Kinsella Phronesis as Professional Knowledge

Phronesis as Professional Knowledge: Practical Wisdom in the Professions

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND EDUCATION: A Diversity of Voices Volume 1

Series Editor Allan Pitman University of Western Ontario Professional Practice and Education aims to provide a forum for perspectives of our understanding of the nature of professional practice and the consequences flowing for education in the professions. It is the intention of the Editor that a platform will be provided for contributors from diverse cultural backgrounds, so that, on a global level, the nature of professions and their cultural/historical positioning might be problematised and re-examined.

PHRONESIS AS PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE: PRACTICAL WISDOM IN THE PROFESSIONS

Edited by

Elizabeth Anne Kinsella

Allan Pitman

The University of Western Ontario

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6091-729-5 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-730-1 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-731-8 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands https://www.sensepublishers.com/

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2012 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vii

1. Engaging phronesis in professional practice and education 1 Elizabeth Anne Kinsella and Allan Pitman

2. Practical rationality and a recovery of Aristotle’s ‘phronesis’ for the professions 13 Frederick S. Ellett, Jr.

3. Practitioner reflection and judgement as phronesis: A continuum of reflection and considerations for phronetic judgement 35 Elizabeth Anne Kinsella

4. Reflective healthcare practice: Claims, phronesis and dialogue 53 Arthur W. Frank

5. Cultivating capacity: Phronesis, learning, and diversity in professional education 61 Kathryn Hibbert

6. Realising practical wisdom from the pursuit of wise practice 73 Joy Higgs

7. Phronesis, aporia, and qualitative research 87 Rob Macklin and Gail Whiteford

8. Phronesis and the practice of science 101 Farrukh Chishtie

9. Reclaiming competence for professional phronesis 115 Derek Sellman

10. Professionalism and professionalisation: Hostile ground for growing phronesis? 131 Allan Pitman

11. Phron sis, experience, and the primacy of praxis 147 Stephen Kemmis

12. Phronesis as professional knowledge: Implications for education and practice 163 Elizabeth Anne Kinsella and Allan Pitman

Notes on the contributors 173

Index 175

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors acknowledge with gratitude the support of the Interdisciplinary Network for Scholarship in Professions’ Research in Education (INSPiRE), The School of Occupational Therapy, The Faculty of Health Sciences and The Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and The Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE), Charles Sturt University, Australia. To our contributors for their generosity of spirit in developing the arguments presented in the book and for their responsiveness to our editorial requests we extend our appreciation. Also, we are indebted to Mariko Obokato for untiring and superb editing and for shepherding the manuscript to its final form; this has been a significant contribution to the book. Finally, special thanks to Susan Bidinosti for her assistance, flexibility and attention to detail in integrating the final edits.

E.A. Kinsella, A. Pitman (eds.), Phronesis as Professional Knowledge: Practical Wisdom in the Professions, 1–11. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

ELIZABETH ANNE KINSELLA AND ALLAN PITMAN

ENGAGING PHRONESIS IN PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND EDUCATION

INTRODUCTION

This book originated from a continuing conversation in which we voiced concern (bordering on distress) regarding the instrumentalist values that permeate (often without question) our professional schools, professional practices, and policy decisions. Like others, we were grappling with a sense that something of fundamental importance—of moral significance—was missing in the vision of what it means to be a professional, and in the ensuing educational aims in professional schools and continuing professional education. We are not alone in this concern; numerous social theorists have pointed out that, for more than two centuries, value-rationality has increasingly given way to instrumentalist rationality (Bourdieu, 2004; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Ralston Saul, 1993; Sandywell, 1996; Schön, 1983, 1987). What then are the implications of this trend for professional education and practice? And, what if anything can be done? We wondered whether, at the heart of the issue, might lie significant issues concerning how we conceive of knowledge in the professions. We questioned whether some corrective might be possible, whether something of importance might be recovered, perhaps through Aristotle and his conception of phronesis or practical wisdom. Numerous scholars have called for renewed attention to phronesis through various means, such as a reinvigoration of the concept within the professions; a reconceptualisation of professional knowledge that draws on phronesis; and even a reconceptualisation of social science itself (see, for example, Dunne, 1993, 1999; Eikeland, 2006, 2008; Flaming, 2001; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Frank, 2004; Gadamer, 1980, 1996; Kingwell, 2002; MacIntyre, 1982; Montgomery, 2006; Nussbaum, 2001; Polkinghorne, 2004; Schön, 1983, 1987; Smith, 1999; Stout, 1988; Taylor, 1999; Vanier, 2001). Consideration of these challenges led to the question at the centre of this inquiry: “If we take phronesis seriously as an organising framework for professional knowledge, what are the implications for professional education and practice?” We took the opportunity to invite a diverse group of interdisciplinary scholars to meet to discuss and debate this question and to formalise their responses in the chapters that comprise this book. Their responses open a multiplicity of understandings as to what is meant by phronesis and how it might be reinterpreted, understood, applied, and extended in a world radically different to that of the progenitor of the term, Aristotle.

E.A. KINSELLA AND A. PITMAN

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But what is phronesis? Phronesis (phron sis) is generally defined as practical wisdom or knowledge of the proper ends of life. In Aristotle’s scheme, phronesis is classified as one of several ‘intellectual virtues’ or ‘excellences of mind’ (Eikeland, 2008). Aristotle (trans. 1975) distinguished phronesis from the two other intellectual virtues of episteme and techne. In Aristotle’s conception, drawn below from Flyvbjerg (2001), episteme is characterised as scientific, universal, invariable, context-independent knowledge. The original concept is known today through the terms epistemology and epistemic. Techne is characterised as context-dependent, pragmatic, variable, craft knowledge and is oriented toward practical instrumental rationality governed by a conscious goal. The original concept appears today in terms such as technique, technical, and technology. Phronesis, on the other hand, is an intellectual virtue that implies ethics. It involves deliberation that is based on values, concerned with practical judgement and informed by reflection. It is pragmatic, variable, context-dependent, and oriented toward action. Through the process of developing this book, we have discovered that phronesis is a slippery concept, much more so than we had first anticipated. Rather than offering a neat corrective to instrumentalist rationality, the dialogues in these pages open a range of exciting conversations. This book does not present a tidy interpretation of phronesis. Rather, through the voices of the contributors, a diaspora of meanings is laid open. This is not to say that there are not commonalities between the ideas advanced: rather, the complexity of the search for an understanding of those forms of knowledge that are brought to, and are part of, professional practice has become clearer. The juxtaposition of chapters in this collection opens a space for dialogue and for the expression of divergent perspectives. We found ourselves wondering whether the classic epistemological metaphor of the blind men grasping at pieces of the elephant was inadequate: perhaps we are dealing with multiple elephants! What has emerged is a constellation of ideas that have a common concern related to the nature of professional knowledge. In particular, the concern focuses on what is missing from the official discourse: the practical disjuncture between the knowledge required for practice and professional schools’ current conceptions of what constitutes legitimate knowledge. Stephen Kemmis refers to this disjuncture as a “negative space”—“a longing for something else” that is not currently present (Kemmis, chapter 11, p. 157). The professions are plagued with a theory–practice gap, which seems to be at the centre of this discontent. Our task was to explore the possibilities of a positive space that could respond to this void. Each of the chapters in this collection responds in one way or another to this space, by considering the ways in which phronesis might (or might not) offer a generative possibility for reconsidering the professional knowledge of practitioners.

PHRONESIS IN CONTEMPORARY PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: EMERGING THREADS AND JUXTAPOSITIONS

We do not live in Aristotle’s world. Gadamer explained the problem of historicity and interpretation well when he pointed out that we cannot fully understand the critique of a 19th-century critic of Shakespeare, let alone see what Shakespeare


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saw. Similarly, we cannot see the world as Aristotle saw it. At the core of this book is the recognition of the tensions inherent in any project that considers Aristotle’s ideas in a world vastly different from his. The book opens with Fred Ellett’s consideration of this topic in some depth. Ellett asks what might legitimately be recovered from Aristotle’s thought, what must be unequivocally rejected, and what might be modified for contemporary times. Aristotle lived in a world comprised of freemen and slaves. Races were deemed superior or inferior. Men and women were seen to have intrinsically different capacities that precluded women from involvement in serious intellectual work. The world was viewed as stable and eternal. The object of the intellect was to gain knowledge and, through knowledge, wisdom (sophia) and to develop a love for knowledge (philos). Hence, philosophy was the pursuit of the elite: the object was a society ruled by the wise ‘philosopher king.’ In current times, while we may wish for wise, thinking political leaders, we do so in a fundamentally different social and philosophical world. In this world, in which theoretical work has been differentiated from the practical and technical, and a post-enlightenment framing of science dominates our world view, new understandings of the tentative nature of our law-like claims call into question, for example, the eternal verity of Aristotle’s episteme. In addition, the social constructions surrounding class, ethnicity, and gender with which we live differ vastly from those taken into consideration in the Athens of Aristotle. This difference has implications for thinking about professional practice in respect to the teleology of ‘the good’ and of ‘doing the good,’ as well as for assumptions about what that might mean, about who can take part in the practice, and for whom such practice is intended. The concern here is on two levels: one in which the focus is on phronesis as it relates to professional practice and its practitioners, the other on those engaged in meta-discussions about phronesis itself. Recognition of the social constructions surrounding class, ethnicity, and gender is, it would appear, key to any reconstitution of the notion of phronesis. Indeed, the whole understanding of what is ‘the good’—the teleological objective of the whole exercise—must be reconsidered in light of the different positions and the situatedness of those engaged in professional practices. What cannot be recovered, as Ellett makes clear, is a moral essentialism of humankind’s nature, purpose, and function, or a first philosophy that is fixed, timeless, and universally necessary. The naturalness of sexism, classism, and racism is emphatically rejected. We are then talking about an Aristotelian conception of knowledge in a world that Aristotle would scarcely recognise. What, then can be recovered and what must be added to a conception that holds relevance for contemporary times? Ellett argues that four aspects are recoverable in that: (a) phronesis typically involves judgement that is deliberative, typically indeterminate but not calculative; (b) phronesis is a virtue; (c) phronesis typically is an embodied social practice that has internal goods and excellences; and (d) phronesis typically involves complicated interactions between the general and practical. Ellett rejects (a) Aristotle’s metaphysical biology; (b) Aristotle’s first philosophy; and (c) recent ‘Grand’ claims for practical rationality. Finally, he argues, given the centrality of probability in current conceptions of theoretical reason and practical rationality,


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that future conceptions of phronesis, should be ‘worked together’ with the concept of probability. Phronesis, or the quest for practical wisdom, implies reflection, but what might processes of reflection oriented toward phronesis look like in professional practice? These are questions tackled in various ways by many of the authors in this book (Arthur Frank, Kathy Hibbert, Joy Higgs, Rob Macklin and Gail Whiteford, Derek Sellman, and Stephen Kemmis), but most directly, as a centre point of focus by Elizabeth Anne Kinsella. In thinking about how practitioners might enact phronesis, Kinsella contends that attention to reflection and judgement is key. Informed by the seminal reflective practice work of Donald Schön, Kinsella’s work offers an extension. Kinsella proposes a continuum of reflection that informs professional action from (a) receptive or phenomenological reflection, to (b) intentional cognitive reflection, to (c) embodied or tacit reflection, to (d) critical reflexivity. Her analysis acknowledges that reflection can take many forms: it can be deep, interior, emotional, and introspective; it can be intentional and based in reason; it may also be tacit, embodied, and revealed in intelligent action; and, further, it may be used to critically interrogate assumptions about taken-for-granted understandings in professional life. Kinsella contends that the work of Schön provides a basis for an elaboration of thinking about the ways in which practitioners use reflection to make judgements and to inform action. She considers six criteria that might be seen as useful in orientating practitioners toward phronetic or wise judgement in professional practice: pragmatic usefulness, persuasiveness, aesthetic appeal, ethical considerations, transformative potential, and dialogic intersubjectivity. Arthur Frank presents a case for practical wisdom to be discovered in reflective health care practice. His writing shows the power of narrative as a means of reflection and as a means of revealing what phronesis looks like in practice. Frank’s writing calls for practitioners “to reflect enough that maybe, eventually, a kind of practical wisdom will develop that can never be fully articulated ... but is felt as a guiding force” (Frank, chapter 4, p. 57). This kind of practical wisdom, according to Frank, is phronesis. His writing moves beyond a linear articulation of what phronesis might be, to capture something more, to actually reveal the aesthetic texture of what phronesis looks like. Frank points out that in health care, practitioners have two choices: to “look at the day as a big checklist and don’t look back or even around ... as a way of getting through their day” (Frank, p. 57), or to engage in reflection. He draws attention to how, in professional practice, reflection often begins with interruption: “Reflection interrupts that flow. It is a carved-out space in which we ask ourselves what we’re doing, and who is doing the things that seem to be getting done” (Frank, p. 54). Frank notes multiple claims on the health care practitioner, of which he names six: Practical claims address the expectation of an outcome from the consultation; professional claims that the practitioner will meet the expectations of peers, both institutionally and personally; scientific claims call on practitioners to act according to the science on which their practice is based, or to “have very good


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reasons for any deviation” (Frank, p. 56); commercial claims act on practitioners as employees, as investors and/or as owners of practices; ethical claims concern standards of practice, respect of patients, etc.; and moral claims call practitioners to moral actions, for example, witnessing the patient’s suffering. A procedural checklist, he suggests, does little to address these claims; but it does (if set down as a protocol) diminish the responsibility of the practitioner, under the guise of accountability. Arthur Frank calls for a phronesis that involves relationship and a call to witness the patient’s suffering. His preoccupation with the practitioner as ‘witness’ and his call to practitioners to respond to patients in the face of their suffering illuminate a relational emphasis in his practical wisdom. Kathy Hibbert also takes up themes of reflection, narrative, and action, to consider what phronesis might offer our thinking about learning and diversity in professional education. Like others, her interest in phronesis began with her concerns about the increasingly instrumentalised contexts of professional practice. Hibbert offers a narrative of an experience that has “haunted” her and fuelled her interest in this area of scholarship: an era of “professional practice” where educators “disseminate materials” and “reproduce … received training,” where “information was scripted and delivered in a top-down system” (Hibbert, chapter 5, p. 62). About her own experience as a teaching consultant, she writes, “I recall feeling that this process of ‘training’ represented the direct opposite of everything I know about good teaching, and it led to a sense of deprofessionalisation and demoralisation” (Hibbert, p. 62), a disheartening digression from a vision of practice that engages practitioners as “professionals and intellectuals” (Hibbert, p. 62). Like Frank, Hibbert points out that reflection often begins in the disruption of routinised experiences. She argues that routinised experiences can be dangerous and that scrutinising one’s actions in practice can influence future actions and decisions oriented toward phronesis. In particular, Hibbert considers how we might cultivate the capacity for phronetic action, drawing on Dewey to argue that phronetic action involves a whole-hearted and open-minded willingness to assume responsibility for one’s actions. She agrees with Joseph Dunne’s (1993) claim that “phronetic action can’t exist without both intellectual and moral conditions of the mind” (p. 264). This theme linking reflection to moral action and its relationship to phronesis continue to weave explicitly and implicitly throughout the book. Joy Higgs also draws on the power of narrative and Socratic dialogue to reflect, through story, on the nature of phronesis. It has been said that we sometimes need fiction to reveal the truth. In Higgs’s fictional narrative of a dialogue between Veteratoris (the mentor) and Novitius (the initiate), phronesis is examined in the pursuit of wise practice and the generation of practical knowledge, which Higgs posits as an approach to balance the instrumentalist rationalities that hold ‘pride of place’ in professional practice. Higgs observes that professional practice is characterised by the ‘absence of certainty.’ Recognition of the complexity and uncertainty of practice is a theme that permeates this book and is reminiscent of the classic metaphor of the swamp used by Schön to illuminate the nature of practice. Phronesis, it seems, is located in Schön’s swamp:


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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 application of research-based theory and technique. In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution. (Schön, 1987, p. 3)

Higgs contends that practice is the precursor of knowledge. Practitioner observation, reflection, and experience bring together actions and ideas that are enacted in wise practice. For Higgs, wisdom is seen as “the ineluctable nexus between practice, judgement, and knowledge” (Higgs, chapter 6, p. 81); “the hallmark of a professional is the capacity to make sound judgements” (Higgs, p.79). In characterising practice knowledge, Higgs depicts it as the sum of the knowledges so used, including propositional as well as experiential knowledge: “Here episteme, techne, and phronesis dance together” (Higgs, p. 77). Within the spectrum of professional practices, Rob Macklin and Gail Whiteford investigate phronesis and qualitative research, arguing that scientific reason is not an appropriate test for interpretively oriented qualitative research. They define scientific reason in a manner consistent with Aristotle’s classic conception of episteme and with taken-for-granted views about scientific reason—as informing impartial, universal, and generalisable knowledge that permeates our culture. Macklin and Whiteford argue that while scientific reasoning appropriately underpins quantitative research, a different form of rationality—practical rationality—is required to undertake and judge the practice of qualitative research. As such, they point out that the practice of qualitative research requires instruction in the practice of practical judgement and a quest for phronesis, as opposed to technical training and a focus on scientific rationality. For Macklin and Whiteford, the dominance of the epistemology of science presents fundamental problems for qualitative researchers. The basis for their position is that the criteria for judging qualitative research are irreducibly different from those of quantitative work. They describe the task of recognition and justification of qualitative research within a culture of science as Herculean; however, it might also be cast as the impossible task of Sisyphus, doomed to spend eternity pushing a block of marble uphill, always to have it roll back down. They argue instead for practical rationality as a more appropriate means for making judgements about qualitative research. Interestingly, a central theme in the work of Macklin and Whiteford, and in other chapters in this book, is the centrality of aporia—unresolvable dilemmas and uncertainties—as a characteristic of the work of professional practice. Embracing rather than avoiding aporias troubles assumptions about the quest for certainty and the use of episteme alone as the gold standard in professional practice. Professional practitioners draw on relevant epistemological knowledge, but the application of that knowledge calls for a quite different form of knowledge from that of episteme alone, one that embraces the messiness of practice. However, doing so is not to deny the central role of episteme in the practice of a profession (i.e., a physician cannot know what to do without a good grounding in the relevant sciences, and a teacher cannot teach without content knowledge) but rather to point out that


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attention to a different form of knowledge rooted in attention to aporia is also fruitful for effective practice. There are particular assumptions about scientific reason, consistent with Aristotle’s conception, that permeate Macklin and Whiteford’s work. Interestingly, the work of philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn (1962) troubles conceptions of scientific reason and therefore of episteme, as impartial, universal, and generalisable. As pointed out by Farrukh Chishtie, scientific reason and the judgements that scientists make require a form of phronesis in and of itself. This tension about the lines between episteme and phronesis, in light of contemporary views of philosophy of science, is an interesting consideration opened up by the authors of this collection. The nature of phronesis within the practice of science becomes a topic of great interest, explored by Chishtie in his consideration of what phronesis might mean in a post-Kuhnian world dominated by science. Kuhn’s (1962, 1977) view of epistemic values leads to a position whereby the knowledge that constitutes the episteme of a disciplinary community is seen to be legitimated through the exercise of judgement based upon agreed values: the epistemic values of the community. This view constitutes a radical repositioning of the role of judgement within conceptions of scientific knowledge. Not only is judgement exercised on a day-to-day basis by practitioners but it is also deeply implicated in the generation of the scientific theories and epistemic frameworks upon which professional practice itself is based. Chishtie argues that, as a consequence, phronesis becomes significant not only in individual practice but also to conceptions of episteme itself. In a Kuhnian view, episteme can no longer be unproblematically viewed as universal, context-independent knowledge. The distinctions between episteme and phronesis blur as our understanding of science is challenged. An implication of this, as pointed out by Flyvbjerg (2001) and Chishtie, is that power relations become significant insofar as they contribute to the formation of the episteme and the policing of its boundaries. In light of a Kuhnian view of science, the assumptions that the professions and their governing institutions hold regarding the nature of episteme, and the place of phronetic judgment in scientific practice, become topics for further consideration and investigation. Derek Sellman reminds us that phronesis is Aristotle’s special virtue, one that straddles cognition and emotion, as well as intellect and character. Phronesis, closely related to wisdom, is the virtue that enables us to judge what it is we should do in any given situation. Sellman points out that the virtue of phronesis has a place in professional life distinguishable from its place in everyday life; he proposes the concept of professional phronimos—the professionally wise practitioner—as significant for conceptions of professional competence. Sellman’s aim is to reclaim the term competence from those who have ‘commandeered’ it to describe skills-based learning. For Sellman, competence involves some form of emergent self-awareness or self-revelation. He argues that an expanded understanding of competence, one that includes phronesis, is necessary if practice is to be more than the mere routine application of technically derived protocols or algorithmic responses to the complex issues facing practitioners in


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everyday work environments. According to this view, competence both encompasses those practitioners who transcend purely technical approaches to solving or resolving messy practice situations and begins to operate in ways that cannot be adequately described in technical rational terms. Sellman also highlights the tensions between agency and structure in the quest for phronesis, a theme that resurfaces and is elaborated the chapter by Allan Pitman. In particular the dangers of calls for practitioners to develop phronesis in the absence of any recognition of the role of institutions in encouraging or discouraging such development in individual practitioners are of concern. If the structured constraints of practice are not recognized, practitioners may find themselves caught in an endless cycle of blame related to their incapacity to live according to the characteristics of the phronimos—the professionally wise practitioner. This theme of the structured constraints of practice is elaborated by Allan Pitman in his consideration of the ‘hostile ground for growing phronesis’ in a time of excessive managerialism and accountability discourses in the professions. Pitman considers the challenges of enacting phronesis, including practical wisdom and professional judgement, in practice contexts in which professionals have numerous and frequently conflicting ruling bodies to which they are held accountable. Professional practice takes place in a social and political context, which is geographically and temporally located. Pitman highlights the situatedness of practice in its institutional and ideological contexts, in an age when discourses of accountability have enveloped professional work. He unpacks assumptions about professional knowledge in the teaching profession to examine the way in which the various accountability mechanisms create tensions for practitioners and potentially work against efforts toward phronesis. Pitman points out that any concern that advocates for a phronetic characterisation of professional practice is located in a dominant discourse of professional practice. As the era of trust in the actions of practitioners has waned, and the financial commitments of governments have grown, so too have arisen discourses of accountability and managerialism, and systems of surveillance. There is a paradox here, reflected in several chapters in this book, that as the mechanisms of professionalisation have been put in place, so too have the levels of prescription increased, thereby circumscribing the capacity of members to act autonomously in situations that demand the exercise of judgement. The ‘danger’ of calling for phronesis and holding practitioners accountable for practical wisdom in contexts that may not support it, and that may actively mitigate against it, is that practitioners may face a double bind, where they are blamed for a failure of agency at the personal level, when the issues may well be structural and systemic. This underlines the essential need to consider calls for phronesis in light of what Kemmis (2005) has called the extra-individual features of practice, including the social, cultural, material-economic, discursive, political, and policy dimensions. Interestingly, Stephen Kemmis suggests that calls for phronesis might be seen as a response to a lack in the present thinking and discourse about professional practice; that is, a reaction to a disquiet about the realities in which professionals go about their work. He describes this lack as a ‘negative space’ and suggests that


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phronesis might be seen as a placeholder for the ‘something more’ that we are looking for in our thinking about the practice of professionals. Kemmis proposes that our longing for phronesis, for wisdom, is really a longing for something else—a longing for praxis. According to Kemmis, “Praxis is a particular kind of action. It is action that is morally committed, and oriented and informed by traditions in a field” (Kemmis & Smith, 2008, p. 4; emphasis in original); “Praxis is the action itself, in all its materiality and with all its effects on and consequences for the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political dimensions of our world in its being and becoming. Praxis emerges in ‘sayings’, ‘doings’, and ‘relatings’” (Kemmis, p. 150). Provocatively, Kemmis posits praxis as a prerequisite for phronesis and as the centrepiece of a morally committed practice. He suggests that it is the wrong way around to hope that if we develop phronesis in rising generations of practitioners, then praxis will follow. According to Kemmis, it is through experience and action—through praxis—that we develop phronesis; therefore, “it is the happening-ness of praxis that we must commit ourselves to if we want to learn or develop phron sis” (Kemmis, p. 158). He suggests that phronesis as a virtue is “evident in the honour and nobility of persons who have committed themselves to praxis as a way of life” (Kemmis, p. 158). This raises conceptual tensions worthy of considered attention. One might ask: What is the nature of the relationship between phronesis and praxis? Where does one end and the other begin? Does one precede the other? To what extent are they symbiotic? Is morally committed action enacted through praxis, phronesis, or both? Perhaps at the heart of Kemmis’s challenge lie contesting ideas about various types of reflection, action, and moral commitment and the ways in which they are related to and enacted in professional life through phronesis, or praxis, or both. For instance, one might ask whether phronesis implies a kind of knowledge that exists ‘only in the heads’ of practitioners, a Cartesian kind of intentional reflection, separated from and followed by action; whereas, praxis implies a type of embodied reflection revealed through morally committed doings, sayings, and relating. Where exactly the conceptual lines in these two dimensions lie is subject to debate. In the context of professional practice, phronesis might be oriented slightly more toward morally committed thought, whereas praxis might be oriented slightly more toward morally committed action, but the lines between the two appear uncertain. It appears that both phronesis and praxis are desirable in morally committed practice. This raises issues concerning the various conceptions of both phronesis and praxis; ongoing work to tease out the lines of distinction and the overlap between the two concepts and the implications for professional practice is imperative. It is clear that the writers in this collection hold differing views about these conceptual lines, which have yet to be articulated in a definitive way. The boundaries are blurry! Of further note, Kemmis draws attention not only to individual phronesis, that of the practitioner, but to collective phronesis, the collective good that a professional community commits itself to through its practice as a profession. This notion of collective phronesis, and the implications it opens up for how professions envision


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and enact what they do, raises a new area worthy of discussion amongst the epistemic communities of the professions at large.

