Brookfield, S. D. "Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking and Acting" San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987. What It Means to Think Critically The need to develop critical thinkers is currently something of a cause cJ lP bre. The New York Times reports that ''the public schools have discovered the importance of critical thinking, and many of them are trying to teach children how to do it'' (Hechinger, 1987, p. 27). Educational journals regularly advertise conferences on critical thinking, and three recent major reports on American education, Involvement in Learning (National Institute of Education, 1984), A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), and Higher Education and the American Resurgence (Newman, 1985), all call for the development of critical thinkers as a national priority for both civic and economic reasons. Civically, a critically informed populace is seen as more likely to participate in forms of democratic political activity. Economically, a critically active and creative work force is seen as the key to American economic resurgence in the face of crippling foreign trade competition. Johnston (1986, p. 4) observes that "it is generally agreed that nothing is more important to the nation's ability to meet the competitive challenge of the future than what Samuel Ehrenhalt (1983, p. 43) of the Department of' Labor has termed a 'flexible, adaptable labor force.' That the message contained in these reports is having some practical effect is evident from case studies of education for critical thinking (Young, 1980; Gamson and Associates, 1984; Stice, 1987), from special issues being devoted to this topic in such journals as Phi Delia Kappan and National Forum in 1985, from a flow of grant monies for projects to research applications of critical thinking, and from a recent upsurge in conferences on critical thinking. There have been attempts to propose a new concept described as critical literacy (Kretovics, 1985) and to outline the foundations of a critical pedagogy (Greene, 1986; Livingstone, 1987) that would foster this capacity. As Sternberg (1985, p. 194) observes, "It would be difficult to read anything at all in the contemporary literature of education without becoming aware of this new interest in teaching critical thinking." 1 But critical thinking is an activity that can be observed in settings and domains very far removed from the school or college classroom. Indeed, there is no clear evidence that any of the skills of critical thinking learned in schools and colleges have much transferability to the contexts of adult life. Sternberg (1985) points out the lack of correspondence between what is required for critical thinking in adulthood and what is taught in school programs intended to develop critical thinking. He writes that "the problems of thinking in the real world do not correspond well with the problems of the large majority of programs that teach critical thinking. We are preparing students to deal with problems that are in many respects unlike those that they will face as adults" (p. 194). In adulthood, we are thinking critically whenever we question why we, or our partners, behave in certain ways within relationships. Critical thinking is evident whenever employees question the appropriateness of a certain technique, mode of production, or organizational form. Managers who are ready to jettison outmoded organizational norms or unwieldy organizational hierarchies, and who are prepared to open up organizational lines of communication in order to democratize the workplace and introduce participatory forms of management, are critical thinkers. Citizens who ask "awkward" questions regarding the activities of local, regional, and national government offices, who call for political leaders to account for their actions, and who are ready to challenge the legitimacy of existing policies and political structures are critical thinkers. Television viewers who are skeptical of the accuracy of media depictions of what are portrayed as "typical" families, or of the neutrality and objectivity of television's reporting of political events, are critical thinkers. Recognizing Critical Thinking What characteristics do we look for in critical thinkers? How can we recognize when critical thinking is happening? What are the chief capacities we are trying to encourage when we help people to become critical thinkers? What activities and processes are taking place when people are thinking critically? These questions, and others, are addressed in nine critical thinking "themes." 2 1. Critical thinking is a productive and positive activity. Critical thinkers are actively engaged with life. They see themselves as creating and re-creating aspects of their personal, workplace, and political lives. They appreciate creativity, they are innovators, and they exude a sense that life is full of possibilities. Critical thinkers see the future as open and malleable, not as closed and fixed. They are self-confident about their potential for changing aspects of their worlds, both as individuals and through collective action. Critical thinkers are sometimes portrayed as cynical people who often condemn the efforts of others without contributing anything themselves. Those who hold this view see being critical as somehow antisocial; it is seen as a belittling activity engaged in only by those with false assumptions