This journal is dedicated to praxis in higher education. A key assumption underpinning the journal is that education is a moral and political activity and that higher education and its practitioners cannot free themselves from moral nor political considerations. However, this assumption comes with several commitments. Rather than standing only from the outside looking in, as in positioning science or research as more valuable or important, this journal calls for the importance of a reflexive inside perspective (cf. Kemmis 2012; Walzer 1987). This implies taking the present structures, conditions, traditions and values – both internal and external – seriously, but also in situ when researching higher education (cf. Bendix Petersen, 2014). The journal is committed to research aimed at the transformation of existing practices and conditions in higher education. In particular, it is promoting research that has a transformative potential including both practical and theoretical dimensions of educational work and higher education research. It is also committed to the idea that through education research, one can seek to both promote justice as well as the capacity of people to express agency, and increase the possibilities provided by society at large to its members (cf. Fraser 2009). 

Research concerning praxis in higher education is thus both a theoretical position on a particular practice and itself an active engagement.  This journal welcomes contributions that are directly concerned with praxis in higher education or with research that is manifestly relevant to praxis in higher education.

First issue 1(1) 2019:

Editorial: ‘Another higher education journal—Really?’ By Melina Aarnikoivu, Kathleen Mahon, Marcus Agnafors, David M. Hoffman, and Petra Angervall

Research articles:

1. ‘A conceptual enquiry into communities of practice as praxis in international doctoral education’By Liexu Cai, Dangeni, Dely L. Elliot, Rui He, Jianshu Liu, Kara A. Makara, Emily-Marie Pacheco, Hsin-Yi Shih, Wenting Wang, and Jie Zhang

2. ‘Organising the ‘industrialisation of instruction’: Pedagogical discourses in the Swedish Primary Teacher Education programme’By Lena Sjöberg

3. ‘The work of university research administrators: Praxis and professionalization’By Sandra Acker, Michelle K. McGinn, and Caitlin Campisi

4. ‘Teacher educators’ perceptions of their profession in relation to the digitalization of society’By Anna Roumbanis Viberg, Karin Forslund Frykedal, and Sylvana Sofkova Hashemi

In the opening line of the first issue of JPHE in 2019, the editorial team posed the following pertinent and critically reflective question: ‘Does the higher education research community really need another research journal?’ (The Editorial Team, 2019, p. 1). In their editorial, they provide a well-argued case for answering this question in the affirmative. The journal’s policy statement also makes a good case as to why JPHE is distinctive defining education as ‘a moral and political activity’ and emphasising the way in which ‘the journal is committed to research aimed at the transformation of existing practices and conditions in higher education.’ (JPHE, 2022, para. 1).

This chapter examines the practices of leading, as an important facet of the extended professional work and experience of educators. It employs a site ontological lens to examine the duality of leading in and for education. The chapter conceptualises leading as a co-constructed, socially situated practice, and focuses on the “happeningness” of leadership, making the actual practices of leading its main emphasis. In particular, questions about the nature and particularity of professional practice as it is enmeshed in different local, national, and international education sites are explored. In so doing, it addresses the following question in relation to leading, that is, how, in different national contexts, is good professional practice (“praxis”) being understood and experienced by teachers, and educators, more broadly? By drawing on the theory of practice architectures, the chapter explores (1) leading as a practice, (2) leading from, within, and beyond the middle, and (3) leading as a democratic practice. Analysis of these interrelated elements aims to contribute to a broader inquiry concerned with understanding, practising, and changing educational leadership by establishing the dynamism of leading as a practice for orchestrating conditions that enable shared educational transformations. The chapter concludes by reorienting leading as being a shared transformative educational practice.

