Paying Attention to Educational Practices: Observing Educational Activities Through Schatzki’s Practice Theory

Abstract

Practice theory has recently gained renewed attention in educational research. However, analyzing educational activities through a theory of practice generally results in the need to explain the relationships among determination, practice activity and practice organization. This article instead seeks to present new ways to see and narrate educational practices based on (a) Schatzki’s practice theory, particularly his idea of human activity as an indeterminate temporal spatial event, and (b) a particular approach to observe and relate to educational practices based on Tim Ingold’s and Jan Masschelein’s work on education and attention. We focus on an exploratory approach that promotes ‘attention’ as a pivotal attitude to observe what happens during educational practices. The main argument is that in addition to understanding, explaining, and attempting to change the forces that shape educational practices, there is an interesting narrative of what happens in present educational activities.

Introduction

In recent years, there has been increased interest in practice theory in education research. Practice theory has been used to explain a range of educational themes, primarily by drawing attention to the unfolding of learning and teaching practices in diverse educational contexts (e.g., Feldman, 2020; Grootenboer et al., 2017; Higgs et al., 2012; Kemmis, 2021; Lambrev, 2021), but it has also been used to consider particular manifestations of policy and management as practices (Feldman & Worline, 2016) and discursive, gender and research practices in education (Lynch et al., 2016). Among the different theories of practice, the work of Theodore Schatzki stands out. This article starts by focusing on Schatzki’s practice theory and introduces key concepts of his work. A practice, as he claims, is “an open-ended, spatially-temporally dispersed nexus of doings and sayings” (2012, p. 14). The main implications of this claim are that practices embrace activity and organization (an organized ‘bundle’ of bodily doings and sayings), that space and time are conceived as a unified phenomenon inherently connected to human activity, and that human actions are continually unfolding and perpetuating those practices. At first glance, Schatzki seems committed to analyzing only activities concerned with humans; however, upon closer inspection, he proposes an analytical distinction between human and non-human agency. For him, other entities are intrinsically tied to human actions, but they are analyzed as arrangements of entities. Furthermore, his thesis is that “all social life transpires as part of a nexus of practices and arrangements” (2002, p. xvi).

While applications of Schatzki’s work in education theory are still rare, his work has recently addressed educational issues (see Schatzki, 2017, 2021) and has influenced prominent researchers to analyze educational activities using diverse theoretical elements. One of the most important applications in this context is Kemmis’s theory of practice architectures and ecologies of practices (see Charteris et al., 2022; Kemmis et al., 2014; Kemmis et al., 2017; Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008).

To date, research on educational activities and things has focused overwhelmingly on their properties and efficiency based on their designed function. In particular, the rise of a culture of performativity in education (Smeyers & Depaepe, 2006) has enhanced interest in the measurement of education with a tendency to focus educational discussion on the measurement of learning outcomes (Biesta, 2009). Although the emergence of evidence-based educational research has been tied to concerns about the quality and improvement of professional practices, it spawned the idea of a ‘better’ way to do research to produce scientific educational knowledge. From this perspective, educational research has been widely implemented under the criterion of effectiveness (‘what works’) (see Biesta, 2010) and less so with an interest in the nature of what is to be studied. According to Smeyers and Depaepe, from this perspective, the “‘picture’ that holds one captive is one of output, of quality indicators, which is to some extent useful, but it obliterates other dimensions, which were and are seen by many as belonging at the heart of education” (2006, p. 10).

The pronounced emphasis on these perspectives, however, risks sidelining other kinds of research that focus on the enactment of practices as well as the importance of the embeddedness of education and the relevance of embodiment in educational activities. This paper offers a concrete response to the request for different approaches that aim to grasp the constitution of educational practices and recognize the dynamic relationship between being and the world (Packer, 2017). In a sense, this kind of research can be called ‘irrelevant’ because it avoids responding to short-term interests and relevant problems that usually determine research agendas and seek effective strategies for implementation (see Smeyers, 2006). In contrast, in this study, practice theory provides a way for educational theory to include the complex, dynamic, and emergent relations between the material and social worlds that occur during educational practices. As Landri puts it, “Practice-based studies are in a better position to address the issue of the mutual constitution of objects and subjects in education” (2012, p. 92). Hence, in this article, we highlight the importance of doing research outside of the confines of representational epistemology and experimental methodology (see Biesta, 2010) to question basic assumptions about educational practices. This point is particularly important because it allows us to overcome the presuppositions that exercise control of educational practices, especially educational outcomes, that can be manipulated to produce better or more desirable realities.

As Ingold holds, things not only exist but also occur. They move with and relate to other things and people. By acknowledging that life is not a relation between independent entities but is the relation itself, Ingold encourages us to look at the movements and forces that hold these relations together. As we shall see, both Schatzki’s and Ingold’s theories are closely linked when the focus of interest is not only understanding, explaining, and attempting to change the forces that shape educational practices but also casting our attention on the relations that occur during educational practices. The paper’s main argument is that educational activities are not only processes to acquire some-thing (knowledge, behavior) but also educative relations. Moreover, because they are a way to relate with others (things, people, knowledge, nature), they also relate a narrative of encounters and gatherings.

