An Inquiry into Schön's Epistemology of Practice: Exploring Links between Experience and Reflective Practice

Abstract

This article describes a qualitative study that documented the use of reflection-in-action by adult educators in problematic situations. The focus of the study was to explore aspects of Schön's theory. The results supported the basic assumption of Schön's theory that reflecting practitioners use a constructivist decision-making perspective while non-reflecting educators use an instrumental problem-solving approach. The findings demonstrated that reflecting educators, whether novice or experienced, use reflecting-in-action and reflecting-on-action as a means to develop expertise. The presence of experienced educators exhibiting minimal reflection and presence of one highly reflective novice indicates that experience alone is not the "master teacher" of the reflective process.