The paper discusses the initial stages of a research project being undertaken across 5 countries (3 of which are Nordic Countries) and 7 universities by a group within the international Pedagogy, Education and Praxis-network. The project explores critical praxis in higher education, focusing on the influences on critical praxis in different national contexts. In this presentation, we ask: What enables and constrains professional learning for critical praxis in higher education? Data collection for this research consists of interviews with academics. Using the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al. 2014) as a conceptual and analytical lens, this paper presents initial findings on the following themes:

●       How  professional learning opportunities provided by the universities support (or not) the development of critical praxis,

●        How the development of critical praxis can happen through voluntary, organic networks (such as Pedagogy, Education and Praxis), and

●        The role of country-specific conditions in how professional learning for critical praxis is enabled and constrained.

In this chapter, we return to the notion of exploring education and professional practices, the key focus of this volume. In the opening chapter, we argued that the theory of practice architectures is simultaneously a theoretical, an analytical, and a transformative resource. Here we highlight some of the ways the chapters in this book have capitalised on the affordances of the theory of practice architectures as their authors have explored education and professional practices. We comment on how, individually and collectively, the chapters contribute to ongoing conversations about particular practices, and our understanding of practices in general.

It is becoming increasingly common for academic developers to engage in "insider research"; that is, researching their own and colleagues’ practices (e.g. using action research). Such research has the potential to yield significant insights into higher education praxis due to the unique position in which academic developers are placed, with access to different academic and disciplinary practices and university levels, and working at the intersection of research, development, and education. However, that very position also creates methodological and ethical tensions for academic developers conducting "insider research". In this seminar, we will explore such tensions, drawing on our own experiences as researchers and academic developers. In particular, we will discuss whether (and if so how) it is possible for academic developers to combine the critical distance of an outsider with the profound contextual insight of an insider. We will also consider how "insider research" linked to academic development can be supported.

In a rapidly changing world, education is vital for humankind and for the world itself. Education is a contested space. This chapter takes a view of education as being for the good for each person and for the good for humankind. The five broad questions that the book explores are outlined in this chapter, as are key concepts addressed throughout the book, including pedagogy, education, bildung, practice, and praxis. We also briefly introduce the theory of practice architectures. The chapter concludes by providing an introduction to the chapters in the rest of the book.

This chapter provides an account, from the perspective of one of the authors of the theory of practice architectures, of how the theory came about and has evolved. The theory was first articulated as the ‘theory of practice architectures’ by Stephen Kemmis and Peter Grootenboer in 2008 in the book Enabling Praxis: Challenges for Education. However, it was many years in the making before 2008, and it has continued to be refined since then through Kemmis and Grootenboer’s engagement in research and conversation with other scholars. The narrative presented here provides insights into many of the theory’s key influences, explaining how and why some of its central assertions and ideas have emerged. Thus the chapter builds on explanations of the theory presented in this book and elsewhere.

This chapter discusses diverse views of worlds worth living in, as described by different groups of students, young people, and adults. It also high-lights how the project of research and writing that produced this volume is an example of critical praxis: history making action directed towards realising the good for humankind. Perhaps, in this, it is an example of what Anna Stetsenko calls a ‘transformative activist stance’. In researching and articulating views of worlds worth living in, the contributors to the volume, and the participants with whom they spoke, not only began to imagine worlds worth living in, they also began to realise them. 

This chapter aims to challenge the narrative of the university in decline in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, by showing how earlier forms of university life and practice persist within emerging forms. It uses the resources of practice theory — more precisely, the theory of practice architectures — to illuminate the analysis. The chapter proceeds in five main steps. First, the theory of practice architectures is outlined. Second, three vignettes of Australian university life in different eras (1964, 1987, 2015) are presented. These give a sense of the changes underway in Australian university life and practice; each is briefly contextualised by reference to a specific university at the time, and in relation to wider Australian culture, economy, and society and politics. Third, the notion of ‘practice landscapes’ is used to interpret and characterise the ‘look and feel’ of Australian university life and practice across the three periods being explored. We describe the university of 1964 as the juridical university, the university of 1987 as the negotiated university, and the university of 2015 as theentrepreneurial university. Fourth, we return to the notion of practice architectures to show how multiple forms of university life and practice have coexisted over time, with earlier forms persisting within later ones. Finally, we draw the argument to its conclusion, namely, that change in the life and practice of (some) Australian universities 1964–2015 is not a linear progress (or regress) in which earlier forms of the university are destroyed and replaced, but, rather, a complex process in which earlier forms are sedimented and displaced within contemporary university life and practice as a contested terrain. We think this alternative perspective offers scope and hope for transformative action for recovery and renewal in the Australian university.

