This symposium explores connections between practices of leading, professional development, teaching and learning. In particular, it explores practices of leading and practices of collaborative learning, offering a theory of practices that understands practices like leading and learning as living entities that relate to one another in ecologies of practices. We present findings from parallel empirical studies of leading and learning in Sweden, Norway and Australia. These studies are shaped by and are shaping a theory of practice architectures (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008) about what practices are made of, and a theory of ecologies of practices about how practices relate to one another (Kemmis, Wilkinson, Hardy & Edwards-Groves, 2009). The studies aim to extend contemporary practice theory following Schatzki (2002) and Gherardi (2008).

We consider leading and learning as practices composed of sayings, doings and relatings that hang together in distinctive social projects. These sayings, doings and relatings are situated (respectively) in semantic space, physical space-time and social space from which they draw their substantive content when they come into existence by ‘happening’. On this view, practices may be enacted by those who practise them, but they are also and equally made possible and prefigured in language, activities and social arrangements held in common in social collectivities. In this sense, practices are not solely produced by individuals; they are also the products of the discursive, material and social-political arrangements that (have) come to exist in the particular places where they are practised. The first paper in the symposium elaborates this theoretical framework.

To highlight the notion that practices of leading and of collaborative learning may be understood as living entities, we draw upon evidence from the empirical studies to discuss examples of practices of leading and of collaborative learning that have travelled from one place to another and from one group to another. Ecologically speaking, these practices have moved from a niche in one ecosystem to a similar niche in another (e.g., from one school to another, or from a municipal professional development site to a school). Based on observations from all three studies, the second paper in the symposium describes practices of leading that have travelled in this way, and the third addresses practices of collaborative learning that have travelled.

Gherardi, S. (2008) ‘Situated Knowledge and Situated Action: What do practice-based studies promise?’In D. Barry and H. Hansen (eds.) The SAGE Handbook of New Approaches in Management and Organization. Los Angeles: Sage.

Kemmis, S. & Grootenboer, P. (2008) ‘Situating Practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social and material conditions for practice’. In S. Kemmis & T.J. Smith (eds.) Enabling Praxis: Challenges for education. Rotterdam: Sense.

Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Hardy, I. & Edwards-Groves, C. (2009) Leading and learning: Developing ecologies of educational practice. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Canberra, November 29 - December 3.

Schatzki, T.R. (2002). The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. University Park, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.