'The Know-How is in the Action'

I've been finding all the reading material a bit overwhelming, so I thought I could just summarise what I've understood so far from reading 'The Reflective Practitioner' by Donald A. Schön (Pages 1-55). The key parts that link to my own potential areas of learning are near the end, but I think it's interesting to see the history of how society has developed a need for reflection-in-action.

SOME KEY TERMS 
Profession - work that needs special training and involves applying general principles to specific problems

Professionals - people specially trained to deal with problems in their specific area of expertise

Avocation - a hobby

Major Professions (term by Nathan Glazer) - jobs like law or science where there is discipline, a clear outcome and training comes from and established institution. 

Minor Profession (term by Nathan Glazer) - jobs like social work or teaching where the outcome is ambiguous, isn't so strongly linked to scientific professional knowledge and is not part of an institution.

Practitioners - anyone who has a specialised occupation
Dominant Epistemology - main study/theory of knowledge

Technical Rationality - the idea that, as technology advances and is completely immersed in society, it can change the rational of society and how it functions (technology in this context doesn't mean computers necessarily, I think it means more science, politics and philosophy)

Positivism - 'a social movement aimed at applying the achievements of science and technology to the well-being of mankind'

Divergent Skills - more creative way of problem solving where you picture all the possible solutions - freethinking

Reflection in Action - things we learn while we do things - impacts how we do things or how we redo those things

Tacit Knowledge - knowledge that can't be explained 

The 1900 brought about an increased popularity in professions. However, a series of 'national crises' occurred that were seen to be caused by the very people being trusted to make professional decisions. Naturally, people lost faith in the experts and it became a question of ethics as professionals couldn't be counted on to actually have society's best interests at heart. Harvey Brooks explains this failure of the professions in the fact that they faced an "unprecedent requirement for adaptability". The professionals were actually having to deal with dynamic problems, requiring them to do a lot more than what they were an expert in. Russell Ackoff describes these situations as "messes". Professionals were unable to explain how they came to know these additional skills that were 'central to professional competence'.

According to the dominant epistemology of the time, Technical Rationality (which derives from Positivism), major professions are more important than minor professions, and professionals in these areas should be given a higher status, i.e. practitioners are not as respected as the researchers. From this point of view, 'real knowledge lies in the theories and techniques of basic and applied science..."skills" are an ambiguous, secondary kind of knowledge. There is something disturbing about calling them "knowledge" at all'.

After the war, government put lots of money into research and certain institutions like medicine did really well. Other professions tried to use the same system and found that not every profession lends itself to the same model. This is where we became more aware of the importance of practice. 

'...with this emphasis on problem solving, we ignore problem setting, the process by which we define the decision to be made, the ends to be achieved, the means which may be chosen. In real-world practice, problems do not present themselves to the practitioner as givens.'

Sometimes the problem isn't there yet, you have to take the parts and work out what problem needs to be solved. And not all problems are linear - secondary problems often interweave and change the ethics of the decision. How will your decisions affect other people? This is where divergent skills become important.

'Shall the practitioner stay on the high, hard ground where he can practice rigorously, as he understands rigor, but where he is constrained to deal with problems of relatively little social importance? Or shall he descend to the swamp where he can engage the most important and challenging problems if he is willing to forsake technical rigor?'

Herbert Simon believes that changing things to make them better is "design" which is creative, but no one knows a science of design yet. We need to bridge the gap between the researchers and the practitioners so there's no longer a hierarchy of knowledge. 

Before the technology is invented, people have to have problems to solve. My view is you can't say that science is knowledge but that practice isn't, because you need to map the problems before you solve them. They are all knowledge. 

A lot of the time we deal with these types of "messes" using tacit knowledge. We experience tacit knowledge all the time in the random things we don't notice that we know. For example, the way we speak with correct syntax - it's not usually taught when learning your mother tongue, and yet we just feel that it's right.

I love the quote: 'The know-how is in the action' - sometimes you can see that somebody knows something more than they can explain that they know.

When we take notice of tacit knowledge, it becomes reflection in action. The best learning takes place when performance results in something unexpected (either positive or negative). Teachers do this when a child doesn't understand a concept. They need to reflect and change their approach to tailor it to the needs of that child. There is no strict science to it as every child is different. 

I do this when I perform - I instinctively change my performance style depending on how the audience responds to me. On tour, I had been used to massive theatres, projecting my voice and filling the whole space with my energy. However, one venue surprised me by being much more intimate. A few minutes into the show I realised my usual approach was not keeping attention as it did in other spaces. I allowed myself to experience the uncertainty of the situation, I reflected, and was able to change my technique. I had to lower my energy, speak with a more intimate tone and smile at individual audience members. This drew them in and made them more confident to call out and interact with the show, which was my goal as the facilitator. Each show teaches me something about how audiences respond and I keep experimenting with my performance to work out how to get the best outcome (e.g. laughter, interaction etc.) depending on the variables of type of venue and age and energy of the audience. 

Schön ends this section of 'The Reflective Practitioner' by saying 'we may thereby increase the legitimacy of reflection-in-action and encourage its broader, deeper, and more rigorous use'. I would have to say I agree, as the more we reflect in action, the easier it will become to explain the mysterious areas of tacit knowledge, and we will more ethically be able solve "messes".