Middle leading practices are ecologically arranged with other practices

This blog presents examples of what practices look like empirically for the work of middle leaders facilitating site based education.

The question of the relationships that exist between practices is crucial for understanding the particularity of practices as they exist in sites, since the effects and consequences of one practice can shape other practices. These relationships need to be shown empirically. Empirically discovered relationships between practices that relate to each other in social sites can be theorised as “ecologies of practices” (Kemmis et al., 2012, 2014). The theory of the ecologies of practices (Kemmis et al., 2012) is an extension of the theory of practice architectures and provides an resource to describe the interconnections between the cultural and linguistic, material and moral, social and political consequences of practices. 

Adapted from Table 1: Ecologies of practices - Ecological principles (Kemmis, Edwards-Groves, Wilkinson & Hardy, 2010).

Ecological principles	If practices are living things and ecologies of practices are living systems, then …	Middle leading practices as connected to other practices
Networks	Practices derive their essential properties and their existence from their relationships with other practices.	Middle leading practices are social practices that enable teachers to participate actively (with initiative, conviction, confidence) and work collaboratively in groups. These do not simply reveal traces of being shaped by previous experiences in professional development practices; these practices (professional learning, teacher leading and facilitating) are both strengthened and connected to one another in the networks of practices observed across as well as within particular sites of practice.
Nested systems	Different levels and networks of practice are nested within one another.	Often the practices of the middle leaders often are nested within the leading practices of the local sites; middle leading practices, in turn, are nested within the teaching practices of the school.
Interdependence	Practices are dependent on one another in an ecology of practices as are ecologies of practices.	Some practices – particular middle leading practices – exist in relationships of interdependence, in which the outcomes of one practice (participating in PD) are inputs to other practices (new teaching practices). These ecologically connected practices are evident in the way that the practices of teaching and learning in classrooms can sometimes be dependent on one another, or in the way in which a particular practice of professional learning might be dependent on the particular middle leading practices and school leadership practices that exist in the school.
Diversity	An ecology of practices includes many different practices with overlapping ecological functions that can partially replace one another.	Middle leaders are demonstrably responsive to the site, the circumstances, the needs and the participants in particular sites.
Cycles	Some (particular) kinds of matter (or in education – practice architectures, activities, orders or arrangements) cycle through practices or ecologies of practices – for example, as in a food chain.	The ecological principle of cycles distinctively emerges in the way the sayings, doings and relatings ‘hang together’; these cycle through and are reproduced from the leading practices to the teaching practices. To illustrate, many teachers recognise that they take on the same interactive and language structures or physical set-ups as they had experienced in their professional learning facilitated by the MLs.
Flows	Energy flows through an ecology of practices and the practices within it, being transformed from one kind of energy to another (in the way that solar energy is converted into chemical energy by photosynthesis) and eventually being dissipated.	Flows can be empirically identified in the ways particular practices, like energy, flow through other practices and practices related to it. That is middle leading practices travel across practices associated with their facilitation of teacher professional development. For example, ideas and practices concerning ‘challenging participants’, designing peer group visits, and developing collaborative relationships flow into new occasions of the practice that secure comprehensibility of, and continuity and connectedness in collegial learning communities for the people involved.
Development	Practices and ecologies of practices develop through stages.	As part of an ecology of practices, development occurs when practitioners’ knowledge, skill and responsibility becomes more familiar with a practice and more expert or accomplished in it (often the middle leader). From teacher’s perspective, ways of working for the good of students are aligned with a view that professional learning is not only about responsibility for self but also for the learning and development of others.
Dynamic balance	An ecology of practices regulates itself through processes of self-organisation, and (up to breaking point) maintains its continuity in relation to internal and outside pressures.	For transformation (via PL practices led by MLs) there needs to be a dynamic balance between external conditions (what individual practitioners encounter in the practice and the sites of practice) and internal conditions (what individual practitioners brings to the practice) and reciprocity of a kind which simultaneously merges external and internal conditions for growth and change.

The complexity of the nature and effect of professional learning practices cannot be understated. However, the ecologies of practices perspective offer us a way to capture the complexities of the practices of professional learning and teacher leading. We contend that there is an empirical ecological connection between practices in schools, that there is an interdependent ecological relationship that exists between different practices in schools.