This report provides a summary and analysis of activities and material generated in the seminar series ‘Academic leading – with a focus on student learning’ developed for staff in management positions at the University of Borås (UB), 2017. The aims of the report are (a) to draw attention to some areas of need and concern that arose during discussions in the seminars (reflected in participants’ written responses in seminar activities); and (b) to make recommendations for consideration of the University’s executive team related to identified concerns/areas of need.

Seminar discussions highlighted that there are currently many practices (including leading practices) and arrangements within the University that enhance, or support enhancement of, the learning environment. However, discussions also highlighted some constraining university arrangements and challenges faced in fulfilling leading/managing responsibilities that have implications for the learning environment. These include a range of issues from staff workloads to staffing issues and staff relations.  Such issues, it is argued in this report, warrant further discussion/investigation and potentially changes to practices and arrangements in order to sustain and create an environment more conducive to student learning and leading with a focus on student learning.  As well as offering some recommendations in this regard, the report also presents an evaluation of the seminars. 

Academic Leading with a Focus on Student Learning

Few people would deny that universities are becoming increasingly complex educational environments due to significant changes in the nature of academic work (e.g., digitalisation of work and learning, educational administration, changing faculty values[1]) and to changing societal expectations. Those in university leadership roles face challenges and opportunities amidst this complexity, especially regarding responsibilities associated with student learning. The capacity of leaders and managers to respond is arguably affected by the arrangements and practices embedded within their own universities. Understanding these challenges and opportunities, and how current arrangements and practices contribute to or limit them, is central for finding sustainable ways of meeting educational responsibilities and supporting leading for student learning.

This paper explores one university’s efforts to enhance academic leading with a focus on student learning, and to understand the site-based arrangements and practices affecting the practices of leading. These goals underpinned a series of four seminars on ‘Academic leading – with a focus on student learning’ developed for staff in management positions. The seminars were inquiry-focused, generating participant artefacts (e.g., diagrams, PowerPoint presentations, notes) that were used to inform seminar discussions. This material was also analysed to form the basis of this paper. Both the seminars and analysis were theoretically framed by the ‘theory of practice architectures’ and ‘ecologies of practices’[2]. According to the theory, practices are shaped by three kinds of overlapping arrangements: Cultural-discursive arrangements such as discourses and languages affect what is possible to say in and about practice (e.g., deficit discourses, critical discourses, discipline-specific discourses, languages). Material economic-arrangements – material, technological, financial, organisational, and other resources – affect what it is possible to do in practice (e.g., buildings, schedules, workload calculators, funding). Social-political arrangements are arrangements that affect the ways in which it is possible for people to relate to others (and things and places) in practice (e.g., organisational rules, mandates, solidarities, hierarchies). These arrangements form the practice architectures of practices like leading, teaching, and learning. 

The analysis highlighted, from a cultural-discursive perspective, the need for explicitly focussing on the learning environment in everyday activities, and for clear articulation of goals and visions on both institutional and departmental levels. These are important for the emergence of shared understandings needed for growth in the area of student learning. From a material-economic perspective, analysis also pointed to the need for opportunities (i.e., time) for staff to reflect in organised ways on their practice and engage in professional learning activities, and for managers to engage in strategic development. This means looking closely at minimising activities and reorienting arrangements that take up time that could otherwise be spent on developing good pedagogical work (e.g., administrative tasks). From a social-political perspective, the analysis emphasised the need for building trusting, productive staff relations within and between departments, academies, and administration.

The paper invites discussion of the issues raised and consideration of how these issues resonate with educational environments in other universities and how they are being, or might be, addressed. It raises the question of how we can more effectively and sustainably support leading for student learning given the challenges and complexities of academic environments, by creating new practice architectures or by reorienting existing ones that constrain leading and professional learning in unhelpful ways.

