-The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action  --  Donald A.
Schön

Full Citation and Summary Schön, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How
Professionals Think in Action. London: Temple Smith, 1983. Print.

This book proposes a model of professional practice based on
"reflection-in-action" against a traditional technical model. This model,
encompassing an epistemology, an ethical component, and a form of political
projection, emerges from a context of de-professionalization and mistrust of
"professional" as a category. Schön's own background in professional
consultancy and organizational design heavily inform the underlying assumptions
and approaches within this project, growing from his earlier work in management
theory.


Chapter Notes

Preface
- Introduces DS' project and personal position in relation to his subject
- His background in business consulting and later as an academic in management
 (pp. vii)
- His project as an epistemological one, one which proposes a new professional
 epistemology (pp. viii) of "reflection-in-action" (pp. ix)
- The vignette case study format (pp. viii)


PART I: PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND REFLECTION-IN-ACTION

The Crisis of Confidence in Professional Knowledge
- Defines "profession" as [from a "we" position] = essential to operation of
 society, located in all formal institutions (pp. 3), claiming expert
 knowledge, possessing a level of autonomy (pp. 4), self regulating (pp. 11),
 obliged to serve the public in some way (pp. 12)
- Section arguing that there is a "crisis" of professionality where society at
 large and professionals themselves have lost their confidence and trust in
 "professionalism" (pp. 5)
- Misuse of autonomy for personal gain, professionally designed solutions and
 tech having neg. effects, professionally managed wars (pp. 4), preservation
 of position over solution of problems which may make them obsolete (pp. 9)
- Questioning claims to extraordinary knowledge (pp. 5)
- View from the inside: loss of "autonomy" in relation to other societal
 processes (pp. 7), increased volume of data (pp. 8)
- [of note: the focus of this tends towards a specifically US content, see pp.
 9]
- Increased sense in the 60s and 70s that professionals (and scientists are
 lumped in here) are dealing with phenomena that are too complex to deal with
 as a whole (pp. 11)
- Trend toward "deprofessionalization" along two axes: industrialization of
 professional workplaces (eg. large engineering companies), and [this one's
 interesting] unionization (over the "professional association"); seen by DS as
 a problem of identity and self-representation (pp. 13)
- [note here: professional culture is opposed to labour culture in some way.
 Also of note is that we can understand "professional" as a category which
 must be produced under specific circumstances for specific ends]
- New demands in practice: "complexity, uncertainty, instability, uniqueness,
 and value conflicts..." (pp. 14); "professional pluralism" of competing
 approaches (pp. 17)
- Issue of teaching the "art of practice" and how DS sees this as an
 epistemological failing first and foremost (pp. 19-20)