CONCLUSION

The contributors to this book speak individually and collectively about what a transformed understanding of phronesis might require. The earlier chapters in the book speak about what might be recovered from Aristotle’s phronesis and offer examples about what phronesis, or practical wisdom, might look like in contemporary practice—through reflection, professional judgement, phronetic action, narrative, dialogue, ethics, discernment, and relationship. The later chapters in the collection offer more critically oriented perspectives on taken-for-granted notions of phronesis, competence, and the relationship between phronesis, episteme, and praxis. In addition, the contributors discuss questions concerning the tensions between individual agency and the structures of professional practice and the potential constraints or ‘hostile ground’ for phronesis. Finally, the possibility that phronesis might be enacted in ways that extend beyond the individual, at a collective level, is considered. Rather than offering closure on this topic, the chapters open a dialogue and point to many more questions than answers. We invite readers into this dialogue and confess that we find the chapters in this book far more interesting than we had first imagined: they are purveyors of far more tensions than they reconcile and are filled with the complexity and uncertainty that any practitioner oriented toward phronesis will acknowledge and embrace. We acknowledge that it is important in this consideration not to give the impression that phronesis is privileged at the expense of either episteme or techne. We wish to be explicit in suggesting that we believe all three—episteme, techne, and phronesis—are required for professional practice. The crisis, as we see it, is that episteme and techne are privileged, and the diminishing of phronesis diminishes the work that professionals aspire to do.

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Kingwell, M. (2002). Practical judgements: Essays in culture, politics, and interpretation. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

Kuhn, T. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kuhn, T. S. (1977). The essential tension: Selected studies in scientific tradition and change. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press. MacIntyre, A. C. (1982). After virtue: A study in moral theory. London: Duckworth. Montgomery, K. (2006). How doctors think: Clinical judgement and the practice of medicine. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2001). The fragility of goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Polkinghorne, D. (2004). Techne and phronesis. In Practice and the human sciences: The case for a

judgment-based practice of care (pp. 97–127). New York: State University of New York. Ralston Saul, J. (1993). Voltaire’s bastards: The dictatorship of reason in the west. Toronto, ON:

Penguin Books. Sandywell, B. (1996). Reflexivity and the crisis of western reason: Logological investigations, (Vol. 1).

London: Routledge. Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Smith, R. (1999). Paths of judgement: The revival of practical wisdom. Educational Philosophy and

Theory, 31(2), 327–340. Stout, J. (1988). Ethics after Babel: The languages of morals and their discontents. Boston: Beacon

Press. Taylor, C. (1999). Sources of the self: The making of modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press. Vanier, J. (2001). Made for happiness: Discovering the meaning of life with Aristotle. (K. Spink,

Transl.). Toronto, ON: Anansi. Elizabeth Anne Kinsella Faculty of Health Sciences and Faculty of Education The University of Western Ontario Allan Pitman Faculty of Education The University of Western Ontario


FREDERICK S. ELLETT, JR.

PRACTICAL RATIONALITY AND A RECOVERY OF ARISTOTLE’S ‘PHRONESIS’ FOR THE PROFESSIONS

I. INTRODUCTION

In the Western philosophical tradition, customary practice has been to distinguish theoretical reason, which is concerned to determine what one should believe, from practical reason (or practical rationality), where practical rationality is concerned to determine how one should act. In recent decades, there has been a renewed interest in Aristotle’s conception of practical rationality, or ‘phronesis.’ My main task here is to explicate some of the important roles such a (recovered) concept can and should usefully play in the professions. To achieve this task, I begin by briefly characterising the concept of ‘profession.’ I then briefly set out what can and should be legitimately recovered from Aristotle’s conception, what cannot be legitimately recovered, and what modifications must reasonably be made to develop a viable conception of practical rationality for the professions. I suggest that ‘practical rationality’ is best seen as a placeholder term concerned with our being responsible in deciding what to do. Finally, I illustrate how ‘phronesis’ can and should play a central and important part in professional teaching in Ontario.

II. ON BEING A PROFESSION

I begin by briefly setting out a plausible understanding of what we might, for our purposes here, usefully consider a profession to be. Here I draw freely from the Pitman and Ellett (2008) essay, “Professionalism: Its ambiguity in the current [educational] reforms in Ontario.” Many of the ideas expressed in the essay have built upon earlier educational works by McPeck and Sanders (1974), Carr and Kemmis (1989), and the early work by Lee Shulmani (1987/2004a). After their review of the literature, McPeck and Sanders (1974) plausibly argued that a profession has four ‘requirements’ (my emphases):

– that there exists a specialized literature which forms an intellectual basis for practice;

– that the occupational group provides a needed social [or public] service as its raison d`être;

– that there exists a set of standards designed to ensure, or certify, minimal competence in membership in the group;

– that there exists a broad range of autonomy both for the individual and for the occupational group to practice according to its own judgment. (p. 64)

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So, then, these requirements state that the occupational group governs itself in important ways (by deliberating and setting its own ethical and competence standards and its own guidelines for certification and suspension, or expulsion) and that each individual member has autonomy of judgement built upon the bodies of specialised literature (knowledge or understandings) within the space set up by the group’s ethical codes and guidelines. Although McPeck and Sanders (1974) held that there must exist “a specialized literature which forms an intellectual basis for practice” (p. 64), they did very little to explicate or codify what the ‘literature’ might be for education. Here, Lee Shulman’s work can be seen as adding to and drawing out the basic conceptual points for being a professional teacher. Shulman (1987/2004a) was responding in large part to calls for serious, educational reforms in the United States, calls made in the early 1980s about the ‘nation’s being at risk’; he helped lead the way in arguing that, in all these reforms, teachers should be seen as professionals. And he recognised that if one were to see teaching as a profession, then one would need to articulate the ‘intellectual basis for practice,’ which are the forms of knowledge unique to teaching. Shulman defended several claims. First, he argued (1987/2004a, p. 227) that a good teacher has “pedagogical content knowledge,” which is a special amalgam of subject-matter content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. It is the pedagogical content knowledge that is uniquely the province of teachers. Second, he argued (1987/2004a, pp. 232–233) that one of the sources of (legitimate) knowledge comes from the “wisdom of the practice” itself. Although Shulman did not embrace ‘action research’ in the manner of Carr and Kemmis (1989), he would surely agree with Carr and Kemmis that one of the major sources of ‘best practice’ is to be found in the ongoing activities (work) of good teachers. Shulman helped lead efforts to study how ‘novice’ teachers become ‘masterful’ (or highly competent) teachersii. Finally, and most important for our purposes here, he argued (1987/2004a, pp. 233–241) that typical cases of teacher activities involve pedagogical thinking (and reasoning), which should be seen as a kind of practical rationality. Although Shulman’s theorising was basically correct in placing a kind of practical rationality at the centre of being a professional teacher, I argue that his views can be significantly enhanced and expanded by incorporating a conception of ‘phronesis.’

III. A RECOVERY OF PRACTICAL RATIONALITY AS ‘PHRONESIS’

Let me now turn to see what can and should be legitimately recovered from the conception of ‘phronesis’ set out by Aristotle, what cannot be legitimately recovered, and what modifications need to made to the conception. I argue that one can (and should) legitimately recover four aspects: (1) Phronesis typically involves judgement (which is deliberative, typically indeterminate, but not calculative); (2) Phronesis typically is a virtue; (3) Phronesis typically is an embodied social practice, which has internal goods and excellences; (4) Phronesis typically involves complicated interactions between what is general and what is practical. I argue that one should legitimately reject (1) Aristotle’s metaphysical biology; (2) Aristotle’s

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First Philosophy; and (3) (the more recent) ‘Grand’ claims for practical rationality. Finally, I argue that the conception needs to be modified in major ways to make room for our (much more recent) conception of probability. (So central is probability to our deciding what to do today that some have called probability ‘the guide to life.’) I also suggest that ‘practical rationality’ is an open concept, which can and should function as a placeholder term concerned with our being responsible in deciding how we should act. Before I begin my account of the ‘recovery’ and ‘modifications’ of ‘phronesis,’ let me make two brief remarks. First, please note that interpreting Aristotle is problematic so my remarks should be suitably tentativeiii. Second, as I have noted earlier, customary practice has been to distinguish ‘theoretical reason,’ which is concerned to determine what one should believe, from ‘practical reason’ (or practical rationality), which is concerned to determine how one should act. Still, let me caution the reader that almost all of the key terms have been used by different thinkers in different ways to talk about the same phenomenon: determining how one is to act. For example, when speaking about ‘practical rationality,’ Jeffrey Stout (1990) used the quite common ‘translation’ term, practical wisdom; when analysing the concept, Max Black (1972) used the term reasonableness; and in his widely read works, Alasdair MacIntyre (1984, 1988) used the term practical rationality. And though John Kekes recovers much from Aristotle’s views, Kekes (1989, 1995, 2002) used various terms to develop his positions. And one can plausibly argue that Dewey (1938/1997) used the terms freedom and self-control to refer to what others have called ‘practical wisdom.’ Thus, one needs to be patient in clarifying what is actually being recovered and being argued. The central topic of interest here involves a conception of determining how one should act. Let us begin with a definition from one widely cited and authoritative source, D. D. Runes (1960):

Phronesis: practical wisdom, or knowledge of the proper ends of conduct and of the means of attaining them; distinguished by Aristotle from theoretical knowledge or science, and from technical skill. (p. 235)

Let us agree that for several thinkers, ‘phronesis’ is indeed the rational capacity (ability) concerned to ‘determine’ the proper end(s) of conduct and to determine the proper ends of one’s life. I hope it is obvious how determining the proper ends of one’s life has serious implications for the proper ends of one’s conduct (activities) and one’s means (actions) for achieving those ends. Black (1972), Kekes (1989, 1995, 2002), MacIntyre (1984, 1988), and Nussbaum (1986, 1990) are all concerned with the ultimate ends of a person’s life. For our purposes here, we have no reason to oppose their views on these ‘ultimate’ matters. But I suggest that for our considerations, we can and should restrict the term ‘phronesis’ to coincide with the range and scope of professional judgements. Every professional being is, of course, a person who has a life to live. And I do agree that (some version of) phronesis is indeed the reasoning capacity that ‘determines’ what are one’s proper ends of one’s lifeiv. I am thereby asserting that one can be a good professional and also be a good spouse, a good parent, or a good promoter of

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world-class university rowing. For most professionals, then, being a good professional is a very important part of living a good life and a part of living a good life that holds serious implications for one’s self-identity and self-esteem. But being a good professional is usually only a part, though an important part, of making and living a good life. (I should note here that I think it plausible that most professionals can reliably pursue the goods and ends of their profession even if such activities do not further—and perhaps, even, to some degree, conflict with—their self-interest, a point to which I will return.) So, then, I suggest that for our considerations the term phronesis be suitably restricted to coincide with the range and scope of professional judgementsv.

III.1 Recovering ‘Phronesis’: Deliberative Judgement (and Not a Calculation)

As Runes’s (1960) definition correctly suggests, Aristotle broke with his teacher, Plato, in his holding (roughly) that the form of theoretical reason (or knowledge), which asks ‘what should one accept (or believe)?’ differs from the form of practical rationality, which asks ‘what should one do?’ and ‘how should one act?’ Aristotle held (roughly) that theoretical reason is governed primarily by the rules of (formal) deductive logic; but he held that practical rationality typically takes the form of a deliberation: the weighing of pros and cons. And by holding that phronesis is a form of deliberation (or judgement), the most plausible account, in my view, argues that phronesis is not a mathematical calculation of any kind (nor a kind of formal, logical argument)vi. (This view stands in contrast to the views of such thinkers as John Stuart Mill, 1863/2001.) Although deliberation can be said to involve ‘the weighing of pros and cons,’ the term weighing is used metaphorically. For example, Black (1972, pp. 56–57), who used the term reasonableness in his recovery of Aristotle’s conception, has explicitly argued both that such a deliberation (judgement) does not involve the ‘maximising’ of any quantity and that typically no determinate answer can be found to the question ‘what is the most reasonable way to act?’ (see also Sen, 1995, 2009). Black also argued that persons in the same situation may judge differently and yet both can be reasonable. (Here, thinkers such as Black, 1972, and Sen, 1995, 2009, have argued that the so-called ‘rational choice theory,’ which has been widely held in economics, is an inadequate model. They both see a more plausible model in Aristotle’s ‘phronesis.’ I side with Black and Sen.)

III.2 Recovering ‘Phronesis’: Practical Rationality as a Virtue (with Accompanying Virtues)

As I have noted, some writers have set out to recover the key insights by using the term ‘practical wisdom.’ In a very good discussion of these matters, Stout (1990) has argued that we should see nurses (and doctors) as engaging in social practices where practical wisdom is one of the central virtues. This notion leads to the second major recovery from Aristotle. According to Plato, Socrates claimed that if an agent knew what the right action was, then the agent would indeed perform that


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action; but both Plato and Aristotle rejected this Socratic claim. (Indeed, Aristotle held that a person could even do what one ‘knew’ to be wrong.) Thus, the Aristotelian tradition has a special place for the (quasi-moral) virtues, where a virtue is a disposition that enables one to perform the action that one judges to be (practically) reasonable. For Aristotle, then, quasi-moral virtues enable a person to judge reasonably (such as being committed to gathering relevant ‘evidence’), whereas moral virtues (such as courage and temperance) enable one to perform the reasonable action to achieve one’s endsvii. In his Ethics after Babel, Stout (1990, p. 269) attempted a recovery of phronesis as ‘practical wisdom’ and argued that “medical care is a social practice in MacIntyre’s sense” (my emphasis), a social practice in which nurses and doctors should have the following virtues: practical wisdom (the ability to exercise sound medical judgement and discernment), justice (giving others their due), temperance, and courage. Stout also included the virtues of hope (the mean between despair and presumption), faith (trust in genuine authorities), and love of the good (properly ordered desire for goods internal to the practice, sought for their own sake) (p. 272). In advocating the virtue of ‘love,’ Stout implicitly rejected both motivational hedonism (which holds that agents are solely motivated by hedonic pleasure and pains) and rational egoism (which holds that agents are rational if and only if they seek their own interests). As noted earlier, I basically agree with Stout here. I think it plausible to hold that most professionals can reliably pursue the goods and ends of the profession, even if such activities do not further (and perhaps even conflict to some degree with) the agents’ self-interest. I think that one of the attractions of ‘phronesis,’ then, is its implicit rejection of motivational hedonism and rational egoism. The upshot is that the second recovery of Aristotle’s ‘phronesis’ will see the professional as having not only the (cognitive) capacity to deliberate (judge) well but also the appropriate (affective) attitudes and dispositions (i.e., the virtues). Also notice that Stout’s discussion provides us with a good example of how the term ‘phronesis’ can legitimately be restricted to coincide with the range and scope of ‘professional’ judgementsviii. Let us turn to the third recovery.

III.3 Recovering ‘Phronesis’: Deliberative Judgement in Social Practice Embodied in Institutionsix

Whether the concept of ‘social practice’ should be regarded as properly Aristotelian or as mainly Alasdair MacIntyre’s recovery is a difficult question to answer. Whatever the case, MacIntyre’s conception of ‘social practice’ has influenced many thinkers (see, for example, Kekes, 1989, 1995, 2002; Stout, 1990). In his After Virtue, MacIntyre (1984) drew out the role of ‘internal goods’ in a social practice in the following way:

By a [social] practice I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity though which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of,

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that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve [internal] excellence, and human conceptions of ends and goods involved, are systematically extended. (p. 187, my emphasis)

MacIntyre (1984) went on to articulate the concept by saying that “arts, sciences, games, politics in the Aristotlean sense, the making and sustaining of family life, all fall under the concept” (p.188), whereas taking long showers, playing tic-tac-toe, bricklaying, and planting tulips do not fall under the concept. The internal goods (and excellences) of a social practice stand in contrast to the so-called external goods: money, status, prestige, and their accompanying power relations. Of course, external goods are real goods (if only instrumental goods). Such external goods can be achieved in other ways or in ways that have little to do with achieving the excellences of the social practice (with achieving the internal goods of the practice). Although MacIntyre (1984) claimed that contemporary moral theorising tends to support the emotive theory, which holds that ethical (moral) statements are really just expressions of one’s emotions, MacIntyre’s conception of ‘social practice’ implicitly rejects both motivational hedonism and rational egoism. In other words, MacIntyre assumed it plausible to hold that most members of the social practice can reliably pursue the goods and ends of the social practice, even if such activities do not further (and perhaps even, to some degree, conflict with) the member’s self-interest. Again, I agree that MacIntyre’s position is a plausible assumption. Furthermore, MacIntyre (1984) has argued that social practices are almost always embodied in institutionsx, which, according to MacIntyre, typically trade in external (to the social practice) goods: money, status, prestige, and their accompanying power relations. Stout (1990) applied MacIntyre’s conceptions to the social practice of medical care as follows:

Social practices are often embodied in institutions. In our [the U.S.] society, the practice of medical care is embodied in institutions such as professional associations, medical schools, partnerships, independent hospitals, and increasingly powerful commercial hospital chains. It is also closely related to broader institutions such as the capitalist market and governmental agencies. Without some sort of sustaining institutions, the practice would change dramatically for the worse, if not collapse altogether. (p. 274)

As both MacIntyre and Stout have noted, although the good side of this discussion is that such institutions do indeed help sustain the social practice, the bad side is that such institutions, since they trade in external goods, often seriously corrupt (or distort or disrupt) the achievement of the internal goods of the social practice. Now, in Ontario, the duties and responsibilities of the elementary and secondary public school teachers are primarily set out in the province’s Education Act and the act’s Regulations. Furthermore, elementary and secondary public school teachers are also members of two different institutions: respectively, the Ontario College of Teachers and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation. Many see the Ontario College of


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Teachers as having been set up explicitly to promote teaching as a profession, whereas the Ontario Teachers’ Federation is seen as being primarily concerned with wages, pensions, and other working conditions. Here, then, at least two important questions arise. How far (and in what ways) does the Ontario College of Teachers actually enable teachers to act professionally? How far (and in what ways) does the Ontario Teachers’ Federation conflict with (or undermine) teachers’ abilities to act professionally? (I shall return to these matters below in Section V.) (In Ontario, nursing is similarly related to two institutions, the College of Nurses and the Ontario Nursing Association.)

III.4 Recovering ‘Phronesis’: Deliberative Judgements Involving Complex Interactions of the Generals and Particulars

Another of the well-known writers who have tried to recover the key ideas from the Aristotelian tradition is Martha Nussbaum. Many good yet short characterisations illustrate the complex ‘interactions’ between all the generals and the particulars involved when the agent is trying to decide (judge) the reasonable action to perform in a concrete situation. I hope you will find Martha Nussbaum’s characterisation to give a good sense of what is going on here. In trying to draw out the similarities between the views of Aristotle and the novelist Henry James, Nussbaum (1990) drew upon one character’s actions in the book by Henry James, The Golden Bowl. She wrote:

In ethical terms, what [the stories articulated imply] is that the perceiver [agent] brings to the new situation a history of general conceptions and commitments, and a host of past obligations and affiliations (some general, some particular), all of which contribute to and help to constitute her [the perceiver’s] evolving conceptions of good living [good acting].... Perception, we might say, is a process of loving conversation between rules and concrete responses, general conceptions and unique cases, in which the general articulates the particular and is in turn further articulated by it. The particular is constituted out of features of both repeatable and nonrepeatable; it is outlined by the structure of general terms, and so it contains the unique images of those we love. (pp. 94–95)

From this passage, I hope it is clear that Nussbaum held that using literature is a good way to sensitise and initiate students (and professionals, too) into what is important in the moral realm. In favourably comparing Aristotle’s views with James’s depictions, Nussbaum also held that literature is a kind of moral philosophy. I believe that an adequate characterisation of good scientific judgements can be seen as typically deliberative judgements involving complex interactions of the generals and particulars (see Elgin, 1996; Hooker, 1995). I further maintain that an adequate characterisation of good professional judgements can be seen as typically deliberative judgements involving complex interactions of the generals and particulars.

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III.5 Modifying Aristotle’s ‘Phronesis’: Rejecting the Moral Essentialism

Nussbaum plausibly shows noteworthy similarities between the ethical views of Aristotle and the ethical stances involved in Henry James’s depictions. For some reason, however, Nussbaum totally neglects to deal with one of the key features of Aristotle’s views. As we have seen above, many have given the following kind of definition (e.g., Runes, 1960, p. 235, my emphasis):

Phronesis: practical wisdom, or knowledge of the proper ends of conduct and of the means of attaining them; distinguished by Aristotle from theoretical knowledge or science, and from technical skill.

This definition is misleading in important ways, for it fails to make clear that, for Aristotle, the ultimate, proper end of the good life is determined by theoretical reason and not by practical reason. Furthermore, for Aristotle, theoretical reason holds that all things must have a form (and function), and that the form for humans enables the philosopher to show that the highest good for all humans is the contemplation of knowledge. Aristotle’s position here is often called ‘moral essentialism’ (or ‘moral cognitivism’). This position has generated many critiques (an early refutation came from Kant.) Here, it is useful to note that MacIntyre himself rejected this position. Although MacIntyre (1984, 1988) has indeed argued that much of Aristotle can be recovered, he has provided good reasons for rejecting Aristotle’s moral essentialism. As MacIntyre (1984) summed it up, we must reject Aristotle’s ‘metaphysical biology,’ the position that holds that mankind has “an essential nature and an essential purpose or function” (p. 88). As Kekes (1995, 2002) argued in many of his works, deciding how one should live one’s life is as much a matter of making as finding. (The alternative position to essentialism is often called ‘moral pluralism.’) In my judgement, such thinkers as Dewey, Kant, Kekes, Margolis, MacIntyre, and Stout provide good reasons to reject the essentialist position. So, this discussion leads to our first rejection: the rejection of Aristotle’s moral essentialism.