of superiority. In fact, the opposite is true. When we think critically we become aware of the diversity of values, behaviors, social structures, and artistic forms in the world. Through realizing this diversity, our commitments to our own values, actions, and social structures are informed by a sense of humility; we gain an awareness that others in the world have the same sense of certainty we dobut about ideas, value and actions that are completely contrary to our own. 2. Critical thinking is a process, not an outcome. Being critical thinkers entails a continual questioning of assumptions. People can never be in a state of complete critical development. If we ever felt that we had reached a state of fully developed or realized critical awareness, we would be contradicting one of the central tenets of critical thinking---namely, that we are skeptical of any claims to universal truth or total certainty. By its nature, critical thinking can never be finished in some final, static manner. 3. Manifestations of critical thinking vary according to the contexts in which it occurs. The indicators that reveal whether or not people are thinking critically vary enormously. For some people, the process appears to be almost wholly internal; very few external features of their lives appear to change. With these individuals, we can look for evidence of the critical process in their writing or talking. With others, critical thinking will manifest itself directly and vividly in their external actions. People who renegotiate aspects of their intimate relationships, managers who deliberately depart from their habitual ways of coming to decisions or solving problems, 3 workers who reshape their workplace according to nonhierarchical organizational norms after establishing a worker cooperative, or citizens campaigning for a nuclear freeze after observing the effects of a radiation leak in their community are all examples of how critical thinking can prompt dramatic action. 4. Critical thinking is triggered by positive as well as negative events. A theme common to many discussions of critical thinking is that this activity usually results from people having experienced traumas or tragedies in their lives. These events, so the argument goes, cause people to question their previously trusted assumptions about how the world works; and this questioning prompts a careful scrutiny of what were previously unquestioned ways of thinking and living. This often happens. It is also true, however, that critical thinking is triggered by a joyful, pleasing, or fulfilling event - a "peak" experience such as falling in love, being unexpectedly successful in some new workplace role, or finding that others place great store by abilities or accomplishments that we exhibit almost without being aware of them. In such circumstances we begin to reinterpret our past actions and ideas from a new vantage point. We begin to wonder if our old assumptions about our roles, personalities, and abilities were completely accurate. We begin to be aware of and to explore new possibilities with our intimates, at our workplace, and in our political involvements. 5. Critical thinking is emotive as well as rational. Critical thinking is sometimes regarded as a kind of pure, ascetic cognitive activity above and beyond the realm of feeling and emotions. In fact, emotions are central to the critical thinking process. As we try to think critically and help others to do so, we cannot help but become aware of the importance of emotions to this activity. Asking critical questions about our previously accepted values, ideas, and behaviors is anxiety-producing. We may well feel fearful of the consequences that might arise from contemplating alternatives to our current ways of thinking and living; resistance, resentment, and confusion are evident at various stages in the critical thinking process. But we also feel joy, release, relief, and exhilaration as we break through to new ways of looking at our personal, work, and political worlds. As we abandon assumptions that had been inhibiting our development, we experience a sense of liberation. As we realize that 4 we have the power to change aspects of our lives, we are charged with excitement. As we realize these changes, we feel a pleasing sense of self-confidence. Critical thinkers and helpers ignore these emotions at their peril. Components of Critical Thinking 1. Identifying and challenging assumptions is central to critical thinking. Trying to identify the assumptions that underlie the ideas, beliefs, values, and actions that we (and others) take for granted is central to critical thinking. Once these assumptions are identified critical thinkers examine their accuracy and validity. They ask awkward questions concerning whether the taken-for-granted, common-sense ideas about how we are supposed to organize our workplaces, act in our intimate relationships, become politically involved, and view television fit the realities of our lives. They are open to jettisoning old assumptions when these are clearly inappropriate (for example, "Workers are there to work, not to think"; "Decisions made by executive directors, parents, and presidents are infallible and inviolable"; "Women should be kept barefoot and pregnant") and to search for new assumptions that fit more closely their experiences of the world. 