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Reflective practice in thedesign studio and teachereducationLeonard J. WaksPublished online: 08 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Leonard J. Waks (1999) Reflective practice in the designstudio and teacher education, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31:3, 303-316, DOI:10.1080/002202799183142

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Re¯ ective practice in the design studio and teachereducation

LEONARD J. WAKS

In SchoÈ n’s account, the distinguishing feature of professional work is its `designlike’character. For SchoÈ n, professional training (including teacher preparation) involvesengagement in design experiments in virtual worlds he calls re¯ ective practica’ . Someteacher educators have developed models of teacher preparation following SchoÈ n’sguidelines. Others have expressed reservations about his framework. But there has notyet been adequate critical assessment of the conceptual ® t between SchoÈ n’s frameworkand teacher preparation. This study contributes such an assessment. After providing amap through SchoÈ n’s system of ideas I pro� er two conclusions. First, conventionalschool teaching is not `designlike’ in SchoÈ n’s sense. Second, teacher training cannotadequately be conducted `o� -line’ in the virtual spaces SchoÈ n calls re¯ ectivepractica’ .

After the publication of Donald SchoÈ n’s The Re ective Practitioner (1983)and Educating the Re¯ ective Practitioner (1987), re¯ ective practice’ , hiscentral concept, was rapidly adopted throughout education in the profes-sions. SchoÈ n’s brilliant case studies and analyses of training in what he calls`designlike’ professions (his featured examples include architecture, engin-eering and industrial management) suggested new lines of programmedevelopment in many ® elds. These included education in what SchoÈ ncalls the interpersonal professions’ such as nursing, social work, consultingand school teaching. By the end of the 1980s many teacher educationprogrammes had the buzz words re¯ ective practice’ in their statements ofgoals and training methods.

By the 1990s, however, some cautions had been sounded about the termre¯ ective practice’ in teacher education. Adler (1991: 139) noted that`underlying the apparent consensus suggested by the widespread use ofthe phrase re¯ ective practice lies a diversity of meanings’ . Calderhead(1991: 153) agreed, stating that few terms have been so widely and readilyadopted in teacher education as re¯ ective thinking . . . though its meaninghas become obscured by its application to various forms of training’.Several scholars attempted to clarify the situation by introducing newde® nitional syntheses for re¯ ective teaching, combining insights from, for

j. curriculum studies, 1999, vol. 31, no. 3, 303± 316

L eonard J. Waks is professor and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership andPolicy Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia PA 19122, USA. In his research heexamines the educational arrangements of postindustrial society and educational themesin American pragmatism. He is the author of Technology’s School: The Challenge toPhilosophy (JAI Press, 1995).

Journal of Curriculum Studies ISSN 0022± 0272 print/ISSN 1366± 5839 online Ñ 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltdhttp://www.tandf.co.uk/JNLS/cus.htm

http: //www.taylorandfrancis.com/JNLS/cus.htm

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example, Dewey, SchoÈ n and van Manen (Zeichner and Liston 1987). In theprocess they merely added to this `diversity of meaning’ .

Even the value of re¯ ective practice in teaching and teacher educationhas been questioned. Copeland et al. (1993: 347) warned that `we are . . .being drawn beyond our knowledge base to the employment of practices . . .founded only in assumptions, rhetoric, and belief ’ . And after a compre-hensive review of the literature, Tsangaridou and Seidentop (1995: 227)concluded that the scant empirical research on re¯ ective practice in teach-ing simply `accepts the value of re¯ ection a priori’ . In light of such concernseven Zeichner (1990), a prime supporter of re¯ ection in teaching, con-cluded that teacher educators should move beyond re¯ ective practice as adistinct programmatic emphasis.

Despite this intense appraisal of re¯ ective practice, there has been apaucity of detailed, critical analyses of SchoÈ n’s framework as it applies toteacher preparation. This paper contributes such an analysis. In the ® rstsection I provide a map through SchoÈ n’s system of ideas. In the secondsection I consider it as an appropriate framework for teacher training.

Re ¯ e c ti v e p rac ti c e : Sc h oÈ n ’s fr am e w ork

One source of problems in clarifying re¯ ective practice’ has been thatSchoÈ n’s ideas have not been sharply distinguished from other epistemol-ogies of practice’ . A familiar reference point in the literature has beenDewey’s theory of re¯ ective thinking (1933, 1938, 1976, 1977).1 This link isnot surprising. Dewey’s ideas are well known, SchoÈ n wrote his doctoraldissertation in philosophy on Dewey’s theory, and he explicitly acceptsDewey’s concept of thinking in `problematic situations’ as his startingpoint. His work on re¯ ection has led him to rethink and reconnect’ Dewey(SchoÈ n 1983: 357, n. 38).