III.6 Modifying Aristotle’s ‘Phronesis’: Rejecting the ‘First Philosophy’

MacIntyre (1988) unwittingly leads us to our second rejection. MacIntyre’s work, After Virtue, had set out to recover something like an Aristotelian conception of virtue, but he recognised he needed some account of rational inquiry. In his Whose Justice? Whose Rationality? MacIntyre (1988) set out to defeat the contemporary liberal political theories by advancing an account of practical rationality as socially and historically determinedxi. MacIntyre (1988) put it this way: a number of analytic philosophers (primarily the American John Rawls) have held that

rationality requires . . .that we first divest ourselves of allegiance to any one of the contending theories and abstract ourselves from all those particularities of social relationship . . . Only by so doing . . . shall we arrive at a genuinely neutral, impartial, and . . . universal point of view . . . . [This] conception of


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ideal rationality as consisting of principles that a socially disembodied being would arrive at illegitimately ignores the inescapably historically and socially context-bound character which any substantive set of principles of rationality, whether theoretical or practical, is bound to have. (pp. 3–4)

In my judgement, MacIntyre’s account is indeed the (comparatively more) plausible account of theoretical and practical rationality, one that conceives of reason as some kind of power preformed by the social-historical context. Yet, even though MacIntyre defended the view that both theoretical and practical reason are in some ways ‘historical artifacts,’ he also tried to show that such a view of reason leads to a First Philosophy of the kind found in the Aristotelian-Thomistic moral tradition. Now a ‘First Philosophy’ is one that holds there must be fixed, timeless, and universally necessary ‘First Principles’ by which to guide one’s thoughts and actionsxii. But it is not a contradiction to hold that moral (and rational) inquiry has no such First Philosophy. And given that theoretical and practical rationality is pre-formed by the social-historical context, it is comparatively implausible that such a First Philosophy exists. Richard Bernstein (1971, 1983, 1993) is a thinker who has also argued that theoretical reason and practical rationality are best seen as historical artifacts. He, too, has argued that it is comparatively implausible that such a First Philosophy exists. And Bernstein (1993) has argued that MacIntyre’s position actually leads to an ‘objectivism’ (the position that in each domain there must exist a uniquely correct theory). In my judgement, Bernstein has provided another reason to hold that MacIntyre’s ‘recovery’ of a first philosophy cannot be legitimated. (In the moral realm, see the works of Margolis, 1996, 2004, and Sen, 2009.) So far, I have been concerned with what we can and should legitimately recover from Aristotle’s conception of ‘phronesis.’ But a related and perhaps ‘wider’ conception of ‘practical rationality’ has played a key role in recent philosophical work on legitimating (liberal) principles of justice. This wider body of work comes primarily from Kant’s use of practical rationality, which is at the core of his ethical theory. As I noted above, Kant explicitly set out to reject Aristotle’s claim that all humans have a unique, ultimate end. He set out to reject this moral essentialism, arguing that we can live our lives in many reasonable ways; he was one of the first ‘pluralists’ to acknowledge ‘the crooked timbre of humanity’ (see Berlin, 1991). Let me try to briefly summarise these recent inquiries. First, Kant himself set out to show that in moral matters all practically rational agents must be committed to the ‘categorical imperative.’ Kant gave several formulations of this (allegedly) necessary principle. Consider the formal formulation, the ‘formula of the universal law,’ which says “Act only in accordance with the maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” Now in the past three decades of Anglo-American philosophy, several good reasons have been given for holding that no formal account can use practical rationality to derive any interesting moral principles. In other words, there is no a priori defence of moral principles. (For a review of the literature, see Wood, 1999, chapter 3xiii.) The more recent philosophers really intend to avoid a priori approaches, and they also try to see practical rationality as some kind of socio-cultural artifact. One

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of the most influential of these thinkers is Habermas, a late member of the Frankfurt School, which advanced views about rationality as being historical. Habermas’s early work (1979) was built around the notion of an ‘ideal speech situation,’ which defined truth as what the community of inquirers would arrive at in the long run. Yet Quine (1960) had early on argued that such a (pragmatic) conception of truth could not be defended. And Geuss (1981) has more recently argued that if Habermas has been pursuing a transcendental approach, then that approach cannot succeed (see Nielsen, 1992). In his more recent ‘discourse ethics,’ Habermas (1990) has tried to show that all rational agents are necessarily bound to such principles:

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its [that is, every valid norm] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation). (pp. 65–66)

But Habermas’s attempts fail because they cannot overcome Berlin’s (1991) point that no matter what structure a society has, there is no society in which all good lives can be promoted and advanced. In the United States, John Rawls (1970) had also hoped to find a unique set of principles of justice that were necessarily binding on all practically rational agents. But in Rawls’s later work (1993), he seems to admit that his original project (1970) cannot succeed. Rawls (1993) fails to deal with Berlin’s concern: even in a liberal society, there will always be individuals whose reasonable interests will not be fostered by a liberal society. In such a context, then, no hope is possible for even a limited consensus of practically rational agents. But Rawls and especially Habermas must face a more serious problem: how to derive the necessary moral principles (binding on all rational agents) if practical rationality is some kind of a socio-historical artifact. Rawls and Habermas have failed to address the deep implications of the question. In recent work, Sen (2009) has argued that even if Rawls’s search for a perfectly just society could succeed (which Sen doubts), this ideal would not help us make a society more just. Sen also argued that no conception of a perfectly just society is needed to make one’s society (or the world) more just. Sen’s work provides a plausible case for showing how theoretical reason and practical rationality (phronesis) can be useful in making a society more just, even if we can devise no conception of the ideally just society (see also Margolis, 1996, 2004.) I have a second reason for discussing these recent attempts to develop a plausible theory of a just society using the concept of practical rationality. As I have noted earlier, the requirements (for being a professional) state both that the occupational group governs itself in important ways, by deliberating and setting its own ethical and competence standards and its own guidelines for certification and suspension (or expulsion), and that each individual member has autonomy of judgement built upon the bodies of specialised literature (knowledge or understandings) within the space set up by the group’s ethical codes and guidelines. John Rawls’s attempts to create the principles for a just society should


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be recognised as attempts to create the legitimate principles for ‘collective choice’ in the society. A professional group also needs to create a set of legitimate principles for collective choice in the professional group. Although I judge the work by Margolis (1996, 2004) and Sen (1995, 2009) to be (comparatively more) plausible, much can be learned from the works of Rawls and Habermas about how to go about generating such legitimate principles to govern (justly) the group and its members. Here the group’s collective choices should, of course, concern how its own internal activities can be fair. And the members of the professional group also need to cooperate with other citizens, relevant experts, and politicians to help develop plans to meet the needs of its clients in a just manner (see Daniels, 1985).

III.7 Modifying Aristotle’s ‘Phronesis’: Incorporating ‘Probability’

One additional, major, modification needs to be made to Aristotle’s ‘phronesis’: it involves the concept of ‘probability.’ Today, many have argued that probability is the guide to life. The concept of probability is widely acknowledged to play major roles in theoretical reason (in both the content of major theories and in the statistical methods for testing theories) and in practical rationality (determining what to do when under risk and under uncertainty). Much has been written about these roles (for example, see Benn & Mortimore, 1976; Black, 1972; Cherniak, 1986; Elgin, 1996; Hooker, 1995; Moser, 1990; Sen, 1995, 2009). Thus, our use of ‘probability’ has ‘revised’ in major ways how we think about theorising and acting. But our conception of ‘probability’ came into being (emerged) in the mid-1600s, and it has since undergone several modifications (or revisions) (for an account, see Hacking, 1975). At any rate, whatever can and should be recovered from Aristotle’s ‘phronesis,’ must be ‘worked together’ (in major ways) with the (modern) concept of probability. (Black, 1972, believed his work did exactly this kind of ‘working together.’ Let me also add that our modern use of probability helps show why a ‘First Philosophy’ is not needed for inquiry, which is always fallible and open to revision.)

IV. A DIGRESSION OF SORTS: THEORETICAL REASON

What are we to make of a domain of inquiry that has no necessary principles that are binding on all rational agents? To get a balanced sense of the problems and possibilities, let us turn to the theoretical domain and to the physical sciences. As noted above, Aristotle argued that the form of theoretical reason (or knowledge) is quite different from the form of practical rationality. And he held that theoretical reason is governed primarily by the rules of (formal) deductive logic, but that practical rationality typically takes the form of a deliberation. (Again, notice that Aristotle had no notion of an ‘inductive logic’ that uses probability; see Hacking, 2001.) In the last half century, Western thinkers and, in particular, Thomas Kuhn (1970, 1977), have argued that Aristotle was quite wrong about theoretical reason. For example, Kuhn has argued that theoretical reason itself has the form of

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practical rationality (phronesis). In the current philosophy of science literature, then, a widely held (if not the dominant) view is that theory choice itself takes the form of practical rationality, in which the scientist has to weigh (comparatively) the key epistemic values: for example, simplicity, explanatory power, predictiveness, and agreement-with-what-we-have reason to accept so far. Thinkers such as Elgin (1996), Hacking (1999), Hooker (1987, 1995), Kuhn (1970, 1977), and Scheffler (1997) have argued that the (earlier) positivistic and Popperian views are inadequate in large part because such accounts cannot allow scientists any serious role in making value judgements involving the epistemic values. These principles are not universal and neutral; they are actually general principles whose meanings are largely specified by the current theories and standards in the socio-historical context. Thus, scientific theory choice is itself best seen as a kind of ‘practical rationality.’ And, as I noted above, an adequate characterisation of good scientific judgements will view as typically deliberative those judgements involving complex interactions of the generals and particulars (see Elgin, 1996; Hooker, 1995). (And given the way ‘practical rationality’ is open to revisions and new developments, it should be regarded as a placeholder term concerned with scientists being responsible in deciding what to do.) I hope you will find my digression into ‘theoretical reason’ helpful. I have been considering what is recoverable from Aristotle; but Aristotle’s account of theoretical reason is seriously inadequate, and it cannot be recovered.

V. Teaching and Educating as a Social Practice Embodied in Institutions

Let me now show how the recovered conception of ‘phronesis’ (or practical rationality), which centrally involves deliberative judgements in a social practice, can greatly enhance our conception of professional actions and especially professional reasoning (or judgement). I want to show that an adequate characterisation of good professional judgements can and should be seen as involving complex interactions of the generals and particulars. Here I focus on teaching and follow the lead of Lee Shulman (1987/2004a) who argued for the central role of a kind of practical rationality in the activities of a professional teacher. My contribution is to extend and deepen his work by developing a much more complex conception of ‘practical rationality.’ My recovery of Aristotle’s ‘phronesis’ yields a conception with a complex model of judgement, where judgement is at the heart of being a (good) professional. And, as noted above, Jeffrey Stout (1990) has also provided some very good steps for enhancing our conception of the role of ‘phronesis’ in nursing (caring and doctoring). Recall that from Stout we recover the ‘practical wisdom’ along with the related virtues (all of which a good professional teaching program should foster). I gratefully use and extend his work in the educational setting: teaching as an (embedded) social practice. My first step is to make plausible that teaching (as a professional activity) is a ‘social practice’ (in MacIntyre’s sense) by drawing out its internal goods and standards of excellence, which I think can be done by modifying (to some degree)


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John Dewey’s view of teaching (see Dewey, 1938/1997; Frankena, 1965). For Dewey, a student’s learning almost always has extrinsic value, for what the student has learned will often be highly useful later in life. But Dewey also wanted the learning (now) to have intrinsic (or internal) value. And I think we can use the following remarks by Dewey to get closer to an understanding of this intrinsic value. As Dewey (1938/1997) put it:

[real] freedom . . . is a power: the power to frame purposes, to judge wisely, to evaluate desires by the consequences which will result from acting upon them; power to select and order means to chosen ends into operation.

Natural impulse and desires constitute . . . the starting point. But there is no intellectual growth without some reconstruction, some remaking, of impulses and desires . . . . This remaking involves inhibition of impulse . . . What has been said [above] explains the meaning of the well-worn phase “self-control.” The ideal aim of education is the creation of power of self-control. (p. 64)

First, I hope it is clear that what Dewey means by freedom (as a power) and self-control is very similar to, if not the same as, the recovered conception of ‘phronesis.’ Second, if the ideal aim of education is the development of the power of self-control, where both the teacher and the learner share this aim, then the student (the learner) and also the teacher should and will likely see the development of ‘self-control’ as having internal (or intrinsic) value. Finally, since educational activities are governed by such moral values as caring and respect, these activities can and should be seen as having internal (or intrinsic) value. Thus, the activities of teachers and students (and the results of those activities) have both extrinsic and internal (or intrinsic) values related to the internal goods and excellences. Here I can draw from Stout’s (1990, p. 272) discussions. I hold that teaching can and should be a profession because it can and should be a social practice in which teachers (and principals) have the relevant virtues. Teachers (and principals) should have practical wisdom (the ability to exercise sound educational judgement and discernment), a sense of justice (the capacity and disposition to give others their due), and the attitudes of temperance and courage. And teachers and principals should also have hope (the mean between despair and presumption), faith (trust in genuine educational and moral authorities), and love of the good (properly ordered desire for goods internal to the practice, sought for their own sake). These, then, are my arguments for holding that the teaching profession can and should be a social practice. Elsewhere, Pitman and I (2008) have argued that, on balance, teaching in Ontario should be, and is overall, a professional enterprise. In the next few paragraphs, I want to illustrate the range and scope of practical rationality (or phronesis) in teachers’ professional activities. (Here I will be concerned only with elementary and secondary public schools.) First, in Canada, the Constitution Act of 1867 gives the provinces the right to control public education. And in Canada, the provinces (by and large) control

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elementary and secondary public schools by means of a major legislative statute called the Education Act and the so-called Regulations to the Education Act. The Education Act also sets out the duties and powers for teachers, principals, school boards, the Ministry of Education, and the Minister of Education. (Recall that the Education Act enables and restricts what teachers can do.) Here I shall start with Ontario’s Education Act (sec. 264) and the related Regulation 298 (sec. 20), which set out (most of) the primary duties and responsibilities for being a teacher. The Education Act, sec. 264.1.c actually states that teachers are to “inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judaeo-Christian morality.” How can this statement be legitimate in a pluralistic, democratic society? Well, the Ministry of Education has issued Policy/Program memorandum (PPM) 112, which states that a teacher’s trying to get a student to accept any religious doctrine (in the secular) public schools is indoctrination and that such action is forbidden. And this PPM 112 reflected adequately what the Ontario courts have ruled about teaching religion: a teacher can teach about religions, but cannot try to get a student to accept any particular religious doctrine. Still the (provincial and federal) courts have stated that they do expect teachers to inculcate basic morality and the basic principles and values of a democratic society (as largely set out in the Canadian Charter of Freedoms and Rights). The Education Act Regulation 99 states that teachers must treat students equitably and with respect. Now in setting out these teacher duties, teachers are assumed to have the background knowledge and understandings to judge wisely (to deliberate wisely) so that the teacher may act morally and treat students fairly and respectfully. In 1996, the Ontario government passed the Ontario College of Teachers Act, an act explicitly designed to promote teaching as a profession and as a social practice with internal goods and excellences. Although the Teaching Profession Act had been passed in 1943 and had established that all teachers must belong to one of the teacher federations, over the years, many had come to believe that the federations were acting mostly as a union in which the primary concerns were working conditions, pay, and pensions. In other words, many had come to believe that the federations’ focus was primarily on the external goods. (Both of these acts are still on the books; and both acts continue to, in various ways, both enable and restrict teachers.) Let me draw out briefly the responsibilities of the Ontario College of Teachers (OC of T). The OC of T now has sole responsibility for credentialing, reviewing, and disciplining its members. To help carry out these tasks, it has produced Foundations of Professional Practice (2006), which has three parts, one of which is “The Ethical Standards of the Teaching Profession.” The ethical standards are grouped into four major categories: care, respect, trust, and integrity. The ethical standard for the category of care states: “The ethical standard of Care includes compassion, acceptance, interest, and insight for developing students’ potential.” Members express their commitment to student “well-being and learning through positive influence, professional judgment and empathy in practice” (p. 9). I maintain that such moral values constitute (some of) the standards for judging the


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goods and excellences internal to the social practice of teaching. Here, again, teachers are assumed to have the background knowledge, understandings, and commitments to judge wisely (to deliberate wisely) so that the teacher may live up to these professional values. In the last decade or so, some teachers were found to be having sexual relations with their students. The OC of T subsequently produced “Professional Advisory: Professional misconduct related to sexual abuse and sexual misconduct” (2002), which clarified the key terms and established that a teacher has a professional (and often a legal) obligation both to refrain from having sexual relations with students and to report (to various bodies) a teacher colleague if the teacher has reason to believe such inappropriate sexual relations are occurring. Here, a teacher’s carrying out the obligation to report such activities helps to either maintain or restore the internal goods of the practice. Ontario teachers are also bound by Education Act Regulation 181 to understand the needs of special education students and to implement the Individual Educational Plan (IEP) for all special education students in the class. I have not explicitly stated what should be obvious: teachers typically interact with many students at a time. A typical class has approximately 25 students; and, in such a class, a teacher may well have more than a few special education students who have been judged to be ‘exceptional’ and who have a suitable IEP. In such a class, then, teachers are expected to understand the various kinds of exceptionalities and the related IEP, to develop ways to carry out each student’s IEP, and to treat each student in caring and respectful (and professional) ways. It should be clear that to carry out these duties, teachers must have the appropriate background knowledge and commitments, be able to judge wisely, and be ready to act upon these reasonable judgements. A teacher’s helping the special education students to meet their learning needs is an internal (or intrinsic) good in the social practice. Let me give an example of another kind of case in which practical rationality and its related virtues are centrally involved. Here I will need to provide a bit of the historical background. The Ontario government has passed the Child and Family Services Act (CFSA) 1990, which requires that all professionals, teachers included, report child abuse. In the original version of CFSA, the key words were “reasonable grounds to believe.” So, then, in fulfilling one’s duty under the original CFSA, a teacher needed to understand the typical symptoms of child abuse and report when the teacher has “reasonable grounds to believe” that child abuse has occurred (or is likely to occur). Thus, a teacher must be able to interpret in a reasonable way what a student’s actions and statements might mean and be able to judge whether there exist “reasonable grounds to believe” that child abuse has occurred. In the original version of the CFSA, however, the standard “reasonable grounds to believe” was apparently interpreted by most professionals to constitute a good deal of evidence (perhaps enough evidence for one to infer that it was more probable than not that child abuse had occurred.) Those who were concerned about child abuse, however, came to worry that such a high standard of evidence would likely mean that serious cases of child abuse would go unreported (and thereby uninvestigated), so they urged revision of the

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CFSA. In the revised (current) version, in fulfilling one’s duty under the CFSA, a teacher must understand the typical symptoms of child abuse and report when the teacher has “reasonable grounds to suspect.” And here “reasonable grounds to suspect” was not meant to be anywhere near the evidence for holding that abuse was more likely than not to have occurred; the phrase was meant to signify a (comparatively) weak set of evidence. The revision to the CFSA was deliberately intended to lower the amount of evidence a professional needed to thereby increase the likelihood that many more cases of (potential) abuse would be reported. The revised CFSA knowingly put teachers (more) on the side of the student and in potential conflict with parents. Since the revised standard “reason to suspect” was meant to lower the amount of evidence a teacher would need to report a case of child abuse, when comparing the original CFSA with the lowered reporting standard of the revised CFSA, the current CFSA will likely have many more reports but will also likely, overall, lead to many more reports being made in error. Thus, if a teacher were to judge (using the revised standard, have reason to suspect) that a parent were guilty of child abuse, the teacher needs to understand that the probability of a report being an error is now rather high. Therefore, a teacher will need integrity and courage to interact with the parent in a respectful and caring way if the report turns out to be in error. In such situations, the carrying out of a teacher’s legal and moral duties (which are internal goods) is likely (unintentionally) to lead to moral harms (and injuries). (Such moral harms are internal to the social practice.) Other kinds of cases in which practical judgement is central involve teachers carrying out school safety rules. Under the Education Act Regulation 298, teachers have the duty to use reasonable means to protect the safety of the students in their school. In difficult cases, this duty can lead to the teacher having to search a student if the teacher “has reason to believe” that the student, say, is carrying a weapon or illegal drugs. Here, again, teachers must judge whether they have reason to believe, which is the first part of the two-prong test set out by the Supreme Court of Canada for the legitimate searches of students. At any rate, a teacher’s protecting students from harm is another internal (or intrinsic) good in the social practice. Now, then, I hope it is clear that in the context of this massive and complex web of rules and standards, it would be very good (even necessary) for teachers to have the virtue of phronesis (and its related virtues) to make sense of the situations, to deliberate well about what to do, and to then act accordingly. In these situations, the professional teacher should use deliberative judgement to decide how to reasonably deal with cases involving complex interactions of the generals and particulars. But these examples illustrate only part of the story. In Ontario today, the cost of health care has been ever rising and pulling monies away from other ministries. This situation leads to serious questions about whether the province’s various educational policies and programs are being adequately funded. For example, many ask whether the special education programs are being adequately funded. This possibility of underfunding has major implications for teachers who may have either more than a few students who have not yet been ‘identified’ or students for whom the suitable educational assistant has yet to be funded. In such a context, teachers will find it very difficult (if at all possible) to judge what to do to fulfill


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their duty to treat students equitably and respectfully. And in such a context, a professional teacher and the professional group (the OC of T) will need to judge wisely about what a professional should do when the government has inadequately funded its programs and policies. Members of the teaching federations, of course, often use work-to-rule tactics to express their dissatisfaction with the external goods provided by the government. But what are the appropriate and fair ways for a professional to express dissatisfaction with the government (or school board) when the internal goods of the practice are being undermined (or not being secured)? Clearly, to carry out these various duties in such difficult situations, teachers must have the appropriate background knowledge and commitments, be able to judge wisely, and then be ready to act upon their reasonable judgements. In summary, I hope my remarks in this section have made it plausible that in such complex educational contexts, it would be very good if teachers (as good professionals) were to have the virtue of phronesis (and its related virtues) to make sense of the situation, to deliberate well about what to do, and to act accordingly.

VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS

In recent decades, there has been much renewed interest in Aristotle’s conception of practical rationality, ‘phronesis.’ In section II, I briefly characterised the concept of profession. In the next sections, I considered what roles the concept ‘phronesis’ can and should play in the professions. In answering these questions, I have set out what can and should be legitimately recovered from Aristotle’s conception, what cannot be recovered, and what modifications need to be made to it. I have argued that ‘practical rationality’ is best seen as a placeholder term concerned with our being (morally and legally) responsible in deciding what to do. Finally, I have tried to show that ‘phronesis’ can and should play a very important role in teaching as a profession in Ontario.

NOTES i In his later works, Shulman did explicate the concept of ‘profession’ (see Shulman (1998/2004c),

especially pp. 529–535; Shulman (1997/2004b). His conception of a ‘profession’ is basically the same as ours.

ii Shulman (1987/2004a) added the following in his footnote 2: “Central to my conception of teaching are the objectives of students learning how to understand and solve problems, learning to think critically and creatively as well as learning facts, principles, and rules of procedure.” Shulman’s objectives are not held by every state (or province). In his 1987 essay, Shulman was concerned to set out the basic forms of knowledge and reasoning. In his later works, Shulman did properly recognise that being a professional also involves moral understanding and commitments see Shulman, 1998/2004c, p. 530.) The recent National Academy of Education book edited by Darling-Hammond and Bransford (2005) also holds that being a professional teacher involves knowledge, know-how, and moral commitments.

iii See Frankena (1965) and Randall (1960) for a discussion of some of the difficulties. iv In a viable recovery, making and creating are as important as finding (see Kekes, 1995, 2002). v And, of course, one’s ultimate ends may conflict with one’s professional obligations. For this

chapter, I ignore the moral and ethical issues involved in such a conflict.

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vi For example, J. S. Mill held that, when deciding what to do, one essentially measures the amount of happiness and pain and then aggregates these quantities. Utilitarians such as Mill (1863/2001) hold that deciding essentially involves a calculation.

vii In one of his more famous papers on moral development, Kohlberg (1971, p. 288) began with a scathing attack on “the bag of virtues approaches.” In his neo-Kantian approach, Kohlberg no doubt saw Aristotle as the main target; but Kohlberg failed to realise that Kant himself, in his later works, put the ‘duties of virtue’ at the centre of his moral views (see Wood, 1999)!

viii As noted above, in his early work (1987/2004a), Shulman was concerned mostly with explicating the forms of knowledge involved in being a good, professional teacher. In his later work (1998/2004c, pp. 530–531), Shulman correctly acknowledges the crucial role of quasi-moral and moral dispositions and commitments.

ix Perhaps this account is MacIntyre’s recovery of Aristotle’s praxis by way of Karl Marx. x I should acknowledge that in MacIntyre and Dunne (2002), MacIntyre reiterated his claim that

teaching is a not ‘social practice.’ At the heart of his view is that real education initiates students in the forms of the various knowing, but that initiation per se is not a social practice. He holds that teaching in today’s schools cannot even initiate students into the forms of knowledge because the (crude) materialism of society overwhelms any real educative efforts. I believe MacIntyre is mistaken to claim that teaching is not a social practice. Although I too am concerned with the impacts of general cultures on teacher–student activities, I believe teachers can use caring and respectful ways to help students to become critical and responsible practically rational agents. In contrast to MacIntyre, who seems to take theoretical knowledge as the goal, I hold that the goal of a good education is to create practically rational agents. If my views can be defended, then the claim can also be defended that internal goods and excellences in the teaching situation comprise a social practice. Here I tend to side with another Catholic thinker, Jacques Maritain (1943/1960). See also Section V below.

xi Here MacIntyre is acknowledging that this concept can be recovered from Karl Marx’s thought. xii Or, put another way: a First Philosophy conceives of inquiry as needing a set of necessary axioms

(and necessary rules) by which to govern its activities. There are good reasons for holding that modern science does not need such a First Philosophy (see Elgin, 1996; Hacking, 1999; Kuhn, 1970, 1977; Quine, 1960).

xiii Since L. Kohlberg’s (1971) highest level, stage six, involves such a formal, universalisability principle, Kolhberg’s views fail, too. And this recent work provides reasons for concluding that the Karl-Otto Apel’s (1980) approach, which is also a priori, cannot succeed.

