An Educational Epistemology of Practice (original) (raw)
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Toward an Epistemology of Practice
Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2007
Higher and post-experience education in many parts of the world has unfortunately overlooked what practice can contribute to our knowledge base distinctly and additively from classroom education. Ultimately, we need a synthesis of theory and practice if we are to prepare thoughtful practitioners. Using conceptual and practical approaches from constructionist thought borrowing such tools as tacit knowledge, critical reflection, and mastery, this paper proposes a means to effect such a synthesis. Needed is a new epistemology of practice that adds praxis to classroom education in order to help learners deconstruct the structures and systems that embed their social environments. The paper also examines the outcomes and particular competencies that emanate from a practice-based learning. Implications for teaching by learning from this practice epistemology are discussed.
1996 Educational Researcher The relationship between theory and practice
Scholarly thinking in this century has been dominated by a strong inequality between theory and practice. Abstract knowledge was considered to be of a higher standing and of more value than concrete skills or the tacit knowledge of good performance. Research concentrated on theory formation, both descriptive for explanation and, in the social sciences, prescriptive for behavioral instructions. Consequently, practitioners in different professions, such as teacher education, were confronted with the problem of bridging the gap between theory and practice, a task that never seemed to succeed very well.
An outline of a theory of practice methodologies
Practice Methodologies in Education Research
This chapter introduces the notion of activist practice methodologies, illuminated through a focus on education research that is informed by practice theory and framed by an explicitly normative regard for education. It identifies and responds to some of the topographies of expansive practice theories; some of the onto-epistemological challenges these topographies create for researchers; and the relationship between methodologies and axiology, especially within education research where social justice values collide spectacularly with policy discourses around competition, the market and particular framings of evidence. Thus established, the chapter outlines key features of research that deploy theories of practice in pursuit of normative ends, developed in conversation with other chapters in this collection. We theorise that within education research, methodologies informed by expansive practice theories are derived from research axiologies that are activist in intent and that they respond to the ontoepistemological challenges of those same theories. In our account, activist practice methodologies are invested with normative ideals, specifically to advance social justice-in this case, in and through education. This work often involves novel arrangements of theory, new approaches to data, and experimental approaches to research writing. Amid the ontoepistemological angst thrown up by expansive practice theories, activist practice methodologies do not give up on method but persist in developing new ways to apprehend and engage practice. Five interrelated aspects of activist practice methodologies are discussed: activist axiologies; reconstituting the ethical subject in research practice; theory as method; more-than-representational data; and restive accounts of research.
Editorial: Self-study of educational practice: Re-imagining our pedagogies
Perspectives in Education, 2014
Self-study of educational practice: Re-imagining our pedagogies Where does re-imagining our pedagogies begin? As self-study researchers, we understand that it starts with our selves. Through self-study of educational practice, we identify issues that we are concerned, curious and passionate about in relation to our own pedagogies and we research those issues in our own contexts. While the research topics are diverse, our common focus is on what difference we as educators can make. Our exploration is about how we can re-imagine our selves, in the hope that our change will have a positive impact on other people. We have confidence that there is always room for change, no matter how small; there is always something we can see or do differently. Thus, we aim to develop practitioner-led, context-specific ideas for change and to explore ways to make that change happen (Pithouse, Mitchell & Weber, 2009). Importantly though, we recognise that, although educational change begins with 'me', it must also involve 'us'. Because we view teaching, learning and researching as interactive processes, we realise that we need the perspectives of significant others such as students, colleagues, and other self-study researchers or 'critical friends' to "challenge our assumptions and biases, reveal our inconsistencies [and] expand our potential interpretations" (LaBoksey, 2004: 849). We also need to make our self-study research available for public critique in order to contribute to public conversations about educational change.
Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 2016
With the knowledge society, educational issues and phenomena have come to the fore. Society is permeated by expectations imposed on its citizens, professionals, experts and researchers to actively 1 This dichotomy may give the impression of a hierarchy. However, the concept habitual refers to aspects that make it possible to distinguish a practice as a practice, that is, recurring patterns of actions, etc., in Knorr Cetina's words: 'Current conceptions of practice emphasize the habitual and rule-governed features of practice' (2001, p. 175).
An epistemological stance towards pupils
2016
This paper presents a conceptual framework of teachers' practical knowledge. The researcher examined interview data from 29 Finnish elementary school teachers to identify common features underlying teachers' practical knowledge. The interviews examined teachers ' teaching and students' learning activities, social relationships within the profession, and teachers ' professional selves. The empirical findings indicated that teachers shared some common epistemological stances guiding their practical ways of knowing. These stances were investigated and identified according to ways of being (nonscholastic stance) and ways of acting (organizational stance). This paper brings these two stances in teachers ' practical knowledge together. It argues that the stances have the potential to combine vocational and professional aspects by establishing alternative epistemologies in teachers' practical knowledge. The results indicate that teaching can be seen both ...
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2010
The present study focused on the epistemology of teachers' practical knowledge by addressing the following research question: how do teachers attempt to reason about their practices and their practical knowledge? The results indicated that teachers supported their practical knowledge claims using the "practical argument". Within this conceptual framework, they relied on contextual grounds that call for the fact that something should or should not be "done", rather than something is "true" or "false". Contextual grounds, then, were found to be backed up by two significant types of warrants: moral ethos, and "what works" notion. Depending on what kind warrants they used, teachers' practical knowledge was interpreted to be based on two different epistemic statuses: "practicable" knowledge and "praxial" knowledge.
Inquiry into the teaching and learning practice: An ontological-epistemological discourse
Cogent Education, 2015
Tertiary education has been actively moving over the last two decades from the lecturer-centred to the student-centred approach, focusing more on "what the student does" rather than on "what the student is" or "what the teacher is". We, as academics, teacher educators, and teachers, do attend many workshops and seminars promoting student-centred learning. However, the question that arises is "are we prepared to truly develop from the conventional lecture-based learning, which is hard to eliminate, to the innovative student-centred learning, which may be hard to accept, adopt, and sustain?" The way we plan, organise and deliver knowledge might be mostly epistemological. However, there exists an ontological stance on how we perceive knowledge and on our belief-informed opinions-of "the most effective pedagogy" in organising and emphasising such knowledge. This paper will present a personal reflective study on the ontological-epistemological discourse that a novice academic experienced in first accepting the idea of a student-centred learning approach, implementing such strategy and in reflecting back on this experience. This study promotes a rethinking of our teaching and learning practice as an ontological and epistemological form of inquiry and generates insights which may be further extended and researched. This paper finally offers a reread of the