2. Challenging the importance of context is crucial to critical thinking. When we are aware of how hidden and uncritically assimilated assumptions are important to shaping our habitual perceptions, understandings, and interpretations of the world, and to influencing the behaviors that result from these interpretations, we become aware of how context influences thoughts and actions. Critical thinkers are aware that practices, structures, and actions are never context-free. What we regard as appropriate ways of organizing the workplace, of behaving toward our intimates, of acting politically, and of viewing television reflect the culture and time in which we live. In realizing this, critical thinkers are contextually aware. 5 3. Critical thinkers try to imagine and explore alternatives. Central to critical thinking is the capacity to imagine and explore alternatives to existing ways of thinking and living. Realizing that so many ideas and actions spring from assumptions that might be inappropriate for their lives, critical thinkers are continually exploring new ways of thinking about aspects of their lives. Being aware of how context shapes what they consider normal and natural ways of thinking and living, critical thinkers realize that in other contexts entirely different norms of organizing the workplace, behaving politically, interpreting media, and living in relationships are considered ordinary. These contexts are scrutinized for assumptions that might be adopted and integrated into their own lives 4. Imagining and exploring alternatives leads to reflective skepticism. When we realize that alternatives to supposedly fixed belief systems, habitual behaviors, and entrenched social structures always exist, we become skeptical of claims to universal truth or to ultimate explanations. In short, we exhibit what might be called reflective skepticism. People who are reflectively skeptical do not take things as read. Simply because a practice or structure has existed for a long time does not mean that it is the most appropriate for all time, or even for this moment. Just because an idea is accepted by everyone else does not mean that we have to believe in its innate truth without first checking its correspondence with reality as we experience it. Just because a chief executive officer, executive director, prime minister, president, religious leader, or parent says something is right or good does not make it so. Critical thinkers become immediately suspicious of those who say they have the answers to all of life's problems. They are wary of the management consultant who argues that "if only you will buy my training package and follow these steps to executive development, your executives will double the company's output in the next fiscal quarter." They distrust the educator who purports to have a curriculum or model of teaching appropriate for all learners or subjects. They scrutinize carefully the therapist or counselor who argues that he or she has discovered the key to resolving difficulties within intimate relationships. 6 How Others Contribute to Critical Thinking On a very personal level, practically all adults function in some way as critical thinkers. At some time or another, most people decide that some aspect of their lives is unsatisfactory, and decide of their own volition to change this. Such self changes are often (though not always) connected to externally imposed crises. Being fired or suffering crippling mental or physical disability is not something we choose to happen. When an intimate relationship dissolves, or a loved one dies, several reactions are possible. We may be thrown into an apathetic resignation to these changed circumstances, or we may deny this disappearance of a previously stable element in our life. We may well fluctuate between periods of acceptance of, and flight from, these changes. Energy alternates with apathy as we first scramble to deny or forget the changes forced upon us, and then become aware of their overwhelming reality. The rollercoaster turbulence of these changes is tiring and debilitating, and we describe ourselves as exhausted, burned out, or finished. As people try to make sense of these externally imposed changes, they are frequently at teachable moments as far as the process of becoming critical thinkers is concerned. As people begin to look critically at their past values, common-sense ideas, and habitual behaviors, they begin the precarious business of contemplating new self perspectives, and actions. Skilled helpers can support these first tentative stages in critical thought by listening empathetically to people's "travelers' tales" of their journeys into unexplored personal and political territories. Helpers act as sounding boards, providing reactions to people's experiences, pleasures, and anxieties. They help to make connections between apparently disparate occurrences and assist people in reflecting on the reasons for their actions and reactions. They encourage people to identify the assumptions under lying their behaviors, choices, and decisions. They help clients, learners, friends, and colleagues to recognize aspects of their situations that are of their own making and hence open to being changed by an act of will. They encourage skepticism of anyone claiming to have "the answer." They help people to realize that while actions are shaped by context, context can be altered to be more congruent with people's desires. When helpers and educators work in these ways, they are