Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions / Edition 1

by Donald A. Schon

Overview

Building on the concepts of professional competence that he introduced in his classic The Reflective Practitioner, Schon offers an approach for educating professional in all areas that will prepare them to handle the complex and unpredictable problems of actual practice with confidence, skill, and care.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555422202
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	01/16/1991
Series:	Higher Education Series
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,071,828
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Donald Alan Schön was a philosopher and professor in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who developed the concept of reflective practice and contributed to the theory of organizational learning.

Table of Contents

Part One: The Roles of Artisty in Professional Education
Part Two: The Architectural Studio: A Prototype of Education for Reflection-in-Action
Part Three: Examples and Experiments
Part Four: Implications for Professional Education

Editorial Reviews

Doctors, architects, lawyers and engineers are all trained in schools that emphasize technique but neglect the key element of artistry that distinguishes the true professional. Today's professional is a drudge, mechanically applying privileged knowledge to rote tasks. That is Schon's diagnosis of higher education, and as a remedy he recommends learning by doing. To teach skills of improvisation and problem-framing, he feels our universities should borrow the methods used in art studios, dance conservatories, athletics coaching, craft appenticeships and psychoanalytic training. In all these settings, a dialogue between student and coach in a low-risk atmosphere encourages creativity. Despite its academic prose, this primer by an MIT urban studies professor will enlighten students, teachers and professionals. Schon concludes the book (a sequel to The Reflective Practitioner with a description of his attempt to create a ``studiolike'' curriculum for MIT's city planning courses. (July 15)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The reflective practitioner is one who participates in a practicum in the professional school which will help him or her ``acquire the kinds of artistry essential to competence in the indeterminate zones of practice.'' In The Reflective Practitioner (1983), Schon argued that professional schools (from engineering to public administration to teaching) were relying too heavily on scientific knowledge and technical rationality while giving little attention to ``reflection-in-action.'' Schon now details a program of reflective practicum education in the professional schools. His book should be of value to all educators, no matter what the field. A. R. Huggins, Memphis State Univ. Lib.

Library Journal