The Practice of Practice

Van Manen, M. (1999) The Practice of Practice.
In: Lange, Manfred; Olson, John, Hansen, Henning & BŸnder, Wolfgang (eds.):
Changing Schools/Changing Practices:
Perspectives on Educational Reform and Teacher Professionalism.
Luvain, Belgium: Garant.

The prominence of practice

In contemporary educational thought "practice" (or "practices") has become a key term of the discourses that aim to give accounts of the actions of teachers. Of course, all teachers are caught up, immured in practices. But the term practice refers to more than the fact that teaching is a busy and practical affair. In general, practice refers to the explicit and the tacit dimensions of the rules, precepts, codes, principles, guides, commitments, affects, and behaviors that one observes or recommends within a domain of action.

The term practice is used in many contexts. We speak of teacher education practices, professional practice, reflective practice, moral practice, pedagogical practice, radical practice, discursive practice, and epistemology of practice. This usage contrasts with the traditional meaning of practice as "practical" or as "the application of theory," which refers to the domain where we operationalize the methods, techniques, knowledge, skills, and competencies of teaching. But the more weighty notion of practice, as hinted at here, is inclusive of many intangible things: it has become a term of discourses that are concerned with preferred ways of acting, tacit knowledge, habituated actions, patterned presuppositions, critical presumptions, knowledge traditions, and so forth.

With some authors the discourse of practice is especially associated with critical theory, postmodernist and deconstructionist writing. In the work of other authors we encounter a more commonplace usage of "the practice of teaching," analogous to the practice of religion or the practice of medicine. Similarly, the educational nomenclature such as "moral practice," "reflective practice," "critical practice" stands for the range of possible actions and vocabularies that these terms evoke. So it appears that practice has become a buzz-word. The popularity of the term is evident also in book titles such as Goodlad, The Study of Curriculum Practice, Jackson, The Practice of Teaching, Clandinin, Classroom Practice, and Britzman, Practice Makes Practice.

Why is it that so many aspects of education are now spoken of as practices? It seems that the popularity of the term reflects more than just a pragmatic attitude. Perhaps the appeal lies partly in "power by association." Practice, Theodore Schatzki (1996) argues, is a term that wants to be descriptive of fundamental phenomena of life--as encountered, for example, in the writings of Bourdieu (1976), Lyotard (1979), Foucault (1980), and the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor (1995). These "practice theorists" set out to explicate what the deeper structures are that organize general social practices. In Bourdieu’s case this would be the habitus or self-reproducing dispositions; with Lyotard social practices are organized by discursive moves or language games; Foucault posits genealogies of practice; and for Taylor it is the vocabulary embedded within the practice that marks its range of possible actions and meanings. It seems then that the term practice in discourses about teaching borrows some of the explanatory or theoretical powers that it possesses in such more philosophically oriented practice theories.

Practice as explanation stopper

Another interesting feature is that practices, in this more fundamental sense (as reproductive dispositions, language games, genealogies, or embedded vocabularies) are not directly accessible, observable, measurable, definable. Rather, they are hidden, tacit, often linguistically inexpressible in a direct or propositional sense. Perhaps we should say that they are hidden inside the presumptive discursive practices of the theories themselves. And yet, in spite of this intangibility, the concept of practice must include the connotation of something transferable, teachable, transmittable, or reproducible (Turner 1994). This is important for teacher development. Only if a practice of teaching is itself teachable, imitable, or somehow conveyable can we meaningfully talk of teacher education or professional development of teachers.

It seems, however, that in education the term practice is rarely systematically theorized. As an educational catchword it wants to capture the kinds of things that are to be heeded or observed but that are otherwise unaccounted for. In this way the concept practice may acquire a pseudo explanatory function. For example, when David Hansen in his book, The Call to Teach, wonders why it is that a person might be called to teaching in the first place, he asks: "What calls?" And he answers: "It is the practice that calls one to act, not the individual per se. The practice is the ‘caller,’ inviting the person to meet his or her obligations" (1995, p. 124).