From Technical Rationality to Reflection-In-Action
- Dominant epistemology of professional practice is "Technical Rationality" =
 professional activity is instrumental problem solving through applying
 scientific theory and technique (pp. 21)
- Basis of knowledge as "specialized, firmly bounded, scientific, and
 standardized." (pp. 23)
- Three components: basic science, applied science, skills (pp. 24)
- [note: in this form, professions do not produce, they deliver a service]
- Separation of research and practice (pp. 26) w/ research  practice; "skill"
 is not legit knowledge (pp. 27)
- Section on the origins of Technical Rationality through a history of ideas in
 a teleology of "world views"; the development as a theoretical trend where
 philosophy drives the bus [history of individuals] (pp. 31-38))
- of note: how philosophical theories become "conventional wisdom" or "common
 sense" (pp. 31)
- of note: practice is positioned as essentially about ethics and morality
 (what should be done) (pp. 33)
- of note: that material changes are driven by philosophical changes
 (industrialization as first a move to Positivism) (pp. 34)
- The university as main site of epistemological dissemination, as a major
 driver of material change (ie. in the training of professionals in Technical
 Rationality) (pp. 35)
- Section on the limits of Technical Rationality through charting the
 wartime/postwar arc of Technical Rationality (pp. 38-49)
- Of note: prestige and status as the drivers of professionalization, but also
 research funding and projects (pp. 38)
- With the crisis of professions, a turn from Technical Rationalities "problem
 solving" to the importance of "problem setting" (pp. 39-40)
- A specific kind of work (naming and framing) transforms a "problematic
 situation" to a "problem," the latter of which is solvable (pp. 40)
- Regular case: mapping problem to technical knowledge; unique case can't be
 directly mapped, must undergo a nontechnical process (pp. 41)
- DS rejects reorganizing the proliferation of unique cases and non-technical
 problem setting into Technical Rationality and proposes a new epistemic model
 (pp. 49)
- Section introducing and defining "reflection-in-action"
- Starts from everyday life in which we posses a "tacit knowledge-in-action"
 which is habitual, and which DS extends to workday activity (pp. 49)
- This tacit knowledge we cannot necessarily explain to ourselves (pp. 50)
- It is key to note that thinking and doing are not mutually exclusive; one can
 do them at the same time (pp. 50)
- Reflection-in-action is thinking about what you are doing while you are doing
 it, and is integral to dealing with the situations which resist Technical
Rationality (pp. 50)
- Section specifically on knowledge-in-action (50-54)
- [note how DS recourses to "common sense" as an epistemological baseline]
- A specific kind of knowing inherent in doing, "know-how", does not originate
 in previous thinking (pp. 50-51), not necessarily self-representable (pp. 52)
- "tacit knowing" (Polyani) (pp. 52)
- Christopher Alexander's tying this into traditional design through a kind of
 back-reading iteration, also thinking it as an ethical-aesthetic (judgement)
 activity (pp. 52-53)
- General definition of knowledge-in-action: 1) spontaneous knowing-how to do
 something; 2) unaware of having learned actions; 3) cannot now describe the
 knowing though we might have been able to at once point (pp. 54)
- Section on reflection-in-action (pp. 54-59)
- [note the move back to common sense as base arbiter]
- The ability to think and do at the same time (gives a couple examples from
 sports and jazz) where a person can "adjust their actions based on conditions
 (pp. 54-56)
- Note: the point of this section is that reflection-in-action is the specific
 iterative adjustment of action to a continuous, real-time condition (uses an
 example from child psychology here) (pp. 56-59)
- Section on reflection-in-practice (pp. 59-
- Explores the ambiguous definitions of "practice" and focuses: 1) performance
 in a range of (professional here) situations; 2) the repetitive preparation
 for performance (pp. 60)
- "Professional practice" involves both components of the def.: professionals
 perform in specific situations and their experience becomes a practicing and
 potentially specialization (pp. 60-61)
- Specialization and the danger of myopia and fragmentation of knowledge,
 boredom, burnout, patterns of error, etc. (pp. 61)
- Reflection as a corrective to the dangers of specialization through taking a
 moment to reflect upon the situation, though this can be done while acting
 (hence "reflection-in-action" (pp. 61-62)
- Reflection operates within a different kind of time, an "action-present"
 which may constitute a long or short period depending on the kind of activity
 (pp. 62)
- This constitutes the "art" of professional practice (pp. 62)
- Reflection-in-action as process of self-crit. where an earlier,
 unsatisfactory, theory of the situation is critiqued and new ones are
 experimented with until a better one is found (pp. 63)
- A kind of translation from "feeling" to strategy/theory through
 "articulation"
- Various examples (pp. 63-68)
- [note: the nexus of a problematic impasse is transferred to the practitioner:
 it is not the situation which is complex, difficult, or irreconcilable, but
 the practitioner's framing of it; the practitioner can always reframe and find
 a solution]
- Practitioner becomes researcher when reflecting-in-action (pp. 68)
- This form of knowledge is not bound by the rules of Technical Rationality
 since it resists its binaries (pp. 69)
- Reflection-in-action as breaking the rigour-relevance impasse and being both
 at the same time (pp. 69)


