Encouraging the Reflective Practitioner

I was the founding Dean of the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts at Boston in the early 70's. I hired a lot of practitioners for this entirely competency based college. I wanted them to continue to be practitioners, not academicians. But the academy wants to judge faculty only as academics. Donald Schön, a renowned architect who had been recruited to teach at MIT, dealt directly with the problems practitioners face in an academic community in his wonderful book The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. (Basic Books, 1983). He also wrote Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions (1987).

What started as an interest in how to provide practitioners tools to defend their practical skills from academics turned into a conviction that all of us must be reflective practitioners of our professions. As a teacher, I must constantly reflect on my practice. That is what I am attempting to do through this blog. I require a Professional Blog from all of my students. I hope that they will use it as a public diary of their practice as professionals, sharing their reflections as they journey through the profession of teaching.