Educational practices
Pascal Perillo
Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples

The plurality of activities and/or programs and/or action protocols designed to support educational processes that fall under the concept of educational practices is a result of the wealth of paradigms and perspectives revolving around this concept. Today, the set of practices international defined as educational practices no longer refer solely to the work of teachers. Rather, it is increasingly common for educational actions to also include the management of the relationship between training and knowledge-building processes on the part of the subjects involved in education and/or learning activities (Melacarne, n.d.) in formal, non-formal and informal contexts (school, education in non-formal contexts, work, daily life and leisure) and in the perspective of lifelong education (lifelong, lifewide and lifedeep learning).
In this case, the concept of educational practice is interpreted in light of the American current of pragmatism stemming from Dewey’s work. This perspective allows us to move beyond the theoreticism that tends to interpret the relationship between theory and practice in education through an oppositional logic. Practice, considered in a ‘primordial’ sense, is not to be understood as the opposite of theory, i.e. the moment of its application. Rather, practice is the name of the original subject-context ‘transaction’ (Dewey & Bentley, 1946/1974). If we follow Dewey (1908/2008) in acknowledging the practical character of reality, educational practices may be defined as complex groupings of intentionally educative acts enacted by a person-in-action in a world of which he or she is an integral part (Corbi & Perillo, 2014).
By identifying experience as involving a form of situated learning for which practical knowledge is defined as a way of knowing in a situation, beginning from the constitutive relationship linking the human training process to processes of knowledge construction, it is possible to recognize that educational practices enacted professionally (e.g. in formal and non-formal educational contexts) or spontaneously (e.g. in family and work contexts) generate knowledge and are validated by a system of meanings, criteria and values. That is to say, the attribution of sense and meaning to educational action does not occur exclusively on the basis of foundational, univocal principles and/or theoretical models. As a matter of fact, these practices contribute to meeting the demands for change and emancipation that drive education and show that practice contains a rationality. Therefore, such practices do not simply constitute a generic field of activity. Rather, they are socio-culturally situated and multi-articulated practices that involve precise forms of ‘intentional control’ exercised by those enacting them (educators, pedagogues, teachers, and parents) (Perillo, 2012).
In light of these points, we understand the practice of educating to be an intentional practice that goes beyond merely applying what the theories “prescribe”. It entails a critique that regulates action, assuming (as Dewey argues) that there are pre-conceptual traits in practice (understood as an “indistinct whole” of activities regulated between implicit and explicit thinking) and considering that the practices of education provide the data and arguments that constitute the “problems” of the investigation (Striano, 2001). Educational practices are situated and embodied and, since they are the source of the problems that educational agents seek to investigate, they require a constant labor of analysis and research through the exercise of reflectivity.
Some of the research actions envisaged by the RE-SERVES project focus on this level with the aim of investigating the educational practices carried out by professionals in formal and non-formal agencies to develop and implement educational communities of care.

Selected references

Corbi, E., & Perillo, P. (Cur.) (2014). La formazione e il “carattere pratico della realtà”. Scenari e contesti di una pedagogia in situazione. Pensa MultiMedia.

Dewey, J. (2008[1908]). La realtà possiede carattere pratico?. In R. Frega (Cur.), Logica sperimentale. Teoria naturalistica della conoscenza e del pensiero. Quodlibet.

Dewey, J., & Bentley, A.F. (1974). Conoscenza e transazione. La Nuova Italia Editrice. (Originariamente pubblicato nel 1946)

Melacarne, C. (n.d.). Educational practices. In P.C. Rivoltella, P.G. Rossi, L’agire didattico. Manuale per l’insegnante. La Scuola.

http://lascuola.it/nuovadidattica/it/home/mappe/1382696387986/1386867413262.

Perillo, P. (2012). Pensarsi educatori. Liguori.

Striano, M. (2001). La «razionalità riflessiva» nell’agire educativo. Liguori.