This article complements theoretical and empirical work that has studied the nature and constitution of educational practices by drawing attention to other paths to analyze and observe educational activities. Our concern in the present article is primarily associated with the relation—the way in which we relate as researchers with the world—that happens when studying educational realities, particularly from a practice approach. As proposed here, this relation should be based not on the stance but on the attitude of the researchers toward educational practices. By implication, this approach involves epistemological and ontological conceptualizations based on Schatzki’s practice theory (2001, 2002, 2012) that capture the idea of human activity as an indeterminate temporalspatial event (2010). In this regard, this paper aims to contribute new ways to see, narrate and understand educational practices based on Schatzki’s practice theory and adds a particular sensitivity formulated in actions of attentive observation as essential modes to undertake practice theory in educational contexts.

The paper is organized as follows. The first section briefly discusses the ‘practice turn’ in social philosophy and theory. It begins by presenting, in general terms, the emergence of practice theory and the broad theoretical foundations of this perspective. Among the diverse approaches, two key aspects are highlighted. First, the human body is emphasized in all forms of human activity; furthermore, practices are embodied activities. Second, practice theory acknowledges the role of nonhumans in social practices; in that sense, practices are human activities materially interwoven with arrangements of nonhuman entities. The second section then presents a general account of Schatzki’s practice theory. Examining this theory reveals ontological and epistemological implications that we consider significant to revealing the complex sociomaterial relations enacted during educational practices. In our reading of Schatzki’s theory, explicit attention is given to analyzing educational activities as temporally and spatially situated events. This means that educational activities are tied to—and essentially dependent on—where educational things and spaces happen. Likewise, spaces and things should be understood (i.e., have function and meaning) in relation to the educational practices performed. The eventful feature of practices implies that the quality and thickness of the relations between human activities and material arrangement are visible only when the performance of educational activities happens. In addition, it suggests that educational activities are indeterminate; even if material, teleological, and motivational factors predetermine it, what a person does is only settled during present activity. Against this background, this paper’s main contribution lies in proposing a different kind of relation to attending temporally and spatially situated educational events. Avoiding the technical approach often assumed in participant observation, we, by exploring Tim Ingold’s (2014, 2017a, 2017b) work, prioritize analyzing participant observation as a way of corresponding. The third section briefly outlines Ingold’s depiction of the relations of correspondence. This specification motivates our contribution, a way of observing educational practices, as developed in the fourth section. Based on Jan Masschelein’s (2010) invitation for a ‘poor pedagogy,’ we focus on ‘attention’ as a pivotal attitude to observe what happens during educational practices. In this regard, attentive observation is proposed as a crucial activity related to educational practices of being, as Masschelein (2010) puts it, ‘present in the present’ during educational events.

Practice Theory

Usually taken for granted, the notion of practices is commonly used without much consideration in educational research. A ‘practice’ is mainly thought of as a way to do something—for instance, a pedagogical practice where technology is introduced or a teaching practice is performed. This section aims to highlight the importance of the notion of practice for educational research by first providing a general overview of what has been called ‘the practice turn’ in social sciences and, second, by focusing on Schatzki’s practice theory as a way to support a notion of practice that may open new ways of viewing educational practices.

In recent decades, social theory has recognized in the ‘practice turn’ the possibility of avoiding the dichotomy between individualism and holism. In this vein, theorists from philosophy, sociology, and cultural theory, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Taylor, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard, have made decisive contributions to providing a theoretical framework for social practices (Schatzki, 2001). According to Reckwitz (2002), the turn to practices shares an interest in the ‘life-world’, and the ‘essence’ of the turn to practices is a unique way of seeing social and human action. Reckwitz holds that a ‘practice’ is a routinized type of behavior that consists of several interconnected elements: “forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge” (2002, p. 249). These elements are mostly shared as the central cores of practice theorists’ conceptions and are important for understanding the practice approach presented in this section.

According to most practice theorists, social phenomena must not be analyzed as separate realms between human actions and material entities. Instead, their ontology claims that there is a link between the production and reproduction of practices and, hence, between these practices and the composition of social phenomena. ¹ Thus, more generally, practice theorists recognize the importance of materiality in the constitution of practices, but their focus is on activities ‘performed’ by human agency. As a result, the way in which material entities constitute human practices, according to practice theory, is not by challenging human agency but by being part of it. In this sense, practices, as social phenomena, transpire and are shaped by materiality.

In sum, as broadly presented above, practice theory provides relevant points for thinking about and examining educational practices in a different way. According to most standard conceptions of practice, a ‘practice’ is a context in which something is done or a routine way of doing something in that context. We follow Schatzki, who uses the term ‘social’ in relation to human coexistence. For him, human coexistence is more than people performing activities; it is a matter of people acting in a world full of things and organisms where their fates are joined together. Following this, researching educational practices is a matter of understanding the kind of relations that come into play when a practice is enacted. To develop this point, it is necessary to delve deeply into a precise theory of practice that provides a more situated understanding of educational practices.