REFERENCES

Apel, K.-O. (1980). Towards a transformation of philosophy (G. Adey & D. Frisby, Trans.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Benn, S. I., & Mortimore, G. W. (1976). Rationality and the social sciences. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Berlin, I. (1991). The crooked timbre of humanity. New York: Knopf. Bernstein, R. J. (1971). Praxis and action. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bernstein, R. J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press. Bernstein, R. J. (1993). The new constellation: The ethical political horizons of modernity /

postmodernity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Black, M. (1972). Reasonableness. In R. F. Dearden, P. H. Hirst & R. S. Peters (Eds.), Reason: Part 2

of education and the development of reason (pp. 44–57). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Carr, W. F., & Kemmis, S. (1989). Becoming critical: Education, knowledge and action research.

London: The Falmer Press. Cherniak, C. (1986). Minimal rationality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.


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Daniels, N. (1985). Just health care. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransfod, J. P. (Eds.). (2005). Preparing teachers for a changing world. San

Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Dewey, J. (1997). Experience and education. New York: Touchstone. (Originally published by Kappa

Delta Pi, 1938) Elgin, C. Z. (1996). Considered judgment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Frankena, W. K. (1965). Three historical philosophies of education. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, and

Company. Geuss, R. (1981). The idea of a critical theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Habermas, J. (1979). Communication and the evolution of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston:

Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communicative action (C. Lenhardt & S. W. Nicholsen,

Trans.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hacking, I. (1975). The emergence of probability. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hacking, I. (2001). An introduction to probability and inductive logic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press. Hooker, C. A. (1987). A realistic theory of science. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Hooker, C. A. (1995). Reason, regulation and realism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Kekes, J. (1989). Moral tradition and individuality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kekes, J. (1995). Moral wisdom and good lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kekes, J. (2002). The art of life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kohlberg, L. (1971). Indoctrination versus relativity in value education. Zygon, 6(4), 285–310. Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago

Press. Kuhn, T. S. (1977). The essential tension: Selected studies in scientific tradition and change. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press. MacIntyre, A. (1984). After virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame. MacIntyre, A. (1988). Whose justice? Whose rationality? Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame. MacIntyre, A., & Dunne, J. (2002). Alasdair MacIntyre on education: In dialogue with Joseph Dunne.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(1), 1–19. Margolis, J. (1996). Life without principles. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Margolis, J. (2004). Moral philosophy after 9/11. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State

University Press. Maritain, J. (1960). Education at the crossroads. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (Original

work published 1943) McPeck, J. E., & Sanders, J. T. (1974). Some reflections on education as a profession. The Journal of

Educational Thought, 8(2), 55–66. Mill, J. S. (2001). Utilitarianism (G. Sher, Ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

(Original work published 1863) Moser, P. K. (Ed.). (1990). Rationality in action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Nielsen, K. (1992). On the status of critical theory. Interchange, 23(3), 265–284. Nussbaum, M. C. (1986). The fragility of goodness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1990). Love’s knowledge: Essays on philosophy and literature. New York: Oxford

University Press. Pitman, A., & Ellett, F. S., Jr. (2008). Professionalism: Its ambiguity in the current reforms in Ontario.

In J. M. Mangan (Ed.), Social foundations of education coursebook, 2008–2009 (pp. 133–141). London, ON: Althouse Press.

Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Randall, J. H., Jr. (1960). Aristotle. New York: Columbia University Press. Rawls, J. (1970). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Rawls, J. (1993). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Runes, D. D. (Ed.). (1960). Dictionary of philosophy. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, and Co. Scheffler, I. (1997). Symbolic worlds. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sen, A. (1995). Rationality and social choice. The American Economic Review, 85(1), 1–24. Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Cambridge, UK: Belknap of Harvard University. Shulman, L. S. (2004a). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of a new reform. In L. S. Shulman, The

wisdom of practice, and the education of professionals (S. M. Wilson, Ed.) (pp. 217–248). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (Reprinted from Harvard Educational Review, 1987, 57(1), 1–22)

Shulman, L. S. (2004b). Professing the liberal arts. In S. Shulman, The wisdom of practice, and the education of professionals (S. M. Wilson, Ed.) (pp. 545–566). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (Reprinted from Education and democracy: Re-imagining liberal learning in America, pp. 151–173, by R. Orrill, Ed., 1997, New York: College Entrance Examination Board)

Shulman, L. S. (2004c). Theory, practice, and the education of professionals. In L. S. Shulman, The wisdom of practice, and the education of professionals (S. M. Wilson, Ed.) (pp. 521–544). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (Reprinted from The Elementary School Journal, 1998, 98(5), 511–526)

Shulman, L. S. (2004d). The wisdom of practice: Essays on teaching, learning, and learning to teach (S. M. Wilson, Ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Stout, J. (1990). Ethics after Babel. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Wood, A. (1999). Kant’s ethical thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

LEGAL DOCUMENTS

Federal Legislation

Constitution Act, 1982 [en. by the Canada Act 1982 (U.K.), c. 11, s. 1], pt. I (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

Ontario Statutes and Regulations

Child and Family Services Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.11. Education Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. E.2. Human Rights Code, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19. Identification and Placement of Exceptional Pupils, O. Reg. 181/98, (Education Act). Ontario College of Teachers Act, 1996, S.O. 1996, c.12. Professional Misconduct, O. Reg. 437/97, (Ontario College of Teachers Act, 1996). Teacher Performance Appraisal, O. Reg. 99/02. Teaching Profession Act, R.S.O 1990, c. T.2. Key sections of Ontario’s statutes, regulations and policy documents, which are been cited in the text and are listed above, can be found in: Allison, D. J., & Mangan, J. M. (Eds.). (2008). Legal digest for Ontario educators, 2008–2009. London, ON: Althouse Press.


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Related Ontario Policies

Ontario Ministry of Education. (1990). Policy/Program memorandum No.112: Education about religion in the public elementary and secondary schools. Toronto, ON: Government of Ontario.

Ontario College of Teachers. (2002). Professional advisory: Professional misconduct related to sexual abuse and sexual misconduct. Toronto, ON: Ontario College of Teachers.

Ontario College of Teachers. (2006). Foundations of professional practice. Toronto, ON: Ontario College of Teachers.

Frederick S. Ellett, Jr. Faculty of Education The University of Western Ontario


ELIZABETH ANNE KINSELLA

PRACTITIONER REFLECTION AND JUDGEMENT AS PHRONESIS:

A Continuum of Reflection and Considerations for Phronetic Judgement

INTRODUCTION

Dominant conceptions of professional knowledge appear to have largely forgotten Aristotle’s conception of phronesis and its place in considerations of what it means to know in professional life. Aristotle draws attention to phronesis as a form of reflective practical wisdom that complements techne, technically oriented approaches, and episteme, scientifically oriented approaches, in considerations of what it might mean to develop and enact professional knowledge. This chapter proposes an elaboration of Donald Schön’s reflective practice in light of Aristotle’s phronesis. Beginning with the seminal work of Schön, I argue for a reinvigoration of phronesis through attention to a continuum of reflection and practitioner judgement in professional practice. Reflection is considered along a continuum that includes Schön’s intentional and embodied reflection, and extends the notions of reflection to attend to phenomenological reflection and critical reflexivity. Also explored are the implicit criteria by which practitioners might make phronetic judgements in professional practice. Thinking of reflection as a continuum, and making explicit the criteria by which practitioners might make phronetic judgements, offers a generative framework for thinking about how reflection and judgement are implicated in the development of professional knowledge characterised as phronesis.

PHRONESIS

Aristotle highlighted three orientations or dispositions to knowledge: episteme, techne, and phronesis. Episteme is characterised as scientific, universal, invariable, context-independent knowledge. Techne is characterised as context-dependent, pragmatic craft knowledge and is oriented toward practical rationality governed by conscious goals. Phronesis is sometimes referred to as practical wisdom or practical rationality. Phronesis is defined in different ways but usually in ways that imply the significance of reflection, both tacit and explicit; that highlight a relationship to morality; and that convey a relationship between reflection and action. Phronesis emphasises reflection (both deliberative and that revealed through action) as a means to inform wise action, to assist one to navigate the variable contexts of practice, and as directed toward the ends of practical wisdom.

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Table 1. Continuum of Reflection

Receptive Reflection Intentional Reflection Embodied Reflection Reflexivity Intuition Thought Action Interrogation Poetic worldmaking Constructivist;

individual worldmaking

Located/situated worldmaking

Social construc-tivist; social praxis & language in worldmaking

Pre-reflective world Neutral pragmatic

world Contextual world Sociality of world

reference Meaning – revealed, received autopoesis

Meaning – individually constructed

Meaning – in actions

Meaning – socially negotiated

Being Thinking Doing Deconstructing &

becoming Raw material for reflection and reflexivity

Reflects on personal experience, evidence and technique

Reflects in/on actions Reflects on social nature of knowl-edge construction

A-rational Contemplative

Rational Embodied Critical/skeptical Performative

Intuition Insight Emotion Wonder

Reason Cognition

Action Behaviour Body

Intersubjective Discursive Performative Power Relations

Implicit theories Espoused theories of

practice Theories-in-use Sociality,

historicity of theory formation

Presence Monologic Monologic/dialogic Dialogic Connection to ‘Other’ through connection to self

Connection to ‘Other’ through thought

Connection to ‘Other’ through action

Connection to ‘Other’ through dialogue

Present to action Examined action Tacit action

Intelligent action Socially informed, critical, thoughtful action

Receptive knowing Aesthetic/poetic knowing

Knowing that Knowing how Knowing-in-action

Deconstructing knowing

PRACTITIONER REFLECTION AND JUDGEMENT AS PHONESIS

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In the scholarship of contemporary professional education, Donald Schön is a key thinker. His writings on reflective practice (1983, 1987) are widely considered to be the most influential works produced in professional education in recent years (Eraut, 1995). Donald Schön critiques the predominant emphasis on technical rationality as the modus operandi for the generation of professional knowledge. He points out that the failure, of what Aristotle might call episteme and techne, to deliver solutions to complex contemporary problems has created a crisis of confidence in the professions. In response, Schön calls for a new epistemology, one rooted in reflection both in and on practice, and one that recognizes the messy, complex, and conflicted nature of practice itself (see Kinsella, 2007a, 2007b, 2009, 2010, for elaboration). This way of conceiving of professional knowledge, as garnered through reflection in and on practice, has much to commend it and might be argued to have much in common with what Aristotle had in mind when he conceived of professional knowledge as phronesis. In this chapter, I examine conceptions of reflection in Donald Schön’s theory of reflective practice and the implicit criteria he identifies as important for practitioner judgement. I argue that in the interest of phronesis, Schön’s conception of reflection is important, but that it does not go far enough. I propose an elaboration of ways of thinking about reflection as a means of thinking about how reflection might be thought about in the interests of phronesis. In addition, I explicate the criteria that Schön implies practitioners use to make professional judgements, and propose three additional criteria that practitioners might consider in making judgements oriented toward phronesis in professional life. Whatever else phronesis might be, we can safely say that it involves reflection. In addition, it involves a disposition toward certain kinds of judgements, which Kemmis, in Chapter 11, suggests cannot be taught. I wonder if by making more explicit the criteria by which practitioners make judgements, and by encouraging the conscious adoption of criteria oriented toward phronetic ideals, practitioners might move toward phronetic judgements in professional practice. What criteria might we consider when using reflection to make judgements and to discern action oriented toward phronesis? If phronesis cannot be explicitly taught, might the disposition toward phronesis be encouraged, and the modes of thinking that work against it be revealed?

A CONTINUUM OF REFLECTION

This chapter proposes a continuum of reflection for phronesis in professional life. Such a continuum includes central dimensions of Schön’s conceptions of reflection, yet extends Schön’s view in two directions: first toward a deeper consideration of the inner life of the practitioner, and second toward a more rigorous interrogation of the sociality of world reference (see Table 1). This chapter considers two domains of reflection evident in Schön’s work—intentional reflection and embodied reflection—and proposes an elaboration along two domains significant for professional life—receptive reflection and reflexivity. Bill Green (personal communication, May 11, 2009) has suggested that this continuum

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might be thought of as a pulsating quadrant in which any piece might overlap with another at any time; I concur with this insight. While each dimension is presented separately for purposes of discussion, they are viewed as interrelated and interwoven and joined through what Sandywell (1996) characterises as an interminable, dialogic praxis.

Intentional Reflection

Intentional reflection is depicted in the second column of Table 1. Schön (1992) states that in the midst of writing The Reflective Practitioner, he realised he was reworking Dewey’s theory of inquiry by adopting reflective practice as his own version of Dewey’s reflective thought (p. 123). Many articles about reflective practice recognise the legacy of Dewey’s work in Schön’s theory, and include a description of reflection that draws on Dewey, usually citing one of two classic books: How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process (1933) or Experience and Education (1938). Schön (1992) acknowledges his debt both to Dewey’s thought and to the link Dewey put forth between intentional reflection and intentional action. Dewey (1933) explains the concept of reflection in terms of reflective thought, which he describes as “active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it and further conclusion to which it tends” (p. 9). According to Dewey, reflective thought “converts action that is merely appetitive, blind and impulsive into intelligent action” (p. 17). In this way, Dewey articulates, and lays the ground for, a link between intentional reflection and intelligent action, which is also found in the work of Schön. Schön integrates intentional reflection with action in three of his pivotal constructs: reflective practice, reflection-in-action, and reflection-on-action. In each instance, reflection occurs in and on actions that occur in practice, in a dialectic fashion. Schön (1983) describes reflective practice as a dialectic process in which thought and action are integrally linked. It is a “dialogue of thinking and doing through which I become…more skillful” (Schön, 1987, p. 31). While reflective practice is his umbrella term, reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action are distinguished by their temporality; the first occurs in the midst of practice, whereas the latter occurs retrospectively. Schön (1992) contends that reflection-in-action is central to the artistry of competent practitioners who conduct on-the-spot experiments in what he calls the action-present. He notes that this process need not employ the medium of words. Schön likens the process of reflection-in-action to that of a jazz pianist’s improvisation of a melody or a basketball player’s instant manoeuvring in response to a surprising move by an opponent. Reflection-on-action, is more closely aligned with Arendt’s (1971) “stop-and-think”; here, thought turns back on itself in relation to the action carried out by the practitioner, and thereby has the potential to influence future action (Schön, 1992). In summary, the concepts of reflective practice and reflection-on-action may each be seen as invoking, and reflection-in-action may be seen as


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partially invoking, a form of intentional rationality which may be characterised as a mode of intentional reflection on the part of the practitioner. The emphasis on intentional reflection of the practitioner is further emphasised in the constructivist underpinnings of reflective practice. Schön draws on the work of Nelson Goodman (1978) to emphasise a constructivist orientation (Kinsella, 2006). Constructivists generally agree that knowledge is constructed, at least in part, through a process of reflection; that cognitive structures are activated in the process of construction; that cognitive structures are under continual development; that purposive activity induces transformation of those structures; and that the environment presses the organism to adapt (Noddings, 1990). Constructivists are concerned with the ways that worlds are made. Goodman argues that the symbols we construct inform the facts that we find and structure our understanding of them (Elgin, 2000). According to his famous dictum, worlds are made, not found. Such making involves active intentional reflection on the part of the worldmaker. The constructivist underpinnings of reflective practice therefore appear to inform what may be characterised as an intentional form of reflection.

Embodied Reflection

In this section, I consider locations wherein Schön explores ways of engaging in reflection that are outside of the realm of intentional reflection. These reflections are depicted as embodied modes of reflection because they arise in the embodied experience of the practitioner and are revealed in action (see Kinsella, 2007b, for an extended discussion). Embodied reflection is depicted in the third column of Table 1. In addition to discussing intentional reflection and its relationship to professional knowledge, Schön notes that skillful practice may also reveal a kind of knowing that does not stem from a prior intellectual operation but is revealed through intelligent action (knowing-how), or tacit knowledge. The influence of philosophers Michael Polanyi (1967) and Gilbert Ryle (1949) can be seen in the development of these ideas. Both Polanyi and Ryle challenge conceptions of knowledge that recognise only propositional knowledge. Polanyi focuses on that which people are unable to say, knowledge that is tacit, whereas Ryle is concerned with overcoming dualities between mind and body. He links intelligence and action through knowing-how. Tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1967) and knowing-how (Ryle, 1949) are central themes in Schön’s constructs of theories-in-use and knowing-in-action, and are briefly considered below. In The Tacit Dimension, Polanyi (1967) sets out to “reconsider human knowledge” by starting from the assumption that “we can know more than we can tell” (p. 4). A famous example of tacit knowledge frequently used by Schön (1983, 1987) is that of face recognition. Polanyi observes that we can know a person’s face and can recognise that face among a million faces, yet we usually cannot tell how we recognise a face we know. So, most of this knowledge cannot be put into words. Schön refers to tacit knowledge in his early work with Argyris (1992/1974), in which they examine the implications of tacit knowledge for professional practice.

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In Theory in Practice, the terms implicit knowledge and tacit knowledge are used interchangeably, and are taken to mean that “we know more that we can tell and more than our behaviour consistently shows” (1992/1974, p. 10). Argyris and Schön contend that tacit knowledge is particularly useful for understanding theories-in-use. In their view, each practitioner develops a theory of practice, whether or not he or she is aware of it. Such a theory is composed of both explicit knowledge, what one is able to say about what one knows, and theories-in-use, which may be unconscious and are revealed through behaviour. Theories-in-use tend to be tacit structures whose relation to actions can be compared to the relationship of grammar-in-use to speech; theories-in-use contain assumptions about self, others, and environment, which constitute a microcosm of everyday life (pp. 29–30), and may have both negative and positive elements. Philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1949) seeks to dispel what he refers to as ‘Cartesian dualism,’ which he contends sets up a dualism between body and mind. Ryle states that the exercise of intelligence cannot be analysed by first considering operations with the mind and then executing them with the body; rather, the mind and body are much more integrated. Ryle resists dualistic thinking with respect to the separation of activities of the mind and activities of the body by directing attention to the ‘doings’ of persons, such as playing chess, knot-tying, car-driving, theorising, and other activities. Ryle finds mind revealed in the doings of persons, doings that are explainable by the doer’s aims, not by ‘ghostly’ inner causes. He writes:

The statement ‘the mind is its own place’ as theorists might construe it, is not true, for the mind is not even a metaphorical ‘place.’ On the contrary, the chessboard, the platform, the scholar’s desk, the judge’s bench, the lory-driver’s seat, the studio and the football field are among its places. These are where people work or play stupidly or intelligently. ‘Mind’ is not the name of another person, working or frolicking behind an impenetrable screen; it is not the name of another place where work is done or games are played; and it is not the name of another tool with which work is done, or another appliance with which games are played. (Ryle, 1949, p. 51)

One can see resonances of these ideas in Schön’s knowing-in-action. Schön (1987) coins the term knowing-in-action to refer to the sorts of know-how revealed in intelligent action, in such publicly observable, physical performances as riding a bicycle and in such private operations as an instant analysis of a balance sheet. In these situations, according to Schön, the knowing is in the action and is revealed by spontaneous, skillful execution of the performance, which one is characteristically unable to make verbally explicit (Schön, 1987, p. 25). With respect to knowing-in-action, Schön (1983) points out that “although we sometimes think before acting, it is also true that in much of the spontaneous behaviour of skillful practice we reveal a kind of knowing which does not stem from a prior intellectual operation” (p. 51). Implicit within this knowing-in-action, which does not stem from a prior intellectual action, is a tacit dimension, an implicit knowing-how. Rather than invoking intentional reflection, knowing-in-action and theories-in-use illuminate a


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different kind of reflection, revealed in knowing-how, which is characterised for the purposes of this discussion as embodied reflection. Because tacit knowledge and knowing-how are revealed in the actions, the doings, of the individual practitioner, I suggest they may be characterised as embodied modes of reflection (see Kinsella, 2007b, for an elaboration), distinct from the intentional mode highlighted earlier. Through his conceptions of knowing-in-action, theories-in-use, and partially through reflection-in-action, Schön invokes this type of embodied reflection, and attends to the duality, with respect to a separation of mind and body, that has frequently been re-inscribed following Descartes.

Receptive Reflection

Although Schön elaborates beyond intentional reflection by highlighting an embodied dimension, a duality continues to exist between the modes of reflection to which Schön refers, and the pre-reflective experience (Greene, 1995; Merleau-Ponty, 1967; Sandywell, 1996), receptive reflection (Willis, 1999), or contemplative reflection (Miller, 1994) depicted by others. Receptive reflection is depicted in the left-hand column in Table 1. Willis (1999) makes a distinction between active/reductive and intuitive/receptive modes of reflection. He observes that the more one thinks about it, the more one is confronted with a proactive and a contemplative dimension. In the proactive stance, a thinker takes in and names experiences, orders them, and locates them into categories of language and ways of seeing the world. Willis contrasts this stance with an intuitive/contemplative stance, which highlights receptive and aesthetic ways of attending to the world. The receptive stance holds back discriminatory analytic thinking, in favour of a more contemplative process, in which the mind acts more like a receptor, receiving ideas, images, and feelings, and being moved by them. In a receptive stance, “the mind does not seize upon the object to analyse and subdue it but attempts to behold it, to allow its reality, its beauty and its texture to become more and more present” (p. 98). This approach “holds the thinking mind back from closure and returns again and again to behold the object, allowing words and images to emerge from the contemplative engagement” (p. 98). Willis makes a useful distinction between intentional reflection and the type of reflection that emerges from receptivity or contemplation. With respect to this notion of receptive reflection, physicist David Bohm’s (2003) ideas are of interest. He discusses the way in which thought can generate illusions, and suggests the possibility of moving beyond this illusion-generating structure to what he refers to as a “response from the emptiness.” He writes:

When one internally imitates an illusion-generating structure, one is thereby immediately lost in illusion, so that whatever one does is worse than useless. Therefore, what is called for is an ending of the response of thought, which is too mechanical. Rather, what is needed is response from the emptiness, which sees the structure of illusion generation, without imitating this structure. (p. 234)

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Bohm (2003) uses the analogy of the mind as an ocean that is stirred up and stormy on the surface but peaceful at the bottom. He suggests:

The mind may have a structure similar to the universe, and in the underlying movement we call empty space there is actually a tremendous energy, a movement. The particular forms which appeal in the mind may be analogous to the particles, and getting to the ground of the mind might be felt as light. The essential point is not that it’s light but rather this free, penetrating movement of the whole. (p.157)

MacInnes (2001) observes receptive reflection through meditation. She suggests that in meditation “we endeavour to stop linear thinking, even to avoid entertaining random thoughts, and all such mental activities” (p. 83). Such an approach complements intentional forms of reflection. MacInnes views meditation as a process in which individuals “disengage the Psyche from all its busy-ness” (p. 83), a shift she describes as gargantuan in today’s world, where she characterises an “overactive mind” as the “disease” of our times (p. 77). She believes that the non-thinking state achieved in meditation gives our whole being freedom to experience a deep sense of unity and the freedom to “do its thing” (p. 22). Thus, according to this perspective, the insight achieved in meditation and the practice of disengagement from the mind have the potential to inform action in a new way. Miller argues that Schön’s reflective practice, while valuable, continues to perpetuate dualities, whereas contemplative modes of reflection focus on overcoming such. Miller contrasts Being, a concept rooted in Heidegger’s (1962) philosophy, with intentional reflection:

Being is experienced as unmediated awareness. This awareness is characterized by openness, a sense of relatedness, and by awe and wonder….When we experience Being, duality drops away and as teachers we see part of ourselves in our students. At the deepest level we may experience brief moments of communion with our students. (Miller, 1994, p. 25)

Others focus on the arts as a vehicle for uncovering such prereflective or receptive landscapes. As educational philosopher Greene (1995) notes, engagement with the arts “may provoke us to recall that rationality is itself grounded in something prerational, prereflective—perhaps in a primordial, perceived landscape” (p. 52). Drawing on Merleau-Ponty (1964), Greene suggests that the prereflective—that is, what we perceive before we reflect on it—becomes the launching pad for rationality. She contends that we must take account of our own landscapes if we are to be truly present to ourselves and engage in authentic relationships. It is on “primordial ground that we recognize each other; that ground on which we are in direct touch with things and not separated from them by the conceptual lenses of constructs and theories” (p. 75). Schön attends to an intentional cognitive type of reflection and an embodied type of reflection revealed in action, yet never explores the significance of receptive reflection to practice. He hints at related concepts, such as the tacit, artistic, intuitive performance of successful practitioners, yet never fully confronts this realm.


