the reflective practitioner and practitioners' narrative unities

The Reflective Practitioner and Practitioners' Narrative UnitiesThe Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action by D. A. SchönReview by: D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael ConnellyCanadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring,1986), pp. 184-198Published by: Canadian Society for the Study of EducationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1494806 .

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Review Essay/Essai critique

The Reflective Practitioner and Practitioners' Narrative Unities

The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action

by D.A. Schon

New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983. 374 pages.

REVIEWED BY D. JEAN CLANDININ, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY, AND F. MICHAEL

CONNELLY, THE ONTARIO INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES IN EDUCATION'

Scattered about the academic landscape are more or less radical works which strive to give renewed meaning to academic studies by using old and fundamental notions of the relationship of ideas to experience. MacIntyre's (1981) After Virtue in moral philosophy and Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) Metaphors We Live By in epistemology are two such radical studies. MacIntyre likens the current state of moral theory to an imaginary situation where a holocaust had destroyed all but fragments of writings in moral theory. In this situation ethicists study and construct theories of the fragments, without remembering that they were originally accounts of proper relations among humans and, of course, without study- ing such relations. In introducing his conception of moral philosophy MacIntyre writes "the notion that the moral philosopher can study the concepts of morality merely by reflecting, Oxford armchair style, on what he or she and those around him or her say and do is barren" (p. vii). His proposed alternative is "to envisage each human life as a whole, as a unity, whose character provides the virtues with an adequate telos" (p. 190). In this shift of emphasis, Maclntyre replaces formalism with a study of the concrete particular human being.

Likewise, Lakoff and Johnson (and ongoing work by Johnson) shift from what they perceive as common practice in epistemological inquiry to their own alternative view. They write that "we shared a sense that the dominant views on meaning in Western philosophy and linguistics are inadequate - that 'meaning' in these traditions has very little to do with

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 11:2 (1986) 184



what people find meaningful in their lives" (p. ix). In their book on

metaphor, they argue that because of its traditional emphasis on

objectivity, metaphor is given little attention in philosophical inquiry. Yet they believe that in everyday life metaphor is "pervasive in language and thought," something unexpected if one were to read the dominant

epistemologists. In proceeding with an inquiry into the uses of metaphor in everyday language and thought, they develop what they call "elements of an experientialist approach to questions about the meaningfulness of our everyday experience." Their book, then, is a study of metaphor in

everyday speech and thought. In principle, Schon's The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think

In Action represents a similar shift from formalism to the study of

experience. Unlike MacIntyre and Johnson, who are philosophers and who ground their inquiry in philosophic traditions, Schon is a social scientist and industrial consultant, a kind of academic professional. His claimed interest is correspondingly narrower and focuses on what he refers to as an "epistemology of practice." It is not the general relations of

theory and practice or of formal thought and experience that primarily interest Schon but, rather, traditional and alternative views of practice and practitioners. At the same time, in sweeping aside traditional views of the professions and replacing them with the practice-based notion of reflection-in-action, this book has radical characteristics. To what extent

may it take its place alongside others of a similarly radical nature?

STRUCTURE AND CONTENT

The work consists of 374 well written, easily read pages divided into o1

chapters and 3 parts. Part 1 is titled "Professional Knowledge and Reflection-in-Action" and consists of 2 chapters: the first casts doubt on traditional ways of understanding professional knowledge; the second identifies the traditional with "technical rationality" and moves to the alternative view of "reflection-in-action."

Part 2, "Professional Contexts for Reflection-in-Action," constitutes the

major portion of the book, and it contains seven chapters. These chapters elaborate Schon's idea of reflection-in-action based on a series of case studies in five professions; architecture, psychotherapy, engineering, town planning, and management. Each case study begins with an account of the intellectual history of the represented field. We are, for example, led through psychiatry from the turn of the century, when it was hardly a medical specialty, through World War II, when it had become a kind of

popular panacea, and the subsequent decades, when a virtual "plethora of

psychotherapies began to make their claims" and intellectual fragmenta-

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tion marked the field, finally to an account of the various efforts to

organize the diversity of thought within the field of psychotherapy and to establish realistic claims for its uses.

