Professional Practice and Higher Education

In a wonderful article from 1995 "Knowing-in-Action: The New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology" Donald A. Schön discusses what he saw as one of the more serious problems with higher education. I think it is fair to say that the problems he saw around 25 years ago are still here today, maybe even more severe.

Schön uses a wonderful article by Edward Shils (reference below) to set the stage. Shils describes how the idea of a research university came to the USA. Today it may be difficult to understand the transformation of higher education that took place in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The idea that research and science would be the dominant foundation for higher education spread during this time and soon became the new normal.

As Schön argues, this shift created serious problems for professional practice. He writes "Most of the knowledge essential to professional practice is not what the research university calls fundamental knowledge, and practitioners are not. as a rule, either scientists or scholars."

So Schön makes a strong argument for a new form of scholarship, based on a new epistemology suited for supporting professional practice. Some of what he is arguing has been adopted in certain areas of higher education but most of it has not.

This is a great read for anyone who believes there is a gap between research and practice, or who wants to develop knowledge in support of professional practice, or is involved in teaching professionals.

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Schön, D. A. (1995). Knowing-in-action: The new scholarship requires a new epistemology. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 27(6), 27-34.

Shils, E. (1978). The order of learning in the United States from 1865 to 1920: The ascendancy of the universities. Minerva, 16(2), 159-195.