Biography
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1930:              Born in Boston

1951:              Graduated from Yale in Philosophy

1955:              PhD from Harvard

1957- 63           Worked as a senior staff member in Arthur D Little, an industrial research firm

1963 – 66          Appointed as director of the Institute for Applied Technology, by Kennedy

1966               Visiting professor at MIT

1972               Appointed Ford Professor of Urban Studies and Education at MIT

From this period onwards, Schon wrote and collaborated on seminal books in which the concept of understanding and change was examined, both as an educational precept, but also in its application to research and consultation

1997                 Died in Boston after a short illness

Theories

Donald Schon’s work centres around the concept of reflection. By reflection, we mean consciously thinking about an event in our minds. The core of his theories is similar to that of Dewey, whose work early in the twentieth century first drew attention to the crucial importance of reflection in the pedagogical approach. Both Dewey and Schon proposed that reflection should be initiated by action – that once a task is started, the skills of reflection should guide the learning. They also believed that this should be an active process, with a conscious structure and a defined outcome.

Schon proposed two forms of reflection:

• Reflection-in-action
• Reflection-on-action

He saw reflection-in-action to be a dynamic, organic process in which the educator (and learner) is constantly thinking about what and how they are doing the task, assessing and reassessing in order to ensure efficiency and success.

Reflection-on-action is the retrospective consideration of the outcome of the learning process, to assess and amend instruction/methodology. This, Schon saw as the antithesis of the scientific methodology which has a fixed method and therefore not applicable to an educational setting in which the process of learning how to reach the outcome is as important as the pathway taken. In this way, learners can apply learnt knowledge to a different task.

We can sum up this process as the difference between knowing what and knowing how.

How Schon Would Tutor

The process of ongoing reflection and learning, sometimes called organisational learning, has been applied to the educational world, but also to business and management. In both worlds, the practice of reflection gives rise to improvements in processes, learning outcomes and some would claim, the mental well-being of both teachers/coaches and students/learners.

 

Schon would initially ensure that he had the right method of learning for different individuals. This of course necessitates a detailed knowledge of his students and any learning concerns or challenges that they have. However, it also would imply that he would also have a clear understanding of the level of understanding of his learners so that he can amend tasks or certainly see the potential for doing so when planning future sessions. He would encourage students to think about and verbalise a lot of the implicit events in learning. Such as if a student made a mistake, he would encourage the student to think about what they did, why they did it and reflect on how they could have approached it differently next time. Schon would ensure the student didn’t feel embarrassed by the mistake, instead seeing it as a learning opportunity.

Having taught skills or knowledge, then Schon would encourage his students to reflect on their own performance or level of learning and to share the reflections with him to ensures that both he and the learner have a better understanding of the process. This may lead to re-visiting knowledge with the student if some of the leaning needs to be retaught.  In this way, the student takes an active role in their learning, rather than encouraging what we sometimes refer to (in non-pedagogical terms!) as being sponges.

Schon knows that asking students to think about their own understanding also encourages them to consider how they might learn better. Schon would argue the more that we can encourage our learners to be actively involved in their learning the better for everyone.

Finally, Schon would ensure he encourage students to see failure not as an ‘end’ but as a potential to do better, revisit, re-think, learn etc.

Criticisms

Some challenges have been made as to the practical difficulties of applying Schon’s teachings. It is not difficult to imagine that in tutoring which is generally 1:1, the use of reflection by both the learner and the tutor is very manageable. It is not necessarily so easy in a class of 30+. However, supporters of Dweck point to the idea that if a practice of reflection is embedded in a learner from an early age, the process becomes an accepted part of a learning programme and need not cost time.

Another challenge, acknowledged by Schon, is that the learner and teacher may not be equipped with the linguistic skills to be able to reflect. This is something that you might like to consider in your tutoring and think about how you might overcome this issue if it exists.

Glossary

Reflection-on-action: the process of considering method, action and progress after having carried out a task

Reflection-in-action: the process of considering method, action, progress and outcome while still carrying out a task