Dewey and SchoÈ n both o� er their theories of re¯ ective practice asalternatives to the positivist model of re¯ ection as technical rationality,according to which reasonable practice consists in direct application ofscienti® cally con® rmed causal laws to practical situations. Like Dewey,SchoÈ n (1983: 42) is interested in the swampy lowland where situations areconfusing ` messes’ ’ incapable of technical solution’, because no `on theshelf’ scienti® c laws could ® t the unique conditions. But although Deweyand SchoÈ n both ask the same questions, and both reject the same wronganswers, they o� er di� erent, and competing, right ones.2 Thus, a fewpreliminary clari® cations of their di� erences are needed.

Dewey’s experimentalism

Dewey shares with the positivists a commitment to science as method.Dewey’s rejection of the positivists’ analysis of re¯ ection rests on its failuretoprovide an independent check, in ordinary experience outside the sciencecontext, for the `o� -line’ formulations of scientists. The positivist modelimplies that social practice is generally irrational because it is not scienti-

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® cally grounded, that the results of scienti® c inquiry are veri® ed directly inscienti® c inquiry itself by members of the scienti® c guild, and that rationalpractice consists of applying those already veri® ed results directly topractical situations to obtain social ends. Re¯ ective practice simply is, onthis model, applied science.

By contrast, for Dewey scienti® c inquiry is always merely an inter-mediate stage in a process with origins in situations where social practicesbreakdown (become unsettled or problematic). Distanced scienti® c inquiryyields causal connections as `meanings’ to apply back to practice. And theprocess of re¯ ection must lead back to back to social practice; its results areveri® ed in and only in the experiences of ordinary non-scientists as sol-utions to their problems. Dewey (unlike positivists such as US psychologistEdward Lee Thorndike) takes everyday practices as appropriate startingpoints. He does not reject them as irrational. He recognizes they may beproblematic. But they need not be, and are only so to the extent that theyare felt as such ± that is, to the extent that the smooth ¯ ow of socialexperience grinds to a halt in doubt. For him re¯ ective inquiry is a timeout’ from social action to provide instruments for addressing these prob-lems. The key point is that social experience can always trump’ scienti® c® ndings. If the alleged `knowledge’ from inquiry is not an e� ective tool ofproblem solving, it is not `warrantably assertable’ ± that is, it is not veri® edand no one including scientists is in any position to claim to know it.3

SchoÈ n’s constructivism

SchoÈ n, on the other hand, rejects altogether the idea of re¯ ection as theemployment of scienti® c method. He also rejects the idea of re¯ ection as atime out’ from social practice for the use of any such method. For SchoÈ n,social agents such as members of the learned professions (i.e. architecture,engineering, urban planning, industrial design, etc.) have their own `eso-teric’ knowledge codes woven into their social practices. These profes-sionals apply tacit knowledge-in-action as they go about their professionalwork. When they encounter messy problems that do not yield to gardenvariety solutions, they do not typically take a time out’ to re¯ ect, and theydo not disengage from the languages of practice in order to use any moregeneral methods of scienti® c inquiry. Instead, they re¯ ect-in-action’ , andin the languages speci® c to their practices.

This implies a fundamental di� erence between SchoÈ n and Dewey onwhat re¯ ective practice is and how it is learned. For Dewey, it remainsscienti® c thinking, and it is learned by doing ± that is, by engaging inscienti® c inquiries at one remove from the practical problems generatingthem. For SchoÈ n it is the forms of thinking speci® c to professionalpractices, and it is learned in the thick of the professional activity, not atone remove. Thus for Dewey the paradigm site of education is the scienti® claboratory; for SchoÈ n it is the design studio. Thus they have contrastingmodels of professional education in university settings. Dewey opts forprofessional training in research universities held together by a common

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culture of science. SchoÈ n advocates a loose collection of professionalschools with distinct professional cultures.

Design and the re¯ ective practicum

SchoÈ n’s purpose is indicated in the subtitle to his Educating the Re¯ ectivePractitioner (1987): `Toward a new design for teaching and learning in theprofessions’. Like Dewey, SchoÈ n sees the role of philosopher of educationas providing a useful plan for education. This is a conceptual hypothesis tobe tested for its consequences and implications; hence, a `design’ foreducation. His proposed `design’ for professional education is, interest-ingly, design itself. His hypothesis is that all professions are `designlike’ insome relevant respects. Thus all professional education can be organized onthe template of educating design professionals: this is SchoÈ n’s `new designfor professional education’ .