The focus of the case study is a particular, personalized account of a

professional problem. For instance, the psychotherapy case continues with transcribed material of a tutoring session between a third-year resident in psychiatry and his supervisor over the resident's treatment of a

young woman. Following the details of the transcription, Schon under- takes an interpretation in terms of practitioner knowing. In the psychotherapy case, he explores the adequacy of therapeutic interpretations, compares this thinking with Erikson's description of therapeutic practice, and explores the relationships between the resident and the supervisor and the resident and the patient.

Chapters 3 and 4, respectively, present an architecture and a psychotherapy case. Based on these two chapters, Chapter 5 becomes a theoretical

study of the structure of reflection-in-action. Theoretical claims are

grounded in the case study data. For instance, one of Schon's claims is that

reflection-in-practice is concerned with unique cases. He shows how neither of his case study participants acted as if they were looking for a

theory or a standard solution but, instead, were trying to resolve a

particular unique problem. Along the way he makes seemingly startling observations which make sense in his turned around perspective on

practice and practitioner thought. He writes, for instance, that "through the unintended effects of action, the situation talks back. The practitioner, reflecting on this back-talk, may find new meanings in the situation which lead him to a new reframing" (p. 135). The idea of a situation talking back makes sense once the reader's mind is attuned to the dynamics of the interplay between action and response in a situation. The

supervisor speaks, the intern responds in a surprising way, and the

supervisor, if he thinks about this back-talk, may be led to a more

adequate understanding of the intern's problem with his client. Because the development of Schon's theory is repeatedly referred to

case incidents, the epistemology which develops "accounts for artistry in situations of uniqueness and uncertainty" (p. 165). This artistry is in contrast with the traditional technical rationality which dichotomizes means from ends, research from practice, and knowing from doing. Instead, he shows that "in the reflective conversation of [the participants], these dichotomies do not hold" (p. 165). Ends and means are jointly considered, decision making and action upon the situation occur in an ongoing and reflective way, and knowing and doing are, therefore, simultaneously under consideration.

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 present three more case studies: engineering (as an

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example of science-based professions), town planning, and organizational management. The pattern in each of these chapters is similar except that now the theory outlined in Chapter 5 is refined. In engineering, for example, reference is made to paradigmatic thinking and to Kuhn as a resource, and to the importance of thinkingfrom exemplars (p. 183) and to the uses of generative metaphor (p. 184).

These various additions to theory are not proposed as general theoretical constructs to apply to all of professional practice. Indeed, there is some doubt in the reader's mind as to Schon's intentions on these matters. Does he want us to think of various terms and insights developed in a particular case as applying to the practices in other professions? Upon reflection it seems that an appropriate answer would be a practical one. We imagine the response to our question: "Use the idea as far as it will take

you in the profession of interest and in the particular case at hand." Thus, thinking from exemplars might well have a place in, for example, studies of teaching. In our own work, for instance, we find that specific visual

images of certain children continue to dominate some teachers' thinking on certain classroom situations (Clandinin, 1985a, 1985b). Using Schon's term we can think of this teacher as thinking with an exemplar of a

particular child. But not all teachers necessarily have such exemplars; indeed, some may often think with exemplars and others seldom. In other words, the Schon terminology, developed in the context of a particular case, has generative theoretical meaning for work in other fields, and its uses should be understood practically. His terms constitute useful notions, applicable in certain situations and theoretically consistent with the perspective elaborated. But the theory is intact and remains unchal-

lenged if any particular term is not found useful in reconstructing the

thinking of particular practitioners in particular fields with particular problems. Thus we have the makings of a different notion of theory qua theory since we may view Schon's theory of practice as an exemplar of

theory per se. Part 2 concludes with a single chapter on the patterns and limits of

reflection-in-action across the professions. Here Schon elaborates on the rudiments of theory developed in Chapter 5 and expanded in Chapters 6, 7, and 8. He does so by highlighting both commonalities across the

professions and, more importantly to this chapter, the limits of common- ality. The limitations of the theory are not at issue but rather the limitations of the possibility of reflection-in-action. In other words, his interest is to outline further the theory of reflection-in-action by describing its boundaries. To develop these boundaries, Sch6n distin-

guishes between intuitive knowing and reflection-in-action on intuitive knowing, pointing out that, when a practitioner displays artistry,

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intuitive knowing is richer than any description of it. There is, therefore, a

gap between artistry and its description (between the act and the account of it), and this leads him to a distinction between reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, the central definition bounding his theory.

