Learning Connections: From Practice to Praxis

The articles in this issue of the Journal of Museum Education are unified by the theme of linking research with practice – a phenomenon many in our field would term “praxis.” As we prepared the issue for publication, our editorial team found ourselves in an honest conversation: Did we really understand what “praxis”means? Many people use the word comfortably and regularly, while others confessed we found it a little fuzzy. Yet we find ourselves living it more often than we may realize. After a deep dive into the history and etymology of the concept, it turns out that it’s no wonder the idea can feel a little slippery. From its origins in the philosophy of ancient Greece, “praxis” has been interpreted in multiple ways and has specific usages in a wide array of fields: medicine, social work, philosophy, justice, psychology, ethics, and, of course, education. From Aristotle to Hegel, Hannah Arendt to Jean-Paul Sartre, “praxis” has taken on many shades of meaning. In the world of education, the term connotes a specific lineage – one tightly intertwined with the foundations of learning theory that underlie museum education. Aristotle’s view was that praxis was any activity, undertaken for its own sake, with an ethical or moral dimension. Its partners in his construction of human activity in the world were theoria (thinking, contemplation, seeking to understand) and poeisis (making or producing material things). It was through Karl Marx’s work that “praxis” took on the theme of purposeful action toward transformation: in his succinct words, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” It was also Marx who thought of praxis as a way of synthesizing theory and action, linking a framework of thought to the practice of doing. Adding this layer of interpretation highlights opportunities to turn any regular or routine act of doing – any practice – into one that is both informed by theory and potentially transformational. Social worker Graeme Stuart phrases it this way: “In praxis, theory (in simple terms, the way we understand things) is embedded in reflection and action, and action is embedded in reflection and theory. It can thus be seen as cycles of action, reflection and theory building.” Since the mid-nineteenth century, key educational theorists have embraced this notion of praxis as a means of connecting the theory of learning and the practice of education in an ongoing, iterative relationship. Prominent among them is Paolo Freire, who in his liberation-focused pedagogical framework described it as “the action and reflection of [people] upon their world in order to transform it.” Freire’s thought informed David Kolb, whose influential theory of the experiential learning cycle centered on the “transformative dialectic between reflection and action.” For Kolb, neither pure action nor pure thought is sufficient to produce learning, but together, they “give us a ‘stereo’ perspective that motivates learning,” enabling “an endlessly recurring process of exchange between the learner’s internal world and the external environment. Learning is like breathing; a lifelong process of taking in and putting out.”