SchoÈ n proceeds by analysing design education on-site, providing andinterpreting audio-taped protocols from teaching± learning sessions in thedesign studio. His ® rst objective is to understand these protocols, andhence to grasp the central features of education in design. From that pointhe extends his analysis toother professions. In this way he tests and extendshis hypothesis that professions are `designlike’ and that, eo ipso, educationin the professions is education in design. After interpreting the protocolsfrom the design studio, SchoÈ n explores protocols from other professionaleducation situations and applies his interpretive terms ± his vocabulary ± todetermine whether it provides an interesting and useful frame for them.

In Educating the Re¯ ective Practitioner (1987) SchoÈ n provides threetest cases’ . The ® rst is education in the performance of composed music.The other two are from education in two interpersonal’ professions,psychoanalysis and management consulting. Throughout, he illuminatesthe role of teaching within these professional education contexts. He alsostates explicitly that school teaching, as another interpersonal profession,would be an important test case’ for his hypothesis. But he does not applyhis framework speci® cally to that case. He has left that job to teachereducators. They in turn have picked up his framework (and now may beputting it down) without subjecting it to careful critical assessment.

The choice of performance of composed music is a very good strategicone for SchoÈ n. As he notes, music performance is an artistic and creativeprofession, and thus one might expect that an analysis of education in thedesign studio would cast some light on it. On the other hand, the perform-ance of composed music tests SchoÈ n’s theory because in this profession theprofessional performs from ascore composed by another musician and thusexecutes another professional’ s design. What SchoÈ n’s analysis demon-strates is that this prior design is only one element in the total situation.The performer must interpret it and must impose upon it an overallcoherence of new musical meaning ± in short, provide a new designexpressed in and through the technical operations of performance (e.g.the bowings selected by a violinist). The choice of performance music alsoo� ers a good platform for the test case of school teaching, because the

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school teacher also executes a design provided by others (e.g. curriculumdevelopers and textbookwriters). I will return to this important point whenI consider whether teaching is `designlike’ .

The practicum and re¯ ection-in-action

SchoÈ n notes that the practice of any profession involves the use of esoteric`knowledge in action’ . This knowledge is not merely verbal, but does, ofcourse, have a verbal or discursive dimension. And although the profes-sional can employ the knowledge in action’, he or she generally cannot givea very full meta-description of his or her practical knowledge. In Polanyi’s(1966) terms, this is tacit’ knowledge, learned not in the abstract but in use.

There are three ways of acquiring such knowledge, SchoÈ n states. The® rst, very unusual, way is via self-instruction. The second is viaapprentice-ship ± learning `on-line’ in real-world’ contexts. But because this isine� cient and can have serious negative real-world e� ects, the standardsite of learning is the `practicum’ . The practicum is an `o� -line’ situationthat approximates the world of practice. In this `virtual world’ the novicelearner undergoes a series of graduated problems under the close super-vision of a master practitioner serving as a coach’. The novice learns thevocabularies of the professional practice in the course of learning its`operational moves’.

In the more advanced problems the novice learns to confront the messyunanticipated problems that arise in professional practice. This is notmerely knowledge in action, but re¯ ection-in-action’ , in that new moveshave to be tried out and assessed, and thus thought about and talked about.The practicum as a training programme aims at pro® ciency in this sort ofre¯ ection-in-action’ . It takes the form of reciprocal re¯ ection-in-action’ ±the coach and novice engaged in conjoint problem solving, talking andworking through the problems side by side. In making the moves, talkingabout them and even talking about their talk about them (meta-re¯ ection),the novice and master `negotiate the ladder of re¯ ection’. In these twoways, in its aims and methods, such experiences are re¯ ective practica.

The concept of design

Although the term `design’ is central to his work, SchoÈ n does not unpack itin any one convenient place. But he does have a speci® c conception ofdesign and the activity of designing at the heart of his programme. It will beuseful to begin with a few general remarks on the general concept of designand then review SchoÈ n’s more speci® c analysis or conception.

The term `design’ is used as both a noun (`a design’ ) and a verb ( todesign’). As a noun, a design is a form, arrangement, pattern, blueprint,template, model, outline, plan, plot, scheme or sketch. These more speci® cdesign synonyms show that a design may be either (1) a pattern inherentwithin an event or object, or (2) a conceptual template: a pattern comingbefore something else that is then executed or made according to its form.

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This template may be merely `mental’ or in the head’ of the person whoseaction is guided by it. But a design may also be a physical product,something itself made and expressed in physical space, which contains aform or pattern after which something else will be made, such as ablueprint or a mould.