Schatzki’s Practice Theory

A starting point in Schatzki’s theory concerns human coexistence. In his view, approaching this point is essential for understanding any social affair—even more, as he declares that without human coexistence, society does not exist. Drawing on Heidegger’s Being and Time, his notion of coexistence implies human existence as “being-in-the-world-with others”. ² Thus, in his theory, coexistence implies four aspects: “(1) encountering others within the world, (2) acting toward others, (3) acting in the same world(s) in which others act, and (4) the sameness of the world’s worldhood for whomever is in it” (Schatzki, 2010, p. 48). This notion points toward a key issue for understanding his theory of practices that is tied to the expression ‘hanging together’ (Zusammenhang). According to Schatzki, human lives ‘hang together’ as a form of ‘nexuses’: “through the interpersonal structuring of what determines action, through chains of action, through intentional directedness toward others, and through the medium of settings” (Ibid: 66). Likewise, the notion of linked existence pertains to other entities, not just humans. In his specification of order, Schatzki declares that ordering “is the hanging together of things.” To capture this idea, he equates orders with 'arrangements.’ Thus, for him, “[a]n arrangement is a hanging together of entities in which they relate, occupy positions, and enjoy meaning (and/or identity)” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 20). Furthermore, both the notion of nexus and arrangements denote the linked existence that envelops human lives and other entities.

A practice, according to Schatzki, is “an open-ended, spatially-temporally dispersed nexus of doings and sayings” (2012, p. 14). This notion highlights, first, the indefinite composition of practices, which is partly due to practices embracing irregular and constantly changing basic activities (doings and sayings). ³ For Schatzki, a practice that is composed as a whole with a determinate number of activities is complete and consequently dead; it is no longer being continued (2012). Second, doings and sayings are spatially and temporally dispersed because they can occur in objective space and over some duration of objective time. However, Schatzki distinguishes between basic activities (e.g., taking notes, reading a paper, writing an article) and activity as an event. Although activity is the performance of an action, for Schatzki, when a person performs or carries out an action, “the action is what is done, whereas the performance is the doing of it” (2010, p. 170). What happens, however, is that the person “does not perform, or carry out, the performance – the activity – itself. Rather, the performance happens” (2012, p. 18). For instance, when a student performs the action of taking notes in a study session, her action is what is done, but at the same time, the performance of taking notes befalls her; it happens to her. In other words, the activity befalls the person who performs the action. In this sense, for Schatzki, human activity is an event that befalls people and combines “something done and something that just happens” (2010, p. 170).

Drawing on Heidegger, Schatzki argues “that human activity should be understood as an indeterminate temporalspatial event: as an inherently temporalspatial happening” (2010, p. x). Accordingly, time and space are not only features of an activity (when or where something happened) but also constitutive dimensions of that ‘happening' of action. Hence, as Schatzki proposes, activity is a temporalspatial event because time and space—or, as he states, timespace (as a nonobjective and unified feature of activity)—“exists only when and in so far as activity happens” and because “timespace makes activity what it is, activity, as opposed to mere occurrence” (2012, p. 18). To clarify this point, it is important to understand that for Schatzki, teleology and motivation determine activity; however, they do not cause it. Accordingly, the way a person acts to obtain good grades and her motivations are part of the future and past dimensions of activity. Therefore, she might perform her academic activities with tenacity and dedication, take part in all her classes, study for exams, and think of the future rewards of her study as a successful student. However, in Schatzki’s conception, past, present, and future dimensions of activity are simultaneous; they occur at a single stroke with activity. Even though the person might perform particular actions determined by her motivations and future pursuits, the reasons for acting are not fixed until an action is performed (2010). Third, a practice is organized by a set of doings and sayings, most of which are bodily actions. For Schatzki, these are “actions that people directly perform” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 72). What he means by ‘directly’ is that there are basic activities that people perform “not by way of doing something else” (Ibid.).

However, in most cases, doings and sayings also constitute further actions when basic actions are performed. In this way, a set of actions performed—for instance, writing a note, highlighting a sentence, or reading a paragraph—is broader than the doings and sayings alone; it also constitutes further activity, such as studying for an exam or preparing a paper. For Schatzki, those actions constitute ‘high-level activities.’ Accordingly, studying a text may include taking notes, highlighting key ideas, and reading the whole text between other bodily actions. In turn, following Schatzki, these activities typically constitute even higher-level activities. Furthermore, those activities’ hierarchies are teleological, that is, oriented toward ends. For instance, when a person studies a text, she might seek to understand a topic, pass an exam, or join a discussion. These teleological hierarchies reach the highest level when some activity reaches a person’s end: “[I]t is that for the sake of which she acts” (Schatzki, 2012, p. 15). For example, when a person studies a text and performs other academic tasks, she may be seeking to obtain a degree; alternatively, she may be studying for the sake of her curiosity and pleasure.

Consequently, what a person does is usually what it makes sense to do, a concept that Schatzki calls ‘practical intelligibility.’ ⁴ According to Schatzki (2010), “To claim that practical intelligibility governs what people do is to claim that what people do next in the flow of ongoing conduct is whatever it is that makes sense to them to do” (p. 114). Furthermore, a practice is constituted by all the activities that are part of those teleological hierarchies, from the basic activities to the higher level of activities that constitute people’s ends.

