The Reflective Practitioner: A Case Study

Presents the author′s academic experiences at the Bachelor′s and Master′s Degree levels (in Business Studies and Organizational Analysis and Development, respectively) and reflects upon the effect of those experiences on subsequent professional practice within the framework of Kolb′s Learning Cycle (1984) and Schon′s notion of the reflective practitioner (1983). The author′s principal learning is that process skills tended to be more enduring than mere content knowledge but that the important determinant of effectiveness of process skills is the ature of the paradigm from which they were derived. Quantitative skills based on a deterministic view of the world proved to be not used in professional practice, whereas organizational diagnostic skills, predicated as a belief that human nature and organizations are probabilistic, indeterminant worlds of multiple, interacting variables, proved much more useful and enduring. Rather than an expert relationship with a client, a collaborative partnership approach, now referred to as “Emancipatory Action Research”, was seen as more appropriate and useful over the years.