This study focuses on pre-service teachers' views of the conditions that foster their participatory action research practices in secondary schools and on how these conditions can inform the development of a teacher education program for a participatory approach. By using the "Theory of Practice Architectures" as an analytical lens, eight cases of participatory action research projects were studied at two interrelated sites of pre-service teachers' learning: the teacher education institute and the internship school. Findings shed light on the conditions for fostering participatory action research practices in a teacher education context in terms of three kinds of arrangements, i.e. cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political. Based on the findings, a set of 17 principles for supporting participatory research practices is presented that can be used to assess the viability of pre-service teachers' participatory action research within a teacher education program, and that also supports a well-aligned institute-school collaboration.