The verb to design’ may also be analysed along these lines. To designmay be (1) to draw, to impose a pattern, or (2) to produce a template forsubsequent iteration. To design in this second sense is to conceive, plan,form, model, originate, outline or sketch. The activity of designing is thusone of conceiving, planning, dreaming up something that will subsequentlybe brought into existence following its guidelines. The general contrastterm for the verb to design’ in this sense is to execute’. To execute is tocomplete, to carry out, deliver, ® nish, ful® l or implement.4 The two-stepmodel (Model 1) suggested is:

Model 1: Design > Execute.

Design professions

The design professions in general are those engaged in designing in thissecond sense: those whose products are designs as templates. The productsof the paradigmatic design professionals (i.e. architects, composers, cityplanners, engineers and industrial designers) are, of course, not in thehead’ but on paper as sketches, scores, blueprints, plans or programmes.SchoÈ n recognizes the two-step’ implication of the term `design’ when hecontrasts the training of design professionals with, for example, machinists.The design professions are the professions of pre-conceptualization forsubsequent execution. Tosay that all professions are `designlike’ is to implythat in all of them this conceptualizing feature predominates. This pre-supposes a broad distinction between conceptualizing and executing, andbetween `professionals’ (engaged in conceptualizing occupations) and`operatives’ . An operative is, of course, not a mere slave. He/she executesthe plans of others, and, as SchoÈ n would be the ® rst to insist, these are notself-applying’ . The builder, for example, has to be able to read’ theblueprints drawn by the architect; they do not contain within themselvesthe rules about what to attend to and what to make of it. So for SchoÈ n alloccupational activities have conceptual and operational dimensions, but inthe professions the conceptual aspect predominates. Hence professions areall `designlike’ in that they all consist in conceptualizing, planning, pattern-ing or otherwise establishing cognitive order.

SchoÈ n’ s conception of design as frame experimentation

SchoÈ n (1987) adds to the basic concept of design a speci® c conception,which he develops in his analysis of the protocol of Judith’, an indocilenovice, and `Northover’, an inexperienced design teacher (who is a stand-infor SchoÈ n). Judith thinks of designing buildings in terms of imposing

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shapes on materials, while attending to technical considerations such asacoustics and energy conservation. She thinks that she can merely choose’a basic design idea once for all in her head’, and impose it on the materialsof the situation and make it work. But for Northover (as for SchoÈ n)designing is a process of trying out meaning ± establishing moves. ForJudith the design experience consists of exercising conceptual control overthe situation. For Northover (SchoÈ n) it is an uncertain and indeterminatematter of experimentation to discover an overall coherence in it. On thisconception of design an initial idea, a frame’ of meaning, is posited and putinto play in the design process. But then the designer enters into a frameexperiment’, a `dialogue’ with the materials of the situation. In the processthe designer makes tentative operational moves and the materials talkback’to the designer, constraining and shaping subsequent moves. They caneven negate the initial frame of meaning. Finally a new order of coherence,a new world, emerges through the co-creation by designer and materials inthe frame experiment.

For SchoÈ n, then, to design is to discover a framework of meaning in anindeterminate situation through practical operations in the situation. Thisconception of design has three implications for SchoÈ n:

� Design is learnable but not didactically or discursively teachable: itcan be learned only in and through the practical operations offrame experimentation.

� Design is holistic: its parts cannot be learned in isolation. Rather, itmust be learned as awhole, in amolecular way, because todesign isto work toward a pattern, a coherent order, a world of meaningcomprising all components of a situation.

� Designing depends upon the ability to recognize desirable andundesirable qualities of the discovered world. But novice studentsdo not possess this ability, and it cannot be conveyed to them byverbal descriptions. This is because the quality-designating wordsin the design situation obtain a speci® c meaning only in theoperational context of designing: their immediate meaning emergesfrom operational moves and material back-talk in the context.Hence, as SchoÈ n frequently insists, word-meanings in designcontexts depend on the design moves to which they are attached.By the same token the signi® cance of the design moves dependsupon the words used to describe and explain them. Thus thelanguage of design’ is an inseparable part of a practical word±action complex, a Wittgensteinian form of life’ .