Timespace is a property of the activities of individual persons, where “human activity consists [of] acting toward ends departing from what motivates at arrays of places and paths anchored at entities” (Schatzki, 2010, p. 40). However, for Schatzki, individual human existence is “being-in-the-world-with others”; in other words, timespace is a social feature of individual activities. In his account, Schatzki maintains that timespace is social because “the timespaces of different people’s activities interweave under the aegis of social practices and the material arrangements with which practices are bundled” (2012, p. 20). Accordingly, for example, a ‘place to study’ is anchored by the interwovenness of the timespaces of different people’s activities, such as students, librarians, and teachers. Ends and purposes therefore circumscribe the unity of the teleological hierarchies of individuals, but their pursuits are recurring and evolving effects of interwoven timespaces of participants in a given practice. In that sense, Schatzki declares that the “activity timespaces of participants in a given practice are partly common, partly shared, and partly personal” (2010, p. 52). Furthermore, the variety of actions that constitute the teleological hierarchies of a given person’s pursuit of something reacts to the practice organization, to the pursuit of ends or projects of other participants of the practice, and to certain states of affairs different from those of other participants. For Schatzki, the interwoven timespaces are central to the constitution of the social.

As indicated, Schatzki describes practice as a nexus of doings and sayings. This nexus embraces a set of activities organized by practical understandings, rules, teleoaffective structures, and general understandings. To clarify this point, he declares that, first, practical understandings are those abilities that allow practitioners to carry out basic doings and sayings in practice. Mainly, those abilities include “knowing how to X, knowing how to identify X-ings, and knowing how to prompt as well as respond to X-ings” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 77). In a given practice, two people share the same understanding when, for instance, highlighting a phrase in a book is understood by both of them as part of the same activity. Moreover, both parties share the same understanding of what kinds of doings and sayings are linked in a practice. However, Schatzki clarifies that even if practical understanding is a skill that underlies activity, it is not only ‘know-how’ that determines what makes sense to people to do. Instead, practical understanding “executes the actions that practical intelligibility singles out” (Ibid., p. 79). Hence, it is not possible to explain actions as a response to the determination of practical understandings.

Second, by rules, he explains that a practice is organized by a set of “explicit formulations, principles, precepts, and instructions that enjoin, direct, or remonstrate people to perform specific actions” (Ibid.). Rules thus become part of a practice as a way of orienting its constitutive activities. As Schatzki points out, they are ubiquitous in human life; people are constantly formulating or producing rules (Schatzki, 2012).

A third form of organization of a practice is by a teleoaffective structure. This structure is constituted by “a set of teleological hierarchies (end-project-activity combinations) that are enjoined or acceptable in a given practice” (Schatzki, 2012, p. 16). For instance, a studying practice might involve a set of tasks and projects that members should or may pursue for the sake of particular ends, such as finishing assignments or grasping the sense of a subject matter. On the other hand, the affective component “embraces the emotions and moods that people carrying on a practice should or may acceptably express” (ibid.). Both elements of the teleoaffective structure belong to the practice, and members share them as a factual matter, meaning that this structure is not a property of members of a practice; instead, it is a property of the practice. Anyone who participates in the nexus of activities organized by a teleoaffective structure circumscribes his actions to those ends, projects, actions, and combinations that were accepted or enjoined as a member of that practice. However, teleoaffective structures are not fixed or identical in each case. Even if members uphold the normativity of the teleoaffective structure of a practice (joining and accepting end-project-activity combinations), “[t]eleoaffective structures are recurring and evolving effects of what actors do together with what determines this” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 81).

Fourth, doings and sayings in a practice are linked by general understanding. These understandings are abstract senses “of the worth, value, nature, or place of things, which infuse and are expressed in people’s doings and sayings” (Schatzki, 2012, p. 16). Determined actions can express in different ways a particular sense in which people understand the practice and, at the same time, identify themselves with that practice. Moreover, some doings and sayings that make up a given practice express these understandings and constitute an important component of its organization.

In sum, the nexus of doings and sayings in a given practice is circumscribed by practical understandings, rules, teleoaffective structures, and general understandings. However, as Schatzki clarifies, practice organization does not pre-settle or guarantee that participants’ actions follow what is prescribed. Hence, “the normative character of practice organization does not command its observance”. As such, participants “only tend to uphold practice organization” (Schatzki, 2010, p. 185). The open-ended quality of actions in a practice lies in the fact that it is possible for participants to ignore normativity and do something else. Indeed, participants’ actions are not controlled by preconceived goals or normativity, as discussed; what people do usually depends on evolving situations.

However, for Schatzki, “[a]ctivity is indeterminate in the sense that it is not fixed or laid down in reality prior to acting either what a person does or what teleological or motivational factors determine this” (2010, p. 175). Accordingly, what determines an action does not precede or succeed the activity. Instead, past, present, and future dimensions of the activity occur simultaneously: “[p]rior to the performance, that which determines what a person does is open: which ways of being and states of affairs will be those for the sake of which and given which she acts is not settled” (Ibid, p. 176). Hence, it is in the event, in the happening of the activity, where what it makes sense to do and what motivates that activity become definite.