encouraging critical thinking. Critical thinking is complex and frequently perplexing, since it requires the suspension of belief and the jettisoning of assumptions previously accepted without question. As people strive for clarity in 7 self-understanding, and as they try to change aspects of' their lives, the opportunity to discuss these activities is enormously helpful. By providing an opportunity for reflection and analysis, educators and other helpers, such as counselors, therapists, trainers, and friends, are crucial. They are sympathizers, empathizers, reactors, devil's advocates, initiators, and prompters. They help people to articulate and understand the assumptions underlying their actions. In short, they assist people to become critical thinkers. Concepts of Critical Thinking Phrases such as critical thinking, critical ana1ysis, critical awareness, critical consciousness, and critical rejection are exhortatory, heady, and often conveniently vague. We can justify almost any action with a learner, client, friend, or colleague by claiming that it assists the process of critical thinking. Haranguing a friend who feels satisfied with life, forcing a learner to view things the way we do, and requiring that lovers re-evaluate their relationship or that colleagues change their work patterns may all be claimed (inaccurately) as examples of facilitating critical thinking. Central to developing critical thinkers must be some minimal level of consent on the part of those involved. Trying to force people to analyze critically the assumptions under which they have been thinking and living is likely to serve no function other than intimidating them to the point where resistance builds up against this process. We can, however, try to awaken, prompt, nurture, and encourage this process without making people feel threatened or patronized. These are the skills of critical helpers. As a concept, critical thinking has been interpreted in a variety of ways. It has been equated with the development of logical reasoning abilities (Hallet, 1984; Ruggiero, 1975), with the application of reflective judgment (Kitchener, 1986), with assumption hunting (Scriven, 1976), and with the creation, use, and testing of meaning (Hullfish and Smith, 1961). Ennis (1962) lists twelve aspects of critical thinking, which include analytical and argumentative capacities such as recognizing ambiguity in reasoning, identifying contradictions in arguments, and ascertaining the empirical soundness of generalized conclusions. D'Angelo (1971) specifies ten attitudes that are necessary conditions for being critical, including curiosity, flexibility, skepticism, and honesty. 8 As the central component of critical thinking, O'Neill (2985) proposes the ability to distinguish bias from reason and fact from opinion. To Halpern (1984), critical thought is a rational and purposeful attempt to use thought in moving toward a future goal. Critical thinking is generally conceptualized as an intellectual ability suitable for development by those involved in higher education (Drake, 1976; Young, 1980; Meyers, 1986; Stice, 1987). Empirical studies of the development of critical thinking capacities focus on young adults (Kitchener, 1986; King, Kitchener, and Wood, 1985) or college students (Perry, 1970, 1981). While this setting for critical thinking is undoubtedly crucial, it is but one of the many settings in which critical thinking is practiced, particularly in adult life. The concepts of critical thinking, analysis, and reflection need to be taken out of the classroom and placed firmly in the contexts of adults' livesin their relationships, at their workplaces, in their political involvements, and in their reactions to mass media of communication. Critical thinking is not seen as a wholly rational, mechanical activity. Emotive aspectsfeelings, emotional responses, intuitions, sensingare central to critical thinking in adult life. In particular, the ability to imagine alternatives to one's current ways of thinking and living is one that often entails a deliberate break with rational modes of thought in order to prompt forward leaps in creativity. One alternative interpretation of the concept of critical thinking is that of emancipatory learning. The idea of emancipatory learning is derived from the work of Habermas (1979), who distinguished this as one of the three domains of learning (technical and communicative learning being the other two). As interpreted by adult educators (Collins, 1985; Hart, 1985; Apps, 1985), emancipatory learning is evident in learners becoming aware of the forces that have brought them to their current situations and taking action to change some aspect of these situations. To Apps (1985, P. 151), "emancipatory learning is that which frees people from personal, institutional, or environmental forces that prevent them from seeing new directions, from gaining control of their lives, their society and their world.'' A second concept closely related to that of critical thinking is dialectical thinking. Dialectical thinking is viewed as a particular form of critical thinking that focuses on the understanding and resolution of contradictions. Morgan (1986, p. 266) writes that "dialectical analysis (thus) shows us that the management of organization, of society, and of personal life ultimately involves the 9 management of contradiction." As proposed by Riegel (1973) and Basseches (1984), dialectical