La Formación De Profesionales Reflexivos

donald schon (schön): learning, reflection and change
Donald Schon made a remarkable contribution to our understanding of the theory and practice of learning. His innovative thinking around notions such as  ‘the learning society’, ‘double-loop learning’ and ‘reflection-in-action’ has become part of the language of education. We explore his work and some of the key themes that emerge. Whatassessment can we make now? 
Donald Alan Schon (1930-1997) trained as a philosopher, but it was his concern with the development of reflective practice and learning systems within organizations and communities for which he is remembered. Significantly, he was also an accomplished pianist and clarinettist – playing in both jazz and chamber groups. This interest in improvisation and structure wasmirrored in his academic writing, most notably in his exploration of professional’s ability to ‘think on their feet’. On this page we review his achievements and focus on three elements of his thinking: learning systems (and learning societies and institutions); double-loop and organizational learning (arising out of his collaboration with Chris Argyris); and the relationship of reflection-in-action toprofessional activity.
Donald Schon
Donald Schon was born in Boston in 1930 and raised in Brookline and Worcester. He graduated from Yale in 1951 (Phi Beta Kappa), where he studied philosophy. He was also a student at the Sorbonne, Paris and Conservatoire Nationale de Music, where he studied clarinet and was awarded the Premier Prix. After graduating, he received the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship andcontinued at Harvard, where he earned master's and doctoral degrees in philosophy. The focus for his doctoral dissertation (1955) was John Dewey’s theory of inquiry – and this provided him with the pragmatist framework that runs through his later work. In 1953 he began to teach Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. This was followed by two years of service in the U.S. Army.Concurrently, he lectured at University of Kansas City as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy.
Working from 1957-63 as senior staff member in the industrial research firm Arthur D. Little, Inc., Donald Schon formed the New Product Group in the Research and Development Division. Under the Kennedy administration, he was appointed director of the Institute for Applied Technology in the National Bureauof Standards at the US Department of Commerce (he continued there until 1966). He then co-founded and directed OSTI (Organization for Social and Technological Innovation), a non-profit social research and development firm in the Boston area (he left the directorship in 1973).
His first book, Displacement of Concepts (1963) (republished in 1967 as Invention and the Evolution of Ideas) dealt with‘the ways in which categories are used to examine “things” but are not themselves examined as ways of thinking’ (Parlett 1991, quoted in Pakman 2000). Pakman (2000:3) goes on to comment:
The interest in metaphor expressed in that book, would grow years later toward his elaborations on “generative metaphor,” and its role in allowing us to see things anew. Thus, he was already showing some of whatwould be epistemological enduring interests for his inquiry, namely: learning and its cognitive tools, and the role of reflection (or lack of it) in learning processes in general, and conceptual and perceptual change in particular.
Donald Schon’s next book Technology and Change, The new Heraclitus (1967) developed out of his experience as an organizational consultant and received considerablecritical acclaim. He was invited to give the 1970 Reith Lectures in London. His focus, ‘Change and industrial society’, became the basis for his path-breaking book: Beyond the Stable State. Schon’s central argument was that ‘change’ was a fundamental feature of modern life and that it is necessary to develop social systems that could learn and adapt. Both books show the influence of the work of his...