Human activity happens in a spatial location. Here, Schatzki distinguishes other notions of spatiality that situate activity ‘inside’ a space. Following Heidegger’s discussion of spatiality, ⁵ for Schatzki, a person is not in the world but is instead involved in a world, toward and amid entities of which it is composed (Schatzki, 2010). In his conception, “[S]patiality embraces arrays of places and paths anchored in entities, where a place is a place to perform some action and a path is a way among places” (Schatzki, 2012, p. 19). For instance, a library embraces places and paths to read, to look for a book, to sit, and to go from one section to another. Thus, these places and paths are spaces through which students perform different study activities. These activities are anchored to entities, such as desks, chairs, and bookshelves. In this way, entities provide stability and location in an objective space of places and paths. In addition, as discussed earlier, material entities are interconnected; they constitute arrangements that are part of social practices. Indeed, for Schatzki, human activities are tied to practices and material arrangements. For instance, studying practices in a library are carried out amid entities such as books, computers, desktops, students, librarians, and tablets, but those practices are also dependent on and altered by those entities. Similarly, activities are carried out with distinct objects. For instance, students might study on a desktop in the library daily because a ‘place to study’ is anchored there.

In addition, according to Schatzki (2012), practices and arrangements form bundles through five types of relations: Causal relations, Prefiguration, Constitution, Intentionality and Intelligibility. This perspective allows us to see, for instance, that relations in a classroom are not reducible to social relations alone. What happens in the classroom between humans and non-humans is more than the relations between teachers and students. Relations of causality are established when the teacher, for example, directs the students’ attention toward an illustration of a well-known painting that fosters a discussion about representations of nature in the Romanticism movement during the 18th century. Hence, the teacher’s gesture and the illustration cause something to happen in the classroom, leading to a change in the flow of action. In addition, what enables (or could constrain) the occurrence of the discussion is not only the teacher’s action. The presence and arrangement of non-human entities in the classroom enable and constrain activities. For example, the classroom design (seating arrangement, shape of the room, furniture design) prefigures the development of easier group discussions. Likewise, in that example, we might recognize that the presence of particular entities, such as students, the teacher, and the thing (painting illustration) that is being studied, makes that teaching practice possible. As such, those entities constitute the teaching practice. From a more general view, we might also say that classrooms, textbooks, and blackboards have helped to constitute teaching practice for a long time.

Furthermore, teaching practices are intentionally related to those entities in the particular way in which teachers and students perform their actions and share their understanding of them as participants in that practice. Their actions express particular thoughts, intentions, and emotions toward those entities, such as the teacher’s anxiety regarding a new technology device that she must use in her class or the expectations of her students about the possibility of also using that device. As those relations arise, the meaning of arranged entities is articulated. The teacher, students, and things receive meaning because of the activities and organization of the practice; in other words, they are intelligible because of the practice in which they participate. In sum, human activities are temporalspatial events that transpire as part of practice-arrangement bundles. Understanding the ‘hanging together’ between, for instance, students and educational materiality would involve addressing how they coexist in a particular practice-arrangement bundle. It is worth noting that a focus on human activity directs our attention to the nexus of doings and sayings that happen in a spatial-temporal event. The notion of nexus acknowledges that activities in a practice ‘hang together’; thus, they are organized and connected through relations of causality and intentionality. ⁶

In this regard, recent theoretical interest has been raised around questions that resonate with the ‘hanging together’ of people and things in educational settings. For instance, challenging the global educational measurement industry, Biesta claims that existential questions—those related to how “we, as human beings, exist “in” and “with” the world, natural and social—should fundamentally orient educational concerns (2022, p. 3). Similar existential orientations toward the essence and ends of education have been raised based on Arendt’s work (Arendt, 1961). Of particular importance are the works of Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019), who define teaching in terms of an unconditional love for the world, and the work of Masschelein (1998), who focuses on the existential dimension of the encounter with the world and its demands.

Before continuing, for the sake of clarity, it is important to indicate that the focus of analysis of Schatzki’s theory is the social life. What is emphasized is that human relations are the starting point to analyze other relations that arise with things and other living organisms. Here, we align with Schatzki’s position to focus on human activities when we refer to researching educational practices. However, we also believe it is crucial to address the co-constitutive relations between human and non-human entities during those practices. In a sense, the invitation provided by practice theories is to rethink the way we approach and analyze what people and things are and do during educational practices. In other words, rather than observing and analyzing people, things, and activities with preconceived meanings and identities, we should relate to practices as events where things that matter are present, occurring, and graspable. During those events, educational stories are unfolded and presented to those who are attentive to them. In this way, practice theory offers new possibilities to grasp new meanings and interactions of what constitutes educative practices. However, although Schatzki’s practice theory offers an articulated structure to describe and analyze the elements of practices, it seems that it also requires a different sensitivity to relate to the living world where practices unfold. This quality, we suggest, can be found in Tim Ingold’s ideas on correspondence that, similar to Schatzki’s notion of ‘hanging together,’ are attuned to the rhythms of the world where human practices unfold.