thinking is thinking in which elements of relativistic thought (for example, "Morality can be understood only in the context of the culture concerned") are fused with elements of universalistic thought (for example, "Moral conduct is recognizable in any society by certain innate features"). Dialectical thinkers engage in a continual process of making judgments about aspects of their lives, identifying the general rules implicit in these judgments, modifying the original judgments in light of the appropriateness of these general rules, and so on. To Deshler (1985, p. 6), "dialectical thinking is thinking which looks for, recognizes, and welcomes contradictions as a stimulus to development." Change is regarded as the fundamental reality, forms and structures are perceived as temporary, relationships are held to involve developmental transformations, and openness is welcomed. Hence, we are involved in a constant process of trying to create order in the worldto discover what elements are missing from our existing ordering and to create new orderings that include these. Daloz (1986, p. 141) echoes this idea in his belief that dialectical thinking "presumes change rather than a static notion of 'reality.' As each assertion is derived from the one before, truth is always emergent, never fixed; relative, not absolute." Being a critical thinker involves more than cognitive activities such as logical reasoning or scrutinizing arguments for assertions unsupported by empirical evidence. Thinking critically involves our recognizing the assumptions underlying our beliefs and behaviors. It means we can give justifications for our ideas and actions. Most important, perhaps, it means we try to judge the rationality of these justifications. We can do this by comparing them to a range of varying interpretations and perspectives. We can think through, project, and anticipate the consequences of those actions that are based on these justifications. And we can test the accuracy and rationality of these justifications against some kind of objective analysis of the "real" world as we understand it. Critical thinking, then, involves a reflective dimension. The idea of reflective learning is a third concept closely related to that of critical thinking. Boyd and Fales (1983, P. 100) define reflective learning as "the process of internally examining and exploring an issue of concern, triggered by an experience, which creates and clarifies meaning in terms of self, and which results in a changed conceptual perspective." Boud, Keogh, and Walker (1985, p. 3) view 10 reflection as "a generic term for those intellectual and affective activities in which individuals engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to new understandings and appreciation." To Schlossberg (1981, p. 5), the outcome of these activities is "a change in assumptions about oneself and the world" requiring "a corresponding change in one's behavior and relationships." Conclusion Critical thinking is a lived activity, not an abstract academic pastime. It is something we all do, though its frequency, and the credibility we grant it, vary from person to person. Our lives are sufficiently complex and perplexing that it would be difficult to escape entirely from feeling that at times the world is not working the way we thought it was supposed to, or that there must be other ways of living. Critical thinking is at the heart of what it means to be a developed person living in a democratic society. The ability to think critically is crucial to understanding our personal relationships, envisioning alternative and more productive ways of organizing the workplace, and becoming politically literate. 11 Schon's Process of Reflection-in-Action Schon, D.A. "Knowing-in-action: The new scholarship requires a new epistemology," 1995, Change, November/December, 27-34. The following are excerpts from two sections of Donald Schon's article: "Institutional Epistemology" and "Turning the Problem on its Head." INSTITUTIONAL EPISTEMOLOGY Like other organizations, educational institutions have epistemologies. They hold conceptions of what counts as legitimate knowledge and how you know what you claim to know. These theories of knowledge need not be consciously espoused by individuals (although they may be), for they are built into institutional structures and practices. ....The research university is an institution built around a particular view of knowledge, as the following dilemma helps to make clear: The dilemma of rigor or relevance. In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground overlooking a swamp. On the high ground, manageable problems lend themselves to solution through the use of research-based theory and technique. In the swampy lowlands, problems are messy and confusing and incapable of technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or society at large, however great their technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern. The practitioner is confronted with a choice. Shall he remain on the high ground where he can solve relatively unimportant problems according to his standards of rigor, or shall he descend to the swamp of important problems where he cannot be rigorous in any way he knows how to describe. Nearly all professional practitioners experience a version of the dilemma of rigor or relevance, and they respond to it in one of several ways. Some of them choose the swampy