Teaching and learning to design

SchoÈ n’s ideas about teaching and learning todesign follow closely from thisconception of the design process. Design teachers are coaches who areinitiates (in the best case, master practitioners) in this form of life. Theyare insiders who know the practice ± both the operational moves and theassociated ways of thinking and talking. By contrast design students are

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novice learners who want to learn the process, but are at the start onthe outside of the form of life. They do not know either the operationalmoves or the speci® c meanings of the esoteric terms of the associateddesign vocabularies. This faces design teachers with the three tasks ofcoaching:

� dealing (alongside the novices) with the substantive problems ofdesign, via combinations of moves/words, demonstrations/descrip-tions, in order to convey to novices the ability to deal with similarsituations;

� particularizing the demonstrations/descriptions to speci® c lear-ners, that is, ® tting esoteric moves and words into a dialogue withthe novices’ uncertain moves and words;

� maintaining relationships with the novices. These teaching± learn-ing relationships are fraught with problems because the novicescan only learn by doing ± but as novices they cannot yet actuallydo. The novices thus can be expected to experience feelings of lossof control, vulnerability and enforced dependence. So coachesmust cope with the predictable negative feelings arising in thispredicament.

Th e d e s ign s tu d io an d te ac h e r tr a in in g

How well does this framework of ideas apply to the training of schoolteachers? Teacher educators have used SchoÈ n’s case studies and analyses oftraining as models for teacher training. In doing so they have presupposedthat teaching is `designlike’ ± that training a teacher is in relevant ways liketraining, for example, an architect. SchoÈ n himself (1987: 157, xii) speaksbroadly of designlike practices and asserts that all professional practice isdesignlike’, though learning and coaching will di� er with the medium andcontent’ of the practices. But that teaching parallels design is what must beestablished. The notion of whether teaching is well conceived as a design-like profession has tobe established, in order todetermine whether SchoÈ n’sframework applies to teacher training - whether it can be reshaped on themodel of a re¯ ective practicum.

There are few sources of insight into teacher preparation in SchoÈ n’sown work. Although it is true that SchoÈ n provides detailed analyses ofteaching, these are always in professional education, not school, settings. Socare should be taken in drawing upon them for school education. There areimportant di� erences between training professionals and teaching children.Furthermore, the professional educators in SchoÈ n’s case studies are all inteacher, not novice, roles as they are in teacher training. So few directlessons may be expected from his examples for teachers as trainees. SchoÈ nmentions school teaching as an interpersonal profession’ , and suggests thatit is an important test case for his overall `design’. Beyond this, he says littleabout school teaching.

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School teaching and teacher training de® ned

Toconsider the relevance of SchoÈ n toteaching and teacher training aroughde® nition is needed: teaching involves co-ordinating didactic, discursiveand heuristic tasks to achieve goals related to academic skills and dis-ciplines.

Didactic teaching involves conveying information and other speci® csubject-matter for memory learning, as well as rules of stock procedures forroutine use. Teaching spelling, multiplication tables or long division, andhistorical chronologies (`names and dates’) are typical examples. The resultof successful didactic teaching is information or procedures learned.

Discursive teaching involves facilitating less determinate processes ofreasoning (hence a `discursion’, a running about’ ) in order to arrive at ananalysis, clari® cation or resolution of a problem, question or issue. Typicalexamples are leading a discussion about the causes of a historical event ormeaning of a work of literature or art, or exploring apathway to aproof of ageometric theorem. The result of successful discursive teaching is anintellectual upshot: a conclusion drawn, an explanation understood, anargument or proof followed.

Heuristic teaching involves training or coaching in production of anobject, which may include a conceptual object such as a plan, model,blueprint, outline, theorem, etc. Heuristics are general problem-solvingstrategies used to complement more determinate productive proceduresacquired through didactic instruction. Learning any complex skill involvesacquiring both heuristics and pro® ciency in stock procedures. The purposeof heuristic teaching may be either to develop a skill for itself, or to providean alternative setting for discursive or didactic learning. For example, aperson can introduce a gardening project either to teach gardening, or topromote group problem solving or incidental learning of botany.

So school teaching involves the co-ordination of lecturing, discussion,demonstration and guided practice, in such skills and disciplines as reading,arithmetic, history and geography, to achieve school-speci® c goals parti-cularized to a unique group of school students. Teacher training involvesteaching± learning activities to enable trainees to accomplish this co-ordina-tion.

School teaching and design compared

On ® rst impression, the ® t between SchoÈ n’s framework for school teachingand teacher training seems forced. Teaching appears to be analysed morefruitfully as an executive or operational, rather than a design, occupation.Teachers, like machinists and builders (but also surgeons and dentists) donot produce designs for others to execute, but rather execute proceduresothers (e.g. curriculum designers, textbook authors, scope and sequencedocument developers, etc.) have designed.5 In what follows I will arguethat this ® rst impression is indeed correct.