PART II: CONTEXTS FOR REFLECTION-IN-ACTION

Design as a Reflective Conversation with the Situation
- Defines what the "design professions" are: architecture, urban design,
 regional planning, town planning; also the "engineering" design professions
 (pp. 76)
- Definition creep of "design" and what kinds of activities are design: eg. C.
 Alexander's definition of traditional production as long-term design, design
 of policy, behavioural design (pp. 77)
- Focus on architecture since it is the oldest/model-for all other design
 professions, but also since it's definition and boundaries are unstable,
 enough that reflection-in-action is a necessary component (pp. 77), it has an
 extensive array of "schools" (pp. 78)
- Uses a case study from architectural education (a crit) as a means of
 examining an underlying generic process in design across schools, design
 professions, etc: that design is a "conversation with the materials of the
 situation" (pp. 78)
- Defining the activity of design (pp. 78-79)
- Design makes things even if they are not the final product in a complex
 process (pp. 78)
- Uses specific and distinct media and language (pp. 79)
- Deals with situations where there are too many variables to produce a
 complete and finite model; any action by the designer will (not might) have
 unintended consequences (pp. 79)
- "conversation with the situation" = the designer shapes the situation and the
 situation "talks back" to the designer who then adjusts to the situation and
 so on; this activity is reflection-in-action (pp. 79)
- Presents the case study (pp. 79-93)
- Of note: the case study is in an education institution (pp. 79) where design
 is a private pursuit in parallel (pp. 80), [where design dynamics operate in
 a kind of lab, where design is an individual activity where one person
 confronts a project. There's an embedded argument here that design, and by
 extension professional activity, is fundamentally an individual endeavour and
 that individual action (not collective action) is the hallmark of being a
 profession.]
- Specific "language of designing" which involves parallel drawing and talking,
 hybrid signs where speech references a drawing and drawings refine speech,
 constitutes a "language game" for DS (pp. 80-81)
- This constitutes a metalanguage where you can talk about designing and
 describe design process [see Tarski] (pp. 81)
- Presents the protocol of designing in the education context (pp. 82-93)
- [note the inclusion of specific transcribed quotes and drawings reproduced
 alongside them; also note how pseudonyms work here]
- Big note!!!: causality is not inherent in the design process here, causality
 and the direction of processual movement must itself be designed and,
 interestingly, it can be suspended and/or ignored at any time (the chain of
 implications can be broken) (pp. 91)
- [Of note: the hidden operation here where the "conversation with the
 situation" is really one-way but simulates a dialogue (pp. 93). It is evident
 from how Quist drives the crit situation: he imposes a primary dictation, then
 drives the dialogue towards the ends he's looking for. He might not know what
 that ends specifically consists of, but he has the power in the situation and
 can disregard feedback at any time (see the prev. comment on causality).]
- Analysis of the protocol that is evident in the case study (pp. 93-102)
- Argues that design is a reflection in action (pp. 93)
- Reflection as a means of experimenting without commitment to full execution
 to check implications and directions of causality (pp. 94)
- Note the local experiment is a component of a global framing adjustment (pp.
 94)
- Taking one existing "coherence" and trying out a new "coherence" as a means
 of deriving a specific problem (pp. 95)
- Three directions of the process:
- "Design domains" = this is the speaking-drawing hybrid language which models
 and operates on the situation (pp. 95-98)
- "Implications" = the one-way process of causation in design, if this action
 then this action must follow; causation can be ignored or suspended; we have
 a feedback system set up here which is iterative (pp. 98-101)
- "Shifts in stance" = movements of position from speculative to imperative,
 from virtual to real, which allows judgement of possible design decisions
 (pp. 101-102)
- Presentation of how reflection-in-action underlies the protocol (pp. 102-104)
- Iteration through reflection in action as the underlying operation below
 differences in "schools of thought" (pp. 103)
- The differences are in what each kind of architect prioritizes in the
 judgement process (pp. 103)
- Note: here the movement is from uncertainty/complexity  order (pp. 103)
- Being able to identify good/fruitful initial moves through "practicing" and
 having worked with similar situations before (pp. 104)