Part 3 is a conclusion and consists of a single chapter in which he considers the professional implications of reflection-in-action. Here he returns to his general concern for the epistemological status of the

professions and, as he calls it, for the "demystification of professional knowledge." The chapter explores the professional-client relationship, which he defines as a commonplace in all the professions, and it moves more generally to the relations of research and practice and outlines a

program of research into practice. Throughout this chapter, he attends to the teaching profession and to a particular educational study. Educational readers can only wish that he had drawn the full-blown case rather than the fragments that appear.

DEWEY'S LOGIC AS A FORM FOR REFLECTION-IN-ACTION

While we have described the theory of reflection-in-action as it appears in

Chapter 5 and is elaborated in subsequent chapters, it is not at all clear that Schon would even agree to have the term theory applied to his work. What he does say is that he is trying to replace the dominant technical rationality epistemology of practice with another which he names reflection- in-action. But technical rationality and reflection-in-action are not com- parable terms. The former names a kind of inquiry, a genus, while the latter names a particular inquiry, a species. Technical rationality is Schon's name for many different inquiries, in different professional fields, which show the epistemological characteristics he names. Reflection-in-action refers to his own specific theoretical construct. Readers can, therefore, cast their minds over various inquiries to decide whether or not they are

properly classified as instances of technical rationality and, if so, to spell out their various characteristics as noted by Schon. But with reflection-in- action we cannot do so since we are not told what kind of inquiry it is. His own inquiry is the only example of reflection-in-action given. But other work might well endow the proposed epistemological alternative with the various desired characteristics. Schwab's formulation (1970; 1971; 1973; 1983), begun some 15 years earlier, is an example which, along with the numerous uses to which it has been put by others (for example, Elbaz, 1981), would qualify. Schwab even launched a telling criticism of technical rationality (called something else by him, of course) in somewhat the same terms as Schon.

Thus, while we may be sympathetic and attracted to Schon's notion of

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practical thinking, we are not quite sure what kind of notion it is. Our own work (Clandinin, 1985a; 1985b; Connelly & Clandinin, 1984), for

example, on practitioners' narratives of experience and how these are embodied in the ongoing events of practice, shares much with reflection- in-action. But, as we shall show, this work differs in significant formal

ways from Schon's. Without an understanding of the kind of inquiry proposed in reflection-in-action, both the significance and limitations of Sch6n's proposal remain obscure.

One illuminating way to read the book is to see it as an expression of

Dewey's (1938) or Schutz and Luckman's (1973) notion of a problematic situation. A situation, says Dewey, is defined by internal and existential elements. Thus, a child learning has certain images, experiences, and

meanings, and these are expressed existentially in situations in the form of speech and action. There is an intellectual and material side to a situation, a personal and a social side. Situations exhibit continuity in time, and they exhibit growth as the various internal and existential relations are reflectively modified. For instance, curriculum materials are reflected in student learning, new needs thereby develop, in turn new curriculum materials are required, and so the situation develops. These dimensions of a situation are seen in Schon's consistent concern in his cases for the individuals, the particular characteristics of their situation, and the

general intellectual history of the field in which the situation exists. We can not only cast Schon's cases in terms of Dewey's notion of

situation but also show his situations as problematic. Dewey's theory of

experience is marked by the notion that all situations which exhibit

potential for growth are problematic in that a discrepancy exists between the existential facts of a situation understood and not understood and the individual's drives. The process by which the known facts are expanded to solve the problem is called inquiry by Dewey, a term which has the earmarks of reflection-in-action.

All of Schon's cases are problematic. None exhibit the ongoing, sometimes business-like, sometimes routine, flavour of classroom life. In phrases which might have been written by Dewey to define the problematic, Schon marks out his own method, as in the following example.

When a practitioner sees a new situation as some element of his repertoire, he gets a new way of seeing it and a new possibility for action in it, but the adequacy and utility of his new view must still be discovered in action. Reflection-in-action necessarily involves experiment (p. 141).