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Teaching and performing as three-step processes: As SchoÈ n’s analysis ofmusical performance makes clear, the mere fact that teachers execute thedesigns of others does not imply that teaching is not designlike in therelevant sense. For musical performance is also operative: the musicalperformer executes another professional’ s composition. Yet, as SchoÈ ndemonstrates, that prior design is only one factor in a total situation uponwhich the performer must still impose a new pattern of meaning throughperformance acts. In musical performance there is thus a three-stepsequence:

Model 2: design 1 > (design 2 > execution)

where the performer is responsible for both `design 2’ and execution. So thequestion is whether teaching follows Model 2, that is, whether teachers inpreparing for their lessons are engaged in design as SchoÈ n conceives it.

Musical performance is `designlike’ in his sense, because `design 2’ is anew design speci® c toand adequate for the act of execution. The performerdesigns the speci® c performance in the sense of making a frame experimentthat concludes with a new pattern of musical meaning realized in theperformance. Performance is not merely execution of the design alreadyinherent in the composition. It is not merely an operation (executing thecomposer’s design). Rather it involves the successful search for anddiscovery of a speci® c new musical meaning to be executed in thisperformance.

Teaching is also a three-step sequence. The textbooks, scope andsequence documents, standardized tests and other imposed design factorsin the situation leave it indeterminate. The teacher’s own teaching style(preferred means of co-ordination of teaching methods), the norms pre-vailing in a school district or authority and an individual school, and theteacher’s unique con® guration of students, leave ample room for theapplication of the teacher’s professional knowledge-in-use. But the factthat the total situation is indeterminate does not prove that a new pattern ofmeaning is called for. The machinist and the builder are also contendingwith indeterminate situations. Nonetheless these occupations are not`designlike’. Builders, for example, co-ordinate the factors in the construc-tion situation to realize the architects’ designs, not their own. By contrast,in performance music performers are judged on the basis of the pattern ofmusical meaning they themselves have created; their pro® cient execution ofthe composer’s design is more or less taken for granted.

Design for performance and planning for teaching compared

School teaching, then, is designlike in SchoÈ n’s sense if and only if the`design 2’ activities of teaching constitute frame experiments’ . The clearestcandidate for `design 2’ activities in school teaching are those in lessonplanning. But teaching may be designlike even if lesson planning does notin itself involve frame experimentation. In teaching, by analogy withmusical performance, the `design 2’ frame experiments may also take

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place directly in teaching, whether in virtual or (prior) real-world settings.The music case will help make this clear.

The musician’s preliminary stage of preparing for performance consistsof a ® rst reading of the score, noting all annotations (of ® ngerings, tempi,etc.), and forming an initial idea about the overall musical meaning in thecomposition. With that idea as a starting point, the musician’s next step isworking on the composition in practice sessions and rehearsals. These arevirtual performances, in that they are removed from the context ofperformance as end-activity. (In rehearsals there can be an audience inattendance in the same hall as the performance ± conceptually, even thevery same audience.) In such virtual performances, however, performers donot merely express musical meaning but they also search for it, and formeans adequate to its coherent expression. They put an experimental frameupon the materials, and test for implications and consequences. Thematerials engage in `back talk’, and a pattern of meaning emerges in thedialogue between performer and materials. It is because rehearsals areavailable for virtual performances approximating real-world conditions thatsuch frame experiments are possible. When a coach is added, a practicesession or even a rehearsal may be converted into a lesson. The noviceperformer experiments while the coach listens and engages in reciprocalframe re¯ ection. As the rehearsal is not real performance, it may be stoppedat any time, reshaped, then repeated.

In lesson planning teachers engage in the analogue of a ® rst reading ofthe score. They take note of relevant factors in the teaching situationincluding existing design factors (textbook chapters, scope and sequencedocuments, content standards inherent in mandated achievement tests,etc.), as well as stylistic preferences and student attributes, and settle apreliminary meaning for the lesson. This may provide a starting point, butdoes not appear to be, in itself, frame experimentation. Such experimenta-tion, SchoÈ n notes, requires operational moves and observations of implica-tions and consequences. Preliminary planning without further testing inoperational moves is analogous to Judith imposing a mental meaninginstead of engaging in the operational moves of designing. The wholepoint of the re¯ ective practicum is to provide avirtual space for operationalmoves and re¯ ection-in-action’. This space approximates real-world con-ditions but does not have real-world consequences. The availability of thisspace for practice and rehearsal facilitates `design 2’ in musical perform-ance.