Psychotherapy: The Patient as a Universe of One

The Structure of Reflection-in-Action
- Long section at the beginning that compares architectural design to
 psychotherapy (pp. 128-164)
- Section comparing reflection-in-action to Technical Rationality which gives a
 summary of the conclusions of the comparison (pp. 164-167)
- Reflection-in-action epistemology takes into account artistry in unique
 situations, and positions technical problem solving as only a small component
 (pp. 165)
- Dichotomies of Technical Rationality (means-ends, research-practice,
 knowing-doing) do not hold (pp. 165)
- The model is this, means and ends are framed independently (problem setting
 -- problem solving) and their independence is transacted through the
 situation in a knowing-doing [what is the significance of the transaction? The
 word even has an added meaning] (pp. 165)
- The problems must be produced, the features determined, the order of
 operations determined, etc.
- Hypothesis testing through temporarily taking a position (seeing as and doing
 as) in "virtual worlds" (storytelling, sketchpad, physical models) where you
 don't have to commit to the decision and its outcomes, they can be played out
 but within a "wrapper" that they cannot leave (pp. 166)
- [the virtual world as a lab that is fully independent from the world but can
 emulate specific aspects of it that are useful for testing; the values of
 Technical Rationality are not rejected, they are just transferred into the
 virtual world]
- Knowledge produced by reflection-in-action is objective insofar as it can be
 disconfirmed, but it is also personal and limited to the "state of the game"
 so to speak (pp. 166)

Reflective Practice in the Science-Based Professions

Town Planning: The Limits to Reflection-in-Action

The Art of Managing: Reflection in Action

Patterns and Limits of Reflection in Action Across the Professions
- Section is about a) patterns of similarity/difference within
 reflection-in-action & b) what the limits to reflection-in-action are (pp.
 267)
- "reflective conversation with the situation" is the major activity of
 reflection-in-action (pp. 268)
- Derived from architecture, but generalizable to all professions (pp. 268)
- Recapitulation of previous themes: inquiry  frame experiment which draws on
 past repertoire of references on which reflection operates (pp. 269)
- "Constants" that various practitioners bring to their reflection-in-action
 (pp. 270)
- "media, languages, and repertoires"
- How practitioners describe and communicate, but also how an experiment space
 is made virtual
- Semantic media content, technical terms, references; these model discursive
 spaces
- "Media cannot really be separated in their influence from language and
 repertoire." (pp. 271)
- How media and technical language produce secrecy and obfuscation, make an
 edge to who is a practitioner and who isn't (pp. 271)
- "appreciative systems they bring to problem setting"
- Critical criteria which is ethical (though not necessarily moral) and perhaps
 taste-making; how a problem approach is judged and made-disciplinary
- Internal objectivity of appreciative system, but subjectivity between
 professions, but the ability to translate a system from one discipline to
 another (pp. 273)
- "overarching theories"
- Faith aspect, faith in specific kinds of models of the world
- "role frames within which they set their tasks"
- Like F's subject locations but also practitioner self-representation: how
 they see themselves and how they locate themselves within the processes in
 which they operate
- Sets a boundary on what kinds of reflection-in-action can happen at all and
 how that activity works beforehand (pp. 274)
- Of interest is that institutional criteria are ignorable in some cases for a
 different formation of practice (pp. 274)
- These constants allow for variation within reflection-in-action, allowing it
 to apply to a wide array of professional fields (pp. 270)
- These constants are historically mutable, in general and within specific
 disciplines (pp. 275)
- Limits of reflection-in-action
- The gap between intuitive knowledge-in-action and descriptions of it; the
 intuitive understanding is richer than any representation of it (pp. 276)
 which itself drives the reflection-in-action process of refining and iteration
 (a "good enough" representation) (pp. 277)
- Dangers of mystifying practice (pp. 278)
- The need for meta-reflection-in-action (pp. 282)
- Question of what constitutes a good description of knowledge-in-action (pp.
 279)
- [proposing that the problem of complexity is a representation problem rather
 than a material problem, ie. all situations are actually simple, but using
 wrong forms of representation makes them more complex than they actually are.]
- The need to regulate when and for how long and in what way one
 reflects-in-action, the way reflection and experiment feed and set boundaries
 for each other (pp. 280)
- The need for "double vision," to compartmentalize various parallel views of a
 situation (pp. 281)


