Exemplary Practitioners

Abstract

Some actors in the public sphere are excellent at what they do. Even if they could hardly do their work alone, they make a difference. This article presents a search for what are called exemplary practitioners. It describes and compares a group of six practitioners found in the literature: the reflective practitioner, the deliberative practitioner, the street-level bureaucrat, the front-line worker, the everyday maker, and the everyday fixer. It points at differences between the types and changes that occur over time. Also, the article concludes that the more recent types of identified practitioners add crucial skills to the repertoire that practitioners need to make a difference in the public sphere. In the epilogue, the researchers reflect on the research they did on the basis of the ideas in the article.