Tim Ingold’s Work on Correspondence

For Ingold, correspondence is the way in which people and things respond to one another over time (2017b). The sense in which correspondence is manifested is depicted by Ingold using the notion of sympathy. For him, in the relations of correspondence, the elements “possess an inner feel for one another” (2015, p. 23). In that event, sympathy emerges as a gathering of forces where elements shape each other: “a form of feeling-knowing that operates in the interstices of things, in their interiority” (2015, p. 24). It is nevertheless important to clarify that in those gatherings, there is no aggregation or fusing of elements, as there might seem to be from the description. Instead, the movements of correspondence qualify, according to Ingold, as a ‘living with’ where people’s lives are bound and drawn together as long as they attend and respond to each other. As such, minds and lives “are open-ended processes whose most outstanding characteristic is that they carry on” (2015, p. 11).

In addition, Ingold claims that a relation of correspondence involves an important distinction in the way that entities relate to each other. Unlike common approaches that establish relations between elements, Ingold declares that correspondence happens in-between. In this regard, if between focuses on the connection of different elements, in between reveals “a movement of generation and dissolution in a world of becoming where things are not yet given (…) but on the way to being given” (2015, p. 147). What this implies, in short, is a focus not on connected objects but on what happens in the interplay of materials and forces that correspond to each other. Moreover, for Ingold, correspondence is not a connection or interaction between points but rather a binding of lines joined not at the end but in the middle. In this relation, ends are not given in advance but emerge in the action itself; they are therefore moments along the way (2017b).

It is precisely to delineate and understand the different kinds of relationships that occur during educational practices that we require not only a technique to gather the data but also, and most importantly, an attitude to relate with people and things that are active constituents of the practices. In proposing a way to observe educational practices, our purpose is to call attention to the stories forged in the ongoing relations produced during educational practices. In this sense, whereas Theodore Schatzki’s theory provides a strong theoretical foundation for the relational elements of practice, the work of Tim Ingold provides a way to reflect on and contemplate those relations beyond their functionality.

Participant observation, as a main approach to interacting with practices and material arrangements as argued in this article, attempts to establish a different kind of relation to attend educational practices. As will be further discussed in the next section, instead of assuming that researchers observe those practices to gather information, following Tim Ingold’s approach (2017a), we insist that observing implies a relation with people’s actions and entities. This kind of relation, rather than objectifying knowledge, allows the researcher to participate with others in a practice.

A Way of Observing Educational Practices

The point we particularly want to highlight here is what we mean by ‘observing educational practices.' The objective of participant observation, according to some educational methodological guides, is to gather open-ended, first-hand information by observing specific educational settings (see Creswell, 2012). In that sense, it seems a common consideration that the central aim of participant observation is the researcher’s ‘immersion’ in a setting where members’ activity can be observed and accurately recorded to identify the ‘meanings’ of their behavior (Howitt & Cramer, 2011). Like many other research approaches, participant observation has been developed as a technique that must be accurately performed to obtain scientific knowledge. Achieving that goal implies, from a functional perspective, a set of procedures and behaviors that indicate ‘how to’ participate in the lives of others and record the data obtained during observations.

Not surprisingly, given the intense debates in social sciences in recent decades that have focused on the opposition between subjectivity and objectivity, contemporary qualitative research often attempts to establish a clear set of criteria for observing social actions (Hatch, 2002; Saldaña, 2011). An important part of those considerations is the combination of participation and observation. As stated by Packer (2017) and often assumed to be ‘problematic’, the relation between observation and participation has remained a central issue in determining the type of involvement of the researcher and his or her subjective limitations in describing a phenomenon objectively. From an anthropological perspective, fieldwork requires immersion. In the case of ethnography, that kind of immersion seeks to grasp the ‘insider’s viewpoint’ and to acquire first-hand information on and insight into a way of life. At this point, however, researchers find themselves with the fundamental confusion of how to become an insider and, at the same time, strive for scientific objectivity. Bernard (2006) addresses this issue in the following way:

Participant observation involves immersing yourself in a culture and learning to remove yourself every day from that immersion so you can intellectualize what you’ve seen and heard, put it into perspective, and write about it convincingly. When it’s done right, participant observation turns fieldworkers into instruments of data collection and data analysis (p. 344).