PART III: CONCLUSION

Implications for the Professions and their Place in Society
- Conclusion looks at implications for the role of the professional in society
 and such (pp. 287)
- Sets up a comparison between three models of professionality [which is
 continued later]: (pp. 288)
- a) Technical Rationality; techno-utopian (pp. 288)
- professional experts as agents of science/technology's push for better life
 in some way (in this model) (pp. 288)
- Can be non-reflective (pp. 290)
- Subject to the "traditional contract:" the professional delivers services and
 the client agrees to defer to the professional's authority (pp. 292-293)
- Professional is accountable to client and to professional peers (their work
 can be judged on two axes) (pp. 293)
- Zero-sum game of control and evasion (pp. 304)
- Ambiguity produces uncorrectable errors, a runaway feedback loop (pp. 305)
- b) anti-professionalism; liberation-utopian (pp. 288)
- double move here: "professional" knowledge as not inherently tied to
 "profession" as a category, being able to become public knowledge AND a
 change in position of professional, they work for the public (pp. 289)
- Can also be non-reflective (pp. 290)
- Not subject to traditional contract, new forms of contractual relation (pp.
 294)
- The "lay-lay" contract of the citizen professional where both parties are
 simultaneously clients and professionals (pp. 294)
- The public vs. professional relation where a set of "clients" identifies that
 they are not the real client but that someone else (the state, a company,
 some rich dude, the professional, etc.) is the real client (pp. 294)
- Zero-sum game of control and evasion (pp. 304)
- Adversarial relation
- c) reflection-in-action; unity-utopian
- contract takes the form of a "reflective conversation" with the client (pp.
 295)
- locating expertise within the context of meanings that it finds itself within
 in this situation; discovering how the professional confronts the client,
 where the client comes from that might be external to the technical aspect of
 their discipline but are inherently tied into it (pp. 295)
- Knowledge that professional expertise is inherently limited and that it is
 deployed in a context that goes beyond its operativity (pp. 296)
- Client becomes critic of professional's activity and "suspends disbelief",
 the professional's actions prove their competency and ability (pp. 296),
 making-public and subjecting to public scrutiny (pp. 297)
- Professional is more directly accountable to client in this model,
 professional is triangulated by oversight (pp. 297)
- NOTE: that DS proposes reflective contracts for situations that are not
 routine and are not emergencies, situations that are safe enough to cultivate
 this specific relationship (pp. 298)
- In this model, the client confronts the professional as a manager, as the
 boss, whether or not they are the boss; see how DS supplies management
 techniques as the competencies of the client (pp. 301)
- [A public of managers? Or an assumption of who clients will be?]
- "Client" is its own profession and must be "competent" in their own
 reflection-in-action which is specific to their being clients (pp. 302)
- Not a zero-sum game and rejects the power games
- Feedback filtering through rejecting or suspending causation at certain
 moments (pp. 306)
- Professionals give up their claim to authority (in knowledge) and client
 gives up their claim to authority (in being the boss) (pp. 298)
- This model makes work a process of self-education: "the practitioner may look
 to leisure as a source of relief, or to early retirement; but when he
 functions as a researcher-in-practice, the practice itself is a source of
 renewal." (pp. 299)
- [notice what's going on here: the model of "passion" and how it modifies the
 economic relations (excuses for more overtime)
- See pp. 300 for a comparative diagram
- No exchange between research and practice since practitioners are always
 already researchers (pp. 308)
- But also the necessity for "reflective research" upon reflection-in-action:
 frame analysis, analysis of canon, theorization processes, research on
 reflection-in-action itself (pp. 309-323)
- Reflective researcher can take time to be a practitioner and vice versa (pp.
 323); new institutional relationships and models (pp. 324) though these new
 models and the old school models will likely operate in parallel (Pp. 325)
- Section on professional-client relationship, this is important since it
 defines what the professional's social relation is (pp. 290)
- It defines what a profession is in a way (pp. 290)
- Identifies that the increasing ambiguity of the "client" position as part of
 why there is a crisis in "the professions" (pp. 291)
- [of note: The constitution of "profession" here is through finding an axis of
