Conceptualising teacher education and research as ‘critical praxis’

A particular approach to epistemological action as ‘critical praxis’ is proposed where we bring together the ideas of ideology critique, self-reflective consciousness and emancipatory action. Critical praxis for educators seeks to move beyond the constraints of formal teaching, knowledge and curriculum and instead encourages communities, teachers and students to work together in producing new understandings and practices for the public good. As teacher educators, we are attempting to design a research methodology that will enable our field of practice to be theorised and to encourage a movement towards new critical understandings of teaching and learning for our students and for ourselves. This is a process of reflexive practice that endeavours to constantly and systematically interrogate our own views and to move beyond the status quo of conservative educational systems, procedures and rigidities so that knowledge is a legitimate investigation of possibility and transformation. In this article, we report a Critical Praxis Protocol to guide further development of teacher education and research. We trace our trajectory from a progressive emphasis on improving learning and professional educational practice to an emerging notion of criticality that seeks explanation with the theorising of Bourdieu. A draft habitus–field analysis is provided to indicate our current understanding of generative themes that suggest the emancipatory potential of teaching and schooling.     

A ‘rhetoric of disruption’ by way of attaining the not yet in the future: re‐membering the past by way of challenging our present educational practices

Our central argument is that if we are to understand who we are as educators in the present as well as who we hope to become in the future, then we must examine and critique how we have collectively represented who we have been. To present our conviction that understanding our history as adult educators is central to understanding our current educational practice, we develop three theses. First, we argue that the purpose of history is to help us understand how we have created our current educational practices from our historical experiences. Second, we draw upon Williams’ notion of a ‘selective tradition’ to show how our current practices are selectively, and often hegemonically, constructed from past practices. Finally, in hopes of moving us toward illuminating our future, we argue that the purpose of history is to help us analyze those selective cultural traditions that inform our current educational practices in order to expose prejudices and illusions. We thus propose the ‘doing’ of history as a counterhegemonic strategy of ‘remembering’ the past in order to critique the present so that as educators we can reveal our historically‐copntinuing limitations and open us to expanding possibilities of Hberatory practice.     

Decolonial innovation in teacher development: praxis beyond the colonial zero-point

ABSTRACT

Despite a rich repertoire of inventive and robust practices, and stated commitments to equity, social justice, and diversity, teacher education has continued to struggle to produce educators capable of enacting culturally sustaining pedagogies, and providing historically marginalized youth and communities with meaningful learning opportunities. This paper contends that ontological distance between educators and youth of colour, and the ways Eurocentric epistemologies exist as a colonial ‘zero point’ in teacher education praxis, are a core element of this existential crisis facing teacher educators. Drawing on decolonial theory and epistemologies of the global south, I suggest that teacher education is in need of epistemic innovation; radically revising our approaches to preparing educators by anchoring them in the epistemic and ontological perspectives of the global south, and in so doing, crafting pedagogical imaginaries through which we might disrupt the ways coloniality lives (often invisibly) in, and is reproduced by, our assumptions about best practices, ways of being, and measures of success. Such a decolonial approach to innovation in teacher education holds promise for ensuring our praxis, and the educators we prepare, are positioned to engage with a hyperdiverse world in humanizing ways.     

Towards Advocacy: post‐positivist directions for progressive teacher educators

This paper seeks to draw attention to the extent to which liberatory pedagogical intentions can function as part of a technology of surveillance unless, as socially critical educators, we actively work against our own tendency to totalising educational discourse. It notes a number of folkloric traditions in pre‐service teacher education that derive from discursive practices which position students either as inevitably acting out a well‐documented scenario or as ‘victims’ of the dominant technocratic model of teacher education. This paper suggests a way forward for teacher educators through the application of post‐positivist theorising to what has come to be understood as ‘proven’ by past and current educational research. This process is exemplified in the discussion by the application of post‐structuralist deconstructive techniques to avant garde educational text in order to bring forward for scrutiny the binary oppositions in our own ‘transformative’ educational discourse. The implications of ‘advocacy’ research are discussed and a plea made for pedagogy that intervenes in socially critical practices by making problematic our own ‘versions’ of student teacher needs.     