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With respect to professional action and the busyness of practice, I wonder about the relevance of receptive reflection as an opening for new ways of seeing and for informing wise action. To what extent can the capacity to disengage from what MacInnes (2001) calls the disease of our times, an overactive mind, contribute to how practitioners might reframe the problems of practice and discern wise action in practice? What, I wonder, is lost by failing to acknowledge receptive reflection in professional practice? How might attention to receptive reflection inform other modes of reflection and offer hope for contributing to practice environments that are more humane and that transcend purely instrumentalist ideals?

Reflexivity

Reflexivity is depicted in the right-hand column of Table 1. Schön (1992) states that Dewey “never fully confronts the ontological differences in our ways of seeing situations and construing them as problematic or not” (pp. 122–123, italics in original). Some social theorists might say something similar of Schön: that he fails to attend to reflexivity. Social theorists might argue that Schön never fully confronts the ontological implications of the agent as embedded in social, cultural, historical, and linguistic communities, and the implications of such for ways of seeing situations and construing them as problems or not. In other words, although Schön acknowledges that we each have different ways of seeing situations and constructing the world, he does not appear to fully acknowledge the background and social conditions that implicitly influence and contribute to our ways of seeing, what Kemmis (2005) refers to as the extra-individual features of practice; nor does he direct practitioners’ attention to a critical consideration of such background conditions. Rather, drawing on Nelson Goodman’s (1978) constructivist ideas in Ways of Worldmaking, Schön focuses attention on individual constructions (Kinsella, 2006) in his epistemology of practice. Schön takes Goodman’s ideas about the ways in which worlds are made and applies these ideas to considerations about the world of professional practice. Underlying this notion of worldmaking, in the work of both men, is a constructivist orientation that emphasises individual reflection as opposed to social constructions, and focuses on viability within the subject’s experiential world. The practitioner in this account tests out actions for their fit within the system within which he or she participates. Thus, in Schön’s conception, within a particular created world, he suggests one can discover the consequences of one’s moves, make inferences, and establish by experiment whether one’s way of framing the situation is indeed appropriate. An implicit assumption in this approach is a focus on the individual person as the locus of meaning construction. While individual reflection is important, one of the critiques of reflective practice is its focus on the individual practitioner’s constructions of knowledge without adequately attending to the material, social, or discursive dimensions of practice knowledge (Kemmis, 2005). In this way, reflective practice relies primarily on the practitioner’s own resources (Taylor & White, 2000). Yet, professional practice occurs within a variety of communities (Wenger, 1998) and is shaped by

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social relations and discursive codifications (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Kemmis, 2005; Taylor, 2003; Taylor & White, 2000). Inherent in this tension is the question of how meaning is constructed. The words of philosopher Merleau-Ponty (1967) are striking: “because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning” (p. xix, italics added). In professional practice, too, we are condemned to meaning; therefore, the question of how meaning is constituted is significant. Is meaning constructed within the solitary practitioner? To what extent is meaning construction a dialogic or social process? How are constructions of meaning influenced by historical conditions, contexts, and discursive practices? Philosopher Richard Kearney (1988) highlights the intersubjective nature of meaning construction. He argues that meaning “does not originate within the narrow chambers of its own subjectivity, but emerges as a response to the other, as radical interdependence” (p. 387). Does reflective practice, with its focus on practitioner subjectivity and worldmaking, have the potential to occlude this “response to the other” in the construction of meaning? In Sandywell’s (1999) view, this is indeed a danger; he believes that individual reflection can fail to consider the accounts of ‘Others.’ Sandywell notes that, since Descartes, cognition appears as a type of inner contemplation, conducted by the solitary meditator, and is distinct from older dialogical views of existence, which, he suggests, have been displaced in favour of a proprietary conception of objects constituted through acts of introspective cognition (Sandywell, 1999). Solitary reflection, according to Sandywell, carries with it the danger of objectifying the other. In response, he proposes a form of dialogic reflexivity. Sandywell (1996) observes that “whereas reflection posits a neutral world of entities, reflexivity reminds reflection of the sociality of all world reference” (p. xiv). He notes:

In day-to-day living we plan and negotiate our ordinary affairs against a relatively fixed background of pregiven relations and structures whose origins and workings are not typically subject to critical reflection. As finite beings we are even unaware that the narratives we use to describe the world actively constitute its otherness as intelligible ‘experience’. Yet by virtue of their located and embedded character, forms of world-interpretation are in principle revisable constructs. (p. xiii)

Thus, Sandywell highlights the social nature of worldmaking implicit in its located and embedded character. Whereas Schön and Goodman might agree with the located and embedded nature of worldmaking, their focus is on the individual agent’s activity as opposed to considering the ‘sociality’ of world reference that Sandywell highlights. With respect to a social dimension to worldmaking, Bohm (1996) points out that thought is both a collective and an individual process. He writes:

We could consider two kinds of thoughts—individual and collective. Individually I can think of various things, but a great deal of thought is what we do together. In fact most of it comes from the collective background. Language is collective. Most of our basic assumptions come from our


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society, including all our assumptions about how society works, about what sort of person we are supposed to be, and about relationships, institutions, and so on. Therefore we need to pay attention to thought both individually and collectively. (p. 11)

This view has significant implications for considerations of how meaning is constructed in practice. Attending solely to individual thought, as in the thought of the practitioner, becomes insufficient without a consideration of the collective background. Rather, it becomes important to attend also to the collective thought that implicitly informs the backdrop to the process of an individual’s worldmaking in practice. In addition, even the construction of disciplinary knowledge has itself been portrayed as a social process (Harding, 1991; Kuhn, 1962, 1977). Although Schön appears to acknowledge the role of applied science and technique in the education of professionals, and to critique the unreflective application of such, he does not emphasise practitioner ‘reflexivity,’ defined by social philosopher Sandywell (1996) as “the act of interrogating interpretive systems” (p. xiv). Reflexivity goes beyond reflection to interrogate the very conditions under which knowledge claims are accepted and constructed, and it recognises the sociality of that process. Sandywell writes:

Where reflective orientations tend to adopt an empiricist orientation to their world domains and a pragmatic attitude toward their own authority, reflexive perspectives approach first-order reality work as a constructive process. Reflection posits a neutral world of entities, reflexivity reminds reflection of the sociality of all world reference. (p. xiv)

According to Sandywell (1996), for reflection, objects are simply things; for reflexivity, however, things are materialised significations, the outcome of social constructions and translation procedures, and require critical interrogation (p. xvi). Epistemic reflexivity is a phrase used by Bourdieu (in Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) to denote reflection and critical interrogation of the social conditions under which disciplinary knowledges come into being and gain credibility. Greene (1995) describes this invisible process of signification using the metaphor of a noxious cloud—the “cloud of givenness.” She writes that in the interpretive act,

we have to relate ourselves somehow to a social world that is polluted by something invisible and odorless, overhung by a sort of motionless cloud. It is the cloud of givenness, of what is considered ‘natural’ by those caught in the taken-for-granted, in the everydayness of things. (p. 47)

Greene (1995) notes communicative “distortions” (as defined by Habermas, 1971, p. 164) in the language of costs and benefits and in the language of instrumental reason by which phenomena are “explained” by powerful purveyors of an indecipherable reality of signs and symbols (p. 46). She laments that too few people are enabled to “crack the codes, to uncover that in which they are embedded” (p. 48). This is the goal of reflexivity, to enable practitioners to begin

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to “crack the codes,” to consider together the invisible cloud that pervades everyday life and everyday practice, and from this location to envision new possibilities together (Kinsella & Whiteford, 2009). Bohm (1996) refers to the need for relentless questioning of everything that does not make sense in all of one’s given presuppositions, assumptions, and taken-for-granted knowledge. Sloan (1983) similarly claims that a major task of the education of professionals is to “create a climate of trust in which radical questioning can take place without fear” (p. 146). Sloan implies that this questioning should be in the context of service to the positive possibility of gaining new perceptions, and insights, as opposed to the endless spiralling of negative critique. Thus, while Schön’s concept of reflection focuses on individual constructions, it neglects to consider the materialised significations, the outcomes of social constructions and translation procedures, which Sandywell (1996) refers to as the sociality of world reference, in any depth. An important example of the significance of reflexivity in the health professions is the type of radical questioning that is beginning to take place with respect to clinical trials funded by pharmaceutical companies. Recently increased media and professional attention has focused on the implications of privately funded clinical trials. The questioning of how such results are constructed and presented to physicians, and the implications for how pharmaceuticals come to be accepted and prescribed, is an example of critical reflexivity. Although Schön focuses on reflection, he does not go so far as to advocate this type of reflexivity.

Reflection: An Interminable Dialogue

Reflection and reflexivity do not, however, form the terms of a binary opposition. Indeed, Sandywell (1996) imagines a continuum between prereflective, reflective, and reflexive experience:

Prereflective experience already contains the primitive forms of embodiment, tacit interpretations and imaginary formations which provide the horizon for more reflective systems of action. Human experience is to this extent an interminable dialogue between prereflective experience, reflective practices, and reflexive action. (p. xiv)

This interminable dialogue between different dimensions within a continuum of reflection are proposed as a central underpinning of how we might think of reflection as important for practical wisdom—phronesis—in professional life. The proposed continuum of reflection retains Schön’s intentional reflection and embodied reflection, as depicted in the two central columns of Table 1. However, a continuum of reflection also includes sensitivity to receptive modes of reflection, those open to revelation, intuition, emotion, aesthetics and contemplation, as depicted in the left-hand column of Table 1. Further, attention is drawn to reflexivity (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), in the sense of critical discernment of the social conditions under which disciplinary knowledges are constructed, and an ongoing interrogation of these conditions. As such, the practitioner oriented toward practical


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wisdom is cognisant of the extra-individual features of practice (Kemmis, 2005); the role of power, discourse, and intersubjectivity in the construction of ‘versions of reality’ in practice; and mindful of the imperative of reflexive attention and dialogue in this regard. Reflexivity is depicted in the right-hand column of Table 1. Although this continuum of reflection is presented in a static form for purposes of presentation, the proposed character is much more dynamic and iterative. It embraces an interminable dialogic praxis (Sandywell, 1996) between different types of reflection. The different types of reflection in the continuum might be thought of as dimensions of reflection, in the sense that they always comprise a mixture of types of reflection, and rarely, if ever, is there a pure enactment of just one type or another. The continuum might be envisioned more as a pulsating quadrant (I am indebted to Bill Green for proposing this image), a messy interacting mixture of different dimensions of reflection alive in professional practice.

CRITERIA FOR PHRONETIC JUDGEMENT: THE DISPOSITION TOWARD PHRONESIS

Reflection is implicated in professional practice through the judgements and actions it informs in the lives of practitioners. How might such judgements and actions be informed with a phronetic quality? Many scholars contend that professional practices are interpretive practices (Montgomery, 2006; Polkinghorne, 2004; Schön, 1983, 1987), centrally concerned with how practitioners make judgements. If this is so, it raises questions about the grounds on which practitioners make judgements, and how practitioners might orient such judgements in the direction of phronesis. Schön (1987) suggests, drawing on Spence (1982), that all interpretations are essentially creative and that any number of different interpretations, equally coherent and complete, might be provided for any particular clinical event. In this view, right interpretations have a power to persuade grounded in their aesthetic appeal. They may also acquire pragmatic usefulness, grounded in the expectation that they will lead to additional clarifying clinical material (Schön, 1987, p. 229). Schön draws attention to three criteria for professional judgement: pragmatic usefulness, persuasiveness, and aesthetic appeal. Illuminating the implicit criteria by which practitioners make judgements may be a useful way both to conceive of, and make explicit, the balancing act in which professionals continually engage, and to begin to think about what types of considerations might lead practitioners beyond instrumental approaches and toward practical wisdom in their interpretations and judgements in practice. In the following discussion, I briefly consider the criteria of pragmatic usefulness, persuasiveness, and aesthetic appeal, and propose three further criteria—ethical imperatives, dialogic intersubjectivity, and transformative potential—which might be worth considering in the quest to engage phronesis through wise judgements in practice. This list is not meant to be exhaustive or to suggest that some normative criteria for phronetic judgements might be found; rather, this discussion is an

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exploratory consideration of possible criteria that might guide practitioners in the disposition toward phronetic judgements in practice.

Pragmatic Usefulness

The first criterion that Schön highlights by which practitioners make judgements in practice is the criterion of pragmatic appeal. His notion of pragmatic usefulness refers to the idea of practice fit or viability within the practitioner’s experiential world. Furthermore, Schön draws on a pragmatic philosophical tradition: his works are grounded in the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey, and the assumptions implicit within that tradition are evident in his perspective.

Persuasiveness

The second criterion identified by Schön is persuasiveness. I assume here that Schön refers to persuasiveness with respect to the course of action a practitioner chooses in light of his or her reflections within a particular practice context and within a particular disciplinary community. Such a view may be likened to philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn’s (1962, 1977) insight that persuasiveness within a scientific community is one of the key criteria by which scientists make judgements about which theory to adopt or accept. In practice, persuasiveness within the disciplinary community and the practice context is a criterion by which practitioners make judgements.

Aesthetic Appeal

A third criterion is aesthetic appeal. Dewey (1929) suggests the word artistic be used to designate the activities by which works of art (including practice) are brought into being, and the term aesthetic be used for the appreciation of such works (p. 5). Thus, an aesthetic vision of experience views professional practice as an art, and the appreciation of that art as the aesthetic. Such a conception recognises more than instrumentalist and efficiency-based views of practice (Stein, 2001) and includes realms that fall outside of traditional epistemic lines. The aesthetic serves as a way of considering the experience of practice itself, in the sense that successful practice may be conceived of as an art form.

Ethical Imperatives

A fourth proposed criterion is ethical imperatives. Ethics receives little direct attention in the work of Schön, despite its centrality in Dewey’s writings (see Dewey, 1972/1897, Dewey & Tufts, 1978/1908). I suggest this area requires significantly more attention with respect to considerations of how practitioners reflect in practice and the criteria by which they make decisions. Many decisions that fall within the indeterminate or grey zones of practice are infused with ethical concerns. For example, when I speak to front-line health practitioners, they


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frequently express concerns about ethical issues and ethical relationships in their practices. Many suggest that it is their connection and care for other human beings that keep them in their vocations despite difficult and morally complex conditions. In an increasingly complex world, in which the infiltration of corporate values in health care (and other environments) is frequently a reality (Stein, 2001), the time and opportunity for reflection on ethical issues can easily become displaced, or simply silenced amid the vast cacophony of other voices. If one is to take phronesis as professional knowledge seriously, then ethics is of central concern. When considering the criteria by which practitioners might make phronetic judgements in practice, consideration of ethical concerns appears to lie at the centre.

Dialogic Intersubjectivity

I propose that phronetic judgements recognise the sociality of consciousness, such that reflection is viewed as an individual and a social process, considered in light of both individual and collective thought. To simply reflect on one’s own interpretations, without a consideration of what Levinas refers to as the “face of the other” (Kearney, 1988, p. 362), and an acknowledgement of the ‘Other’s’ interpretation of meaning, raises ethical questions (Kinsella, 2005). An ethics of care (Nodding, 1984) and answerability (Bakhtin, 1993) recognise the dialogic nature of identity and the practitioner’s responsibility to others in this regard. It draws attention to the imperative within practice to attend to the powerful intersubjectivity that is always at play. Dialogic intersubjectivity recognises both the negotiation of meaning within practice settings and the role of discourse in this process. Thus, a fifth proposed criterion by which practitioners might move toward phronetic judgement in practice is through recognition of dialogic intersubjectivity: the extent to which the dialogic nature of interpretation is acknowledged and the extent to which ‘Others’’ versions of ‘reality’ are given a hearing. The practitioner oriented toward phronesis is aware of and concerned with not only his or her own interpretations in practice but also the dialogic possibilities implicit in the recognition of the interpretations of clients, co-workers, and others.

Transformative Potential

A sixth proposed criterion for phronetic judgement is attention to the transformative potential within the practice situation. Rather than looking solely for pragmatic fit within the traditions of practice, one might also consider the power of imagination and the transformative potential of a situation. Such a perspective embodies the idea of the practitioner as a transformative intellectual (Giroux, 1988) and attends not only to pragmatic or practical interests but also to emancipatory interests and possibilities (Habermas, 1971) within the situation at hand. Rather than accepting received views, the practitioner oriented toward practical wisdom critically considers why things are as they are, examines the taken-for-granted, and engages with possibilities for transforming the situation at hand, in the interest of justice.

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In summary, I highlight six criteria by which practitioners might move toward phronetic judgements as they engage in processes of reflection in practice. These criteria do not claim to be exhaustive or normative in any way. However, if we accept that professional practices are interpretive practices, centrally concerned with how practitioners engage in reflection to make judgements, perhaps it behooves us to begin to think about and make explicit the implicit criteria by which such judgements are weighed. Beginning first with three criteria discussed by Schön, I propose an elaboration to six criteria that might foster practitioner reflection in ways that move toward phronesis or practical wisdom: pragmatic usefulness, persuasiveness, aesthetic appeal, ethical imperatives, dialogic intersubjectivity, and transformative potential. These criteria are offered not as the final word but rather as a means to open a conversation about how phronetic judgements might be cultivated in professional life.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have proposed an elaboration of Schön’s reflective practice in light of Aristotle’s phronesis. It is my hope that this chapter will spark further conversation about how we might extend conceptions of reflection and think about practitioner judgements and the implications for phronesis. I propose that reflection, in the interest of phronesis, might usefully be conceived as a continuum, and have begun to articulate what that continuum might look like (see Table 1). This continuum is not meant to be linear or hierarchical, and indeed it might better be imaged as a pulsating, overlapping, quadrant. In addition, I have examined the criteria for professional judgements identified by Schön, and propose an elaboration, recognising that this is just the beginning of a scholarly conversation in this realm. These criteria are not meant to be an exhaustive list, nor are they meant to imply that a normative schema can be identified; rather, this discussion is offered merely as a means of opening an important and largely unarticulated conversation. Schön (1992) noted that philosophers remain alive for us, in so far as we are inspired to rethink and renew the meanings of the ideas they plant in our minds. The same may be said of Schön and Aristotle; both have left us with important legacies. It is our job to rethink and renew the meanings of these ideas in light of contemporary theoretical conversations and complex practice contexts, and to do so with as much practical wisdom as we can muster. Perhaps it is through our efforts to engage such conversations, as much as in any insights that we might garner, that we will find phronesis!

REFERENCES

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Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: Heath & Co.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Collier Books. Dewey, J. (1972). Ethical principles underlying education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The early works,

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Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of worldmaking. Sussex, UK: The Harvester Press. Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change.

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Cornell University Press. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Marquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York: Harper. Kearney, R. (1988). The wake of imagination. London: Routledge. Kemmis, S. (2005). Knowing practice: Searching for saliences. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 13(3),

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Miller, J. (1994). The contemplative practitioner. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Montgomery, K. (2006). Rationality in an uncertain practice. In K. Montgomery (Ed.), How doctors

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Continuing Education, 21(1), 91–112. Elizabeth Anne Kinsella Faculty of Health Sciences and Faculty of Education The University of Western Ontario


ARTHUR W. FRANK

REFLECTIVE HEALTHCARE PRACTICE

Claims, Phronesis, and Dialogue

Phronesis comes into being but has no specific beginning; we evoke it, but any description seems incomplete. One evocation of phronesis is illustrated in a story retold by the Zen teacher and poet Norman Fischer. The story involves a dialogue between two Zen masters—it’s important to note this dialogue is not between a student and a teacher but between two masters—Guishan, also referred to as Shan, and Daowu, also called Wu.

Guishan asked Daowu, “Where are you coming from?”

Daowu said, “I’ve come from tending the sick.”

Shan said, “How many people were sick?”

Wu said, “There were the sick and the not sick.”

“Isn’t the one not sick you?” Guishan asked.

Daowu said, “Being sick and not being sick have nothing to do with the True Person. Speak quickly! Speak quickly!”

Guishan said, “Even if I could say anything, it wouldn’t relate.” Later Tiantong commented on this, saying, “Say something anyway!” (Fischer, 2008, p. 66)

Fischer (2008) offers several observations about this story, although he presents the story less as a text to analyse and more as what I’d call a companion—that is, a story to live with over time and in the different circumstances that life presents. Fischer recommends “letting [such stories] work on us, instead of us working on them” (p. 63). But such an approach doesn’t exclude a level of interpretation that begins with Fischer noting that although visiting the sick is a great spiritual practice, it’s possible that Daowu was not visiting the sick at all. Instead, sick in this dialogue is used in the sense of the first Noble Truth of Buddhism—that all beings suffer. The teaching question, or koan, that Fischer takes from the story is: “Who is sick?” This question is not intended to be answered in so many words; again, the

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point is to let the question work on us, instead of us working on it. But as the last part of the dialogue emphasises, although nothing relevant can be said, silence also is not an option. So Fischer (2008) offers a sort of answer to his koan:

Who are the sick? The ones who have forgotten the stories of suffering and pain, who think that they themselves are not sick. These are the sick ones; these are the ones who suffer a lot. Who are the ones not sick? These are the ones who know the stories, who know that they are sick, that we all are sick, and who have sympathy. They know the world is a hospital ward and we are doing nothing but tending the sick, ourselves included. (pp. 66–67)

Fischer would be the first to acknowledge that he didn’t discover any of this. It is very ancient teaching. When I had cancer back in the 1980s, I’d read enough of this teaching to attempt to say some of the same sorts of things in the book I wrote about my own illnesses, At the Will of the Body (Frank, 1991). My working title for that book was A Dangerous Opportunity. One danger of being diagnosed with a disease is thinking that only now you are sick, and that being sick with a disease is something special. One opportunity you have is to realise all the ways your life has always been sick, and then expanding that realisation to recognise that the sick are all around you. Sickest of all are those people who are most convinced that they exist on the other side of some great divide between themselves and your condition of illness. I begin with Fischer’s (2008) story of Shan and Wu for two reasons. First, I want to say to healthcare workers: Take this question—Who is sick?—and keep it close by so that it can work on you. Let it in, and become shaped by it. Mainstream medicine reduces the answer to this question to the identification of a diagnosable disease. Like all reductions, that answer is useful, but it also authorises us to stop thinking at the point at which wisdom needs to supersede knowledge, which is when phronesis begins. My second reason is to exemplify one form of reflective practice before I talk about reflective practice, which I will now do.

* * *

Reflective practice begins with interruption. I remember once talking to a clinical ethics colleague, William May, about my frustration with one of the oncologists who had treated my mother-in-law when she was dying. This oncologist simply would not stop and listen to her questions, or the family’s questions, or anything. “You threw him off his rhythm,” Bill said to me, and that reply expressed considerable wisdom about medical practice. All of us have a rhythm as we go through our daily tasks, and we resent anything that throws us off. In the course of any present task, we are anticipating the next task, and the pace of the present task takes that anticipation as its metronome. Living in such anticipation is a very un-Zen way to be, always subordinating the present moment. But it gets things done, whether that task is house cleaning or medical rounds. Reflection interrupts that flow. It is a carved-out space in which we ask ourselves what we’re doing, and who is doing the things that seem to be getting done. In these reflective moments, the subject of action and the object of action are linked; not quite merged, but fully dependent on each other. You can’t think about one without


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questioning the other. Daowu and Guishan both know this, which is one reason why Guishan’s question—“Isn’t the one not sick you?”—is very funny, in the spirit of koan questions to which you can answer neither yes nor no. Both answers are true and not true, which is why the question does not require an answer as a response, at least in any usual sense of an answer. What the question does require might be better described as an interruption. In the space of this interruption, we need to ask what more is being asked than can be addressed by any answer. What needs to be interrupted is the temporal flow in which what is supposed to happen next dominates the present. And beyond that, what gets interrupted is what sociologists call typification, which is one of the main ways that humans make manageable the unmanageable complexity of the reality we face, especially the reality of other people in all their differences. The biographical uniqueness of every other person is simply too complex for humans to deal with, so we categorise people into types, usually according to what we think they expect of us or what we expect of them. Each type has its rules of interaction: how much time to spend, what to say and what need not be said, and so forth. The sociologist Harvey Sacks (1974) took the idea of typification further and talked about membership categorisation devices. What Sacks (1974) noticed was that in much ordinary conversation, speakers refer to people in ways that require the listeners to decide what membership category those people belong to. Sacks’s famous example was a child’s very short story, “The baby cried. The mommy picked it up” (Sacks, 1974, p. 216). No personal pronoun restricts the noun mommy, so the story is ambiguous as to whose mother is referenced. Sacks claimed and subsequent scholars agree that most of us hearing that story assume the woman who picks up the crying child is that child’s mother. She could be another child’s mother, but most of English-language speakers will intuitively decide she is the mother of the child she picks up. And here is Sacks’s point: having made the membership-categorisation decision, we will stick to it and require considerable persuasion before we entertain other possibilities. So, this story shows another way we make an unmanageable world sufficiently manageable to live in, again, whether we are cleaning house or practising medicine. Reflection first interrupts the temporal flow of yielding to the demands of next, and then it disrupts the processes of typification. Reflection asks: Who am I putting in this category of sick? What makes them members of this category, and others not members? What is the principle of my categorisation? I want to emphasise what was gently pointed out to me by the observation that my questions were disrupting the oncologist’s rhythm. To stop somebody who is going about his or her business and ask them what they are doing—and worse yet, who is doing that—is beyond annoying. Such interruptions recall why people were sufficiently annoyed with Socrates to execute him. In his distinctively rational but Zen sort of way, Socrates practised interrupting people and asking them to reflect on what they were taking for granted, especially the categories they used to account for their activity. Those who practise Socratic interruption risk Socrates’s untimely demise. That is exactly what I will now risk, as I try to specify more closely what kinds of questions healthcare workers might ask themselves, if they were to practise

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reflection. Who is sick? is a fine question for meditation, but professional reflections can also be more task-specific. At the end of these more specific questions, however, we can still return to Who is sick?