Dewey and almost any one of his followers would find such a statement compatible with their views. Indeed, reflection was one of Dewey's key

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terms. Oddly, when Schon goes about the business of defining the

problematic method, he resorts to John Stuart Mill's somewhat narrow

description of method (pp. 142 ff.). At this point, of course, Schon rather

sharply departs from the more general notion of inquiry proposed by Dewey to advance a particular type of inquiry, a subspecies if you like. With this hint, it is easier to imagine different subspecies of reflection-in- action but the genus problem remains.

It is not merely that reflection-in-action is conceived as a version of

experimental inquiry that provides the clue to the genus but also that the evidential bases for this notion are the various problematic situations in the cases. In the architecture case, Petra, the student, has "set problems that she cannot solve" and Quist, the instructor, helped solve her problem (p. 8o). In the psychotherapy case, the resident "has been troubled by his relations with his supervisor," and, in turn, the intern's patient had decided that "she wasn't getting anywhere in therapy" (p. 109). The engineering case is actually two-fold: first, a classroom problem is set in an engineering course; second, a professional engineer is asked to "solve a problem that had arisen at the teaching hospital at Kali" (p. 190). In the town planning case, a planner must review and recommend upon a developer's plan in terms of the town's bylaws (p. 21 1). The organizational management case is defined as a crisis in which there have been "troublesome production delays" (p. 247).

In sum, we make three points relative to our view that Dewey's notion of a problematic situation constitutes a form for understanding Schon's work.

(1) A notion of situation helps account for the conception of the kinds and

range of components dealt with in each of Schon's cases. (2) Sch6n's focus is on particular kinds of situations, that is, ones that are

problematic. (3) His notion of the problematic is a subspecies of what might be contained within Dewey's notion of inquiry.

Reading Schon as a study in problem formulation and solution in

practical situations helps us identify those features which we share and with which we sympathize. But it also allows us to identify characteristics of his work which are troublesome, in particular his apparently restricted notion of inquiry seen in his reliance on Mill and the fact that the case data are all problematic situations. The latter is, of course, a limitation, only insofar as the situations of interest are not well understood in problematic terms. We believe that many educational situations are better understood in non-problematic terms such as ritual, habit, routine, cycle, rhythm, personal philosophy, and image (Connelly & Clandinin, 1985).

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MCKEON, SCHON, AND THE FORMS OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEORY AND

PRACTICE

Schon recognizes that in one of its most general senses his notion of the reflective practitioner embodies a conception of the relations between theory and practice. This relation is of special interest in educational inquiry because it refers to two related relationships: (1) the relationship of researcher and practitioner during inquiry and (2) the relationship of

theory so gained to the practice of schooling. The two questions of interest are "How shall we relate to teachers, students, and others in our research?" and "What shall we do with the resulting knowledge as far as school

practices are concerned?" Both of these matters have a certain kind of resolution in Schon's notion of the reflective practitioner and in the traditional technical rationality epistemology to which he objects.

These matters are discussed in their most general sense in McKeon's

"Philosophy and Action" (1952) in which he establishes four possible historical relationships of theory to practice in philosophy and in the world of action. The four he calls logistic, operational, problematic, and dialectic. A brief sketch of each will help illuminate possible responses to the two questions of interest.

According to the logistic conception, the worlds of theory and practice are seen as distinct. Practice is treated as applied theory, and it is assumed that the motives of action differ from the principles of knowledge. Action is seen as fundamentally irrational, and, since there is no certainty in action, a science of action, which in education has been named "implementation and change theory," is needed to guide the uses of theory in

practice. The research tends to emphasize the development of knowledge aimed at controlling the uses of theory in practice. This feature marks the

attempts of educational reformers to build system analysis theories, implementation strategies, models of planned change, and the like.

Schon's objection to technical rationality is, in its most generic sense, an

objection to McKeon's logistic conception of the relation of theory and

practice. According to Schon, "the model of Technical Rationality ... consists in instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique" (p. 2 i). Given McKeon's account of the logistic, we see that Schon's objection to technical rationality can be

grounded on its fundamental assumption that practice is essentially irrational. Rationality, therefore, consists of the various tactics and

strategies by which the vagaries of practical action are ordered and made coherent. This view is fundamentally at odds with Schon's which credits

practical reasoning as a deliberate, intentional, problem-solving process forming and governed by the reflection that takes place as practitioners

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deal with specific problems. Technical rationality, therefore, embodies a notion of theory and practice which is not only substantially different from that proposed by Schon but also philosophically different in its conception of the nature of human action. Given Schon's argument, strengthened by the insight offered by McKeon, a reader wonders how it is possible that this essentially antagonistic view of the phenomena of practice in professional fields has come to dominate, as Schon says it has, their modes of inquiry.