The intent of quoting this passage is not to diminish the excellent study by Hansen, but rather to illustrate that the term practice in educational discourses tends to become a stopword that may insinuate more than it actually explains. In the educational postmodernist literature too the usage of the term practice often is ambiguous: seeming to explain or clarify and yet failing to do just that. Stephen Turner shows how this usage is common in social theory and thus not restricted to education. He argues that in contemporary social science discourses the notion of practice has become an explanatory backstop, "an opaque endpoint to reflection and explanation" (Turner 1994, p. 43). In short, practice functions somewhat like a postmodernist variation of the traditional explanation stopper.

The important point is that while in educational discourses the term practice may be a gloss, it does hide a complex and fascinating pedagogical reality. My aim is therefore not to explain or deconstruct the meaning and usage of the term practice but rather to explore some of its lived meanings and thus to gain a sense of the forms of knowledge that are constitutive of our professional lives but that may indeed be only indirectly observable–not unlike the way that the dispositions, language games, rules, norms, principles, and precepts of social practices are in some sense hidden.

Lived practice

What the term practice may do then, is to invite us to be observant of the ordinary phenomena in the lifeworlds of schools--concerns that have been largely overlooked and that tend to be marginalized in educational research. The following is an account from my observational notes in a grade 8 classroom:

The drone of the school buzzer has announced that school has started. But Mr. Turner, the teacher, is still sorting stuff at his desk muttering to himself. Frustrated. He seems to be looking for something. Some of the kids sitting close are observing his antics with obvious amusement.
One boy in the front starts to imitate while stealing glances and smiles from his neigbours. Silently he pronounces f... He knocks his books on the floor and gathers them with impatient gestures while mouthing swears. The f... word is actually heard aloud. Now the teacher has noticed the imprudent imitator. A cloud seems to draw across his face. The tension is momentarily tangible and some of the kids in the front quickly straighten up. They fake seriousness, innocence. Look away from the teacher. But in stead of bursting into anger the teacher stares at them intently and says with a slow deliberate drawl. "Well I don’t seem to be able to find the surprise test I was going to give you this morning. What do I do now?"
The kids who heard him cheer. No way.
Now the rest of the class tunes in. "What? A test? What?"
The teacher remains stonefaced. But his students know him. They are accurate face-readers. They sense that this is only pretense. They risk catcalls, jokes, a flurry of rebellion. Pretense all around.
All the while the teacher has opened a textbook and moves to the board. He waves his book and starts to write, veigning to suppress a secret smile. What is he up to now? The class turns momentarily silent, intensely watching the words appear from his hand. Suspense. Is this a test after all? But as soon as they recognize the nature of the assignment, books and binders fly open like the flapping wings of a flock of geese taking off. Relief. A pleasant sense of routine seems to settle over the class.
This whole incident did not last for more than a few minutes. But it is undeniable that an intangible atmosphere conducive to working has grown out of this seemingly trivial chaotic classroom moment.

Is this incident trivial? Perhaps, but it is in these trifling occurrences that the practice of teaching is enacted. It matters whether the teacher knows how to proceed with inventiveness, humor, resoluteness, energy, warmth, and engagement. And these relational qualities are mediated by factors that have to do with things such as presence, personal style, and practical confidence. At the micro level of the practice of teaching there are layers of action and mutual understanding that are instantly and often unreflectively realized in everything that teachers do in constantly changing situations. Indeed, I would argue that all things that teachers do, or do not do, and the way that their presence is felt by the students they teach, has pedagogical significance, whether positive or negative.