Researching educational praxis: Spectator and participant perspectives

This paper describes two parallel research programmes exploring educational practice/praxis. The first, including a theory of ‘practice architectures’, aims to contribute to contemporary practice theory that views practice from the perspective of a spectator. The second aims to contribute to an emerging (practical philosophy) tradition of ‘researching practice from within practice traditions’ and views practice (and praxis) from the perspective of participants. It is argued that these particular spectator and participant perspectives are complementary. They offer a dual approach to researching educational practice and praxis and allow us (educational actors, educational researchers) to see ourselves as formed by a collective praxis, within which teacher—researchers can aspire to act educationally in the sense of acting for the good for each person and for the good for humankind.     

Adult learning: ‘A Key for the Twenty‐first Century’: Reflections on the UNESCO fifth international conference 1997

Experiential learning is part of the canon of the theory and practice of adult learning. However, most of the writing on this subject tends to be normative, i.e. arguing whether or not experiential learning is a ‘good’ thing, or mechanical, i.e. how it occurs and how it can be facilitated. Less has been said about why or how this ‘progressive’ educational idea has become important in educational/training discourse in a period of ‘new right’ government. Drawing on the debates surrounding the notion of postmodernism and, more specifically, the sociology of postmodernism, I suggest that experiential learning offers a space in which the conflicting assumptions and values of the ‘new right’ and ‘new middle class’ (the burgeoning cultural producers and intermediaries) compete for ascendancy, as part of the construction of a ‘common sense’. In general, support from the government for practices that recognize and develop experiential learning have been met with positively by adult educators/trainers, as giving recognition and status to our work. It is suggested that the support for these measures has more to do with the government's desire to restore (self‐)discipline within the social formation. It is argued that experiential learning is integral to postmodernism and, therefore, as adult educators/trainers, in order to understand our own practices better, we need to understand and engage in debates about postmodernism.     

Envisioning Our Practice: Examining and Interpreting Pedagogical Visions of Four Early Career Teacher Educators

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explore how pedagogical visions inform our work as former classroom teachers and current teacher educators in rural and urban regions of the United States. Specifically, we explore the instructional decisions we make as we work to meet these visions in higher education. Teacher educators are charged with the task of fostering visionary teachers in today’s highly challenging educational landscape. We pose the question: How can teacher educators foster visionary beginning teachers without an examination of their visions for their practice? Using a self-study design, we examine the intersections of our pedagogical visions for teaching and the instructional actions we take to work toward our visions in higher education. Findings highlight specific instructional practices and strategies used to enact visions while providing a critical discussion of the lens of visioning within self-study research.     

Critical allies and feminist praxis: rethinking dis-ease

In Australian universities, non-Indigenous educators teaching Indigenous studies and/or Indigenous content must engage critically with anti-colonialism, not simply as lip service to syllabus content, but also, as an ethical consideration whereby consultation and collaboration with Indigenous scholars must necessarily direct praxis. Such an engagement might be referred to as a ‘critical alliance’: an engagement with Others about whom we are speaking that forms the basis for an ethical relationship. A ‘critical alliance’ with Others seeks always to undermine the colonial relations of power that discursively position both Indigenous and non-Indigenous subjects. This paper explores what such an alliance might ‘look like’ as a feminist practice, what will sustain it or give it substance so it can be a productive contribution to a more socially just pedagogy that gives emphasis to Indigenous struggles and Indigenous knowledge.     

“LIVING” EDUCATION: ACTION RESEARCH AS A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO CONGREGATIONAL EDUCATION

Action research as an educational strategy suggests that educators engage in an intentional, collaborative cycle of observing, reflecting, planning, and acting. This approach deliberately attempts to bring theory and practice together in praxis. Action research may be helpful for religious educators who wish to improve their educational practice. This article focuses on ways in which action research might be employed by congregationally based educators.     

How evidence-based teaching practices are challenged by a Deweyan approach to education

The claim is made in this paper that the discourse of education offers a challenge to evidence-based practices because this latter approach is embedded in the discourse of management. Although claiming the status of being ‘scientific’, this latter development is drawn upon problematically by policy makers to provide the warrant for stipulating rules and procedures for ‘best practices’ to which educators are being held accountable. This paper shall draw mostly upon Dewey and is structured into three sections. The first section will attempt to explain the flaw in this evidence-based approach by providing a comparison between empiricism and science. Second, a review of Dewey's recommendation for educators to become more scientific in attitude will then follow, leading to the final section, in which the case will be made that educational practice needs to become as scientific, philosophical and democratic as possible in order for educators to resist being de-professionalised.     