It is apparently necessary to assume a dual role, described by Powdermaker (1966) as that of “stranger and friend” (as cited in Rock, 2007). In this duality, participation implies involvement as a way of gaining access to the lives of others and learning from them, whereas observation aims for detachment, standing back, analyzing, and recording objective data. The personal experiences of the researcher, as noted by Clifford (1986), are key to the research process, but they “are firmly restrained by the impersonal standards of observation and ‘objective’ distance” (p. 13). Participant observation, as a methodological approach to gathering information, seems to hinge on a contradictory balance between objective distance and empathic participation. ⁷

However, what if we consider participant observation not just as a technique for gathering information or consider that researchers are more than instruments that emulate roles to become insiders? As discussed, from a practice theory perspective, researching human actions is not about locating knowledge in the human subject-mind or interpreting what people think and why they perform certain actions. Instead, what is argued is that mental conditions are expressed in the bodily performances of a given practice. Therefore, rather than aiming to grasp insiders’ motivations for their actions by assuming a ‘friendly role,’ a researcher should seek to attend to the actions and things involved in a practice. Strange as it may seem, what is often forgotten is that as researchers, if we observe and participate in a social practice, we become part of that practice and its activities. When actions happen and are shown to us, we become involved with those who performed the actions and with other entities that become entangled in that activity. As declared by Ingold, there is no contradiction between participation and observation; in fact, it is quite the opposite. For Ingold, “[O]bservation is a way of participating attentively” (Ingold, 2017a, p. 23).

In terms of scientific protocols, however, it is not easy to define a clear set of criteria to observe and interpret what happened in a given situation. Issues about how and for whom reality should be represented must not guide the motives and actions of the researcher during participant observations. What is necessary, then, is not a method to reveal the meaning of actions performed during a practice but rather a disposition. In this respect, Ingold describes participant observation as ‘an ontological commitment’ where researchers ‘attend’ and ‘respond.’ For him, it is a way of “corresponding with people” (2017a, p. 23). In other words, we do not have to follow strict guidelines and expect to reveal hidden knowledge to account for scientific objectivity. Instead, what is proposed is a disposition to attend and respond to things and actions that appear during social practices. In this particular sense, for Ingold (2014), participant observation is a practice of correspondence.

This finding has important implications. In emphasizing the limitations of methodological approaches to participant observation, our purpose is not to claim that any method should be avoided. It is hardly possible to implement empirical research without a methodological design. Rather, we intend to point out that those limitations shift our view to the kind of relation researchers assume during participant observation. As Ingold notes, there is an important distinction between studying with people and conducting studies of them. For him, “it is the of that converts observation into objectification” (Ingold, 2017a, p. 23). Moreover, it is not that participant observation reduces reality to objects but rather that the disconnection between the observer and the world occurs when this research practice is mostly defined by methodological intentions. Indeed, the problem appears when reality is conceived as an aggregation of objects of knowledge instead of people and things that relate to each other and become part of the researcher’s experience.

Our point is that when observing educational practices, the issue is not about choosing the right method, i.e., choosing an adequate role as a participant, how to categorize the data, or how field notes are created. Following the ideas of the Belgian philosopher Jan Masschelein (2010) about education, it seems that the problem is not about representation but about the ‘(dis-)tance’ with the world—in other words, about the way we relate with those educational practices and their members. Masschelein describes that kind of relation as a movement that liberates or displaces our view to become attentive or be ‘present in the present.’ In short, it implies a different way of relating to the world and to what is present. Specifically, this kind of presentness described by Masschelein can be tied, in our opinion, to the particular understanding of temporality and spatiality proposed by Schatzki in his notion of ‘timespace.’ Here, movement is a crucial aspect of the happening of educational practices and is also crucial for researchers to become part of the nexus of doings and sayings that happen in a spatially temporal educational event. In other words, it is the way in which the researcher coexists with the practice. In this regard, the aim of this kind of movement is not a better perspective or a vantage point, i.e., a more objective standpoint; instead, according to Masschelein, it is about liberating or displacing our view. In other words, it is about paying attention. Indeed, as Masschelein observes, attention lacks intentions; it “entails the suspension of judgment and implies a kind of waiting” (p. 282).

As researchers, we usually assume that observations are delineated as processes confined within the finalities of our project. In fact, fieldwork is partly determined by the prior representation of research objectives, methodological procedures, and theoretical distinctions. Thus, the observer’s gaze is usually filtered by the preconceived designs of research proposals and expected outcomes. It is precisely because of those images that the present fails to be experienced as a rhythmic activity in which the observer is immersed. What happens is usually interpreted in the aftermath of an encounter through the documentary descriptions compiled in the researcher’s field notes. However, attention does not lie in the accuracy of field notes. As Masschelein suggests, it resides in exercises of waiting and presenting. Moreover, by waiting, the observer’s gaze is attuned to the activities that are happening. By presenting, the observer exposes herself to seeing and feeling and to the possibility of being transformed by that experience.

Here, drawing on Ingold (2017b), observing is something one undergoes; while observing, the researcher is immersed in the activity, moved by its rhythm and events. In this sense, to be open to educational practices, we need to surrender something, our intentions and objectives, and also our bodies. As a result, this undergoing can be an active experience with unintended consequences, such as aches and tiredness after a long session of observations. In giving up intentionality, attention can be distracted by predefined aims to be caught on emergent actions that say something else (something unexpected) about the practices. Another way of capturing this is to say that participant observations are biographical; activity happens to and changes the researcher, and because of that, researchers can relate (with) a narrative of encounters and gatherings.