* * *

During the last decade, I have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time talking to nurses and physicians about their work. One realisation for me has been the many different responsibilities clinicians have in any encounter with a patient. I think these responsibilities are usefully thought of as claims on the healthcare worker. Each claim calls on the clinician to act a certain way. Some of these claims are complementary, but some can be antithetical to other claims. My list has six claims, and these six are not exhaustive. First, practical claims. Patients, but also colleagues and insurance companies, expect an outcome. The healthcare workers are supposed to get something done, whether that task is diagnosis or intervention. Second, professional claims. Physicians work under the most stringent expectations to meet the anticipated judgements of their peers, both locally and extensively; the professional claims on nurses seem more institutional and team-based. These expectations might be explicit—as in best-practice guidelines issued by professional associations and to which physicians are legally responsible—or they might be implicit, as in what colleagues say about you in the lounge or locker room. I have to remind myself how incredibly peer-oriented medical culture is, which I perpetually underestimate. Third, scientific claims. Medical practice is supposed to be based on science, both basic science and the more specific clinical findings known as evidence, as in the phrase, evidence-based medicine. Physicians, as those who have the final responsibility to prescribe treatment, expect themselves to fulfill those responsibilities according to science, or to have very good reasons for any deviation. Fourth, commercial claims. Included here are many claims, from the sorts of direct financial interests that raise the eyebrows of ethicists—such as physicians having significant personal investment in the pharmaceutical company whose drugs the physician prescribes—to the more mundane claims of sustaining office income. The latter may involve being answerable to an office manager who monitors the physician’s productivity, or, if the physician owns his or her own practice, she or he needs to respect the claims of office staff whose employment depends on the financial viability of the practice. Fifth, ethical claims. Here, I use ethics in the sense of bioethics: partially codified standards of practice concerning matters such as patient autonomy and consent, confidentiality, respect for dignity, and, at the extreme, non-maleficence. Physicians have all sorts of power with respect to patients, who have all sorts of vulnerabilities. Ethical claims involve the non-abuse of that power. For that reason, such claims are largely negative, phrased as prohibitions. Finally are what I could call moral claims, using moral in the sense that Arthur Kleinman (2006) may have done most to refine in his writings on medicine. The moral claim that I emphasise most in my own writing is to witness the patient’s suffering. In a perfect world, this claim would be complementary to the first


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expectation that physicians do something with a practical benefit, but a tension can exist between the two, as each makes fundamentally different demands in the physician–patient relationship. The moral claim often involves a very difficult task for physicians: Don’t just do something, stand there. Or, better yet, sit there. Quietly. Either allow the patient to speak, or allow the silence to hold you both together. If the practical claim presupposes the greatest distance between the practising subject and an object that is practised upon, the moral claim understands what both subject and object share in their common humanity. They are both sick and both not sick. They both suffer and they both know stories that address that suffering. Again, these six claims hardly exhaust all the responsibilities imposed upon and experienced by healthcare workers. Six are enough for now, and you can think about others. You can also think about which of these claims support other claims and which undermine other claims; when do healthcare workers find themselves in conflict as to which claim to honour? Reflection, in a more focused, applied sense, can begin by asking which claims are relevant in any medical encounter. Which claims ought to have priority in this encounter? How are different claims backed up, and do those backings give certain claims undue force, vis-à-vis other claims? How can each claim best be honoured, and when must some claims be allowed to fall into the background, perhaps the deep background? Let me emphasise three points that seem to me to be crucial. First, at least all these six claims will be relevant in any physician–patient encounter. Second, in most encounters that I can imagine, some claims will militate against others. Third, no decision algorithm can prioritise among the claims. As I see it, the physician has pretty much only two choices. One choice is to organise the days according to a default setting with respect to which claims are honoured how. That is, look at the day as a big checklist and don’t look back or even around, which is one description of residency training that imprints itself on physicians as a way of getting through their day. The other choice is to reflect enough that maybe, eventually, a kind of practical wisdom will develop that can never be fully articulated—again, it’s never an algorithm—but is felt as a guiding force. The name that is increasingly given to that practical wisdom is Aristotle’s term, phronesis.

* * *

Why are professionals in diverse fields looking to phronesis as some kind of solution to problems they face? What do these people hope that phronesis can do for us? All kinds of answers are useful to consider, but I will propose only one. Simply put, consider the project of thinking that life’s decisions can be made by plugging them into an algorithm; sociologists would call it the routinisation project. Unfortunately, solutions along these lines seem to cause as many problems as they resolve. Let me illustrate with several stories. The first is a fairly obvious story of what could be called non-phronesis or even anti-phronesis practice, and the later stories show the need for phronesis because what ought to be done is by no means clear. An experienced dialysis nurse described a patient who did not speak English and was both especially apprehensive about dialysis treatment and in pain. He was agitated and pulling at the dialysis lines, so he was given a breakthrough dose of narcotic, according to a protocol. He fell into a calm sleep. As the treatment

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progressed, a floor nurse came by, noted on the patient’s chart that the protocol called for him to receive an oral pain pill, and proposed to wake him up to administer the dose. The dialysis nurse objected that this was ridiculous—the patient was already asleep. She also pointed out that the patient’s chart indicated a choking hazard. The floor nurse returned with a supervisor; the patient was woken and given the pill, by mouth, despite the choking hazard that was charted and written on a sign over the bed. People tell clichéd jokes about hospital patients being woken up to receive pills so that they can sleep. But sometimes, it is not a joke. Regular medication to prevent breakthrough pain is good practice. But breakthrough pain was not the risk for this dialysis patient. The issue was not the patient’s needs but the needs of the protocol. I call this story anti-phronesis because it’s about overriding the claims of practical wisdom in favour of routines that have been decided upon without reference to the situation at hand but which are nevertheless applied. The story is almost too much of a cliché to be useful, but it did actually happen. And that it happened—that the protocol was so obviously lacking as a guide to action—is why people turn to phronesis as a better way of doing things. What also needs to be emphasised is that phronesis does not do what protocols are intended to accomplish, which is to decrease personal responsibility for decisions that might be challenged. If, for this dialysis patient, the protocol had been followed and things had gone badly, the nurses would have been accountable, but they had a defence. If things had gone badly and the protocol had not been followed, their level of accountability would have increased. So accountability trumps both the patient’s interest and the nurse’s self-respect as a professional. Phronesis offers no such formal, juridical accountability. On the contrary, phronesis is precisely about taking personal responsibility that is based on expertise. My other stories come from Tony Miksanek (2008), a physician practising in Illinois. Miksanek’s article is titled “On Caring for ‘Difficult’ Patients,” and the patients he describes really are difficult. Willy is a diabetes patient who demands that Dr. Miksanek do nothing more than renew his prescription for insulin and syringes. He refuses any examination or care. “If his chart is ever reviewed by the insurance company for quality of care,” Dr. Miksanek writes, “I’m going to get dinged” (p. 1424). He concludes: “What makes me an ineffective physician in my mind is exactly the quality Willy deems vital in his primary care doctor. I’m easy” (p. 1424). At the other end of the patient spectrum, the difficulty of caring for Mrs. Thomasina is that she exemplifies what Dr. Miksanek (2008) calls “testophilia” (p. 1424). She is convinced she needs every medical test she hears of, and she calls weekly to demand more tests. Those tests that Medicare will not cover she pays for herself. Dr. Miksanek writes: “Her faith in technology and medical science approaches medical devotion” (p. 1425). He also recognises that if “she isn’t single-handedly bankrupting the healthcare system, Mrs. Thomasina is definitely putting a small dent in it” (p. 1425). He tries to resist her demands, “Yet she has a way of wearing me down” (p. 1425). The third patient is Max, who not only has but also is a pain in the neck—the metaphoric nature of the physical symptom is significant. Max is angry with his


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employer and with workers’ compensation. “Max sees himself as a victim,” Dr. Miksanek (2008) writes; “Now I feel just like him—pessimistic” (p. 1426). Their appointments have a ritual quality: Dr. Miksanek fills out forms, and he gives Max a pep talk, although, as he writes, he does not believe it himself. At the end of their session, “We nod at one another without speaking a word” (p. 1427). Care of these patients can be provided only on the basis of phronesis because these patients don’t fit the accepted models of practice. But here we reach an impasse that I see as undecidable. Some might argue that what all three patients need is precisely to have a protocol imposed on them to force them to accept good care or to accept reasonable limits to care. I am convinced that such attempts would alienate the patients and either drive them to other physicians, where the same cycle would repeat itself, or drive them out of the medical system entirely. Unless that risk is taken—and in the not too distant future it may become an acceptable risk—neither phronesis advocates nor protocol advocates can claim to be right. Dr. Miksanek’s stories do not lead to any conclusion for improved care. No magic intervention is offered to make things right for any of these patients. Dr. Miksanek suggests that longer, less frequent visits might help, but those who reimburse the visits do not see things that way. He concludes: “Difficult patients and their frustrated physicians fail each other. We flop together. We lose hope. And there is no more worthless doctor than one who has lost all hope. Same holds true for a patient” (Miksanek, 2008, p. 1428). Where, you might ask, is the possibility of phronesis in the care of these all-too-real patients, who might also be students, or social-work clients, or any other type of what the British and Irish call service-users?

* * *

To paraphrase Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the wisdom of care is all too often strained, but nevertheless it continues to fall “as the gentle rain from heaven.” That’s a miracle we should celebrate. I hear that rain falling in Dr. Miksanek’s stories of difficult patients. The quality of phronesis that I hear in these stories is the recognition that these people need care not in spite of all the ways they resist good medical practice but precisely because of that resistance. To put it in more abstract terms, Dr. Miksanek’s practical wisdom informs his courage to remain in dialogue with imperfect patients, even to the point of recognising how their imperfections instigate his own. Here, then, is a final koan about reflective practice. In Dr. Miksanek’s closing, despairing comments about flopping together, is he dragged down by his patients, or is he dragged up? Say either and you miss the point. Speak quickly, as Daowu says. And, if you can think of nothing to say that relates, say something anyway, as Tiantong says you must, because these stories happen and your silence is not an option. Phronesis is what enables these sad, depressing stories to be equally stories of liberation, of duty, and of calling. Phronesis does not make these stories any less sad or less depressing, but might enable the professional who finds himself or herself living such stories to persevere.

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REFERENCES

Fischer, N. (2008, March). Phrases and spaces. Shambhala Sun, 62–67. Frank, A. W. (1991). At the will of the body: Reflections on illness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Company. Kleinman, A. (2006). What really matters: Living a moral life amidst uncertainty and danger. New

York: Oxford University Press, Inc. Miksanek, T. (2008). On caring for "difficult" patients. Health Affairs, 27(5), 1422–1428. Sacks, H. (1974). On the analysability of stories by children. In R. Turner (Ed.), Ethnomethodology (pp.

216–232). Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Arthur W. Frank Department of Sociology University of Calgary


KATHRYN HIBBERT

CULTIVATING CAPACITY:

Phronesis, Learning, and Diversity in Professional Education

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.

Alan Alda

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter I consider phronesis in terms of what it has to offer our thinking about learning and diversity in professional education. I approach the topic as an educator who has participated in professional education contexts in both medicine and education. I begin with a brief narrative to situate my thinking and illustrate one way in which I work to disrupt assumptions about professional education in the educational context. As the chapter progresses, I consider what it might take to cultivate the ‘habits of mind’ needed to build capacity for phronetic action in the professions.

PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

I began teaching in 1982. At that time in Ontario, Canada, regional professional education was largely the domain of teacher federations. Teachers were routinely surveyed about their professional needs so that professional development days could be planned in response to those needs. Typically, sessions began with a motivational keynote address that led to much discussion over the days and weeks to follow. Numerous breakout sessions were offered, and teachers chose those sessions that addressed the subject area or pedagogical needs for which they were seeking support. The sessions were frequently participatory, and we looked forward to spending these days working with colleagues from other schools, talking about ideas we had, and sharing the strategies we were using in the classroom. Further opportunities were available for dialogic interaction around our subject area by participating in one of the teams writing curriculum. I looked forward to working on these projects because of the meaningful opportunities for learning and the engaging discussions about our practice. By the mid-1990s, much had changed. A standardised curriculum had been introduced, followed quickly by standardised assessment and evaluation procedures and a standardised electronic reporting process. The number of days allocated for

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professional education via school districts was reduced, and the increase in mandated changes shifted both the control and focus of the experiences from professional development that emerged from regional needs, to ‘training’ in the new provincial standards. By then, I was working as one of the central program staff at the Board of Education. Responsibility for generating the new curriculum guidelines and procedures was assumed by the Ministry of Education and Training in a much more significant way. The support staff role (previously considered ‘a position of additional responsibility’) transformed into a position that required us to disseminate materials and reproduce our received training in a ‘train-the-trainer’ format. Information was scripted and delivered in a top-down system, which, for me, was the antithesis of teaching. All teachers, regardless of years of experience, level of education, or competence in the classroom were subjected to identical sessions. I recall feeling that this process of ‘training’ represented the direct opposite of everything I knew about good teaching, and it led to a sense of de-professionalisation and demoralisation. How could we expect teachers to create engaging and stimulating learning environments for students when they weren’t themselves being engaged as professionals and intellectuals? How could we ask them to differentiate their instruction on the basis of student needs when we completely ignored their differences and needs? The ‘train-the-trainer’ experience has haunted me ever since, and I continue to return to it in my research time and time again.

EDUCATING PROFESSIONALS: AN EXAMPLE FROM A FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Educating professionals brings with it a set of assumptions about its learners. At the faculty of education where I serve as a teacher–educator, students and faculty bring assumptions into their learning environment. Gaining access to the program is highly competitive. Recognising this admission’s context, I typically gather information from my students early in a course. For example, in an English Language Arts class, I ask the following questions:

– Tell me about your literacy background. What led you here? What are your long-term goals?

– List a sample of the texts that you enjoyed this summer. – What would you like me to know about you as a learner?

This information allows me to plan my teaching in a way that accesses the student-as-informant (Harste, Woodward, & Burke, 1984), and the results are always instructive. Eventually, I began to consider other ways to use the information that students provided to educate the classroom community. Gathering such information and making it visible became a first step toward accessing the knowledge of practitioners in ways that could help them to problematise their current understandings and begin to negotiate the gaps in their knowledge. For example, I developed ‘mini challenges’ to help teacher candidates prepare for their work with students in classroom settings, such as the Case of Hsilgne, below:

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Mini Challenge #1 The Case of Hsilgne

During the first observation day, your Associate Teacher introduces you to Hsilgne. She is new to the school and the Associate Teacher has asked you to get to know her, consider what her needs are and what approach you might take to help Hsilgne transition to her new class and into the curriculum. In your conversations with Hsilgne, you learn the following:

• She can learn via lecture style if it incorporates movies, stories, parodies, etc., as she recognizes that she has a short attention span.

• She needs to take her time to complete her work. • Sometimes she misses instructions when too much information is presented all

at once. • She finds it helpful to discuss her ideas with others before having to write, as

she needs to be able to practise or think things through before applying what she is learning.

• She finds speaking publicly to be anxiety-provoking. • She is a hard worker and loves to learn new things, but often needs to read

material more than once before she comprehends it. • Once she is comfortable with a topic, she is willing to take a leadership role.

The Associate Teacher sits down with you, asks you what information you have gathered, what the information tells you about the student, and what you need to do as her teacher, to help her experience success in your classroom.

I share this case with my class and encourage them to discuss their responses in small groups. When we come back together as a whole class, the suggestions in response to this activity typically include the following:

• This student sounds like she is immature, and maybe has a learning disability. • Hsilgne is highly anxious and has a lot of learning problems and it appears that

there are some socio-emotional ones as well. She will need a lot of support. • She seems to have a good grasp on what it is that she needs in order to learn, so

perhaps someone has been helping her develop learning strategies along the way.

• She sounds like a typical teenager, struggling with competing identities.

After some discussion about the possible problems that Hsilgne may or may not be challenged by, I pause and look at the class for a moment without speaking. Then, I tell them that I want them to listen very carefully to what I am about to say and remember these words as they enter the teaching profession: Hsilgne, I tell them, is YOU. It is the word English spelled backward, and she is a composite of the things that you have told me that you want me to know about you as learners. Without fail, this brief activity serves as a startling disruption to some of the assumptions that teacher candidates bring to their professional education environment—namely, that those who have already completed an undergraduate degree with sufficient success to gain acceptance into a very competitive

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professional education program must all be independent learners requiring little in the way of direct instruction or differentiated learning strategies. The activity serves “to spatialise the conventional narrative, and to relocate the autobiographical in its social and cultural landscape” (Kamler, 2001, p. 2) in ways that open their thinking to alternative perspectives and experiences.

EDUCATING MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS

The need to acknowledge and clarify the assumptions we bring to our professional practice becomes even more pronounced when we move into what have long been considered the elite professions, such as medicine. What does it mean to move knowledge about teaching into a global medical education community in ways that demonstrate complex understandings of diversity? Over the past few years, my work in a professional education capacity with physicians has revealed that, like our work with teacher candidates, we must first convince medical educators that diversity in learning exists at all levels. The faculty in many academic medical institutions have increasingly witnessed a growing diversity in the classroom (e.g., in terms of gender, class, age, culture, and language). The greater challenge is to better understand what is not as visible, that is, the complex ways in which people learn. As an educator working with residents and physicians in a highly competitive field, I have observed that assumptions about who residents are as learners often becomes conflated with their intellectual ability. Both physician-educators and the residents themselves are often surprised that despite having qualified to enter a highly competitive program, some struggle with the learning. The typical response by most faculty (and often the students themselves) to their struggle is to ‘pathologise the learner’; in other words, to focus responsibility for the struggle on those activities that the learner may or may not be doing. Residents have sought help repeatedly (from across the country and usually with a promise of anonymity) under a cloud of fear and shame, seeking support, first, to understand why they are struggling and, second, to negotiate ways to address their needs. For many, the new learning context they encounter in their residency is their first experience of struggling academically. As a result, we focus much of our work on helping medical faculty to question their assumptions about learners and to ensure that, as educators, we share a collective responsibility to find ways to address the learning needs of our students. The impetus to increase diversity in medical programs and to build and maintain competent and sustainable human resources in our own communities and in outreach settings must, for ethical reasons, include a parallel commitment to develop professionals and programs that are adequately prepared and supported to meet the learning needs encountered in this increasingly diverse context. Disrupting assumptions borne from a more monolithic educational past becomes even more critical as the participants, the contexts, and the knowledge needed are increasingly responsive to an ever-changing context of global needs and the diversity entailed by such demand.


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A ROLE FOR THE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle examined the conditions wherein moral responsibility might be ascribed to individuals. I wonder, might Aristotle’s notion of phronesis offer a “unifying and essential habit of the mind” (Birmingham, 2004, p. 314) to guide the work of medical educators in today’s global context? Eikeland (2006) suggests that a return to Aristotle

springs from a deeply felt desire for finding concepts to grasp kinds of knowledge and skills that are directed towards understanding and acting in accordance with requirements of the concrete situations we find ourselves in. The search is for non-technical, non-mechanical ways of recognizing the sovereignty and independence of our everyday cognitions and judgments, without constantly being referred and subordinated to “science.” Phronesis appears to be a concept with great potential for this. (p. 6)

Phronesis, as Aristotle defined it, is a “state of grasping the truth, involving reason, concerned with action about what is good or bad for a human being” (Aristotle, trans. 1999, p. 154). In professional practice, and medical education is no exception, the dominant discourse has long been steeped in the language of technical and scientific approaches (Schön, 1983). Physicians in particular, are trained to aim for maximal certainty and “are rewarded for efficiency, technical skill, and measurable results” (Phillips, 1994, p. 1). Instrumental rationalism, however, can only take us so far. Anne Phelan (2005) has fittingly noted that educators “must learn to recognize that generalizable knowledge is fragile in the face of practice” (p. 353). Because medical residents have been inculcated into a reverence for generalisable knowledge during their undergraduate medical training, difficulties emerge in practice when they need to apply clinical judgement or “the exercise of practical reasoning in the care of patients” (Montgomery, 2006, p. 37). Montgomery further argues that the “obstacle they encounter is the radical uncertainty of clinical practice: not just the incompleteness of medical knowledge but, more important, the imprecision of the application of even the most solid-seeming fact to a particular patient” (p. 37). At this point, it may be instructive to consider what is meant by practice. MacIntyre (1984) describes it as:

any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended. (p. 187)

Practice, and professional practice in particular, is therefore both an intellectual and a moral enterprise. In their clinical education, physicians are trained to expect the unexpected; to make decisions in the absence of information and in the presence of conflicting information. How might we encourage those who mentor, supervise, and

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teach residents to apply such contextualised understanding to the pedagogical practices in their resident education programs? In other words, how might we shift the architecture of medical education ‘training’ at the residency level, in particular, to a design that positions learners as professionals participating in improving their education, and therefore their ability to make informed decisions? Donald Schön (1973) suggests that “a social system learns when it acquires new capacity for behaviour . . . and must also learn to create the systems for doing so” (p. 109). He later considers practitioners’ “capacity for reflection on their intuitive knowledge in the midst of action and use this capacity to cope with the unique, uncertain, and conflicted situations of practice” (Schön, 1983, vii–viii). Reflexive analysis of practice (what Schön calls ‘reflection on action’) offers a means for practitioners to deliberate about the ends and goods involved—a deliberation sorely lacking in a purely technical approach. Indeed, Pring (1996) has argued that practitioners “no longer deliberate about the aims of education as part of their professional responsibility; instead they deliberate about the means to achieve externally imposed ends as part of their craft” (p.110). Reflective practice as a means to knowledge construction is often criticised for its subjectivity in having educators come to understand their practice initially through personal interpretive lenses. The longer one teaches, the greater the likelihood the theoretical underpinnings to practice will become tacit and the practices routine. While routines can be beneficial by helping us to manage the complexities of our day without attending to every detail, routinised practices are more likely to then remain unexamined (Tripp, 1993). Yet, it is precisely the process of examining those routine practices that opens the door to the work of reflective practice. Further scrutinising those actions is highly likely to influence the future actions and decisions made by professionals in ways that may directly affect the experiences of patients or students, an activity that Tait (2008) argues is the “impetus for reflective practice” (p. 153). Once educators are able to acknowledge and articulate the theories and assumptions that underpin their practice, they are in a better position to critique their practice and to subsequently act upon the insights gained. Birmingham (2004) suggests that “reflection is centered on the personal character of the individual, but is expressed in actions such as critically examining instructional goals, caring for students, and ensuring just treatment for students” (p. 316). She insists that the model of reflection needed is one “in which knowing and thinking are inextricably bound up in action, emphasising [Schön’s] terms reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action” (p. 316). The capacity to understand precisely which action is best suited to a particular situation draws on the notion of phronetic action.

