Practice architectures and ecologies of practices: knowing practice within sites

Theory is often used to speak across and for cultural contexts and sites, in that it explains phenomena and helps us apprehend experiences and practices at various levels. Rarely is theory used to speak within sites, such that it provides a means for entering a conversation of knowing practices in action within sites, particularly when that knowing in action is prefigured (enabled and constrained) by the cultural essence of a practice landscape. Using vignettes of reflective collaborative research encounters with each other within theory , where we came to know each other’s research practices as individuals (Australian and Trinidadian and Tobagonian), through the application of theory to research sites, the authors explore the bundling of practices and how these practices were prefigured by arrangements that came to constitute a shared ecology of collaborative research practice. We draw on the ecological connections emerging from our experiences as participants in the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) research network, where we were immersed into international research practices and sites influenced by Stephen Kemmis’ work in practice theory. This mosaic construction of collaborative research practice will illustrate the complexity and interconnectivity of the arrangements, which sustain and nurture our practices of researching, mentoring and leading in an ecological relationship with each other.