An exploration of educative praxis: Reflections on Marx’s concept praxis,informed by the Lacanian concepts act and event

This article explores an aspect of Karl Marx’s concept, praxis. Praxis is meaningful work, through which we fulfil ourselves by fulfilling others. The discussion draws on the author’s work with postgraduate student teachers, where both students and author were researching their own practice. Reflecting Marx’s conception of praxis as subjective fulfilment in the objective world, this activity was intended to trouble and complicate the categories ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’, whilst enabling students to become both more autonomous and other-oriented. The intention behind this article is to develop the theoretical vocabulary of praxis available to educational researchers and practitioners. Some ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis are introduced, followed by extensive discussion of Slavoj ?i?ek’s concepts, ‘act’ and ‘event’. The key argument is that in a nascent educative praxis, ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ perspectives can be understood not as fixed points of reference, but as dual orientations on a flow of signification. These ideas are developed alongside detailed examination of two university-based research sessions with student teachers. With reference to session activities, a rationale is provided for an emerging educative praxis, in which students explore creative tensions between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ perspectives on school-based practice.     

Praxis,educational development and the university sector in Australia

In this article, we utilise recent theorising on praxis and educational development to explore how academics in universities can foster public, institutional and more personal development, even as they are challenged by what are sometimes described as more ‘managerial’ and ‘neoliberal’ conditions. The research draws upon a variety of sources of data, including publicly available correspondence on the university sector in Australia, interviews with colleagues, and personal reflective journals. These data reflect three instances of educational praxis development in the Australian university context, and at three scales/levels: nationally; unit-wide (university/faculty/institute); and sub-unit/individually. The findings reveal such development in the form of: academics using mainstream media to inform the general public about the nature of university industrial relations and funding at a national level; junior and senior academics collaborating and engaging in mentoring practices to build institutional research capacity at a university/institutional level; and, individual academics meeting to develop individual teaching practice. Through explicating the characteristics and value of educational development for and as praxis, we provide resources for hope for better understanding how the work of universities, including their broader mission to inform the public, might be enacted more educationally.     

Valuing and Desiring Purposes of Education to Transcend Miseducative Measurement Practices

Abstract

The separating and isolating tendencies of measuring practices can lead educators to lose sight of the aims and purposes of education. These end purposes can be used to guide and ensure that the activities of educators are educational, and therefore, Biesta recommends there is a need for educators to reconnect with them. This article. explores this notion of a ‘reconnection’ and argues that if educators are to challenge any potentially miseducative measuring practices, then this reconnection must require educators to value and desire particular end purposes. Desires are recognised to be existential in character and are identified as being necessary for initiating actions. It is argued here that this aspect of desires is important for understanding the significance of a ‘reconnection’ because without it the purposes of education may remain only as abstract philosophical ideals. To make a difference and to challenge the isolating and miseducative tendencies of some measuring practices, educators must come to value particular purposes of education, and in addition, they must exercise the courage to enact them. This can be made possible because educators strongly care for and desire the actualisation of the purposes to which they are connected.     

Praxis in vocational education and training: being and becoming a person

In this paper the concept of praxis is discussed against the background of professional and vocational education and training (henceforth, ‘VET'). The notion of praxis is considered to have at least four elements: contexts, theories, actions and persons (who hold theories and perform actions in specific contexts rather than acting in possible, abstracted, universal or armchair worlds). The relationships of these elements, what is taken as praxis, is discussed and in particular the complex nature of personhood is canvassed. It is suggested that insufficient attention is generally accorded to certain aspects of personhood relevant to action in both professional and VET contexts, that there exists a need for educators to develop a more nuanced and finely textured concept of persons (whom they teach and who they are; and who they, and those whom they teach, might become). Current inadequate metaphysical conceptions of persons should press VET educators and trainers toward longer‐term goals which demand deeper, and deeply secular, time‐based approaches to teaching.     

Driving change from ‘the middle’: middle leading for site based educational development

ABSTRACT

Educational researchers have invested much in isolating the specific ‘drivers’ that influence school change and teacher professional development. In this vein, this article draws attention to necessarily situated understandings of practice development through research into the nature of ‘middle leading’ for site based education development in one primary school district in regional Australia. Drawing on practice theory, the analysis reveals how developing and sustaining change in schools is contingent on middle leaders’ insider knowledge, shared responsibility and capacity to sustain and ‘drive’ teachers’ learning. The article argues more situated understandings of middle leading practices are essential for sustainable educational reform.     