[1] Slaughter, S., and Leslie, L., L.  (1997). Academic Capitalism. Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University. Baltimore, Maryland USA: John Hopkins University Press.

[2] Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer.

Leading for learning in higher education – challenges and possibilities

Lill Langelotz and Kathleen Mahon, University of Borås, Sweden

Few people would deny that universities are becoming increasingly complex educational environments due to significant changes in the nature of academic work and to changing societal expectations. University leaders face challenges and opportunities amidst this complexity, especially regarding responsibilities associated with student learning. The capacity of leaders and managers to respond is arguably affected by the arrangements and practices embedded within their own universities. Understanding these challenges and opportunities, and how current arrangements and practices contribute to or limit them, is central for finding sustainable ways of meeting educational responsibilities and supporting leading for student learning.

This paper explores one Swedish university’s effort to enhance academic leading, and to understand the salient site-based arrangements and practices affecting leading for learning. These goals underpinned a series of four seminars on ‘Academic leading – with a focus on student learning’ developed for all staff in management positions (including administration). The seminars were inquiry-focused, generating participant artefacts (e.g., diagrams, PowerPoint presentations) that were used to inform seminar discussions. This material was also analysed as part of an ongoing practitioner inquiry aimed at understanding and addressing site-based challenges for academic leading. Both the seminars and analysis were theoretically framed by the ‘theory of practice architectures’[1].

Initial results show a need for explicitly focussing on the learning environment in everyday activities, and for clear articulation of goals and visions on both institutional and departmental levels. They also point to the importance of opportunities (i.e., time) for staff to reflect in organised ways on their practice and engage in professional learning activities and strategic development, as well as the need for further interrogation of activities that take up time that could otherwise be spent on developing good pedagogical work (e.g., administrative tasks). From a social-political perspective, the results emphasise the need for building trusting, productive staff relations within and between departments, faculties, and administration teams.

The paper raises the question, on the basis of the analysis, of how we can more effectively and sustainably support leading for learning given the challenges and complexities of academic environments, by creating new practice architectures and/or by reorienting existing ones that constrain leading and professional learning in unhelpful ways.

[1] Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer.

Rapid digitalisation of higher education: leadership of teaching and learning in times of crises.

Since 2020, the academic community in higher education has been rapidly shifted into online environments due to the pandemic COVID-19. In Sweden, this has had several impacts on health care and teacher education, programs that traditionally (mainly) were delivered face-to-face before the pandemic. The overall aim of the project is to investigate how educational leadership practices are being reshaped/are reshaping teaching and learning practices in Swedish HE and with what academic and social consequences at a time of crisis and rapid digital transformation. The research design is framed by practice theory, which treats practices as the primary subject of analysis in the study of human relations. An early phase of the project involved interviews with academic leaders and teaching staff in one Swedish University at the beginning of the pandemic, and a review of literature related to leading teaching and learning in higher education. This will be followed up with interactive shadowing of leaders in their daily interactions with university teachers, students, and other stakeholders in three Swedish Universities. The study will document leadership practices as they happen and particularly how they affect and are affected by teaching practices and what students experience, do, and learn. Student and educator focus-group interviews will also be conducted to capture teacher and student perspectives. Analysis will be informed by the theory of practice architectures.

Analysis of findings from the initial phase has highlighted three main themes which have important implications for leadership practices related to teaching and learning in the fields of teacher education and health care education, but also possibly other professional education fields. They concern the ways in which the shift to online education has affected possibilities for, and highlighted the importance of, spontaneity, authentic relationships, and embodied interactions. Meanwhile, the findings of the literature review have highlighted how much is assumed, but how little is actually known about, the relationship between what leaders do in their everyday work and student experiences. These findings point to the importance of future studies that empirically explore, at an everyday practice level, the complexities and challenges for leadership of working in online environments, and whether and how what leaders do and do not do concretely affects student learning and the student experience.