PHRONETIC ACTION IN CONTEXT: THE 21ST CENTURY LEARNER

More than ever before, learners who come before us no longer rely solely on an individual instructor or a particular text to gather their information. Access to information, even in developing countries, is growing and is radically changing the way learners think about situations and the prior knowledge, skills, and experiences


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they bring to a teaching and learning context. Conversely, the expectations that many faculty continue to bring to the teaching and learning environment too often reflect a passive learner from a different generation—a learner who took notes, followed directions, and progressed in predictable and controllable ways. In today’s global society, our classrooms are increasingly multicultural, and our students, especially the younger generation, engage in their learning and interaction in ways not experienced by an older generation. Returning to Aristotle (as cited in Flyvbjerg, 2001), we are reminded that phronesis is that intellectual activity that “focuses on what is variable, on that which cannot be encapsulated by universal rules, on specific cases; it requires consideration, judgment and choice” (p. 57). A first step in moving away from the more traditional, orthodox teaching approach involves shifting the culture of institutional and professional educators’ expectations in ways that acknowledge the fluidity and complexities of the global learning environment and its students. The shift in cultural awareness requires a concurrent willingness to assume professional responsibility for one’s actions. Dewey (1932, 1933) refers to this willingness as a whole-heartedness and open-mindedness that I argue better positions educators to act phronetically, that is, in ways that enhance the quality of the teaching and learning experience for the entire community. To act phronetically requires a shift in thinking about both our learners and our pedagogical responsibilities for their professional education. Expect learners to arrive with diverse skills, knowledge, and abilities that go beyond the prerequisite training from their undergraduate medical preparation. Plan their educational experiences in ways that acknowledge these differences, and model the precise kind of phronetic action you expect them to apply in their clinical practice. As educators, we are teaching in every interaction, every decision, and every response—including every silence. To act phronetically is to behave in a way that demonstrates ethical practicality; doing what is needed, when it is needed, to bring about the desired ends through our actions. Acting phronetically is both intellectual and moral work. Indeed, Dunne (1993) claims that “phronetic action can’t exist without both intellectual and moral conditions of the mind” (p. 264), conditions that may “counter the overreliance on techne seen in skills-based movement[s]” (p. 268). Briefly, Narvaez (2005, 2006) finds a moral expert to be someone who demonstrates high levels of: (1) ethical sensitivity (e.g., connecting with others, awareness of people’s feelings, controlling one’s social biases, understanding moral and social situations); (2) ethical judgement skills (e.g., applying a code of ethics, reasoning about what needs to be done, determining the best course of action); (3) ethical focus (e.g., making morality a priority, aligning one’s moral values with one’s identity, being an active community member, deriving meaning from living a moral life); and (4) competence in ethical action (e.g., implementing morally related knowledge and action, engaging in moral leadership, showing courage and resiliency in the face of hardship). In many ways, the characteristics of a moral expert run parallel to the aims of clinical education that seeks to “transform students into reliable practical reasoners … as they work out what is best to do for a particular patient” (Montgomery, 2006,

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p. 5). Furthermore, Montgomery claims that “it is the conjunction of the two: the rational, clinical experience, and scientifically informed care of sick people” but notes that “its essential virtue is clinical judgment, the practical reasoning or phronesis that enables physicians to fit their knowledge and experiences to the circumstances of each patient” (p. 33). How might we adapt that same capacity for phronesis that is needed to care appropriately for individual patients and apply it to pedagogical decision-making for students and residents? To begin, we need to disrupt the assumptions that medical educators bring to this role. As illustrated with the Case of Hsilgne, we need to break down the misconceptions that exist about teaching and learning in the professions. Since most medical educators have little or no professional educational preparation (e.g., teaching and learning theories and strategies, curriculum development, and assessment and evaluation), they are more likely to re-inscribe forms of pedagogy that they themselves have experienced (including deficit forms). Typically, in our research, this re-inscription translates into traditional, teacher-centred approaches that view learners as a homogeneous group. Helping medical educators to understand diverse learning needs and the varying approaches to meet those needs is a significant challenge. Aristotle held that experience was essential to developing phronesis. Within the current structure of many medical education institutions, gaining the kind of educational experience that may lead to phronetic action is difficult. Traditional undergraduate medical education scenarios involve large classes often taught by a long roster of highly trained physicians or specialists who present to the class as infrequently as once per year. The lack of teacher–learner interaction inhibits the formation of relationships necessary to inform teacher practice and decision-making. For example, ratings on teacher effectiveness and data measuring students’ learning are typically shared with faculty, but not until long after their class is over and in a numeric format that has been described by some as “utterly meaningless.” In a residency program for physician specialists, the opportunities for individual and small group instruction prevail. However, effective pedagogical feedback continues to be limited or non-existent (Amman, Van Deven, & Hibbert, 2010). Since phronesis evolves from experience, the need for pedagogical feedback is critical. “Once we descend to particular cases,” Dunne (1993) explains, “we are no longer securely in the governance of techne, which is always limited to general rules” (p. 259). The need to take action must include an ability to combine those general rules that guide our practice with a more sophisticated ability to discern the unique characteristics of the particular case or context. Kathryn Montgomery (2006) has introduced a framework for building capacity for phronetic action in medical education as it relates to patient care. In her book, How Doctors Think (Montgomery, 2006), she makes the case that medicine is not a science, but a practice that draws on science, and that the “physician’s best clinical instrument—diagnostic or therapeutic—is the physician herself” (p. 162). The same is also true for teaching. Just as residents must “recast the biology they have spent years learning into clinically relevant cases” (p. 51), medical educators must recast what they know (have learned) clinically into diverse and pedagogically


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relevant teaching practices in order to successfully mentor and instruct the next generation of physician-educators.

CAN DOCTORS THINK?

Creating pedagogically engaging experiences for students requires a willingness to think deeply about the complexities of practice—both clinical and educational. In a 2008 issue of The Lancet, Anthar Yawar asks the question, “Can doctors think?” He eventually concludes that doctors might benefit from “training in ideas…[to] develop the flexibility and depth ordinarily attributed to insightful philosophers” (p. 1286). However, if we intend to develop the type of professional, reflective thinking that will support phronetic action, more than training is required. We need to cultivate an institutional culture and conditions wherein thinking, reflection, and ideas thrive and are modelled by all members in the profession. Montgomery (2006) reminds us that if “medicine were only a science, physicians could establish their clinical competence by answering test questions correctly” (p. 138). In many institutions, answering test questions correctly is the dominant accountability system used to ‘measure’ competency. The test-competency-as-gatekeeper tradition permeates the concerns of residents, whose overriding focus is successfully passing their board exams. “Medicine” after all, “is not, by and large, a reflective profession” (Klaus, 2007, p. xiv). Disrupting well-established assumptions and cultivating a different culture takes time, energy, and the support of key champions within the institution who are dedicated to educational reform. Cultivating a culture that promotes both reflection and the ethical responsibility required to improve the conditions for learning for all students should be an easy alliance for professionals educated in an ethic of care. However, the rigid hierarchical system in medicine that Montgomery observes for medical students and residents can be made even more palpable when non-physician educators are introduced. Integrating new ways of thinking can be likened to introducing new dance steps into a well-rehearsed routine. If we can help doctors remember that in their profession, they are eternally both a student and a teacher and also help them to reconnect with what it means to be a learner, our work has begun. In Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor, Perri Klaus (2007) offers sage advice to her son as he follows her example and enters the medical profession: “When all else fails, look at the patient” (p. 62). The same advice can be offered to medical educators. Basic skills do not define a profession. Choosing a profession includes accepting all the intellectual and moral responsibilities that accompany that profession as we will need to decide what to do, in each situation for the good of humankind. In medicine, these responsibilities do not end with patient care. These responsibilities extend to the profession as a whole, and to ensuring that those who follow us are better prepared than we were, to engage in an increasingly diverse world. We cannot fully grasp our responsibilities without first scrubbing off our ‘windows on the world.’

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NOTE

The epigraph to this chapter is drawn from “The Wilderness of Your Intuition,” a commencement address by Alan Alda at Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut, May 20, 1980, available at http://aspen.conncoll.edu/programs/pfr. cfm.

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Aristotle. (1999). Nicomachean ethics. (T. H. Irwin, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Birmingham, C. (2004). Phronesis: A model for pedagogical reflection. Journal of Teacher Education,

55(4), 313–324. Dewey, J. (1932). Theory of the moral life. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative

process. Boston: D. C. Heath. Dunne, J. (1993). Back to the rough ground: Practical judgment and the lure of technique. Notre Dame,

IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Eikeland, O. (2006). Phronesis, Aristotle and action research. International Journal of Action Research,

2(1), 5–53. Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed

again. London: Cambridge University Press. Harste, J. C., Woodward, V. A., & Burke, C. L. (1984). Language stories and literacy lessons.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Kamler, B. (2001). Relocating the personal: A critical writing pedagogy. Albany, NY: State University

of New York Press. Klaus, P. (2007). Treatment kind and fair: Letters to a young doctor. New York: Basic Books. MacIntyre, A. (1984). After virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Montgomery, K. (2006). How doctors think: Clinical judgment and the practice of medicine. London:

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Narvaez, D. (2006). Integrative ethical education. In M. Killen & J. G. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (pp. 703–732). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Phelan, A. (2005). A fall from (someone else’s) certainty: Recovering practical wisdom in teacher education. Canadian Journal of Education, 28(3), 339–358.

Phillips, S. (1994). Introduction. In S. Phillips and P. Benner (Eds.), The crisis of care: Affirming and restoring caring practices in the helping professions (pp. 1–17). Washington: Georgetown University Press.

Pring, R. (1996). Values and education policy. In M. J. Taylor (Ed.), Values in education and education in values (pp. 104–121). London: Falmer Press.

Schön, D. A. (1973). Beyond the stable state: Public and private learning in a changing society. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.

Tait, J. (2008). Teachers’ practical judgment: Acting in the face of uncertainty. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Retrieved February 2010 from https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/7723/ubc_2009_spring_tait_joyce.pdf?sequence=1


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Tripp, D. (1993). Critical incidents in teaching: Developing professional judgment. New York: Routledge.

Yawar, A. (October, 2008). Can doctors think? The Lancet, 372, 1285–1286. Kathryn Hibbert Faculty of Education, and Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry The University of Western Ontario


JOY HIGGS

REALISING PRACTICAL WISDOM FROM THE PURSUIT OF WISE PRACTICE

PRELUDE

In the autumn of his years, Veteratoris (the experienced practitioner)

paused at the end of his day to ask his young novices his usual question,

What have you learned this day?

Tironis (the beginner) replied: I have decided I want to be a great teacher.

How can I learn to teach like you?

Novitius (the newcomer) asked: I want to be a good practitioner.

How can I learn to be wise like you?

Veteratoris reflected for a while, wondering how to answer.

Finally he replied, let me tell you a story.

When I was a young man, I went to visit a great and wise man

called Aristotlei. He told me the mystery

of the three intellectual virtues who spent their time pursuing

teaching, learning, and practice.

Episteme, a youth of some stature brought the virtue of independent knowledge.

He loved science with a passion and applauded truths that were universal, invariable, and independent of context.

Techne was the practical one. Her desire was to create

and to learn how things worked and how to make things

that suited the current task and goal. Her favourite answer was “it depends.”

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Phronesis was the quiet achiever. She often pondered over whether

her planned actions would be wise and proper as well as practical.

She was fascinated by two ideas praxis—a tantalising blend

of reflective, right, and transformative practice and poiesis—developing technique

through artistry and creativity.

Veteratoris finished his story by saying, to me, each of these three virtues demonstrates excellence of mind.

I want you to think about what you want for your future

and what sort of person, teacher, or practitioner

you want to be— Tironis and Novitius—

and come back next week with your answers.

Barely had he finished speaking when Tironis exclaimed:

I don’t need a week—I know already. If I am to become a great teacher then science must be my guide.

I will spend all my time searching for The Truth

I will teach from strength not ‘maybes.’

One week later, Novitius waited after class

to speak to Veteratoris. She said:

I want to be a good practitioner so I need to learn the virtue of Techne.

I want to critique my practice so I need the virtue of Episteme to learn new ideas and strategies

that science can offer. And, more than everything else,

I want someday to be wise like you to make what I do

make a positive difference to people’s lives so I need to accept the challenge of Phronesis

to bring reflection, ethics, and practicality to my journey of becoming

a good and wise practitioner.


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ENTR’ACTE

If we leap forward more than two centuries, we arrive at a time of debate between those who embrace a social science perspective and those for whom instrumental rationality holds such obvious pride of place that it is as though no other position exists. Social theorists, such as Bourdieu (2004), Ralston Saul (1993), Sandywell (1996), and Schön (1983), have highlighted the sublimation of value rationality by instrumentalist rationality. Schön (1995) decried the emphasis on technical rationality, whereas Taylor (1995) challenged the hegemonic rationality of modern universities. However, the time is both right and necessary for the world of professional practice and education to balance these rationalities (see Flyvbjerg, 2001). In the words of Veteratoris, we can find excellence of mind in each perspective, and as we face the ‘wicked problems’ii of the 21st century, we need to draw upon multiple perspectives and many answers, such as the multiple views expressed throughout this book. In this chapter, the place of phronesis is examined in the context of the pursuit of wise practice and the generation of practical knowledge.

THEME ONE: OF PRACTICE AND WISE PRACTICE

Novitius: Can we speak today of practice and wise practice?

Veteratoris: A good starting point—it provides ‘the what, the why, the how, the who, and the where.’ Can you lay out your ideas about practice and show me what you have learned?

Figure 1. Ideas on practice and wisdom.

Derived from Higgs and Titchen, 2007 and Higgs, McAllister, and Whiteford, 2009.

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Veteratoris: Novitius, where have these ideas come from?

Novitius: I have watched you, Veteratoris, practising with great artistry and have seen this as a way of living out your wisdom in practice. I have seen the three intellectual virtues carried into your practice and at the same time grow from your practice when you speak of what you did not know before, but now has become ‘the practice at your fingertips.’

THEME TWO: ON THE CHARACTERISTICS AND CONTEXUALISATION OF PRACTICE

Novitius: I have learned from observation, reflection, and experience that practice is a blend of actions and ideas and that these indivisible action-ideas are enacted in situations.

Practice (particularly professional practice) is based on specific intentions and values, is often grounded in assumptions rather than conscious decisions, is constructed by individuals and groups, is situated and situational, and is constantly evolving (Fish & de Cossart, 2007; Green, 2009; Higgs & Titchen, 2001; Kemmis & Smith, 2008). Characterised by complexity, uncertainty, and diversity, practice includes technical, practical, relational, and communicative aspects. It is essentially ‘fuzzy,’ dynamic, and indeterminate, and achieves excellence through improvisation and invention (Bourdieu, 1980/1990). Practice is inherently indeterminate and fluid but with its own dynamic coherence (Polkinghorne, 1997). Schatzki (2001) argues that practice is the place for understanding the phenomena of knowledge, language, agency, ethics, science, and power. Practice occurs within social contexts, is framed by each professional’s experience and theoretical framework and is negotiated between people; practice is realised and created by seeking to both make sense of and influence a particular context. For each practitioner, not only is his or her evolving practice knowledge and capabilities a result of experience and context but each practice action or episode is influenced by and, optimally, shaped to suit the particular practice. Professional practice is linked inexorably with the contexts of what Certeau (2002) calls “practised places” of everyday life; these places exhibit a rich interconnectedness of cultural texts, institutions, knowledges, and practices (Saltmarsh, 2009). The importance of the everyday aspects of practice and the lifeworld of practice are emphasised by Reckwitz (2002) and Green (2009).


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Veteratoris: Where are people in these practised places?

Novitius: The places are the frames that people create for themselves. They are the spaces within and between people and they are the connections among people from socio-cultural and politico-cultural groups. They contain spoken and unspoken norms and expectations. And they create the goals, facilitators, drivers, and inhibitors of people’s practices.

THEME THEREE: ON (WISE) PRACTICE AS A PRIMARY SOURCE OF PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICAL WISDOM

This book’s position is that we should take phronesis (practical wisdom) seriously as an organising framework for professional knowledge. This chapter rests on the contention that practice is the precursor of knowledge and that the primacy of practice is inherent in understanding and developing practice knowledge. Higgs, Andresen, and Fish (2004) contend that the principal argument inherent in notions of practice primacy is that practice provides the context (i.e., the goal, purpose, and raison d’être) of practice actions, where practice actions include thinking in addition to other more observable actions. According to Fish and Coles (1998), the metaphor of the iceberg of professional practice illustrates the indivisibility of knowledge and practice, in which approximately one-tenth of practice is the visible performance (action), beneath which (invisibly) lie the remaining nine-tenths: the theoretical knowledge, beliefs, assumptions, emotions, and values of practice. In The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle (1949) wrote that efficient practice precedes the theory of this practice. He argued against Descartes’ notion of the mind as a ‘ghost in the machine’ of the body. Rather than the ghost of intelligent thought standing behind intelligent action, Ryle argued, “when I do something intelligently, i.e. thinking what I am doing, I am doing one thing and not two. My performance has a special procedure or manner, not special antecedents” (Ryle 1949, p. 32). Wittgenstein and Heidegger also reacted strongly to the Cartesian legacy and modern rationalism; they saw thinking as grounded in everyday practices (Dreyfus & Hall, 1992). Importantly in this discussion, I am talking about practice knowledge as the sum of the knowledges that are used in practice, including propositional knowledge (derived from science and theorisation) and experiential knowledge. The latter includes knowledge derived from professional practice experience (professional craft knowledge) and knowledge derived from personal experience (personal knowledge) (see Higgs & Titchen, 1995). Here Episteme, Techne, and Phronesis dance together. The centrality of practice and the inter-relationships between practice and knowledge are emphasised by Higgs, Andresen, et al., (2004). In this interpretation, practice encompasses a range of activities and experiences of professional practice. Two intertwining dimensions are enmeshed in practice: knowledge (including

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procedural, artistic, ethical, and propositional knowledge) and reasoning (including judgement, wisdom, metacognition, and intuition). Professional practice needs to be a recognised as a blend of art, science, craft, and humanity. Practice knowledge requires empirical, critical, practical, and aesthetic ways of knowing, and effective professional practice requires creating new understandings during practice. A moral and ethical approach to practice is needed, one that works in collaboration with clients and employs ongoing critical examination of beliefs, positions, and practices.

Veteratoris: Are you saying, Novitius, that all knowledge comes from practice?

Novitius: No—that’s not what I mean. I think that the very important practical wisdom (phronesis) is born in practice and the way we practise reflects who we are and who we want to be, but I think the knowledges of techne and episteme need to be learned and created for, about, and in the context of practice, and all three need to be tested in practice.

THEME FOUR: OF WISDOM, JUDGEMENT, AND PRACTICE

Veteratoris: If I say to you that the third partner alongside practice and knowledge is judgement, how would you respond?

Novitius: Do you mean judgement as the decisions we make? If so, it seems to me that my decisions are like recalling what I have been taught to do or what I can remember worked well before. Yours seem more magical and wise — born of great Phronesis and they are more likely to be just right —exactly what the situation needed no matter how complex or simple it is. Or, do you mean the way we make decisions? Then I can see my decision-making more clearly, as problem-solving or analysing, moving carefully from step to step using Techne and Episteme. When you are using judgement, it’s more invisible—I can’t see how you decide. Sometimes it’s in a moment— like you can see the answer clearly— like a familiar friend. Sometimes it’s like you’re pondering on a great mystery that’s challenged you for ages


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and then you smile, like all the threads have suddenly woven themselves together in a sublime and perfect answer.

Veteratoris: Let us look at both of these and also think about How do we know that our judgements are sound?

To accept Veteratoris’ challenge involves realising (both understanding and making real or performing) practical wisdom, which could also be called wise judgement in practice. For Aristotle, phronesis is a way of thinking that can only be demonstrated in action, in particular, moral action. Making moral decisions involves identifying what is right in the given situation and then acting on this decision (Gadamer, 1960/1991). Unlike technical knowledge, moral reasoning cannot be separated into theory and application (Bradley, 2009). Complex decision-making lies at the heart of good practice, which leads to sound professional judgement and actions that can be truly referred to as practical wisdom (Fish & de Cossart, 2006). Critical and creative conversations are invaluable in fostering shared meaning, negotiation, and both decision-making in practice and professional decision-making (Higgs, 2006). Professional practice requires creating new understandings during practice. A moral and ethical approach to practice involves working in collaboration with clients, pursuing critical examination of beliefs and positions, employing a heightened awareness of reasoning, and making judgements through critical self-monitoring (Higgs, Andresen, et al., 2004). Professional practice is an inexact science (Kennedy, 1987) and requires the capacity to make judgements beyond the rules of science. Practice and practice environments are portrayed by Eraut (1994, p. 17) as complex and unpredictable, requiring “wise judgement under conditions of considerable uncertainty”. Phronesis has much to offer this understanding of practice and professional decision-making. The hallmark of a professional is the capacity to make sound judgements in the absence of certainty. Sound decisions are sound by virtue of the capacity to argue convincingly in support of the proposed actions based on a variety of evidence.

THEME FIVE: REALISING PRACTICE WISDOM FROM PRACTICE EXPERIENCE

Novitius: Veteratoris, how can I gain practice wisdom?

Veteratoris: We need to consider the way experiences of practice can be tested to produce claims of knowledge and consider how credible these claims are.

The derivation of knowledge from practice is itself an informed practice; it requires practitioners to understand the nature of knowledge and its creation (epistemology)

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to own a worldview and practice model that guides and gives credibility to knowledge. A model of knowledge generation from practice employing critical appreciation (Higgs, Fish, & Rothwell, 2004) is built on a constructionist interpretation of knowledge, wherein all knowledge emerges in a social, cultural, and historical context and is a construction of human beings who are striving to understand nature and experience. In this view, knowledge serves a useful social or human purpose and provides a means of addressing human needs and solving problems (see Figure 2). This figure illustrates an interpretation of the process of making sense of aspects of the world in order to produce knowledge. This process involves a set of interactive, spiralling, cognitive, reflexive, and communicative processes of knowledge development. From ideas born of practice, through a deepening understanding of the phenomenon, the thinker is seeking to appreciate or to come to know; the knower proceeds through evaluation and critique to achieve a level of certainty, conviction, or validation of the truth that the notion is judged to satisfactorily reflect reality. The knower then releases this knowledge claim for public critique, and accepted claims become part of the knowledge base of the group, profession, and society.

Figure 2. Appreciating practice knowledge.


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THEME SIX: THE GETTING OF PRACTICE WISDOM —LEARNING FROM THE MASTER

Novitius: In my journey to understand and seek wise practice, I have learned many things. Some of these learnings remain as knowing, some have become part of my being, some are realised in my doing. Some remain on the edge of my understanding and are my next becoming. Before I leave you to make my own way in the practice world, can you tell me your lived understanding of phronesis?

Veteratoris: My practice wisdom is my deep and personal knowing that is the foundation for my practice. It arose from and is continually re-created through three awakenings— the critical conflagration of the refiner’s fire that tests my practice worldview and my ways of knowing; the contemplative pool that explores shadows and light in watching from beside and looking up from within the practice waters; and my dialogical lifespace that speaks with places, and people and situations and ends to illuminate realisations. In all these ways, my knowing from practice realises my practice wisdom, which in turn helps me to realise—to achieve wise practice and give rise to greater practice wisdom.

Novitius: (After reflecting for some time, Novitius replied in a moment of inspiration.) It seems to me, Veteratoris, that you are speaking of wisdom as the ineluctable nexus between practice, judgement, and knowledge.

Knowing in, from, about, and through practice should be part of every practitioner’s practice and their practice responsibilities. Practitioners should pursue, and be free to pursue, their own practice model: an approach to doing, knowing, being, and becomingiii that stands for what they stand for. Their practice

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should be an embodiment of their practice ontology and their practice epistemology. Phronesis lies in the heart of this philosophy but also in the essential call for ethical practice. How can practice be wise if it is not known, owned, and authentic to self and to one’s professional role and responsibility to serve society with a clear duty of care?

OUTRO

THE GETTING OF PRACTICE WISDOM —BEING MY OWN MENTOR

Novitius: For five long years, I have learned from you, Veteratoris. Yet I feel there is so much more to learn. And I wonder, as I head out to practise on my own, how I can be my own teacher.

Veteratoris: Let me share with you the words of another wise man.

No man can reveal aught to you but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledgeiv.

Learn the words of wisdom uttered by the wise

and apply them in your own life. Live them—but do not make a show of reciting themv.

Your hearts know in silence know the secrets

of the days and nights … the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes …

Seek not the depths of your knowledge

with staff or sounding line For the self is a sea

boundless and measurelessvi.

EPILOGUE

Ten years later, Tironis and Novitius

met one day in the market and shared stories

of their lives since leaving


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their classes with Veteratoris.

Tironis was a respected science teacher —he flourished in The Academy

—his passion for scientific knowledge remained undiminished

and he had named his first son Episteme.

Novitius was respected as a wise practitioner, working in a country town

with three young students of her own. She passed on to them

the teachings of Veteratoris— the craft of practice,

the need for sound judgement, the value of wisdom and virtue,

as well as her own learnings. She visited the metropolis on occasion

and was called upon to address The Academy whose members delighted in

her capacity to build bridges between theory and practice.