lowland, 1 deliberately immersing themselves in confusing but critically important situations. When they are asked to describe their methods of inquiry, they speak of experience, trial and error, intuition, or muddling through. When teachers, social workers, or planners operate in this vein, they tend to be afflicted with a nagging sense of inferiority in relation to those who present themselves as models of technical rigor. When physicists or engineers do so, they tend to be troubled by the discrepency between the technical rigor of the "hard" zones of their practice and the apparent sloppiness of the "soft" ones. People tend to feel the dilemma of rigor or relevance with particular intensity when they reach the age of about 45. At this point, they ask themselves, "Am I going to continue to do the thing I was trained for, on which I base my claims to technical rigor and academic respectibility? Or am I going to work on the problems -- ill formed, vague, and messy -- that I have discovered to be real around here?" And depending on how people make this choice, their lives unfold differently. What are the sources of the dilemma of rigor or relevance? The dilemma depends, I believe, upon a particular epistemology built into the modern research university, and, along with this, on our discovery of the increasing salience of certain "indeterminate zones" of practice -- uncertainty, complexity, uniqueness conflict -- which fall outside the categories of that epistemology. ....As the professions came to place their educational branches in the prestigious research universities they looked at professional practice as though it consisted of the application of science or systematic knowledge to the instrumental problems of practice. The conception of professional knowledge the professions thereby accepted, which I call "technical rationality," is that practice is instrumental, consisting in adjusting technical means to ends that are clear, fixed, and internally consistent, and that instrumental practice becomes professional when it is based on the science or systematic knowledge produced by schools of higher learning. ....Technical rationality fostered a separation between research and practice. Research of the kind that was viewed as proper to the "higher schools" -- rigorously controlled experimentation, statistical analysis of observed correlations of variables, or disinterested theoretical speculation -2 finds little place to stand in the turbulent world of practice, which is notoriously uncontrolled, where problems are usually ill-formed, and where actors in the practice situation are undeniably "interested." The consequence, stronger today than ever, was that the research produced by the "higher schools" seemed to have little to say that was of value to practitioners. TURNING THE PROBLEM ON ITS HEAD The relationship between "higher" and "lower" schools, academic and practice knowledge, needs to be turned on its head. We should think about practice as a setting not only for the application of knowledge but for its generation. We should ask not only how practitioners can better apply the results of academic research, but what kinds of knowing are already embedded in competent practice. Perhaps there is an epistemology of practice that takes fuller account of the competence practitioners sometimes display in situations of uncertainty, complexity, uniqueness, and conflict. Perhaps there is a way of looking at problem-setting and intuitive artistry that presents these activities as describable and susceptible to a kind of rigor that falls outside the boundaries of technical rationality. Knowing-in-action. When we go about the spontaneous, intuitive performance of the actions of everyday life, we show ourselves to be knowledgeable in a special way. Often we cannot say what we know. When we try to describe it we find ourselves at a loss, or we produce descriptions that are obviously inappropriate. Our knowing is ordinarily tacit, implicit in our patterns of action and in our feel for the stuff with which we are dealing. It seems right to say that our knowledge is in our action. And similarly, the workaday life of the professional practitioner reveals, in its recognitions, judgments, and skills, a pattern of tacit knowing-in-action. Common sense admits the category of know-how, and it does not stretch common sense very much to say that the know-how is in the action - that a tightrope walker's know-how, for example, lies in, and is revealed by, the way she takes her trip across the wire. Or that a big league pitcher's know-how is in his way of pitching to a batter's weakness, changing his pace, or distributing his energies over the course of a game. 3 Examples of intelligence-in-action include not only the exercise of physical skills but acts of recognition and judgement. Michael Polanyi, for example, has written about our ability to recognize a face in the crowd. The experience of recognition can be immediate and holistic. We simply see, all of a sudden, the face of someone we know. We are aware of no antecedent reasoning and we are often unable to list the features that distinguish this face from the hundreds of others present in the crowd. Polanyi has also described our ordinary tactile appreciation of the surface of materials. When we use a stick to probe a hidden place, we focus not on the impressions of the stick on our hand but on the qualities of the place that