In general, what Schon says of the professions, and by implication of education, may in fact be said of education although perhaps not quite as

strongly as Schon asserts. Numerous arguments against technical rationality have appeared in the educational literature in the past decade or so. Still, for the most part, Schon's general observation on the professions seems applicable to educational inquiry. With Schon, one can only hope that logistic forms of inquiry become balanced with others, such as his own, which grant rationality and integrity to the discourse of practice.

Closely related, in the field of education, is McKeon's operational view of the relationship of theory and practice. Here, practice is seen to determine the relevant theory through the actions taken. Again, practice is seen as essentially nonrational and, as a result, truth is sought in opinion and in criteria of usefulness. Knowledge is viewed as mere activity and

process. Characteristically, ideas are converted to processes, and one searches for operational procedures for persuading practitioners to

operate in certain ways. Unlike the logistic view, where research is aimed at developing rational logical methods for translating theory into practice, the operational position tends to "fly by the seat of the pants." It lays its trust in such matters as needs assessment and user opinion to understand the attitudes and predispositions of practitioners. These are then used to

manipulate and persuade practitioners through the use of proper rewards in the intervention process. The change agent modifying user attitudes, beliefs, and values is a familiar figure in the operational literature.

Much of Schon's criticism of technical rationality is equally well understood in terms of the operational perspective as in terms of the logistic. When Schon criticizes technical rationality by referring to Glazer's notion that "the development of a scientific knowledge base depends on fixed, unambiguous ends because professional practice is an instrumental activity" (1974, p. 23), he essentially criticizes an operational notion, that of instrumentality. It is operationalism that Schon objects to when he writes that according to technical rationality "practitioners are supposed to furnish researchers with problems for study and with tests of

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the utility of research results" (p. 26). In contrast to the notion of

implementation that characterizes both operational and logistic views, Schon writes that "there is no question of an 'exchange' between research and practice or of the implementation of research results" (p. 308). Instead, he argues, "we have recast the relationship between research and

practice" such that "research is an activity of practitioners ... triggered by features of the practice situation undertaken on the spot, and immediate-

ly linked to action" (p. 308). In Schon's view, then, it is not the researcher who solves problems as it is in the logistic and the operational modes but the practitioner reflecting-in-action. Thus, for Schon, the needs assessment and user opinion strategies used to obtain the attitudes and predispositions of practitioners are no longer of interest since, in the operational view, these strategies are merely used as ways in which the researcher circum- vents and works against the ongoing evolution of the problematic situation.

McKeon's problematic conception of the relationship between theory and practice has a limited expression in the educational reform literature. Here, the practical is essentially viewed as a form of inquiry differing, however, from inquiry in the natural sciences. That is, the methods of

knowledge production are viewed as different from the methods of

practical problem solving. Nevertheless, knowledge is viewed as entering practice, and emerging from it, through problem definition and problem- solving methods. According to this conception, knowledge is modified, adjusted, and used selectively according to the dictates of the particular problem confronted in practical situations. Problems are treated as they occur in ongoing experience. Notions such as action research and mutual

adaptation acknowledge the problematic method (Berman & McLaughlin, 1979; Parlett & Hamilton, 1977; Shipman, 1974).

We have, of course, already identified Schon's conception as a

problematic one. We earlier introduced his work by identifying it as a radical departure from traditional inquiry practices by comparing it to work in moral theory and in epistemology. We now see, by virtue of

reading Schon through the eyes of Dewey and of McKeon, the credibility of this view. Schon's work departs from the traditional in both its logistic and operational forms, and these, taken together, mark out most of the

inquiry in education and, if Schon is correct, in the professions in general. And we see, from reading Schon in terms of McKeon, that the departure is not only a matter of how theory is thought to control practice but of how we conceptualize human action and even of the place of human action in theoretical thought. Whereas for the logistic and operational views human action is essentially irrational, for the problematic it is the basis, the substance, of reason. Indeed, while the end of inquiry from the

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logistic and operational perspectives is theory and its subsequent control of practice, the end of inquiry in the problematic is progress in practical affairs. In this we gain a new sense of the significance and power of Schon's reformulation. Still, there are troubles and limitations in Sch6n's view. These are seen in McKeon's account of the dialectical perspective.