(Un)reflective practice

Advocates of "reflective teaching" have spurned the most successful trend ever to hit the educational scene. After all, who would argue that teachers should be unreflective in their practice? Thus there has never been a counter movement to reflective practice. And yet, the case of reflectivity has been made rather unreflectively, because anyone reflecting on the actual experience of the interactive teacher-student relation would discover that the relational activity of teaching is rarely, if ever, cognitively reflective in the sense that is usually implied by the term reflection. It is ironic that the attractive notion of reflective practice as "retrospective reflection" or as "anticipatory reflection" is unoriginal but likely, while the attractive idea of "reflection in action" is original but unlikely. In other words, we reflect on past and future actions to become thoughtful and we reflect on present actions by stepping back from a social situation in order to consider what to say or do next. The attractive, but problematic claim is that action, and reflection on this action, can be simultaneous: reflective teaching theorists argue that not only is it the case that "we can think about doing something but that we can think about something while doing it" (Schön, 1983, p. 54).

The social practice of reflecting-about-doing-something-while-doing-it is compromised by at least two considerations: the relational structure of the interaction, and the temporal dimensions of the practical contexts in which the action occurs. First, the relational dimension poses limitations upon the degree of reflection and distance one can take in a conversational situation. Strictly speaking one’s mind is not quite one’s own when one is actively involved in social interactions such as speaking together. The opportunity to reflect on what I say and do with an other while I am saying or doing these things can only be seized at a certain cost of the authenticity of the interaction. The temporal dimension of interactive practice also poses limitations on reflection. The thinking on or about the experience of teaching and the thinking in the experience of teaching seem to be differently structured. Retrospective reflection on (past) experiences differs importantly from anticipatory reflection on (future) experiences (van Manen, 1991). In contrast, contemporaneous reflection in situations allow for a "stop and think" kind of action that may differ markedly from the more immediate "reflective" awareness that characterizes, for example, the active and dynamic process of a class discussion, a lecture, a conflict situation, a monitoring activity, a one-on-one, a routine lesson, and so forth.

It seems therefore that, on the one hand, the theory of reflective practice seems to overestimate the possibility of introspective "reflection on action while acting" (van Manen 1994, 1995). Phenomenologically it is very difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to be emersed in interactive or dialogic activities with their students while simultaneously stepping back from the activity. On the other hand, the theory of reflective practice seems to underestimate the complexity of the organization of ordinary teaching practices, and the incredible intricacies of practical actions in teaching-learning situations. I would argue that the practice of teaching is so challenging not only because it is cognitively complex but also because the knowledge that inheres in our practices is in part noncognitive–and it may be this noncognitive dimension of practice that continually challenges us in our efforts to provide for quality teacher education or teacher professional development.

Knowledge in practice

I have suggested before that there are forms of knowledge that inhere so immediately in our actions, in our body, in our relations, and in the things around us that they seem invisible (1995). This is how I would make sense of these forms of noncognitive knowing:

(a) Knowledge resides in action as lived, e.g.,
- as confidence in acting, style, and practical tact
- as habituations and routine practices

(b) Knowledge resides in the body, e.g.,
- as an immediate corporeal sense of things
- as gestures and demeanor

(c) Knowledge resides in the world, e.g.,
- as being with the things of our world
- as situations of at homeness, dwelling

(d) Knowledge resides in relations, e.g.,
- as encounter with others
- as relations of trust, recognition, intimacy

By noncognitive I mean then that in their practice experienced teachers commonly demonstrate a kind of confidence that is really a form of knowing except that this "knowledge" cannot necessarily be captured in words. Actually, this idea of noncognitive knowledge is not new. There has been increased attention given to the phenomenon of embodiment in human action. From a phenomenological point of view it can even be argued that the whole body itself is cognitive. Thus "the body knows" how to do things, such that, if we wanted to gain intellectual control of this "knowledge" we might in fact hamper our ability to do the things we are doing. Merleau-Ponty (1964) described the body’s knowledge in terms of the access it provides to our world. But it could also be argued that the knowledge does not only inhere in the body but also in the things themselves. Knowledge inheres in the world already, in such a way, that it enables our embodied practices. An alien or disturbed environment may confuse the habituated and confident practices of the body. And thus, in a strange environment or unfamiliar world we may not only feel disoriented but also quite stupid, naive, ignorant. In such case, I find myself in this world but I am not of this world. What happens then is that the things of this world do not "hold" my knowledge, so to speak.

