This ethnographic study investigates pedagogic practices in a child and family health service in Australia. The approach taken to supporting parents’ learning has both particular and shared qualities that make the setting worthy of study. The Residential Unit (RU) at Karitane in Sydney offers intensive 24-hour support to families over a 5 day period. This approach, while common in Australia, is unusual in the European context, where parenting support and education more often operates through home visiting, clinic, day stay, or regular group activities. The residential approach provides opportunities to explore how the form and function of pedagogic practices that follow the challenges of parenting round the clock – meal times, evening sleep, night waking etc.

In the context of this distinctive educational setting, the approach to pedagogy is explicitly framed around partnership, specifically the Family Partnership Model (FPM). The FPM is a training-based intervention offered to a professionals working with children and families across a wide range of health, social and educational services. Initially developed in the UK (Davis et al 2002), the FPM has been implemented in a range of countries across Europe, notably in association with the European Early Prevention Project (Davis et al 2005), which included Cyprus, Finland, Greece, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the UK. Other European countries have adopted similarly principled (ie. partnership-based) approaches to supporting children and families (eg. Coyne 2007 in Ireland; Svavardottir 2008 in Iceland). This study provides a rare ethnographic account of partnership between professionals and families as it unfolds in practice.

The study draws on and contributes to sociomaterial theorisations of pedagogy and practice. Questions of teaching and learning are increasingly being framed in European and other contexts in terms of practices as conceived through a number of theoretical frameworks that may loosely grouped together as sociomaterial (see Reckwitz 2002). These include the work of Fenwick et al (2011) in Scotland, framed within Actor Network Theory (ANT), Landri’s (2012) arguments in favour of re-turning to practice in educational research, and a number of scholars approaching issues of learning and practice from an organisational perspective (Gherardi 2008; Gherardi & Nicolini 2002; Nicolini 2009). Within this broader theoretical turn, this study draws particularly on the North American philosopher Theodore Schatzki (1996, 2010). The potential of his theoretical framework has yet to be thoroughly explored with regard to questions of learning and pedagogic practice. This study thus enriches and extends a body of international research exploring learning in sociomaterial and practice-focused terms. 

Three questions guided data generation and analysis: How can parenting pedagogies in the RU be described in socio-material terms? What forms does partnership take? What can we learn about the value of practice theory in understanding learning and pedagogy?

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