research in Practice

Kathleen Mahon

Susanne Francisco

This book was written to help people understand and transform education and professional practice. It presents and extends the theory of practice architectures, and offers a contemporary account of what practices are composed of and how practices shape and are shaped by the arrangements with which they are enmeshed in sites of practice. Through its empirically-based case chapters, the book demonstrates how the theory of practice architectures can be used as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource to generate insights that have important implications for practice, theory, policy, and research in education and professional practice. These insights relate to how practices are shaped by arrangements (and other practices) present in specific sites of practice, including early childhood education settings, schools, adult education, and workplaces. They also relate to how practices create distinctive intersubjective spaces, so that people encounter one another in particular ways (a) in particular semantic spaces, (b) that are realised in particular locations and durations in physical space-time, and (c) in particular social spaces. By applying such insights, readers can work towards changing practices by transforming the practice architectures that make them possible.

Through the Lens of Practice Architectures

Exploring Education and Professional Practice

This book introduces readers to the theory of practice architectures and conveys a way of approaching practice theory through developing a practice sensibility. It shows that, in order to change our practices, we must also change the conditions that make those practices possible. The book draws on everyday life to illustrate how we can see the world by watching it unfold in practices: it argues that life happens in practices. The theory of practice architectures takes the ontological nature of practices seriously by recognising that practices take place in the real world. Consequently, the book offers a new perspective on how practices happen amidst a vast world of happenings; on how we participate in the “happening-ness” of the world through our practices. It invites us to consider whether our practices reproduce or aggravate the contemporary environmental crises confronting the Earth, and whether we can transform our current practices to ameliorate these crises. Given its focus and scope, the book will benefit master’s and doctoral students in social and educational theory, early career researchers, and established researchers new to practice theory.

An Invitation to the Theory of Practice Architectures

A Practice Sensibility

Peter Grootenboer

Christine Edwards-Groves

Jane Wilkinson

Ian Hardy

Laurette Bristol

This book aims to help teachers and those who support them to re-imagine the work of teaching, learning and leading. In particular, it shows how transformations of educational practice depend on complementary transformations in classroom-school- and system-level organisational cultures, resourcing and politics. It argues that transforming education requires more than professional development to transform teachers; it also calls for fundamental changes in learning and leading practices, which in turn means reshaping organisations that support teachers and teaching – organisational cultures, the resources organisations provide and distribute, and the relationships that connect people with one another in organisations. The book is based on findings from new research being conducted by the authors – the research team for the (2010-2012) Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Project Leading and Learning: Developing Ecologies of Educational Practice.

Changing Practices, Changing Education

Stephen Kemmis

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