we apprehend through these tacit impressions. Polanyi speaks of perceiving from these impressions to the qualities of the place. To become skillful in the use of a tool is to learn to appreciate, as if it were directly, the qualities of the material that we apprehend through the tacit sensations of the tool in our hand. Chester Barnard has written on "non-logical" processes that we cannot express in words as a process of reasoning, but evince only by a judgment, decision, or action. A child who has learned to throw a ball makes immediate judgments of distance that he coordinates, tacitly, with the feeling of bodily movement involved in the act of throwing. A high school student solving quadratic equations has learned spontaneously to carry out a program of operations that she cannot describe. A practiced accountant of Barnard's acquaintance could take a balance sheet of considerable complexity and within minutes or even seconds get a significant set of facts from it, though he could not describe in words the recognitions and calculations that entered into this performance. All of these are examples of what Polanyi calls "tacit knowing" and what I would like to describe as "knowing-in-action." I submit that such knowing-in-action makes up the great bulk of what we know how to do in everyday and in professional life. It is what gets us through the day. If a skilled performer tries to teach (and therefore, in part, describe) her knowing-in-action to someone else, she must first discover what she actually does when confronted with a situation of a particular kind. So a piano teacher might say, for example, "I don't like the way you play this transitional passage. Let me play it so that I can see what I do." She must observe what she does before she can describe it. And there is no guarantee, even then, that she will be able to describe it accurately. Similarly, a calculus teacher might have to "see what he does" he is asked to say 4 how he sets up a problem of differentiation or integration. Often, we misstate what we know how to do. Indeed, when we ask people to describe what they know how to do, we are likely to get an answer that mainly reveals what they know about answering such a question. If we want to discover what someone knows-in-action, we must put ourselves in a position to observe her in action. If we want to teach about our "doing," then we need to observe ourselves in the doing, reflect on what we observe, describe it, and reflect on our description. In many instances, of course, this is not what we do. And failing this, we teach in bad faith, which is to say that what we teach is not what we know-in-action. I think this is also true of teaching in the sciences, for they also involve a practice - the practice of doing scientific research - and such a practice includes its own forms of knowing-in-action. But if we ask physicists or mathematicians, "Do you teach what you do?" they may very well reply, "Of course not! How could you expect that? We teach research results." Yet there is a great deal of critically important knowing-in-action that is not captured in research results as they are usually formulated in textbooks or published papers. Reflection-in-action. We all have, in greater or lesser degree, the capability of reflecting on what we know as revealed by what we do. And we also have the ability to reflect-in-action to generate new knowing, as when a jazz band improvises within a framework of meter, melody, and harmony: the pianist laying down "Sweet Sue" in a particular way, and the clarinetist listening to it and picking it up differently because of what the pianist is doing - and nobody using words. The process of reflection-in-action begins when a spontaneous performance - such as riding a bicycle, playing a piece of music, interviewing a patient, or teaching a lesson - is interrupted by surprise. Surprise triggers reflection directed both to the surprising outcome and to the knowingin-action that led to it. It is as though the performer asked himself, "What is this?" and at the same time "What understandings and strategies of mine have led me to produce this?" The performer restructures his understanding of the situation - his framing of the problem he has been trying to solve, his picture of what is going on, or the strategy of action he has been employing. On the basis of this restructuring, he invents a new strategy of action and tries out the new action he has invented, running an on-the-spot experiment whose results he interprets, in turn, as a "solution," an outcome on the whole satisfactory, or else a new surprise that calls for a 5 new round of reflection and experiment. This is the sort of thing a physician may do when encountering a patient whose particular configuration of symptoms is "not in the book." It is what a good teacher does as she tries to make sense of a pupil's puzzling question, seeking to discover, in the midst of classroom discussion, just how the pupil understands the problem at hand. In the course of such a process, the performer "reflects" not only in the sense of thinking about the action he has undertaken and the result he has achieved, but in the more precise sense of turning thought back on the knowing-in-action implicit in action. The actor reflects "in action" in the sense that his thinking occurs in an action-present - a stretch of time within which it is still possible to make a difference to the