Donald A. Schon

A provocative and powerful view of practical knowledge. Schon argues that effective professionals do not simply follow the accepted body of knowledge corresponding to their field, but instead engage, intuitively, in a reflective conversation with their problems, probing them, reframing them, and relating them to previous cases. He also argues convincingly that the commonly accepted research and development model in which practitioners bring problems to scientists and scientists hand back show more reproducible solutions is broken and misleading. show less

If I ever go back into teaching at a university, I'll spend the first week there rereading this book, then another week thinking about it, and then bother with class design. Waking these kinds of skills in our students was *hard*, but their lack was one of the things that drove me from academia.

The longer it's been since I read this, the more I appreciate it. Possibly the most helpful work-related book I've ever read, and I found it very pleasant to read on the sentence level as well.

The concept of reflection-in-action has been very influential in contemporary design theory, even though Schön does not delimit himself to design but addresses all kinds of professional practice. This book is not only a useful summary of The reflective practitioner (1983) but also a discussion of what the model implies for education of skilled professionals.