Taking a practice perspective, this article explores how built spaces within the university can impact on, and enable, practices of everyday professional learning amongst university educators. The discussion draws on analysis, informed by the theory of practice architectures, of interviews with six academics at a Swedish university. Three main themes emerged in the analysis as significant for the enablement of educators’ professional learning practices within the physical university: spontaneity, authentic relationships, and embodied interactions. Because the interviews were conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, when most academics were required to work remotely, the analysis offers a comparison between affordances of certain built spaces for professional learning compared to online spaces. We consider what opportunities for professional learning might be missed if the academic community continues to be separated from campus.

This special issue is a collection of articles that emerged from a series of symposia on praxis in higher education, aimed at critically exploring challenges and possibilities for educational praxis, including its role in the contemporary university. The collection highlights the need for asking critical and uncomfortable questions about what is and what could be in higher education. It calls for more focused attention on the consequences of what we do as teachers and university communities, both intentionally and inadvertently, so that higher education can be more socially just and responsive to student and societal needs amidst contemporary challenges. In explicating the concept of ‘educational praxis’, the editorial introduces the metaphor of ‘walking on the edge’ to illustrate the concept’s ‘uncomfortable dimension’ in terms of academics’ responsibility to engage critically with challenging issues in endeavours to address educational concerns.

In this paper, the author revisits empirical material generated in her PhD research in light of (a) her recent experiences and conversations as course coordinator of the supervision course at the centre of the Special Issue, and (b) current supervision practice. Part of her PhD research included examination of her own supervisors’ pedagogical praxis while they were supervising her doctorate. This examination occurred, rather uniquely, in dialogue with her supervisors in supervision meetings and interviews, and also through analysis of reflective notes made about her experiences of being supervised during the PhD. At the end of the paper, the author relates the findings of her retrospective analysis to her own being, becoming, and praxis as a supervisor and academic developer involved with the professional learning of supervisors. The discussion builds on current doctoral education and higher education praxis literature by highlighting, among other things, the role of supervision experiences—as both supervisor and supervisee—in supervisor becoming, and how, supervision practice as praxis can be both enacted and nurtured within a supervision team.

This article is a critically reflexive account of how collaborative processes and democratic relations were negotiated in a doctoral research project which combined elements of institutional ethnography, self-study, and, significantly for this article, critical participatory action research. The critical participatory action research dimension of the project involved a group of academics working in the same university faculty, critically and collaboratively examining their own pedagogical practice and the conditions which constrain and enable critical pedagogical praxis in their setting. The article explores what possibilities for democratic participation were created and limited by the circumstances and conditions that constituted this critical participatory action research. I consider the kind of democratic participation that was possible, what enabled this kind of democratic participation, and challenges that emerged in attempts to realise democratic goals. The discussion highlights some of the complexities of fostering democratic participation in critical participatory action research within doctoral research.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between professional education, embodiment, and neoliberalism, focussing primarily on the practices of professional educators. The chapter draws on the theory of practice architectures to pose questions about how practices, and the bodies that make those practices possible, are being enabled, constrained, and transformed by neoliberalising forces that have pervaded many aspects of contemporary societies, including sites of professional education and the everyday lives of professional educators. Are bodies, through practices, becoming both “neoliberalised” and “neoliberalising”? What does/could this look like/feel like? What might this mean for the future of professional education? The chapter highlights the sense in which, in this neoliberal age, professional educators’ bodies are increasingly experiencing, performing, and perpetuating neoliberal ideals, and why promoting a sensitivity to this, and resistance, is so important. For illustrative purposes, the chapter draws on some lived experiences of professional educators gleaned from literature and the author’s own research and history as a teacher educator.

In developing anewacademic journal,ourcoreintention, asmentionedin previouseditorials,has beentogenerate,disseminate, andpromote the interrogation ofknowledgeandscientific and/or philosophical investigationofhigher education.Thisis our way ofpromoting the important andcritical taskof sustaininghighereducation,and indeed higher education research,asmaybe-ingarenas’1. By this,we meansustainingspacesof possibility; of pushing at the boundaries notonly ofwhatIS, butalsoof what is thinkable, knowable, and doable; of imagining howthings can be otherwise.