In a similar sense it is the case that some of our knowledge resides intangibly in our relations with others. For example, who is not familiar with the peculiar phenomenon that in the presence of one person we may feel totally stupid while in discussion with an other person we may feel really smart? In interactive relations our words seem to be tied up in the total conversational structure of our relation with this other person with whom we speak and to whom we listen. Gaston Bachelard (1969) put it well when he suggested that when we become animated, at times, our words begin to think for us. (Bachelard was actually referring to teaching in this example.) In conversations it may happen that we are saying or telling something, and as the words fall from our tongue we hear ourselves speak and we think, "Not bad!" We may be surprised at our own thought and eloquence. "Did I say that? That’s good, I should write it down!" Thus, Merleau-Ponty says, "my spoken words surprise me myself and teach me my thought" (1964, p. 88). But it can also be the other way around. Listen to this grade nine student.

I'm not dumb, stupid, or even a slow learner; however, when the science teacher would ask questions about the topic we were reviewing in the lab, he either made me feel stupid, or extremely brilliant (the last thing hardly ever!). I always hoped he wouldn't call on me. When his cool, unfeeling eyes roamed around the room, my body would start to feel rigid and cold. I often tried to hide between my desk and chair. Nevertheless, he always seemed to find me.
"Gulcin…"
I would sit straight up and try to concentrate, but the harder I would try, the more it would make me think of what his reaction would be. After the humiliation, he would point his finger at someone else. I would feel relieved. Yet, the thought of him asking me again, just brought a bigger lump in my throat.
However, today was going to be different. I was not going to be afraid. I was determined to answer the very first question that he asked. If I could.
"Okay class, what kind of simple machine is the water faucet?"
Hey, I know this. Even though my palms were sweaty I raised my hand, very lightly, part of me wishing he wouldn't see it. But he did.
"Gulcin?"
My voice was barely audible above a whisper.
"The screw?"
I watched his eyes with uncertainty, anticipating that his disapproving glance would show me that I got it wrong.
But I got it right! I felt so pleased, that, for a moment, I didn't hear the second part of the question. He spoke the words very slowly while staring at me intently. His words rang in my ear.
"What is the principle of this simple machine, the screw?"
I froze, astonished by his sharpness. I felt cheated. He licked his lips. In pleasure? He seemed to enjoy catching kids off-guard. He walked up and bent towards me. His face was close, grotesque. I shirked back slightly. Then he started to answer the question himself, very emphatically.
"It is… an inclined plane… that is wrapped around a cylinder. Isn't it?!"
As his cigarette stained breath perfumed the air, he added: "I hope there isn't a screw loose in your head, madam."
I managed to croak a silent, "Yes… I mean, no sir."
I slumped back in my seat and silently watched him direct his gaze at someone else.

In exploring the pedagogical practice of teaching, I am often struck how eloquent young people can be if we are prepared to listen to them attentively and invite them to speak or write about their experiences. As researchers we should engage their perceptiveness and eloquence. In other words, pedagogical research as a practice needs to be attuned to relational knowledge as well. Good research makes kids appear as smart as they can be. To reiterate, the interesting claim is that everybody is really smarter in relations with some than with others. And if this is true, then would it not be important to try to find out what it is about some relations that make students appear smart or stupid? This is the stuff of pedagogy.

In the above student anecdote the case seems quite clear: here is a teacher who is simply insensitive and rude in his interactions with students. The student, Gulcin, is obviously intimidated by and fearful of this teacher. No wonder she feels stupid. But her story shows that things are more complex. This ability of being knowledgeable or ignorant in the presence of certain people thus may be much more subtle and more difficult to explain than simply as a consequence of positive or negative feelings.

