Education and career He was born in Boston and brought up in Massachusetts, at Brookline and Worcester. After doing a Bachelor's at Yale University, he completed Master's and doctoral studies in philosophy at Harvard University. His thesis dealt with Dewey's theory of inquiry. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and pursued advanced study in music Piano and clarinet. Little along with Raymond Hainer with whom he worked on his ideas which resulted in his first seminal work, The Displacement of Concepts.
In fact this original work was a new interpretation on the history of the ideas of all time—a complement to Thomas Kuhn's work or even a more accurate look at the dynamics of invention. His later works there presaged a lifetime of interest in the subtle processes whereby technological and other change is absorbed or not by social systems. In , he delivered the Reith Lectures for the BBC, on how learning occurs within organizations and societies that are in permanent states of flux.
These presentations were published subsequently in his Beyond the Stable State. He remained there until his death in Their collaboration led to two books in the s— Theory in Practice and Organizational Learning —the latter of which was completely revised and published in as Organizational Learning II.
Much of his later work related to reflection in practice and the concept of learning systems. He along with Chris Argyris maintained that organizations and individuals should be flexible and should incorporate lessons learned throughout their lifespans, known as organizational learning.
His interest and involvement in jazz music inspired him to teach the concept of improvisation and 'thinking on one's feet', and that through a feedback loop of experience, learning and practice, we can continually improve our work whether educational or not and become a 'reflective practitioner'. Journal of Planning Literature, 13 , 3— Displacements of Concepts. London: Tavistock Publications. Technology and change: The new Heraclitus.
Oxford: Pergamon. Beyond the stable state: Public and private learning in a changing society. London: Temple Smith. The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action.
New York: Basic Books. Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. Curriculum Inquiry, 22 , — Winograd Ed. Frame reflection. Schwartz, H. The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action book review. Administrative Science Quarterly, 32 , — Senge, P. The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday. Smith, M. In The encyclopedia of informal education.
Retrieved from www. Waks, L. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 11 , 37— Warsh, D. The giraffe. The Boston Globe , p. Wiener, N. Cybernetics: Or control and communication in the animal and the machine. The ability to draw upon a repertoire of metaphors and images that allow for different ways of framing a situation is clearly important to creative practice and is a crucial insight. We can easily respond in inappropriate ways in situations through the use of an ill-suited frame.
However, what we also must hold in view is some sense of what might make for the good see Smith Al It may well be that this failure to attend to method and to problematize the production of his models and ideas has also meant that his contribution in this area has been often used in a rather unreflective way by trainers.
As such they have suffered from being approached in ways that would have troubled Donald Schon. For him reflective practice was to be enacted. In a similar fashion, his work with Chris Argyris still features very strongly in debates around organizational learning and the possibilities, or otherwise, of learning organizations. Interestingly, though, it is difficult to find a sustained exploration of his contribution as a whole.
While there are discussions of different aspects of his thinking e. This is a great pity. Going back to books like Beyond the Stable State pays great dividends. Argyris, M. Increasing professional effectiveness , San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Public and private learning in a changing society , Harmondsworth: Penguin. How professionals think in action , London: Temple Smith. Influential book that examines professional knowledge, professional contexts and reflection-in-action.
Examines the move from technical rationality to reflection-in-action and examines the process involved in various instances of professional judgement. Development of the thinking in the book with sections on understanding the need for artistry in professional education; the architectural studio as educational model for reflection-in-action; how the reflective practicum works; and implications for improving professional education.
Anderson, L. Argyris, C. Eisner, E. A personal view , Barcombe: Falmer. Etzioni, A. The theory of societal and political processes , New York: Free Press. Finger, M. Learning our way out , London: Zed Books.
Hainer, R. Glatt and M. Shelly eds. Newman, S. Pakman, M. Ranson, R. Ranson ed. Inside the Learning Society , London: Cassell. Richardson, V. Clift, W. Houston and M. Pugach eds. Encouraging Reflective Practice in Education. Russell, T. The Reflective Turn. Usher, R. Address to the meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
Acknowledgement : The picture of The Reflective Practitioner is by. How to cite this piece: Smith, M. Retrieved: insert date]. Smith First published July Last Updated on April 7, by infed. Donald Schon made a remarkable contribution to our understanding of the theory and practice of learning.
We explore his work and some of the key themes that emerge. What assessment can we make now? There: education was not a segregated activity, conducted for certain hours, in certain places, at a certain time of life.
Hutchins Slavery made this possible — releasing citizens to participate in the life of the city. Exhibit 1: Donald Schon on learning and the loss of the stable state The loss of the stable state means that our society and all of its institutions are in continuous processes of transformation.
What are the characteristics of effective learning systems? What are the forms and limits of knowledge that can operate within processes of social learning? What demands are made on a person who engages in this kind of learning? Schon Donald Schon argues that social systems must learn to become capable of transforming themselves without intolerable disruption. The unit of innovation is a functional system. The pattern of diffusion is centre-periphery.
The pattern of diffusion is systems transformation. Relatively fixed centre and leadership. Shifting centre, ad hoc leadership. Relatively stable message; pattern of replication of a central message. Evolving message; family resemblance of messages.
Scope limited by infrastructure technology. Learning can also be social: A social system learns whenever it acquires new capacity for behaviour, and learning may take the form of undirected interaction between systems… [G]overnment as a learning system carries with it the idea of public learning, a special way of acquiring new capacity for behaviour in which government learns for the society as a whole. To this end Argyris and Schon initially looked to three elements: Governing variables: those dimensions that people are trying to keep within acceptable limits.
When they came to explore the nature of organizational learning Chris Argyris and Donald Schon described the process as follows: When the error detected and corrected permits the organization to carry on its present policies or achieve its presents objectives, then that error-and-correction process is single-loop learning. Smith Second, there is some question as to the extent to which his conceptualisation of reflective practice entails praxis.
In other words what he tends to look at is the process of framing and the impact of frame-making on situations: As [inquirers] frame the problem of the situation, they determine the features to which they will attend, the order they will attempt to impose on the situation, the directions in which they will try to change it. Further reading and references Argyris, M.
References Anderson, L.
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