The complexity and challenges of higher education (HE) in recent times have been widely discussed in HE literature, as have concomitant demands on university teachers and their professional learning needs. Much attention has been paid to new academics in these conversations, but less so to international PhD and post-doctoral researchers, who are often asked to teach, yet can be precluded from attending foundational pedagogical courses. This paper discusses an interpretive-hermeneutic study based on a pedagogical course developed for new academics in this very situation. Our discussion focuses on professional growth experienced by the course participants in terms of pedagogical understanding and self-confidence, and what enabled that growth from the participants’ perspectives. On the basis of analysis of interviews, questionnaires and qualitative course evaluations, we consider the value of such purpose-built courses and offer insights into what may need to be considered by course developers to ensure that their impact is optimal.

This book critically explores urgent questions that researchers, educators, and policy makers need to consider and address in order to better our understanding and capacity to transform education. Focusing on areas that underpin the empirical, theoretical, and strategic research of the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) International Research Network, it discusses the following topics: the nature of educational praxis; research approaches that facilitate praxis and praxis development; changing cultural, social, political and material conditions affecting the educational practices of teachers; and how good professional practice in teaching, leading, and professional learning are understood and experienced.Presenting findings emerging from the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis research, the book raises new questions and offers new ways of thinking about the identified issues and themes in light of current educational concerns and the prevalence of neoliberal conditions being experienced in educational settings around the globe. It provides supporting evidence and illustrative examples to help readers understand important concepts, situations, and concerns, and brings together intellectual and cultural-historical traditions that, when considered in relation to each other, open up critical opportunities and ideas orienting readers towards future educational transformation. 

This book was written to help people understand and transform education and professional practice. It presents and extends the theory of practice architectures, and offers a contemporary account of what practices are composed of and how practices shape and are shaped by the arrangements with which they are enmeshed in sites of practice. Through its empirically-based case chapters, the book demonstrates how the theory of practice architectures can be used as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource to generate insights that have important implications for practice, theory, policy, and research in education and professional practice. These insights relate to how practices are shaped by arrangements (and other practices) present in specific sites of practice, including early childhood educationsettings, schools, adult education, and workplaces. They also relate to how practices create distinctive intersubjective spaces, so that people encounter one another in particular ways (a) in particular semantic spaces, (b) that are realised in particular locations and durations in physical space-time, and (c) in particular social spaces. By applying such insights, readers can work towards changing practices by transforming the practice architectures that make them possible.

This chapter uses the theory of practice architectures to show how particular kinds of arrangements can make particular kinds of academic practices possible. It does this by exploring the authors’ experiences of being stirred in to practices of academia within a particular practice landscape as part of a research group, and the arrangements that enabled and constrained that stirring in. Employing an auto-ethnographic approach, the authors draw on their individual and collective experiences of research and collaboration with Stephen Kemmis and encounters with the theory of practice architectures. Individual narratives are analysed to identify key cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements that prefigured our being stirred in, a process which has led to deep and long-lasting research collaborations and commitments that have strong and enduring local and international ties. In sharing our analysis and narratives, we provide a glimpse of how these collaborations and commitments, and the theory of practice architectures (itself a prefiguring arrangement of our practices) have influenced our research into practice in our respective fields. Our discussion offers insights not only into the kinds of practice architectures that make up a university landscape, but also how conditions of possibility can be created for academic practices that resist the de-professionalising effects of troubling university conditions.

