Search results for "practice theory"
showing 10 items of 19 documents
Textbook Practices: Reading Texts, Touching Books
2018
Drawing on practice theory, a programme of research is delineated that focuses on textbook practices. Textbooks and their textual content are seen as materially shaped textual artefacts that are adapted, transformed, contested, subverted, or may even be banned from the classroom. Mapping qualitative research that deals with the use of textbooks, two shifts denoting an increasing recognition of practices in textbook research are identified: a shift from static content to dynamic texts in use and a shift from written language to the material artefact itself. The chapter concludes by outlining possibilities for further research on textbook practices.
Wie konzipieren wir Kinderkriegen?
2016
Zusammenfassung: Wie geht Kinderkriegen? Im Alltag lautet die Antwort Sex – Schwangerschaften resultieren aus Geschlechtsverkehr und Befruchtung. Sozialwissenschaftliche Studien führen sie dagegen auf ein (rationales) Entscheidungshandeln von Paaren zurück. Diesem unterliegen ‚Fertilitätsintentionen‘, denen ein entsprechendes ‚Fertilitätsverhalten‘ korrespondiert. Theoriegrundlage bilden Rational-Choice- und kognitionspsychologische Ansätze. Der Aufsatz wird diese Modellbildung hinterfragen, da sie das Kinderkriegen in seiner lebensweltlichen Komplexität nicht nur empirisch ausklammert, sondern auch normativ idealisiert und dabei dessen sozialen Eigensinn verfehlt. Anhand narrativer Intervi…
Practices of Writing in Ethnographic Work
2020
Although the practice of writing is key to the production of ethnographic knowledge, the topic remains understudied. Using material from our own ethnographic research in the fields of air travel and cultural heritage as data, we develop a reflexive account of ethnographic writing. We examine in detail the practices of jotting down observations, writing field notes, analytic annotating, ordering and rearranging, and drafting and revising papers. The article takes a praxeological stance, conceptualizing writing as a practice that is simultaneously cognitive, embodied, and material. Our analysis finds that writing influences and shapes all stages of ethnographic work, from orienting perception…
Revisiting agricultural modernisation: Interconnected farming practices driving rural development at the farm level
2019
Abstract Rural development related to agriculture can roughly be divided into two trajectories: 1) agri-industrial development or modernisation, and 2) multifunctional or even post-productivist rural development. The role of these trajectories varies in different rural settings, with different emphases on agricultural production and its conduct. At the farm level, the trajectories evolve from existing farming practices and their connections, which enable or disable different kinds of development. However, the connections through which changes in agricultural production practices contribute to different rural development trajectories deserve further scrutiny. This is addressed with the help …
Disassembling the classroom – an ethnographic approach to the materiality of education
2012
The ethnography of education is challenged by the materiality of the classroom. Ethnographic accounts of school lessons mostly highlight language and interaction and offer no suitable methodology for researching objects and their role in the classroom. Moreover, objects are part of complex and interwoven assemblages involving human actors, practices and things. As such, their contribution to human practices often remains unnoticed in the background of routine activities. In order to make the materiality of practice available to ethnographic observation, we thus have to analytically disassemble these assemblages. An ethnographic approach that draws on practice theory and concepts developed i…
Critical educational praxis in university ecosystems: enablers and constraints
2018
Universities serve several important functions in society today through research, education, and community engagement, not least helping people to live meaningfully in society, and helping to create a world worth living in. A kind of practice that seems particularly important in fulfilling such responsibilities is critical educational praxis, a social-justice oriented, educational practice/praxis, with a focus on asking critical questions and creating conditions for positive change. Yet, the contemporary university is not exactly a niche for critical educational praxis. There are many practices and arrangements within higher education that make the enactment of critical educational praxis v…
What is ‘good’ mentoring? Understanding mentoring practices of teacher induction through case studies of Finland and Australia
2015
Mentoring is a practice widely utilised to support new teachers. However, in locally formed systems, the practice of mentoring is conditioned by traditions and arrangements specific to the site. To understand ‘good’ mentoring, these local arrangements cannot be ignored. In this article, the theory of practice architectures is employed to make explicit the prefiguring arrangements of mentoring practices in Finland and NSW Australia. The findings suggest that mentoring practices are shaped by their ontological specificity and this makes reproducing mentoring practices in different sites problematic. Explicating the prefiguring architectures of practices is critical to understanding the contes…
Reconfigurations in sustainability transitions : a systematic and critical review
2021
Two streams of literature have become especially prominent in understanding social change toward sustainability within the past decades: the research on socio-technical transitions and applications of social practice theory. The aim of this article is to contribute to efforts to create dialogue between these two approaches. We do this by focusing on the concept of reconfiguration, which has become a much-used, but poorly defined notion in the discussion on sustainability transitions. To understand what is defined as reconfiguration in systems and practices, and how the understanding of reconfiguration in regimes could benefit from insights about reconfiguration in practices, we conducted a …
Practices of development assistance and climate change mitigation in reshaping the Mozambican REDD+ strategy
2020
ABSTRACTThis paper studies how the practices of climate change governance and development assistance have reshaped the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) process in Mozambique. We look at how the original goals of the Mozambican REDD+ strategy changed in the interplay of different governance-related practices, both those originating locally and nationally, and those coming from international organisations. The paper is based on the frameworks of multilevel governance and practice theory. We identify six combinations of practices that are relevant in the REDD+ programmes and projects. Three of them are incorporated in the general idea of sustainability, inclu…
Gendered Agency and Emotions in the Field of Care Work
2011
This article examines the gendered effects of the intensification of public sector care work due to neoliberal reforms. It draws on an interview study of Finnish social and healthcare workers to argue that the expectations towards men and women in the reorganized field of care work are different, especially in the case of their emotional involvement in care practices. The article develops a conceptual framework based on Bourdieu’s theory of practice and its feminist developments. We discuss caring as gendered, habitual and emotional work and as a lived social relationship that produces different states of autonomy and dependency for women and men. Our study finds that women in particular fa…