A leading M.I.T. social scientist and consultant examines five professionsengineering, architecture, management, psychotherapy, and town planningto show how professionals really go about solving problems.The best professionals, Donald Schön maintains, know more than they can put into words. To meet the challenges of their work, they rely less on formulas learned in graduate school than on the kind of improvisation learned in practice. This unarticulated, largely unexamined process is the subject of Schön’s provocatively original book, an effort to show precisely how ”reflection-in-action” works and how this vital creativity might be fostered in future professionals. |
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52 of 53 found the following review helpful:
A must read for self-aware practitionersAug 23, 1998
By Richard L Stein
In this book, Schon gives us a language for understanding professional practice. Because the sum of what a professional knows is greater than the sum of what he is aware he knows -- let alone the totality of what he can articulate -- there is a hidden world of practitioner competence. I found Schon to be a little repetitive and his examples difficult to fully conceptualize. However, his discussion of the Technical Rationality model and his vignettes of five professions provide a framework which may be applied to the practice of any profession. I believe that readers of this book can enhance their self-awareness as professionals and artists.
53 of 58 found the following review helpful:
 This is an educational theory bookAug 28, 2000
By David Stengle
This book discusses the history and theory of professional learning. Schon spends a great deal of time justifying what every professional knows - that framing problems is difficult and that book learning is insufficient to deal with these problems.If you are interested in positivism, technical rationality, and the evolution of the modern professional school, then this book is loaded with meaty material. If, however, you want to apply methods built upon other epistemologies, go straight to his 2nd book, "Educating the Reflective Practitioner". The book is well thought out, but I found it a heavy read. Not for the faint-of-heart. I got a lot out of it. Recommended only for epistemology or history of professional school wonks.
32 of 35 found the following review helpful:
 Tough reading - but definitly worht it !Jun 11, 2000
By Rasmus
A word of warning. This book is hard to read. Some things are reapeated over and over, while other detailes are never given proper treatment. But - if you don't mind spending some time reading and analyzing the book, there are heaps of golden nuggets to find. Schön illustrates why rational design processes doesn't work in reality (for computer enthusiasts this means an explanation of why the waterfall model will never work on real life problems). Instead he tries to explain how designer (architects, musicians, engineers etc.) really work, when they solve real problems. And how to teach expert knowledge to others. I highly recommend this book for non-whimps...;-)
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
A foundational classicJun 13, 2005
By Dr.
This is a critical book that provides a foundation for most of the other work on organizational learning (such as Senge) and complexity in organizations (Wheatley). As most classics are, this is not the most up-to-date book on reflection and action, and if you are looking for something that will give you a fast pay-off, I suggest looking elsewhere. If, however, you are interested in reading one of the foundational pieces of writing on these issues, this is one of the classics, and an important book.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Reflective Practitioner: Stepwise Discovery of SolutionsMay 09, 2007
By JN
Dr. Schon addresses how professionals can better join in a process of learning and decision-making. By seeing life as a process involving both the service provider and the client/customer, the interaction itself provides additional tools and information. Coming out of an industrial engineering perspective, processes of decision-making can be structured to require step-by-step participation in problem definition and solution clarification. Best quote: "A skillful teacher draws out critical facts, and by a sequence of astutely chosen questions leads students through a process of inquiry which serves both to structure the "solution space" of the situation at hand and to demonstrate a mode of thinking about business problems."
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