It is argued in this chapter that critical pedagogical praxis is a kind of social-justice oriented, critically reflexive, and informed teaching practice that is needed in universities in these times of complexity and rapid change. However, critical pedagogical praxis can sometimes be difficult to enact amidst pressures associated with mass education, changing community expectations, and the influences of neoliberalism and managerialism; pressures that are being experienced in educational institutions world-wide. This chapter discusses how the theory of practice architectures can shed light on some of the challenges of enacting critical pedagogical praxis in higher education. In the discussion, we draw primarily on a doctoral research project which examined enabling and constraining conditions for critical pedagogical praxis within a particular Australian university through the lens of practice architectures and other practice theories. We explore some of the salient architectures that were identified in the research, focussing our discussion on possibilities for enacting critical pedagogical praxis in the context of a faculty restructure. Ways in which academics were able to negotiate the changing conditions and create enabling architectures are discussed in the analysis.

This chapter explores the question “What is educational praxis?” based on a review of theoretical and empirical research undertaken by the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) international research network over the past decade. A book series produced by the network in 2008 explored this very question in relation to a range of educational sites and national contexts. Six key themes emerging from this work were outlined in the first of the books in the series, Enabling Praxis: Challenges for Education. In short, the themes concerned agents and agency; particularity; connectedness; history; morality and justice; and praxis as doing (Kemmis and Smith in Enabling praxis: challenges for education. Sense, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2008b). Using these six themes as a point of departure, we present a view of educational praxis as a kind of educational practice that is informed, reflective, self-consciously moral and political, and oriented towards making positive educational and societal change; it is context-dependent and can therefore take many forms. We also explore the forming, self-forming, and transforming nature of educational praxis and explain its relevance at a time when instrumental, managerialist, and neoliberal rationalities continue to dominate global and local education narratives.

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 very challenging. This paper explores this concern by explicating the notion of critical educational praxis and examining enablers and constraints for critical educational praxis drawing on an empirical study conducted in one university setting. Our aim in doing so is to prompt consideration of the kind of university ecosystems currently being created, and the implications of this for academic communities and society. 

This chapter introduces the theory of practice architectures and locates it within the theoretical terrain of practice theory. It highlights what is distinctive about the theory as a practice theory, and discusses its affordances as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource for practitioners and researchers. We argue that, to create new possibilities for practice in our disciplines and professions, and/or to challenge unsustainable or untoward practices in education and professional practice more broadly, our current practices must be interrogated. The theory of practice architectures can inform such interrogative work. This chapter provides a foundation for the case chapters in this book which variously illustrate the kinds of insights yielded by exploring education and professional practice through the lens of practice architectures.

Our aim in this paper is to discuss praxis and its possibilities for helping academics understand and challengethose aspects of contemporary higher education making academic work quite meaningless. Praxis, for thepurposes of this paper, is broadly interpreted as a concept that captures the moral-political dimensions of humanactivity. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first we address the question 'What is praxis?' from atheoretical perspective (to explore praxis as a concept) as well as from an empirical perspective (using empiricalexamples to explore praxis as a phenomenon; as a kind of action). In doing this we hope to depict what praxiscan look like in higher education in its individual and collective forms. In the second part, we extend this discussion to highlight some of the key tensions facing academia today, and raise questions about the possiblerole of praxis (in its more critical forms) in reclaiming the meaningful in higher education and in researching higher education complexities. The paper will draw on empirical material from higher education studies undertaken by the authors for illustrative purposes.

For those preparing for outdoor education and related professions, formal theory has an important role to play in terms of informing professional practice and understandings of teaching-learning dynamics. Despite this, surprisingly little is understood about how pre-service outdoor educators (POEs) view and engage with it in their preparation courses. Drawing on findings of a case study in an Australian outdoor education teacher education (OETE) course, this article explores POE theory engagement focussing on a problematic tendency to methodise formal theory, that is, to treat theories as formula for action. The authors argue that this tendency is concerning because it ignores the complexity and problematic nature of both theory-practice relationships and outdoor education pedagogy. The discussion highlights contributing factors and implications for OETE, especially with respect to enabling aspiring outdoor educators in tertiary courses to move beyond methodising theory as they enter the outdoor profession.

