Learning with artifacts

Donald Schön is professor emeritus and senior lecturer at the Department for Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has taken active part in the debate about professional competence and professional education. In his book: The reflective practitioner (Basic Books, 1983) he rejects the idea that professions such as Architecture, Medicine or Law can be seen as applied sciences, and argues in dispute with a.o. Herbert Simon that the professional constructs competent action through engaging in conversation with a problematic situation. He develops his core concepts of knowing-in-action and reflection-in-action further in the book: Educating the reflective practitioner (Josey-Bass Publ., 1987). In this book he delivers a strong argument for, why teaching is basically impossible. He demonstrates through a number of case studies from architectural education how coaching is the only workable approach to professional education, because learning must always stem from the learner’s personal encounter with the problems of the profession. In dealing with the issue of learning with artifacts one of the very interesting things about Donald Schön’s work is that he directly addresses the question of how the individual engage with the physical world around him. I started the interview by asking him if he could think of learning that takes place without engagement with the physical world?