Routledge Practice Theory and Education: Diffractive readings in professional practice

Practice Theory and Education challenges how we think about ‘practice’, examining what it means across different fields and sites. It is organised into four themes: discursive practices; practice, change and organisations; practising subjectivity; and professional practice, public policy and education. Contributors to the collection engage and extend practice theory by drawing on the legacies of diverse social and cultural theorists, including Bourdieu, de Certeau, Deleuze and Guattari, Dewey, Latour, Marx, and Vygotsky, and by building on the theoretical trajectories of contemporary authors such as Karen Barad, Yrjo Engestrom, Andreas Reckwitz, Theodore Schatzki, Dorothy Smith, and Charles Taylor. The proximity of ideas from different fields and theoretical traditions in the book highlight key matters of concern in contemporary practice thinking, including the historicity of practice; the nature of change in professional practices; the place of discursive material in practice; the efficacy of refiguring conventional understandings of subjectivity and agency; and the capacity for theories of practice to disrupt conventional understandings of asymmetries of power and resources. Their juxtaposition also points to areas of contestation and raises important questions for future research. Practice Theory and Education will appeal to postgraduate students, academics and researchers in professional practice and education, and scholars working with social theory. It will be of particular interest to those who wish to move beyond the limiting configurations of practice found in contemporary neoliberal, new managerialist and narrow representationalist discourses. Review ‘This book is an extremely rich, broad and beautifully theorised collection of essays that takes on the complexities of practice in an erudite and accomplished style that comes together across each piece and in the weave and fabric of what has been produced overall… This is a scholarly collection that repays detailed reading and indeed, requires detailed reading and rereading. The collection challenges us all to engage with a robust set of contrasting theories and demands serious attention.’ Meg Maguire, Professor, King’s College London, UK, writing in the Journal of Education Policy ‘Practice Theory and Education explores and maps relatively uncharted territory, to problematise and theorise practice. An impressive range of theoretical resources (including Bourdieu, Vygotsky, Deleuze) are mobilised to bring practice into question. This is a creative, adventurous and significant collection of papers, written by outstanding scholars, which marks a step-change in how we understand and research practices in education. Really exciting stuff!’Stephen J. Ball, Professor, University College London, UK ‘Insightful, wide-ranging, scholarly, and innovative, this book is a welcome addition to the growing body of work on practice theory and professional education. An important contribution, breaking new theoretical ground, it rewards careful and attentive, diffractive reading!’Bill Green, Emeritus Professor, Charles Sturt University, Australia ‘This stunning collection troubles all the clichés about practice that structure and weigh down an applied field like education, especially the theory/practice and research/practice binaries. Authors convince us that theory, practice, and research function in an onto-epistemological arrangement in which they are not distinct but completely imbricated. They encourage us to experiment in this arrangement to produce difference, the exceptional, rather than to repeat the same, the pedestrian, the normal they refuse.’Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre, Professor and Graduate Coordinator, University of Georgia, USA ‘The need to theorise practice in education has never been greater than it is today. It is through theoretical analysis leading to the development of cogent critique that we should be able to resist the vagaries and