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Donald A. Schön as a Constructor of Reflective Practice

The idea of reflective thinking was a theory suggested by Dewey; however,

the idea of „reflective practitioner‟ was developed in large part by Donald. A. Schön, who was a student of Dewey, in the 1980s and 1990s. According to Schön (1983), educationalists should engage in the study of their own practice anddevelop their own educational theories deriving from that practice (McNiff& Whitehead, 2002).

With his statement,Schön(1983) demonstrated the inefficiency of teacher education books to improve teaching and foster professional development because educators sometimes come across problems that are not stated in the books and defy existing information on teaching. Therefore, to overcome the difficulties educators come across in their teaching practices, they should definitely take part in reflection to find a solution to the existing problems. To clarify the inefficiency of reflective
practitioners‟ pedagogical knowledge and the need for reflection, Schön (1987) stated that:
because the unique case falls outside the categories of existing theory and technique, the practitioner cannot treat it as an instrumental problem to be solved by applying one of the rules in her store of professional knowledge. The case is not „in the book‟. If she is to deal with it competently, she must

do so by a kind of improvisation, inventing and testing in the situation strategies of her own devising. (Schön, 1987, p.5)

To conclude Schön(1987) sees reflection as rigorously bound to action andpersonal experience. The reflective practitioner has to engage in thinking with the effect of action. In order to take part in this cognitive process of thinking and evaluation of the situation, in 1991, Schön divided reflection into two types and distinguished between “reflection-on-action” and “reflection-in-action” by expanding the theory of reflection stated by Dewey (1933).
Reflection-on-action.Reflection-on-action, as it can be concluded from the name itself, is conducted upon experiencing the action. The practitioner thinks about what the others did and engages in an evaluation to understand whether the activity was successful or not by making judgments on himself or herself. Moreover, the person tries to see if there is any other opportunity or alternative to reach the same or better outcomes of the action (Grayling, 2000). In other words, according to Schön 1983 “We reflect on action, thinking back on what we have done in order to discover how our knowing-in-action may have contributed to an unexpected outcome” (p. 26). As it can be concluded from Schön‟s statement, via reflection on action, the reflective practitioner can also evaluate the simultaneous decisions conducted at the time of the action. Therefore, by analyzing past, not only experiences but also active thinking processes in actions help reflective practitioners enhance their teaching practices.