But unlike musical performers, teachers do not have ready access tovirtual performance contexts approximating real classrooms. Essentialelements ± learners ± are missing. The musical performer can practisethe same composition over and over, and even rehearse on the sameinstrument in the same performance hall, even with live audiences. Bycontrast, the teacher cannot prepare for teaching a real lesson merely bypractising or rehearsing the lesson over and over. Even rehearsals ofteaching require students as materials that talk back’. These will beeither ringers’ going through the motions of learning (e.g. peers inmicro-teaching contexts), or genuine students trying to learn. In theformer case they do not approximate the classroom situation, in the latter

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the lessons are not virtual and preparatory, but real lessons. This is whyactual school classrooms remain the typical settings for generating insightsabout teaching. The re¯ ective practicum as SchoÈ n explains it does not ® tthe content and media of teaching.

Design and frame experimentation in lesson preparation

Perhaps the teacher, through imaginative thought experiments, is mentallydesigning lessons (in SchoÈ n’s sense of design)? Perhaps the design activitiesin lesson planning can themselves be conceived as frame experiments’?

The teacher in lesson preparation is organizing didactic, discursive andheuristic activities and co-ordinating them within the time-and-spaceboundaries of the lesson, particularized to speci® c students. The aim isto achieve a balance of educational objectives from the domains of knowl-edge, discursive sophistication and operational skill. But the question iswhether he or she is searching for new meaning.

In didactic activities, the teacher presents information for memorythrough lectures and other media. Like builders, and unlike teachers in agraduate school, teachers are seeking to realize an existing design (e.g. inthe material, in the curriculum, etc.) and not a new design of their own.The point is to convey information pre-selected as school knowledge.6

In discursive activities, the teacher opens and facilitates a discursion, arunning about’ in search of a meaning. A design or pattern emerges out ofthe contributions of the participants. But in an authentic discussion, this isnot modelled on a pre-existing template. Unlike the musical performance,the meaning in the discussion is not the result of prior `design 2’ activitiesin the necessary sense. Discursive activities are, like jam sessions’ in music,spontaneous events in which pattern emerges without prior designs astemplates. The teaching task is to facilitate the give and take of intellectualmoves topromote the emergence of coherent meaning. If a teacher imposesa pre-existing design, it is not facilitation but manipulation.

In heuristic activities the focus is skill development. The skills areselected for their own value to society or tothe learners, or because learningthem provides a fruitful context for incidental didactic or discursivelearning (e.g. the gardening example above). In either case the skills areselected not as vehicles’ for the teacher’s construction of new meaning, butfor the instrumental value they possess as already conceived.

Thus, typical cases of lesson preparation, regardless of teachingmethod, are not searches for new meaning, and thus not frame experi-ments.7

Learning to design and learning to teach

One ® nal observation is that SchoÈ n frequently discusses heuristic teaching.For him teaching in professional education settings is coaching ± facilitat-ing learning-by-doing (as opposed to just memorizing or discussing outside

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an operational context) through a combination of demonstrations andoperational descriptions/explanations.

Oddly but signi® cantly, although SchoÈ n’s master teachers all have hadintense formal study of their professional arts, they have not (formally)studied anything about the art of teaching-coaching. And surprisingly, theydo not appear to design their lessons. Rather, they just plunge in spon-taneously, guided su� ciently by their own professional arts. These para-doxes should alert us that teaching is very di� erent from more paradigmatic`designlike’ professions such as architecture and engineering.

SchoÈ n’s account of the re¯ ective practicum and the tasks of coachinghelps explain the paradoxes. The novice learns the professional art by jointexperimentation with the coach, either modelling his or her moves and self-descriptions after the coach (the follow me’ mode of coaching) or workingtogether with the coach, reworking and correcting the novice’s moves (thejoint experimentation’ mode). In either case the novice learns both how tosolve the substantive problems posed in the professional practice and howto `negotiate the ladder of re¯ ection’ about the practice. He or she learnshow to think and talk about the problems and how to step back from thattalk for meta-consideration about it. Thus he or she learns to handle the® rst two tasks of coaching simply by learning the designlike professionitself. All that remains for teacher training in professional education islearning the third, interpersonal task: managing the strains speci® c to theinitiate± novice relationship.8

N ote s

1. Typical is this statement: `The image of a teacher as a . . . re¯ ective practitioner ± can, likemost enduring ideas in education, be traced to Dewey’ (Copeland et al. 1993: 347).

2. Some scholars have lumped Dewey into the positivist camp because of his allegiance tothe methods of the natural sciences (Zimpher 1986: 57). Others have erroneously lumpedDewey’s ideas together with SchoÈ n’s as o� ering a common front against positivism. Tomy knowledge, the only scholar to identify the use of Dewey as a source of confusionabout SchoÈ n is Tremmel (1993: 439). But he does so not systematically, but merely inpassing, on the way to o� ering a competing `Zen’ interpretation of SchoÈ n.

