For Week 8, I was partnered with Vicki as the lead discussants for the article by Ben Kotzee entitled "Private practice: exploring the missing social dimension in 'reflective practice'". I had worked well with Vicki in the past so I was very happy to work with her again . We met on several occasions to discuss the article and I have to say I was surprised by the amount of discussion/collaboration we had in preparation for our lead discussion. We discussed Schon's 'reflective practice' and whether or not it effectively explains how people learn professionally. We talked about how Schon leaves out the social nature of practice (Ben Kotzee's main criticism), the role of tacit knowledge plays, the concept of expert vs. novice, and Schon's concepts of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. Lastly, we discuss Schon's views of teaching reflection-in-action as artistry.
Out of all our conversations, I would have to say that Schon's expert versus novice was the most interesting especially when talking about his notion of the "architect's studio. Schon explains "the different abilities of the architect and his student to design a building as a difference not in what the student and the architect can know or say but in what they can do almost without thinking and saying - the architect's mastery compared to the student's inexperience can be explained in terms of the architect's more extensive and fluent 'reflection-in-action'". Vicki and I didn't buy into this theory because how can you then explain the likes of Joey Alexander, the gifted piano prodigy from Indonesia.
How at the age of 12 could he become such an expert? How could he be better than other professional piano players who have played for 30 or 40 years? How is Joey able to have such a feel for music? I agree with Schon that being an expert comes down to "artistry" or a sense of "intuitive knowing" but I think the amount of time a person has to build up the store of tacit knowledge needed to become and expert is not a defining factor.
After our presentation, one of the main takeaways is that I had a much deeper reflection on the article and came away with a lot more knowledge because of the social dimension which existed during my group work with Vicki. In this sense, I feel that Kotzee was on to something about how Schon may have overlooked the social nature of refection.
