In the beginning was the deed, or so one could at least speculate that it was. Wittgenstein spent a considerable amount of time reflecting upon the various practices that we (human being) engage in to live through both our communal and individual forms of living.
Practices could involve such meaningful acts as prayer or meals or pilgrimage or fasting or the daly routine of reading a bedtime story to a child. Our practices are what give shape to our life, and they are often what we can hold strongly to or feel that we have lost. Language - then - is not a primary concept. Instead, the languages we speak and write go to serve those very practices, which are significant in the way we live, believe and collaborate.
Please explore the notes on the concept of practice. They seek to answer questions like,
- "what makes a practice a practice?" or "what makes it meaningful?
- "how do we come to adopt a practice into the shape of our lives?", "who introduces it to us and showed us the way?"
- "how much influence do social and material conditions play in the uptake and maintenance of a practice?" and
- "what would it be like to enter a practice as an outsider?" "what challenges would be confronted?" and "why face the challenges at all?"
If I can hit the nail on the head, I would say that actions do not much make sense on their own. They only make sense as actual moves in a form of life or as preparatory ones.
Each of the links below take you to a different set of notes on the topic.
“In our view, the crucial concept in Wittgenstein’s later work is practice. He says that it ‘it is not certain propositions striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language game’ (#204). The concept of practice is given shape in this notion of language-games: the interwovenness of utterances and actions and how language finds a home within a ‘form of life.’” (Burbles and Smeyers, 2010, pg 170-171)
Vygotsky's (1978). It goes as follows: 'Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people..., and then inside people... All higher [mental] functions originate as actual relations between human individuals' (p.57)
“IN ANCIENT times, teaching and learning were accomplished through apprenticeship: We taught our children how to speak, grow crops, craft cabinets, or tailor clothes by showing them how and by helping them do it. Apprenticeship was the vehicle for transmitting the knowledge required for expert practice in fields from painting and sculpting to medicine and law. It was the natural way to learn. In modern times, apprenticeship has largely been replaced by formal schooling, except in children's learning of language.”
“People are smarter when they use smart tools. Better yet, people are smarter when they work in smart environments; that is, environments that contain, integrate, and network a variety of tools, technologies, and other people, all of which store usable knowledge ... People are always parts of environments, whether they are particularly smart ones or not.” (Gee, 2008, pg 89)
Seeing writing as both a social and cognitive practice recognises that (a) writing is a part of the social practices in our lives and the practices themselves give meaning, contexts and audiences to our utterances, and (b) writing is a deliberative practice that requires one to coordinate the habits of the mind to assess, plan, prepare, process and critique the multi-faced elements (or routines) of composition.
“Exile, in other words, is distinguished by the fact that it is an ‘othering’ experience. It demands a certain kind of learning at the level of practice that is necessary for knowing how to get on within a culture. It also generally involves the risk and prospect of failure: both also failure at the deeper cultural level that helps to determine a sense of what is culturally appropriate. This continual risk of failure and lack of understanding of the underlying agreed cultural judgements requires a kind of learning that can only be obtained through practical encounters.” -- (Peters, 2010a, pg 28)
The concepts of practice, of cultural practices, of communities of practice, of activity systems, of rules, and of rule following play particularly important roles in education. A practice is an activity that one does regularly in the course of a form of life where certain standards of excellence exist and which involves a community of practitioners. Practices - such as artistic practices or religious practices - don’t just happen. They arise out of particular cultural, historical and material conditions. Continue to the glossary ...