outcomes of action. Reflecting on Reflection-in-action. Yet we also have the ability to reflect on such a process, reflecting on reflection-in-action. This may sound fancy, but it is illustrated by the relatively mundane experience of a basketball player who spends Sunday morning looking at a videotape of Saturday's game, asking himself, for example, "How was I trying to get past that guard? Why didn't it work? What moves should I try next time?" Reflection-in-action occurs in the medium of words. It makes explicit the action strategies, assumptions, models of the world, or problemsettings that were implicit in reflection-in-action. It subjects them to critical analysis and perhaps also to restructuring and to further on-the-spot experiment. A practitioner such as a lawyer, a teacher, or a machinist may reflect in this way on a particular episode of reflection-in-action or on a sequence of such episodes, thereby making explicit and subjecting to critique and testing the strategies, assumptions, or problem settings implicit in a whole repertoire of situational responses. Deweyan inquiry and action research. In the domain of practice, we see what John Dewey called inquiry: thought intertwined with action - reflection in and on action - which proceeds from doubt to the resolution of doubt, to generation of new doubt. For Dewey, doubt lies not in the mind but in the situation. Inquiry begins with situations that are problematic - that are confusing, uncertain, or conflicted, and block the free flow of action. The inquirer is in, and in transaction with, the problematic situation. He or she must construct the meaning and frame the problem of the situation, thereby setting the stage for problem-solving, which, in combination with changes in the external context, brings a new problematic situation into being. Hence the proper test of a 6 round of inquiry is not only "Have I solved the problem?" but "Do I like the new problems I've created?" Deweyan inquiry is very close to the notion of designing in the broad sense of that term - not the activities of "design professions" such as architecture, landscape architecture, or industrial design, but the more inclusive process of making things (including representations of things to be built) under conditions of complexity and uncertainty. This broader sense of designing includes a lawyer's design of a case or legal argument, a physician's construction of a diagnosis and a course of treatment, an information technologist's design of a management information system, and a teacher's construction of a lesson plan. Design inquiry consists not only in creating plans but in enacting them. It is undertaken in particular situations of practice. When it is effective, it deploys knowing-in-action already accessible to the practitioner, and it may also generate and test new knowledge for action - for example, a view of what may be wrong with a patient (conceived, as the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson once wrote, as a "universe of one"), or of what potentials and constraints are inherent in a particular architectural site, or of how a particular set of mathematical concepts and procedures might be explored and communicated through a new lesson plan. Such practice knowledge - generated in, for, and through a particular situation of action - may be made explicit and put into a form that allows it to be generalized. The kind of generalization I have in mind is not the "covering law" variety - a general, perhaps statistical, proposition applicable to all instances in which certain combinations of variables are present. It consists, rather, in framing the problem of a problematic situation, and strategies of action appropriate to its solution, in such a way that both the problem and the action strategies can be carried over to new situations perceived as being similar to the first. In the new situations, one must still test the validity, actionability, and "interest" (the term so beloved of academicians) of the practice knowledge derived from the initial situation. Through these processes of reflection-in-action and reflection on reflection-in-action, the newly generated practice knowledge may be modified and incorporated into the practitioner's repertoire so as to be available for projection to further situations. 7 This is very much what Kurt Lewin, the renowned social psychologist and "practical theorist," meant by action research. During and after World War II, Lewin dealt with such mundane problems as how to get children to drink orange juice and eat liver. But through such practical inquiry, he developed the idea of the role of the "gatekeeper" in gaining acceptance for new ways of thinking and acting, and the notion of fields of social forces and quasi-stationary equilibria within them, which have long since entered into our common stock of ideas in good currency about the operation of the social world. In Lewin's work, we find the idea that a practitioner's reflection on knowing- and reflection-inaction give rise to actionable theory. Such verbally explicit theory, derived from and invented in particular situations of practice, can be generalized to other situations, not as covering laws but through what I call "reflective transfer," that is, by carrying them over into new situations where they may be put to work and tested, and found to be valid and interesting, but where they may also be reinvented. 8