3. This is the central thesis of Dewey’s experimental logic. As Dewey (1976: 367) puts it,the test of thought is the . . . unity of experience actually a� ected. The test of the validityof thought is beyond thought, just as at the other limit thought originates out of asituation which is not dependent upon thought.’ See also Waks (1998).

4. Educators in technology and design use the concept of `design and build’ to mean bothconceiving or planning a project and also carrying it through, executing it, bringing whatis conceived or dreamed up into reality. The implication of this usage is that designingand building are two di� erent but complementary activities.

5. The name of occupations suggests the relative dominance of conception and execution,but this can be misleading. A surgeon performs surgical operations but may also designthem.

6. Of course a great didactic teacher is akin to a performer, and a lecture like a dramaticmonologue. But whereas the content of a monologue such as those of US entertainerSpaulding Gray serves the purpose of an overall aesthetic unity, the aesthetic unity of thelecture serves primarily to intensity attention and thus facilitate the memory of thecontent. When this priority order is reversed, the teacher is said tono longer be teachingbut (merely) performing.

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7. University teachers sometimes combine their own research with teaching. Theirpreparations for lectures may then be frame-experiments. But they would be searchesfor meaning in their disciplines. School teachers sometimes engage in curriculumconstruction, a paradigm design activity, lying beyond teaching per se. If the conceptionof school teaching is broadened, beyond the de® nition above designlike activities may beincluded. The re¯ ective practicum in SchoÈ n’s sense may then be the preferred site fortraining in these associated tasks.

8. The third task is not learned in the re¯ ective practicum in his profession. SchoÈ n (1987)devotes twochapters to teaching and learning this taskof interpersonal management. Hiscases are psychoanalysts, counsellors and consultants. These professionals `mirror’ thebehaviour of their clients in their own relations with their supervisors in the practica,which thus become `halls of mirrors’ in which they can re¯ ect-in-action’ on the task ofrelationship management. A practicum in coaching becomes akin to a psychotherapeuticsession in teacher self-awareness.

Re fe re n c e s

ADLER, S. (1991) The re¯ ective practitioner and the curriculum of teacher education.Journal of Education for Teaching, 17 (2), 139± 150.

CALDERHEAD, J. (1991) Review of R. T. Clift, W. R. Houston and M.C. Pugach (eds),Encouraging Re¯ ective Practice in Education: An Analysis of Issues and Programs.Journal of Teacher Education, 42 (2), 153± 155.

COPELAND, W. D., BIRMINGHAM, C., DE LA CRUZ, E. and LEWIN, B. (1993) The re¯ ectivepractitioner in teaching: toward a research agenda. Teaching and Teacher Education,9 (4), 347± 359.

DEWEY, J. (1933) How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Re¯ ective Thinking to theEducational Process (Boston, MA: Heath).

DEWEY, J. (1938) Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Holt, Rinehart &Winston).DEWEY, J. (1976[1903]) Studies in logical theory. In J. A. Boydston (ed.), John Dewey: The

Middle Works, 1899± 1924, Vol. 2: 1902± 1903 (Carbondale, IL: Southern IllinoisUniversity Press), 293± 375.

DEWEY, J. (1977 [1904]) The relation of theory to practice in education. In J. A. Boydston(ed.), John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899± 1924, Vol. 3: 1903± 1906 (Carbondale,IL: Southern Illinois University Press), 249± 272.

POLANYI, M. (1966) The Tacit Dimension (Garden City, NY: Doubleday).SCHOÈ N, D. A. (1983) The Re¯ ective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New

York: Basic Books).SCHOÈ N, D. A. (1987) Educating the Re¯ ective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for

Teaching in the Professions (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass).TREMMEL, R. (1993) Zen and the art of re¯ ective practice in teacher education. Harvard

Educational Review, 63 (1), 434± 458.TSANGARIDOU, N. and SEIDENTOP, D. (1995). Re¯ ective teaching: a literature review. Quest,

47 (2), 212± 237.WAKS, L. (1998) Experimentalism and the ¯ ow of experience. Educational Theory, 48 (1),

1± 19.ZEICHNER, K. M. (1990) Educational and social commitments in re¯ ective teacher education

programs. Paper presented at the National Forum of the Association of IndependentLiberal Arts Colleges for Teacher Education, 9± 11 November, Milwaukee, WI(University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI). ERIC ED 344 855.

ZEICHNER, K. M. and LISTON, D. P. (1987) Teaching student teachers to re¯ ect. HarvardEducational Review, 57 (1), 23± 48.

ZIMPHER, N. L. (1986) Review of D. A. SchoÈ n, The Re¯ ective Practitioner: HowProfessionals Think in Action. Journal of Teacher Education, 37 (2), 57± 60.

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