In short, the study of the practice of teaching would need to be sensitive to the experiential quality of practical knowledge: the acknowledgement that much of knowing what to do, ensues from the complex dimensions of practice: one's body, actions, relations, and the things of one's world. A different way of saying this is that the knowledge base of teaching does not only include bodies of knowledge but also knowledgeable bodies, not only enacted knowledge but also knowledge that is already action, not only situated and contextual knowledge but also knowledge that inheres in situations and relations in such a way that we may not recognize it as knowledge. We do not experience our practice as knowledge. Rather we experience our practice as experience, and "experience is knowing" said Levinas (1969, p. 62). Experience as knowing is experienced in modalities such as self-confidence, things we can say or do.

Complexity in practice

Teaching is seldom a one-dimensional affair. While we usually move along some kind of plan for our lessons, we also know that in the lived moment of teaching we may move on a different plane. Research on the actions of teachers need to acknowledge that action is never singular, one-dimensional. Not unlike, for example, the passengers on a train or airplane we operate on several levels of action at once: the itinerary of the train or plane and the movements and stories that we live during this travel. And these layers of action can be compared to plots and subplots. Similarly, every moment of teaching is always a complexly layered temporal region of actions. All these components and layers of activity in the practice of teaching are forms of practice that easily go unnoticed. But when we ask students to describe a classroom moment these plot-like aspects of teacher actions are immediately clearly evident.

"Get to work or you'll be in here after school."
Hearing these magic words I quickly got to work, writing out my essay in rough. It was only the second month of school but I already knew it had been a mistake to have opted for creative writing with Mr. Shaw. I wonder if he could write himself. He was the type of teacher without any originality or sense of humor. He talked with affected gestures and he was the only one who seemed to enjoy supervising the detention room. To see his flabby body in his tight off-white shirts that were always stained with sweat at the armpits made me want to run out of that awful place as fast as I could. The sight of his greasy suit exposing his rolls of fat, his hairy chest, and the suffocating smell of body odor seemed to aggravate the heavy atmosphere hovering forever in his room. It almost brought stinging tears to my eyes. But I was stuck there for the rest of the year and I knew it. I turned to my neigbour.
"Please Jill, could I borrow some paper?"
"Here, Mary is asking for you to write her a note."
"Oh, thanks."
Reaching across the aisle for the paper I could feel the cold stare of Mr. Shaw. Without looking I could picture his fishy, squinty eyes set in his puffy, oily face.
I quickly began writing the note to Mary. But aware of Mr. Shaw's wrath, I was cautious to hide the note under my binder. Then, feeling irritated with myself for being such a coward, I added to the note these fateful words: "Mr. Shaw is such a pig!" Just as I finished writing I felt myself caught. The smell of sweat had reached me even before his heavy hand touched my shoulder.
"What is that Laura? Give it to me right now!"
Before I could do anything he snatched the note from my hand and started to read it with that awful sneer on his face, as if delighted to catch me with something at last. His head cocked sideways in that ridiculous pose, and without a word, slowly and deliberately, he ripped up the note in front of my face. The room was completely quiet except for the noise of shredding paper. I felt how everybody was watching, shocked that I, Laura, who never broke a rule, was getting into trouble for the first time.
My face, burning fiercely with shame, I heard him say, "You have a D.T. with me after school."
Then he turned around, with a squeal.

Here is an example of a situation where the subplot, the disturbance of a lesson in creative writing, becomes the main plot. The teacher may not even realize how much his physical appearance and gestures become a dominant theme in his class. In literary works we often encounter situations where the subplot of a narrative turns into the main plot, while the main plot recedes to a state of less prominence. Teaching is like that. The lesson is about amphibians but the kids are preoccupied with other things: passing notes or planning a dance for the weekend. The main plot of the lesson has become the subplot for the students. In other words, actions of teachers and students are much more multi-grained than we tend to acknowledge. Classroom interaction or discourse may involve shifts of mood or genre that can profoundly influence the pedagogical atmosphere. We all know many examples of this: The teacher tries to engage the students in a serious discussion about a poem but the students happen to focus on word plays that seem to shift the tone from seriousness to comedy, from literary reflection to sexual innuendo. In this manner, the classroom sphere shows shifts of genre, mood, tone, style, engagement of practice by both teachers and students. Of course, these shifts are not felt by everyone in the same manner. While one student may be seriously considering an issue raised by the teacher, an other student is privately mocking the whole discussion. Even when a teacher manages to engage the whole class in a shared mood then it is wise to remind ourselves that these experiences too are still different for each student. The next anecdote is a reminiscence of a science class by a student who is now a physics teacher himself.