 exchange: who are the ones who give something up in exchange for expertise
 &/or who are the ones who need the expertise enough that they will allow for
 independent action and ensure their authority. (pp. 291)]
- [Of note: The definition of "professional" is derived from their position as
 labour, they must sell their labour, but their possession of a specific kind
 of knowledge modifies their position within a production process. The
 definition of profession is derived from an economically expressed relation,
 not one of idenitity: not the question "who am I?" but the question "who do I
 work for?" (pp. 291)]
- [Of note: the client and the employer can be two different people or two
 different groups of people. Eg: One's "client" could be a community
 association that you're designing a building for, but your employer could be
 The City or a developer. This changes the dynamics of the situation. (pp. 291)]
- [Of note: there's an interesting operation going on here where, for DS, the
 deployment and use of reflection-in-action automatically places the
 practitioner in a professional position whether or not they are officially a
 professional or trained as such. In short, you must be a professional to deploy
 this knowledge and by deploying this knowledge you become a professional since
 that is the only position from which this knowledge is possible. (see pp. 295)]
- Section on reflective practice in institutions (pp. 326-338)
- Focus on turn to corporatization (bureaucracy) (pp. 326)
- Proposal (in the classic 60s US hippy mode) that reflection-in-action, the
 critical position it espouses and the individual consciousness it creates is
 directly antithetical/a threat to bureaucratic formal organizations which are
 inherently stiff and conservative (pp. 327-337)
- The feeling of being "de-professionalized" by the institution where work is
 done through controls imposed upon individual activity [in the classic
 anti-institutional critique; the "bugging out" model which is along the commune
 axis] (pp. 337)
- Models a "reflective institution" which is: a) procedurally flexible, b)
 decentralizes responsibility, c) appreciates complex processes; makes space
 for conflicting values and purposes (pp. 338)
- [DECENTRALIZED RESPONSIBILITY]
- [Reflection-in-action in this context as a kind of technical fix (see ppm
 338)]
- Section that locates professions in society at large (pp. 338-
- DS primarily locates professionals within politics (ie. policy) by tracing
 how politics has become increasingly professionalized (pp. 339-341)
- The professionalization of politics =/= public consensus but often leads to
 managed stasis (pp. 342)
- Conditions where previous sites of "regulated conflict" within specific
 democratic models can no longer contain the conflict which spills out into
 newly produced sites of regulated conflict (proliferation of sites where
 conflict can happen/is supposed to happen) (pp. 344)
- "So long as the conduct of society depends upon special knowledge and
 competence, there will be an essential place for the professions." (pp. 344)
- Suggesting a new role for professionals within society, within politics and
 policy (pp. 345)
- The professional not as an expert in any specific topic per se, but more of a
 person who is an expert in reflecting-in-action (pp. 345)
- The professional is a participant in a larger societal conversation where
 their role is to try and make that conversation a reflective one (pp. 346)
- Bases this on an agent ontology ("at once the subjects and objects of
 action") where we can act upon ourselves (pp. 347)
- Bases this on a discursive view of practice: that particular descriptions
 (representations) of problems can become powerful for action and attain
 dominance (pp. 348)
- From this, the view that professionals do not really have the ability to
 perceive and change their own institutions through professional activities (a
 limit on the possibility of professional activity) (pp. 349)
- Proposing that professionals are agents of "back-talk" that can produce
 reflective conversations within an adversarial context (pp. 349-350)
- Having sides act on their own views while subjecting them to reflection,
 taking an adversarial stance while understanding their opponents' views (pp.
 350)
- DS provides two examples which demonstrates forms of assimilation
- First example shows a consumer rights org. turning to collaboration with a
 business adversary (assimilation to business criteria, but it's an exchange
 right) (pp. 351)
- Second example shows state and business interoperability (assimilation of
 state and business to each other through ensuring that an interface that once
 was present is no longer apparent) (pp. 352)

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