This open access book is the first of a two-volume series focusing on how people are being enabled or constrained to live well in today’s world, and how to bring into reality a world worth living in for all. The chapters offer unique narratives drawing on the perspectives of diverse groups such as: asylum-seeking and refugee youth in Australia, Finland, Norway and Scotland; young climate activists in Finland; Australian Aboriginal students, parents and community members; families of children who tube feed in Australia; and international research students in Sweden. The chapters reveal not just that different groups have different ideas about a world worth living in, but also show that, through their collaborative research initiative, the authors and their research participants were bringing worlds like these into being. The volume extends an invitation to readers and researchers in education and the social sciences to consider ways to foster education that realises transformed selves and transformed worlds: the good for each person, the good for humankind, and the good for the community of life on the planet. The book also includes theoretical chapters providing the background and rationale behind the notion of education as initiating people into ‘living well in a world worth living in'. An introductory chapter discusses the origins of the concept and the phrase. 

This special issue brings together a unique collection of papers on doctoral supervision, including work from researchers both outside the pedagogy discipline as well as those centred within it. The contributions include research on factors that contribute to supervisor stress, professional learning programs for supervisors, advising ancestry, gender and power in supervision, and the formation of supervisors more generally.

Editorial

During the COVID-19-pandemic, many academics have experienced profound changes to theirdaily work. This is especially due to sudden and wholescale shifts to online forms ofcommunication for teaching and studying, researching, and community/industry engagement. Working and studying from home has become the new normal, in universities as in worklife ingeneral. This presentation draws on an ongoing empirical project designed to investigate such changes, almost from the time a pandemic was declared. In the project, entitled Academics’ Learning in the Time of Coronavirus, we have interviewed 42 academics across four countries, Finland, Norway, Australia and Sweden, 31 of them at two points in time. Some of the interviewees (27) have also kept regular diaries of their experiences. Diaries and interview transcripts have been analysed using the theory of practice architectures. This has generated several insights into how academics’ practices (i.e., their sayings, doings and relatings) have changed during the pandemic and with what consequences. It has also given insight into how these changes have been enabled and constrained by existing and evolving practice architectures (i.e. cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements in sites of practices).

In the presentation, we focus on a practice architecture that emerged as salient to many of the changed practices identified in our analysis: the computer screen. As we shall show, the computer screen has played a key role in prefiguring academic practices, particularly in synchronous online meeting forums like Zoom and Teams. The screen mediates what is/not,and can/not be, said (including e.g. through emojis and ‘chat’ comments, and ‘live’ spoken exchanges). It also mediates what is, and can be, done (including through technical hardwareand software features). Finally, it mediates how people (can) relate to each other and their virtual and physical environments (e.g. through on-screen arrangements of people’s images,‘host’ versus ‘non host’ access to functions like mute buttons, or sound-image delays). This inevitably has implications for academics’ capacities to create and maintain personal ties with colleagues, students, and research partners/participants, and to engage in meaningful work.

Through empirical examples, we aim to highlight how the screen has positively and negatively affected relational dimensions of academic work (especially those related to power). We also hope to provoke discussion about what our findings might mean for research, teaching and learning, and community engagement in the post-pandemic university.

This article explores academics’ learning. Specifically, it focuses on how academics have come to practise differently under the abrupt changes caused by responses to the Coronavirus pandemic. We argue that people’s practices—for example, academics’ practices of teaching and research—are ordinarily held in place by combinations of arrangements that form practice architectures. Many existing practice architectures enabling and constraining academics’ practices were disrupted when the pandemic broke. To meet the imperatives of these changed arrangements, academics have been obliged to recreate their lives, and their practices. We present case stories from four individual academics in Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Australia. Building on a view of learning as coming to practice differently and as situated in particular sites, we explore these academics’ changed practices—working online from home with teaching, research, and collegial interactions. The changes demonstrate that academics have learned very rapidly how to manage their work and lives under significantly changed conditions. Our observations also suggest that the time of the Novel Coronavirus has led to a renewal of the communitarian character of academic life. In learning to practise academic life and work differently, we have also recovered what we most value in academic life and work: its intrinsically communitarian character.