In his book, Schon looks deeply at several examples of expert practitioners helping more junior counterparts work through a problem. He does this to gain insight into how the experts think about fuzzy problems (i.e., an expert architect working with a student on a building design problem).
What he ends up with is “reflection-in-action,” which he defines as a structured process of “reflective conversation with a unique and uncertain situation.” Experts use their repertoire of experience and knowledge to reframe the problem into one which they believe they can solve, then test the consequences and implications of this reframing. This yields new problems, discoveries and opportunities — leading to additional reflection-in-action. Schon pictures experts literally conversing with the problem in this interative fashion.
In summary, experts are really good at reframing problems into something they can solve. But the process with fuzzy problems is not a reframing that yields “this is x, therefore y” but “this looks like x; let’s compare the two and see what happens.” The result is experimentation and new insights which lead to a solution through many interations.
How do experts get that way? Actual experience is critical (an expert’s “repertoire” only evolves from actually doing). But Schon’s examples of expert practitioners working with their junior counterparts also sheds light on the importance of an apprentice-like social interaction. By jointly working on fuzzy problems with experts, the junior practitiioners get in-the-moment insight into the expert’s reframing process and begin to construct their own unique version of this critical cognitive activity.