McKeon's dialectical position views theory and practice as inseparable. Problems of theory are seen in practice and vice versa. Indeed, practice is

theory in action. There is no essential dichotomy. According to this view, the practical constitutes a kind of proof such that if theoretical notions and practice are incompatible it is theory rather than practice that is seen to be at fault. This contrasts sharply with the attitudes of most policy makers and developers whose fundamental assumption is that ever

increasingly sophisticated ways of intervening must be developed as it is revealed that reform does not affect practice as intended. Theory, according to the dialectic, is much less fixed than it is in either the logistic or the operational modes, and it is assumed to change and modify accord-

ing to the shifting exigencies of the practical world. The essential task of dialectic is to resolve oppositions.

Following upon the dialectic view of the relationship of theory and

practice, we may imagine that researchers and practitioners would be

co-participants in inquiry. A relationship would be established where the researcher becomes part of the situation, thereby reflexively altering its character as inquiry proceeds. The situation under study, while primarily defined by the givenness of the practical situation, would nevertheless be the modified one consisting of the researcher's intentions, purposes, predispositions, and practices within the situation.

This feature has important consequences for both our opening questions on the conduct and outcome of inquiry and its uses in practice. The dialectical inquirer is obliged to conceive of inquiry in intersubjective terms no longer watching but participating in the situation. This notion of

intersubjectivity and its essential opposition to the objectivity of knowl-

edge characterizes Lakoff and Johnson's notion of epistemology; and

Polanyi wrote about it: "I regard knowing as an active comprehension of the things known, an action that requires skill ... such as the personal participation of the knower in acts of understanding" (1958, p. viii). Polanyi argues that personal participation denies objectivity as ordinarily understood but does not make our understanding merely subjective. Rather, he says, knowledge is made personal, thereby embodying notions of objectivity and subjectivity typical of a dialectic view. The anthropolo- gist Dwyer, writes on the dialectical relationship between the anthropolo- gist and informant. He thinks of this relationship as a dialogic one with the

following three characteristics:

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First, the confrontation is "recursive": that is, its meaning at any moment both depends upon and may call into question the meaning of what has preceded. Second, the confrontation is "contingent": its continuity must not be taken for granted and its meaning, at any moment, must entail the fact that rupture, until that moment surmounted, may also ensue. Third, the confrontation is "em- barked": that is, it is necessarily tied to specific forces which transcend personal activity and, at the very least, to those forces which perceive human groups as different and which encourage direct contact between certain of their members. (1979, p. 215).

Without fully exploring the ramifications of Dwyer's view, we see that

inquirers operating according to a dialectical notion of theory's relation-

ship to practice must account not only for their presence in the situation but also for the relations that develop and change between the researcher and participant. What one claims to know as a result of this process is never, therefore, a pure account of the situation independent of the

inquirer. We draw attention to these matters because they speak to the two

questions with which this section opened and because of the evident contrast between the dialectic and Schon's view on these questions. While Schon never gives an unambiguous statement of his method, it is clear from his cases that his own inquiry role is that of observer. He faithfully records events in practice, standing on the outside looking in. There is no

necessary relationship except one of permission or of accident (Schon had a longstanding knowledge of and friendship with the engineer) between researcher and practitioner. Accordingly, whatever claims Schon makes may be said to be objective. They may well be objective claims about the intersubjective character of practitioner actions (although this is not his emphasis) but in themselves they do not have the

intersubjective "personal knowledge" character named by Polanyi and described by Dwyer. The limitation of this feature of Schon's work for

inquiry resides in the fact that by not becoming personally involved with the situation, significant tacit characteristics of reflection-in-action and, more generally, of practitioner thought cannot be understood or cap- tured. Inevitably, the objective, observational stance is limited to the observable behaviours which occur in a problematic situation. The emotional and moral meaning (Clandinin, 1985a; 1985b) of action and its tacit personal knowledge base in the form of metaphors, images, and other fragmentary bits of wisdom gained through experience will hardly, if at all, be exhibited in inquiry.