Scaling Up an Untracking Program: A Co-Constructed Process

The adoption and implementation of the Advancement Via Individual Determination untracking program in the state of Kentucky illustrates the utility of viewing the "scaling up" process of educational reform within a conditional matrix. In this article, we examine the way in which the consequences of actions taken in one context become the conditions for actions taken in other contexts. When the reform process is understood as a conditional matrix, we are afforded a better opportunity to understand the complexities confronting the implementation of a successful prototype than provided by unidirectional interpretations. Some educators may initiate reform efforts, others may push or sustain them, and still others may resist or actively subvert reform efforts. This range of actions shows that the agency of educators is part of a complex dynamic, shaping and shaped by the structural and cultural features of school and society.     

Regimes of risk: the need for a pedagogy for peer groups

Peer groups matter more than we think. In this paper we assert that peer group commitments and affiliations are often the primary social reference in determining the way young people think about and practice risk. It is, we argue, inappropriate to impose adult constructions of risk‐taking and anti‐social behaviour when trying to assert influence over the decisions and practices young people make in the context of their peers. Prominent in our discussion is a concern that mainstream educational theory and practice focuses disproportionately on the individual and their capacity to make rational and independent choices. We believe that within this individualizing framework, teachers have only a very limited capacity to influence the practices and decisions young people make in the presence of their peers, their friends. To ground this discussion we juxtapose the actions and interactions of two young male peer groups, to highlight their respective constructions of group identity.     

Towards mentoring as feminist praxis in early childhood education and care in England

Following our contribution to a study of mentoring in seven European countries, we explored epistemological and ontological inconsistencies within mainstream mentoring systems and their regulated practice in England. We considered how feminist mentoring praxis can unsettle conceptualisations of mentoring relationships and challenge inequity in the early education systems and the practice of teaching young children. Predominantly female, early childhood educators suffer from low status in England, and their working lives may be controlled and policed through inequitable systems. On entering the workforce, trainees encounter a reductionist policy milieu where mentoring structures and normative assessment arrangements contribute to inequity. Mentors play pivotal roles in inducting trainees into their worlds of work with young children. Mentoring relationships can determine whether trainees accept the status quo. Principles derived from feminist praxis enable mentors to practise an ‘engaged pedagogy’, co-constructing knowledge, subverting hierarchies and contesting taken-for-granted aspects of policy and practice.     

(Re)beginning and becoming: antiracism and professional development with white practicing teachers

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on an educational foundations-based professional development (PD) curriculum of antiracist conscientization we as two teacher educators designed and implemented with eight white practicing teachers in the Midwestern United States. We first articulate our conception of educational foundations and curriculum theory as a framework for our PD. We briefly review literature on other PD on race in the United States, outline our data sources, and describe the pedagogy and curriculum of RaceWork’s Tripartite Model of race-visible and antiracist praxis. We then highlight, through interview data, the significance of group (relational) accountability and collaborative relationships that supported these teachers’ self-designed antiracist interventions in their own unique school contexts during the 2-year PD experience. An ongoing, relationship-based PD model leading to material antiracist changes and practices points to a need for a broader, more holistic, and contextualized conception of antiracist interventions in U.S. public P12 school contexts, but also one grounded in the notion that in a white supremacist society, we (as race-visible white educators) are always becoming antiracist.     

Finding Nexus: connecting youth work and research practices

Participation in educational and social research helps to develop understanding of how young people learn and to consider wider aspects of their lives to enable their voices to be heard and acted upon. Research also facilitates the articulation and sharing of methodologies across a range of professional practices. We assert that theory and practice in educational youth work offers a position of strength from which to undertake research. In making this assertion, we suggest cross‐disciplinarity between youth work and research practices in order to build research mindedness among youth workers who, through this nexus, are well‐placed to engage in practice based research. Drawing on discourses about young people, youth work and youth participation, we identify five elements of youth work practice that can be aligned with research processes: reflexivity; positionality and bias; insider cultural competence; rapport and trust; power relationships. The article examines how these elements are present in youth work and a range of research settings. We identify youth work methods and dispositions as enhancing research capacity which could also be useful in building participatory research methods in disciplinary areas beyond education. Yet, in making these connections, we also identify a range of factors that show this nexus as complex and contestable. Reflecting on the lessons learned from our experiences as youth work practitioners and academic researchers, we propose that finding nexus, which in this instance is between youth work and research paradigms, could inform educational research practices and contributes to developing a meaningful praxis.