My science teacher in grade 10 had quite an effect on me. I especially liked his enigmatic grin whenever he was demonstrating a science experiment or when we were trying to understand some physics phenomenon. He always seemed even more amazed than we were about the strange ways of nature. Science became something extraordinary.
I remember one day, it was early in September. The first school term had just started. As our new science teacher walked into the classroom a narrow beam of sunlight reflecting from an upper window had landed on the front wall board. Some kids were making up jokes about it. The bright reflection almost hurt my eyes.
The teacher took immediate notice of it. He stood still and regarded the phenomenon with a wondering kind of smile. He stood there so intently staring at the light that the whole class became silent. Now everybody stared puzzled at the strange blast of sunshine. The upper shaft drew a sharp long triangle, like a huge finger pointing at something. That day our lesson was about reflection and prisms.
After a few minutes the sunbeam suddenly disappeared as if someone had turned off the light. The teacher pointed out that the next time we would see the giant sunray, in the spring, the course would be in its final stage and we would be reviewing what we had learned during the year for our final test.
"In this class we go by cosmic time," he pronounced quietly. A smile hovered around the corners of his mouth and his eyes. I was transfixed. Some kids laughed knowingly. I did not quite understand what he meant, but it sounded intriguing, like almost everything he said and did in class.
The year flew by fast because we worked very hard for our science teacher, not wanting to disappoint him. I think that everybody enjoyed the lessons, the labs and assignments in which we were involved during the year.
It was quite a shock when one day we were greeted, again, in the science room, by an incredibly brilliant ray of light, plunging, as if by witchcraft, from the upper light boxes. The beam descended in a blazing brightness in exactly the same location on the board, reflecting from its surface like from a polished mirror. It made me think of a giant exclamation mark. As if it were bringing us a secret message.
When the teacher came in he abruptly stopped; with his arms folded he stood there, glancing enigmatically at the sunbeam's dazzling reflection on the board. We could not help but smile with him. It was as if we were in conspiracy with our teacher about its magic appearance.
Then he nodded his head solemnly; he reached into his desk and, without any further ado, he began to distribute the study review notes for our final test.
I felt sort of sad--as if I was about to finish a good book.

With this anecdote the physics teacher tells us, as it were, what it is about his own school experience that drew him into the vocation of teaching. But is he able to emulate the example of his own teacher? He admits that he cannot be like his own teacher. But he now knows that he must find modes of practice that belong to him, and that may instill a love for science and sometimes perhaps a pedagogical desire in his own students. Relational qualities are both fickle and infectious. And if we regard the practice of teaching in its complexity then it is clear that there is always much more going on that needs to be taken into account. The point I have tried to make is that this "much more" material includes forms of knowing and modes of practice that are in part noncognitive and that cannot always be easily accessed by ordinary discursive means. However, accounts from students and teachers may give us an indirect glimpse of the kinds of themes that are at stake. We notice then that there are external and and also internal aspects discernible in teaching practices. Teaching techniques employed by different teachers may look behaviorally the same on the outside but individual teachers always have acquired and developed these practices in a personal manner–sometimes in entirely different biographical and situational settings. Thus, particular practices get embodied in the context of personal life histories and backgrounds, and these practices become habituated in uniquely different situational and relational spheres. In our teacher education and professional development endeavors we need to find ways in which these practices can be practised.

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