Schon Shock: a case for refraining reflection‐in‐action?

Abstract This paper assesses the contribution of Donald Schon's The Reflective Practitioner to thinking about professional knowledge and expertise. While containing an important original idea, the notion of reflection‐in‐action, Schon seems more concerned with finding examples to counter what he calls the technical rationality paradigm. Hence he neither analyses everyday practice nor attempts to consider how reflective processes might serve different purposes or vary from one context to another. Most of his examples fail to provide evidence of reflection‐in‐action and none of them relate to crowded settings like classrooms. Indeed it is difficult to see how one could distinguish reflection‐in‐action from reflection‐on‐action when the action is cool and deliberate rather than hot and rapid. Three recommendations are made for reframing Schon's account of reflection. First, to redefine the key prepositions so that in refers to context on refers to focus and for refers to purpose. All Schon's examples relate ...