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The author links academic and practical knowledge and sets them onto equal footing. He explains how practitioners know what they know, and he emphasizes the creative processes involved in planning and problem-solving. Schon's work addresses a variety of professions -- engineering, architecture, management, psychotherapy, and town planning -- and distills what they have in common.

Dr. Schon addresses how professionals can better join in a process of learning and decision-making. By seeing life as a process involving both the service provider and the client/customer, the interaction itself provides additional tools and information. Coming out of an industrial engineering perspective, processes of decision-making can be structured to require step-by-step participation in problem definition and solution... Read Full Review

This is a critical book that provides a foundation for most of the other work on organizational learning (such as Senge) and complexity in organizations (Wheatley). As most classics are, this is not the most up-to-date book on reflection and action, and if you are looking for something that will give you a fast pay-off, I suggest looking elsewhere. If, however, you are interested in reading one of the foundational pieces of... Read Full Review

A word of warning. This book is hard to read. Some things are reapeated over and over, while other detailes are never given proper treatment. But - if you don't mind spending some time reading and analyzing the book, there are heaps of golden nuggets to find. Schön illustrates why rational design processes doesn't work in reality (for computer enthusiasts this means an explanation of why the waterfall model will never work... Read Full Review

In this book, Schon gives us a language for understanding professional practice. Because the sum of what a professional knows is greater than the sum of what he is aware he knows -- let alone the totality of what he can articulate -- there is a hidden world of practitioner competence. I found Schon to be a little repetitive and his examples difficult to fully conceptualize. However, his discussion of the Technical... Read Full Review