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
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If practices are living things and ecologies of practices
are living systems, then …
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Middle leading practices as connected to other practices
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Networks
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Practices derive their essential properties and their
existence from their relationships with other practices.
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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.
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Nested
systems
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Different levels and networks of practice are nested
within one another.
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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.
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Interdependence
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Practices are dependent on one another in an ecology of
practices as are ecologies of practices.
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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.
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Diversity
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An ecology of practices includes many different practices
with overlapping ecological functions that can partially replace one another.
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Middle
leaders are demonstrably responsive to the site, the circumstances, the needs
and the participants in particular sites.
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Cycles
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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.
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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.
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Flows
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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.
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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.
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Development
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Practices and ecologies of practices develop through
stages.
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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.
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Dynamic
balance
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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.
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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.
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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.