Still another consequence of the dialectical recursive relationship between researcher and participant is that, as inquiry proceeds, the situation changes. These changes are, of course, practical. Thus, the

ongoing interplay of theory and practice characterized by dialectic results

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in practical consequences during inquiry. Accordingly, when we interest ourselves in the practical uses of theory, the dialectic first turns our attention to the act of inquiry rather than, as is more traditionally the case, to its subsequent applications. There is no sign nor even, of course, a place in Schon's observational view for the act of inquiry to become part of the

development and growth of practice. When we do turn our attention to the uses of the results of inquiry for

practice, the dialectic compels us to be more cautious in our prescriptions and more sensitive to the exigencies of practice. Indeed, it is inappropri- ate, as it is for Schon, to implement ideas in practice. Rather, to use Polanyi's notion of personal knowledge and Clandinin's account of the

personal practical knowledge of teachers, the results of the inquiry become part of the practical knowledge of participants within a situation (either a participant-researcher inquiry situation or practitioners alone in a situation). There are no necessary consequences even now, and, as

practice develops with its reconstructed personal knowledge as a result of inquiry, this knowledge, as the dialectic affirms, is as much under

scrutiny as it is in use. Schon, we believe, would not be altogether dissatisfied with this notion of the uses of the results of inquiry. He does, after all, strongly object to the idea of implementation. Still, Schon gives little sense of the personal character of knowledge claims with their concomitant attributes of emotion, morality, intentionality, and intersub-

jectivity. The practical uses of the dialectic as outlined, while perhaps not

incompatible, would not likely evolve or be understood, according to his

problematic view.

THE REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER AND PRACTITIONERS' NARRATIVE UNITIES

These marks of a dialectic study of practice are evident in the study of

practitioners' narratives. The construction of practitioners' narrative accounts follows a process like that described by Schafer (1981) for

therapeutic encounters in psychotherapy. According to Schafer, psychotherapy is essentially retelling personal stories. This retelling is a kind of

theorizing. It recasts the events in a person's life within a different structure and with a different set of terms which are meaningful to the client and which are, therefore, helpful to him. For Schafer, the therapist draws out a first telling by the client of his story. As the encounter continues, the therapist explores different ideas to cast light on the story and, as the client responds and tries out still other ideas, the story is

gradually re-told in more meaningful ways. In the narrative method used to study classrooms, teachers' stories are

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retold in the narrative accounts so that the observed and reflected upon events are embedded in narrative unities within the person's personal and

professional life. Thus, we add, in the simplest sense, an historical dimension to the understanding of practice. It is this historical dimension that permits us to recast the narrative in terms of unities of personal and

professional experience. The possibilities revealed in the narrative study of classrooms help

answer our original question concerning the radical nature of Schon's

proposed alternative to technical rationality. As this paper unfolded, it became clear that Schon's notion of reflection-in-action inverts the usual

theory practice relationship in inquiry. In this, Schon presents a view that differs markedly from the usual form of inquiry in education. But his alternative is by no means unique. Others have argued similar positions for educational inquiry. Some have made the case more strongly.

Furthermore, Schon's theory as developed in the case studies is

essentially a researcher's theory grounded in the data of practice. Indeed, proponents of grounded theory would be quite comfortable with Schon's method. Thus, it may still be said that Sch6n's theory as evolved in

Chapter 5 and elsewhere reveals a kind of observer's theory. He brings us closer to the study of practice but does not alter the fundamental relations of theory and practice in the way imagined by Maclntyre and Lakoff and

Johnson, seen in Schafer's psychotherapy, and expressed in studies of narrative in education. In psychotherapy, the theory isjointly constructed out of the narrative histories told and retold during psychotherapeutic encounters. Likewise, in the narrative study of schooling, narrative accounts are jointly constructed by researcher and participant on the basis of observational, interview, and biographical material. In Schon's case we have a kind of objective theory of practice and in the other two an

intersubjective, historically based theory.

NOTE

An earlier version of this review was presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, French Lick Springs, IN, April, 1985.

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the reflective practitioner and practitioners' narrative unities

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