SCHÖN'S REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

The late Donald Schön, formerly a leading social scientist at M.I.T., hypothesized a set of generalizable meta-skills which he felt were at the core of effective professional practice. His work is entitled The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action (1983). His research was based on professionals from the diverse fields of engineering, city planning, management, architecture, and psychotherapy; one chapter is devoted to science-based professions. The essence of his observations is that skilled professionals have the ability to reflect upon their actions. Furthermore, this ability can be cultivated.
Schön's book is critical of Technical Rationality and the assumptions that professionals can learn to apply solutions to problems. He suggested that practice was becoming increasingly complex, and technical thinking no longer applied.
On the whole, their assessment is that professional knowledge is mismatched to the changing character of the situations of practice--the complexity, uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflicts which are increasingly perceived as central to the world of professional practice. (p. 14).
"Most professionals focus on problem-solving, not problem-setting.... [They are] managing complexity which resists the skills and techniques of traditional expertise" (p. 14). Schön's words are remarkably consistent with what is to be learned from the field of complex systems. "The situation is complex and uncertain, and there is a problem in finding the problem" (p. 14).
Schön's book offers creative ideas for professionals to use to address the increasing complexity of practice. Foremost is reflection upon their work, and the evolving ability to reflect in action. He stated that professionals often have a
...fear of reflection, from a lingering model of practical rationality which is much in need of reflection.... When a practitioner does not reflect on his own inquiry, he keeps his intuitive understanding tacit and is inattentive to the limits of his scope of reflective attention (p. 282).
He emphasized the skilled practitioner's use of all their experience when approaching a unique situation.
The practitioner has built up a repertoire of examples, images, understandings, and actions.... A practitioner's repertoire includes the whole of his experience insofar as it is accessible to him for understanding and action.... When a practitioner makes sense of a situation he perceives to be unique, he sees it as something already present in his repertoire (p. 138).
The artistry of a practitioner ... hinges on the range and variety of the repertoire that he brings to unfamiliar situations (p. 140).
Schön accented the "probing playful activity by which we get a feel for things" (p. 145); this is similar to Wheatley's exhortation about playfully engaging with complex systems. He noted the ways that professionals end up in conversations with their problems, and use generative metaphors. Seeing "something" as "something else" reveals ways that the first "something" can be viewed differently. In one of Schön's examples, seeing "a paintbrush as a pump" resulted in the invention of new paintbrushes!