In more practical terms, observing educational activities through Schatzki’s Practice Theory entails a specific conceptualization of activity, acknowledging the importance of indeterminacy and interwoven timespaces for the constitution of educational practices. By implication, observation must pay attention to people’s activities and the evolving relations with material arrangements that happen in an educational situation. Understanding that the presence and arrangement of material things can affect educational activities requires more than a description of the scene; those events call to attend to the continual responsiveness in the interaction of humans and non-humans. Here, the five relations specified by Schatzki between practices and arrangements are clearly a key initial step: causal relations, prefiguration, constitution, intentionality, and intelligibility. This specification, in turn, provokes questions about changes in the flow of actions in relation to spaces and material things, actions that are enabled or constrained, movements, gestures, and emotions caused during activities, and other different actions and organizations that say something about the event (the timespace of activity in Schatzki’s terms) being observed. As discussed in section two, several other elements must be considered to analyze how human activities and material things coexist in a given practice. Our point here, however, is that following the variegated sinews that give form to an educational practice is a contingent experience. The unfolding of events is largely emergent, irrespective of predefined goals and intentions; as noted, individuals’ actions usually depend on evolving situations. The observer, more specifically, is immersed (in-between in Ingold’s terms) in the activity-event. As participant observer, his presence is narrated from a corporeal/practical experience situated between theoretical constructs and observed practice. Nevertheless, we believe it is illuminating to insist that attention is a movement that liberates the gaze of the observer, even beyond the confines of the theory, to make possible a different way to relate to the present.

From the perspective of positivist methodology, the greatest risk is undoubtedly that this kind of research practice can be regarded as having no method at all. As described by Ingold, in contrast with the methodological protocols of normal science,

[t]he steps of participant observation, like those of life itself, are contingent on the circumstances, and advance towards no end. They rather tread ways of carrying on and of being carried, of living life with others—humans and non-humans all—that is cognizant of the past, attuned to the conditions of the present and speculatively open to the possibilities of the future (2014, p. 390).

Indeed, the lack of standard procedures, rules, and goals for observing and recording reality, as suggested in this section, is what allows a different kind of relation with the observed practice. However, it would be impossible to completely avoid these research objectives and intentions. Nevertheless, we contend that the act of observing is intrinsically dynamic and directed toward present activities. Even if research interests frame the fieldwork design, observations follow evolving situations. We might say that if procedures and goals bind, attention provides a different kind of relation or rebinding (e.g., to the present, to be with others).

However, the question remains as to whether there is a method for this kind of participant observation. We believe the answer lies not in the procedure or the results, i.e., which procedure is more accurate for describing reality or what kind of results were obtained, but in the practice. What we mean is that by practicing this kind of observation, the researcher exercises a discipline to attend and respond to others—to follow their actions with her senses and walk their paths with her body. In this sense, her method is constructed in the experience of practicing with others. Thus, what we mean by ‘observing educational practices’ is paying attention to what is happening in one’s present activity.

Conclusion

What can we say about contemporary educational practices? We can conclude that they are enacted with spaces, things, and people. It is precisely because of their relation (of correspondence) that those elements occur with the practices (as a nexus of practices and arrangements, in Schatzki’s terms). However, while prominent research on education seeks to ‘operationalize’ and explain the defining characteristics of educational practices, this article attempts to present an alternative way to observe and narrate those practices. On one hand, proposing a methodological approach is proposed that addresses the coexistence of educational practices and material arrangements based on Schatzki’s theory. On the other hand, it invites consideration of a different way to attend to what happens in educational practices.

Ongoing research in higher education, for instance, has tended to reproduce and reinforce the creation of explicit educational design processes to achieve predefined objectives in the university context (e.g., orchestrating learning, personal learning environments, competence analytics frameworks, smart learning) (e.g., Braun, Esterhazy & Kordts-Freudinger, 2020; Broucker, Pritchard, Milsom, & Krempkow, 2022). Through this logic, however, activities of teaching and studying appear as predesigned artifacts (tools designed for particular purposes) that comprise a sequence of actions and results (see Biesta, 2005; Simons & Masschelein, 2008; Lewis, 2014). It is revealing, however, that what is expected of teachers and students is that they perform actions and produce results, yet possibilities for response (or corresponding), such as curiosity, astonishment, care, and hesitation, seem to be banished from purposefully driven educational designs. In practice, teaching and studying conditions are intimately attuned to people and things (see Decuypere & Simons, 2019; Jiménez, 2020). Thus, far from fitting into staged designed settings for teaching and studying, those activities happen in relation to aspects of current activity. Furthermore, it is plausible to hold that their uniqueness lies in where and with whom it happens. The importance of this implication is that educational practices cannot be explicated as a projection of performances that follow a structure imposed by learning trajectories; instead, they should be narrated as occurring events that do not necessarily have anything to do with their determination. Rather, these stories mostly say something about how teachers and students navigate educational matters with things and other people.

As argued in this article, a different kind of attitude is necessary to observe and narrate other possibilities of educational practices. This attitude might allow us to find a different way of observing educational activities by ‘pausing’ their functional structure. This ‘pausing’ will show that as the gaze avoids aiming toward the projected activity (ends, goals, preconceived behaviors), it is possible to attend to present relations between people and materiality that reveal alternative forms and movements in educational practices.