She saw her working life as the search for practice wisdom

that blends episteme, techne, and phronesis and the pursuit of practice artistry

that embodies humanity, particularity, and service.

NOTES i Refer to Aristotle (c. 400 b.c./1999). ii Wicked problems are problems that are difficult or impossible to solve. C. West Churchman

introduced the concept of wicked problems in a “Guest Editorial” of Management Science (Vol. 14, No. 4, December 1967, pp. B141–B142)

iii Higgs & Titchen, 2001. iv Gibran, 1926, p. 67. v Gibran, 1958, p. 62. vi Gibran, 1926, p. 65.

REFERENCES

Aristotle. (1999). Nicomachean ethics (T. Irwin, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. (Original work published c. 400 B.C.)

Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice, Cambridge: Polity Press. (Original work published 1980) Bourdieu, P. (2004). Acts of resistance: Against the myths of our times. Cambridge, England: Polity

Press. Bradley, B. (2009). Rethinking experience in professional practice: Lessons from clinical psychology.

In B. Green, (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 65–82). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

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Certeau, M. D. (2002). The practice of everyday life (S. F. Rendall, Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Dreyfus, H., & Hall, H. (1992). Introduction. In H. L. Dreyfus & H. Hall (Eds.), Heidegger: A critical reader (pp. 1–25). Oxford: Blackwell.

Eraut, M. (1994). Developing professional knowledge and competence. London: Falmer. Fish, D., & Coles, C. (1998). Developing professional judgement in health care: Learning through the

critical appreciation of practice. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Fish, D., & de Cossart, L. (2006). Thinking outside the (tick) box: Rescuing professionalism and

professional judgement. Medical Education, 40(5), 403–404. Fish, D., & de Cossart, L. (2007). Developing the wise doctor. London: Royal Society of Medicine

Press. Flybjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed

again. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Gadamer, H.-G. (1991). Truth and method (J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall, Trans.) (2nd rev. ed.).

New York: Crossroad. (Original work published 1960) Gibran, K. (1926). The prophet. London: Heinemann. Gibran, K. (1958). The voice of the master (A. R. Ferris, Trans.). London: Heinemann. Green, B. (2009). The primacy of practice and the problem of representation. In B. Green, (Ed.),

Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 39–54). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Higgs, J. (2006). Realising hermeneutic dialogues: Creating spaces for critical, creative conversations in

learning, research, clinical decision making and practice advancement (CPEA, Occasional Paper 5). Collaborations in Practice and Education Advancement, The University of Sydney, Australia.

Higgs, J., Andresen, L., & Fish, D. (2004). Practice knowledge–its nature, sources, and contexts. In J. Higgs, B. Richardson & M. Abrandt Dahlgren (Eds.), Developing practice knowledge for health professionals (pp. 51–69). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Higgs, J., Fish, D., & Rothwell, R. (2004). Practice knowledge—critical appreciation. In J. Higgs, B. Richardson & M. Abrandt Dahlgren (Eds.), Developing practice knowledge for health professionals (pp. 89–105). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Higgs, J., McAllister, L., & Whiteford, G. (2009). The practice and praxis of professional decision making. In B. Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 101–120). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Higgs, J., & Titchen, A. (1995). The nature, generation and verification of knowledge, Physiotherapy, 81, 521–530.

Higgs, J., & Titchen, A. (2001). Preface. In J. Higgs & A. Titchen (Eds.), Professional practice in health, education and the creative arts (pp. x–xii). Oxford: Blackwell Science.

Higgs, J., & Titchen, A. (2007). Becoming critical and creative in qualitative research. In J. Higgs, A. Titchen, D. Horsfall & H. Armstrong (Eds.), Being critical and creative in qualitative research (pp. 1–10). Sydney: Hampden Press.

Kemmis, S., & Smith, T. (2008). Personal praxis: Learning through experience. In S. Kemmis & T. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp. 15–36). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Kennedy, M. (1987). Inexact sciences: Professional education and the development of expertise. Review of Research in Education, 14, 133–168.

Polkinghorne, D. E. (1997). Reporting qualitative research as practice. In W. G. Tierney & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Representation and the text: Re-framing the narrative voice (pp. 3–22). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Ralston Saul, J. (1993). Voltaire’s bastards: The dictatorship of reason in the West. Toronto, ON: Penguin Books.

Reckwitz, A. (2002). Towards a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing, European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2), 243–263.

Ryle, G. (1949); The concept of mind. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books. Saltmarsh, S. (2009). Researching context as a ‘practiced place.’ In B. Green (Ed.), Understanding and

researching professional practice (pp. 153–183). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.


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Sandywell, B. (1996). Reflexivity and the crisis of Western reason: Logological investigations (Vol. 1). London: Routledge.

Schatzki, T. R. (2001). Practice theory. In T. R. Schatzki, K. Knorr-Cetina & E. von Savigny (Eds.), The practice turn in contemporary theory (pp. 1–14). London and New York: Routledge.

Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Schön, D. (1995). The new scholarship requires a new epistemology. Change, 26(6), 26–34. Taylor, C. (1995). Lichtung or Lebensform: Parallels between Heidegger and Wittgenstein. In

Philosophical arguments (pp. 61–78). London: Harvard University Press. Joy Higgs AM PhD The Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning & Education The Education for Practice Institute Charles Sturt University


ROB MACKLIN AND GAIL WHITEFORD

PHRONESIS, APORIA, AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

INTRODUCTION

Qualitative researchers sometimes adopt an interpretive orientation, thereby promoting a form of professional practice not underpinned by positivist reasoning processes but by practical rationality. In this chapter, we contend that what we call ‘interpretive’ qualitative research does not stand the test of standard conceptions of scientific reason. However, we also contend that the test of such conceptions of scientific reasoning is not an appropriate test for interpretively oriented qualitative research. By ‘scientific reason,’ we refer to reason that in the research arena is best exemplified by quantitative research methods and is underpinned by a commitment to conceptions of the scientific method in which reason is viewed as a neutral, impartial, universal, and generalisable approach to knowledge generation: that is, reasoning that assumes that the truth can best be revealed by, inter alia, ensuring that knowledge is arrived at through objective techniques, which exclude the personal values and agenda of the researcheri. By ‘interpretive’ qualitative research, we refer to qualitative research approaches that accept research as being inevitably open to the circumstances, situations, values, and interpretations of both the researcher and the researched. Such research does not seek to be unencumbered by the personal hopes, fears, and values of the researcher, or by the circumstances and idiosyncrasies surrounding data collection and the individual research subject (see Denzin & Lincoln, 1994, for a discussion of some of these approaches). Thus, interpretive qualitative research does not accord with the strict tenets of the standard scientific method. Compared with quantitative approaches, interpretive qualitative research is far more interpretive, flexible, participatory, and reflexive. Indeed, the extent to which qualitative research is judged to be trustworthy is relative to its foregrounding of the researcher as an engaged subject within and throughout the research process. This description can be taken to mean that interpretive qualitative researchii is suspect and unprofessional; however, we argue that qualitative research practices are underpinned, and appropriately so, by a form of rationality called practical rationality. Practical rationality involves evaluating multiple factors in concrete situations and taking into account people’s beliefs, interests, and norms, in addition to the specific demands of a particular context, to arrive at a sound practical judgement (Bernstein, 1983).

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We use an example of the deliberations and judgements associated with qualitative research to illustrate the practical reasoning process. This example is also used to demonstrate that practical rationality requires researchers to deal with what Jacques Derrida (1990) called aporia (impossible puzzles and paradoxes). We further argue that the context and conditions of aporia should be admitted and, indeed, valued rather than concealed. Finally, we conclude that recognising practical rationality as underpinning qualitative research, and aporia as an inevitable feature of this type of research, has implications for research training. Qualitative research involves a different form of rationality from that which underpins quantitative research methods. Qualitative research requires instruction in the practice of practical judgement as opposed to the technical training required for quantitative research.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AS PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Macklin (2009) defines professional practice as a mode of practice or, perhaps more clearly, as a way of practising: that is, professional practice is not used to refer only to the practices of people who work in what are identified as ‘the professions.’ Rather, professional practice is portrayed as a feature of practice of very many, and perhaps of all, occupations. From this perspective, professional is characterised as an adjective that modifies practice. People can therefore be seen and evaluated as either practising professionally or not. Building on the work of Van de Camp, Vernooij-Dassen, Groll, and Bottema (2006), Koehn (1994), and Hughes (1960), Macklin (2009) argues that acting or working professionally involves pursuing excellence, exercising high interpersonal skills, and acting in accord with ethical norms. More particularly in this last respect, Macklin (2009) contends that acting professionally involves tasks or occupational roles in which the practitioner implicitly or explicitly declares that the recipient can trust the practitioner not to use him or her as a mere means to the practitioner’s ends. That is, the practitioner will not instrumentalise the recipients of his or her services but will instead treat them as ends in themselves. In professional practice, this approach entails treating recipients with respect and dignity and seeking to serve their needs. It is our contention that qualitative research can be undertaken ‘professionally,’ that is, that qualitative research can be seen as a professional practice. Professional qualitative research, we argue, requires the pursuit of excellence, the exercise of very high interpersonal skills, and the following of ethical norms. More particularly, we suggest that whether explicitly articulated in research ethics applications or more implicitly expressed, professional qualitative research is underpinned by activity that respects and takes into account the interests of the interviewees. In other words, professional qualitative research practices do not instrumentalise interviewees. Professional qualitative researchers treat the people they interview not as mere means to their own research publication or project goals, but as ends in themselves.


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In Macklin’s (2009) depiction, the concentration remains on the moral dimensions of professional practice. In doing so, the roles of phronesis and aporia are highlighted. We contend in this chapter that phronesis and aporia are also relevant to qualitative research as a professional practice, not just with respect to the ethical dimensions of research but also more broadly to the practices associated with its conduct. Given the qualities that are seen to characterise ‘professional’ practice, we argue that the evaluation of qualitative research practices must take into account the role of phronesis and aporia. As discussed in the following sections, the application of standard scientific critiques to qualitative research practices and, by extension, attacks on its professionalism, are ill-founded because qualitative research is underpinned by a different form of rationality from that which underpins the standard scientific method.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AND RATIONALITY

Qualitative researchers may need to contend with critiques of the interpretive paradigm as being less professional, or more questionable, than research that relies on probabilistic data collection techniques and statistical analysis. Such work may be suggested to be less firmly underpinned by the type of scientific reasoning that typifies survey-based or experimental science and is thus considered suspect. Our work can be spoken of as being less scientifically reasoned than quantitative research because it is arguably more open to situational biases, driven less by formulaic techniques, and displays a greater openness to intuition. The claim that a qualitative approach is open to situational bias has two dimensions. First, compared with quantitative research, qualitative research can be considered far more open to the personal hopes, fears, and values of the researcher. In other words, the approach of qualitative research is less objective and more encumbered by the life history, culture, and idiosyncrasies of the people undertaking the research than those pursuing quantitative research. Second, compared with quantitative researchers, qualitative researchers may be suggested to be more heavily affected by the particular circumstances of data collection and the idiosyncrasies of the individual research subject. Any research interview, for example, will be affected by temporal and spatial factors that imbue the interview with a particular tenor, or tone. Thus, if the same interviewee and interviewer attempted to repeat an interview in the same or a different venue from the first interview, different interpretations would be made and different outcomes would result. Moreover, research participants come with their own life history, personality, and value interpretations, which can, we suggest, more heavily affect the data collection process and outcomes than would be the case with quantitatively driven data collection methods. The explanation for this difference comes down to technique. For example, properly conducted quantitative survey research is heavily structured into sequential steps. The researcher will strive to 1) develop a hypothesis, 2) utilise pre-existing scales, 3) send out the questionnaire to respondents, 4) collect it after a set period, 5) enter the data into a database, and 6) analyse the results using pre-established


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statistical techniques. In addition, no single respondent is purposely chosen; all are included by blind chance. Every respondent faces the same set of questions and their responses are analysed in exactly the same way. Finally, the questions asked of each respondent are short, ‘single-barrelled,’ and closed-ended (for an example of this approach, see Cooper & Schindler, 1998). Supporters of the quantitative approach may argue that the consequence of this structured process is that the idiosyncrasies of the researcher, of the respondent, and of the research context are heavily constrained, and the data is perceived to be credible because it is converted into numbers. Numbers provide a common measure, a way to see through the complexity and messiness of everyday life. Qualitative research, on the other hand, tries not to reduce what people say to measures and indicators. Such research is designed to be a textually rich form of communication that illuminates what people mean and how they make sense of events and of other people in particular contexts. Qualitative researchers avoid reducing words to numbers, and numbers to statistical analysis, because their intent is to communicate the richness of the world rather than reduce it to abstract concepts. The cost is the loss of simplicity and a growth in variation and nuance. Discovering the common and the generalisable becomes excessively difficult in the face of the interpretive openness of non-numeric language. As a consequence, critics may argue that qualitative research does not stand the test of scientific reason. It cannot get beyond subjectivism. It remains always enmeshed in the circumstances. In the flux and tempest of emotions, our ability to be scientific must struggle against interference from personality, values, place, and time to observe how everyone with the right mind would, or should, act. To embrace scientific reason is to strive to reach beyond contingencies to reveal what is actually the case without the overlay of interpretation, to reveal what everyone would think if their minds were not clouded by passions, and to discover logical universals that we can use to solve the problems that all humans must face. As professional qualitative researchers, we might try to improve our chances of rising above idiosyncrasy by emulating, as best we can, the steps of quantitative design. We could perhaps preplan our research carefully, articulate clear stages, ask standard questions, and strive to be mere extensions of our tape recorders. But it is questionable whether we could ever reach the ‘clinical’ standards required by scientific reason. Alternatively, we could embrace the chaos and argue instead that we will leave a clear map that can be followed and verified. Thus, we might proclaim that the demands of scientific reasoning have been met if others can read our maps or, better still, if others can follow our research down the same path. That is, our research effort will have been verified through its reproduction and thereby point to phenomena that stand beyond any single researcher. But, we wonder, how clearly are these paths really ever mapped out and, if they are, how reproducible will the findings be? Don’t contingency and contextuality always worm their way, in some way or other, into qualitative studies? Perhaps we could accept these conditions and reject any attempt to remove values, emotions, and circumstances. Our task would then be to embrace the messiness of life and to acknowledge that the outcomes of our activities are


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partially situated constructions, partially localist accounts (Alvesson, 2002) that provide rich, complex, and layered accounts of the fullness of human activity and perception. Here we could eschew the drive for consistency and the simple generalisability of our data and, instead, use our findings to evaluate or construct a theory. Falsification would then become the underlying task. If a theory survives attempted refutation, it will be embraced by reason ... but only for the moment. Finally, we might avowedly and openly attach political goals and values to our research endeavours. The task of qualitative researchers is to recognise that research is imbued with values, to be explicit in our writings about these values, and to proclaim that greater freedom or life chances is what is purposefully being pursued. We fear, however, that such partisan and value-laden approaches will ultimately be seen to appeal not to reason but to rhetoric. The response from the politically aware researcher may be to claim that scientific reason itself is not neutral but simply a dominating form of rhetoric. But classifying scientific reasoning as rhetoric is never enough—or rather it is enough to identify one’s own impotence. The dominant rhetoric wielded as it is by those who dominate the academy and broader society will marginalise the critical researcher’s efforts and even their claims of hegemony. And isn’t this marginalisation exactly what the critical researcher predicted must happen all the way along? There surely is cold comfort in being proven right. Moreover, we suggest the consequence of this failure to be scientifically reasoned enough, and the willingness to embrace values in the face of a powerful orthodoxy, means that qualitative research is relegated to the lesser pole of a dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative research, in which quantitative research occupies what is perceived to be the most scientifically sound and ‘professional’ end of the continuum. Qualitative researchers, and especially those of a more interpretive or critical orientation, can keep trying to invert the poles, but we suggest such efforts will always be a Herculean task. Small gains may be made, but the link between standard scientific reasoning and quantitative methods is far too strong. Alternatively, some might argue that a full frontal assault on scientific reason could be made with the hope of toppling it from its dominant (we would contend hegemonic) position. But surely scientific reason is even more ensconced than quantitative research. In Western societies, most pleas for action must be underpinned by appeals to good scientific reasons. So, is a way out possible for us, as qualitative researchers? We think so. It involves recognising that qualitative research does not stand the test of standard scientific reason but instead accords with a different form of reasoning that is valuable and vital to everyday life. It involves broadening what people define as ‘reason’ and doing so, moreover, not by trying to stipulate and then impose some new definition but by appealing to far older understandings. It involves appealing eventually to the work of Aristotle who did not identify one single all-embracing definition of reason but instead spoke of different types of wisdom and reasoning, each with different purposes and logics. Professional qualitative researchers, we suggest, can break the dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative research by


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publicly identifying themselves with a form of reasoning that fits with what Aristotle called practical wisdom, or phronesis.

VARIETIES OF REASON

As discussed in Macklin (2009), Aristotelian wisdom can take three forms: theoretical, technical, and practical (Dunne, 1997). Theoretical wisdom, also known as episteme, is wisdom about the eternal laws of the universe and is concerned with the search for necessary and universal knowledge that can be reproduced in similar circumstances by another researcher and is thus seen to be ‘objective’ (Halverson, 2004; Statler & Roos, 2005). For some people, theoretical wisdom at its most developed level is about pursuing philosophical truths (Dunne, 1997). For Aristotle, technical wisdom, or techne, is wisdom about how best to produce things. It is the knowledge that a craftsperson utilises, for example, to make a product such as a chair, a suit, or a dress, or to shape a state of affairs such as in the expert tuning of a piano (Dunne, 1997). It is an instrumentally rational form of knowledge that focuses on the best way to achieve ends (Halverson, 2004). According to Dunne (1997, p. 249), techne was, for Aristotle, a “generative source (arche) of useful things, a habitual ability (dunanris) of the matter through which he [sic] can reliably produce and reproduce them.” With technical wisdom, the craftsperson’s technique will vary in relation to the planned end product. But regardless, techne, at its core, as pointed out by Dunne (1997), is about the reliable reproduction of products and activities. For Aristotle, practical wisdom, or phronesis, focuses on the highly variable, non-reproducible, and contingent facets of our world. More specifically, it focuses on human conduct and how individuals act on their interpretation of contextual particulars. It is not centred on the development of universal rules or repeatable techniques, but on fitting knowledge to circumstances (Halverson, 2004). John Caputo (1993, p. 101; cited in Macklin, 2009) describes practical wisdom as:

the capacity to act on the spot, to think on one’s feet, to invent what is needed at the time, to innovate, improvise, experiment, a capacity to move with the mobility of events, to let one’s logos hang loose.

Phronesis, as Caputo’s quote suggests, is the ability to evaluate largely non-reproducible circumstances so that one can work out what should be done in a particular situation. Phronesis also, therefore, relates to working out how to act suitably in the face of ambiguity without preset formulae or highly detailed plans of action. In the face of contingency, phronesis combines knowledge, judgement, understanding, and intuition in appropriate ways in order to act ‘aptly’ in a particular circumstance. In addition, phronesis does not involve pure technique or pure intellect, but a capacity to sense or to intuit and an ability to draw on emotions. Practical wisdom is thus case-based, customised to particular contexts and not easily susceptible to empirical generalisation (Dunne, 1997; Halverson, 2004; Statler & Roos, 2005).


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As with technical wisdom, practical wisdom becomes a habit but not in the sense of developing an ability to repeatedly and unreflectively apply a set of techniques to the reproduction of some end or activity. Rather, practical wisdom, in part, involves developing a habit of not acting in accord with a routine or habit (Halverson, 2004; Statler & Roos, 2005). For Aristotle, phronesis was perhaps most applicable to the moral realm. Quoting Dunne (1997, p. 244):

Phronesis...characterizes a person who knows how to live well (eu zen). It is acquired and deployed not in the making of a product separate from oneself but rather in one’s actions with one’s fellows. It is personal knowledge in that, in the living of one’s life, it characterizes and expresses the kind of person that one is.

This characterisation accepted, we now argue that the kind of reasoning required by qualitative researchers fits or accords most comfortably with phronesis.

RESONANCE WITH QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

We suggest that qualitative researchers who do not attempt to emulate the strictures of quantitative methods are using practical wisdom to make judgements about the conduct of their research. Qualitative research is like dance (Janesick, 1994) or jazz in that, compared with a quantitative approach, the researcher is required to more flexibly and adaptively apply broader theories and ideas to particular circumstances. Qualitative research demands of the researcher the ability to adjust to the changing circumstances of a situation and a capacity to combine knowledge, judgement, understanding, emotion, and intuition to act appropriately. In this respect, qualitative research also involves thinking on one’s feet while acknowledging that research is value-laden and must be underpinned by a moral orientation. Thus, qualitative researchers avoid preset inflexible strategies and opt instead for emergent, evolving, and flexible designs and practices (Patton, 1990) to understand the particularities and contingencies of social life. As a result, their qualitative research practices do not produce a sharply distinct and transcendent knowledge easily generalisable to some kind of greater universal truth. The knowledge generated by qualitative researchers will always be to some extent contingent, transient, and imbued with the reality of everyday life and with the rich ideas and constructions of the individuals with whom the researcher converses. Just as in phronesis in ethics, practical wisdom in qualitative research draws on preestablished knowledge, including broad and abstract ideas or guides, to focus the researcher’s attention. The results and findings will never attain the status of The Truth, but qualitative research’s verisimilitude can be assessed by other people and can be offered up for acceptance as one or other of the many possible truths that people can use as a guide for their own lives and actions. That is, qualitative research is, to use Flyvbjerg’s (2001, p. 140) terminology, a form of ‘phronetic research.’ It requires understanding the flux and flow and embracing the complexity and contingency of human interaction. Quantitative research results in


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formulae and generalisations that researchers hope will transcend location, time, personal values, and the idiosyncrasies of every individual. Qualitative researchers dive into this complexity to understand the complexity of others’ lives and, in doing so, rely on phronesis as a guide. Their results, if accepted, are not transcendent universals, but a guide to further practice and part of the ongoing and always evolving stock of collective wisdom. The tying together of social science with phronesis is not a novel idea. For example, Flyvbjerg (2001) argued that all social science should follow the phronetic approach. In addition, according to Dunne (1997), Habermas suggested that many social scientists have lost their way because they have attempted to deny or ignore phronesis and have opted instead for, at best, technical, and, at worst, theoretical knowledge. These social scientists strive, therefore, to discover universal truths in a social world soaked in contingency instead of using practical reason to help determine how they and others can learn to act in the world. But our argument is that Habermas’s critique and Flyvbjerg’s challenge should be reserved for researchers who pursue consistency, objectivity, and universalism. Many qualitative researchers, we suggest, have already, and for some time, embraced practical wisdom, though rarely stating so explicitly. As professionals, these qualitative researchers are, we suggest, phronetic social scientists. Moreover, we suggest that phronetic qualitative researchers should stop juxtaposing themselves with quantitative researchers, who are engaged in a different set of practices that have their own rationality and wisdom. We will shortly describe an example of some phronetic qualitative research to briefly illustrate the points we have been making. However, before we do so, we add one more feature to the phronetic view of qualitative research and to phronesis more generally. We do so by borrowing from the realm of legal and moral philosophy.

APORIA

According to Jacques Derrida (1990), all deliberations in law are massively complicated by aporia. That is, they are dripping with perplexities and inconsistencies such that judgements should never be seen as flowing easily from evidence. As discussed by Macklin (2009), this theme is picked up in Caputo’s book Against Ethics (1993), in which he broadens the discussion of aporias beyond the law to ethics. Caputo takes a stance against the power of universal principles to guide moral judgements in everyday life and, in doing so, draws, in part, on the notion of aporias. Following Derrida (1990), Caputo identifies three relevant aporias:

• The ‘aporia of suspension’ – the inability to apply a principle mechanically to a case because every decision requires a unique interpretation, reworking, or subtle (or perhaps gross) reinvention of the relevant principle;

• The ‘ghost of undecidability’ – the perplexity that accompanies the reality that in moral deliberations we are required to choose between “respect for equity and universal right ... [and] ... for the always heterogeneous and unique singularity of the unsubsumable example” (Derrida, quoted in Caputo, 1993, p. 104); and,


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• The ‘aporia of urgency’ – decisions must be made here and now and individuals rarely have the luxury of being able to thoroughly think through a decision. To quote Caputo (1993, p. 105) even in those situations where time is available to an individual “still there comes a time—‘a finite moment of urgency and precipitation’—when the leap must be made, the gap crossed, the decision taken.”

We suggest that these aporias are not just applicable to the law and ethics but to all practical reasoning. More specifically, we suggest that these aporias are perplexities that all researchers face when undertaking qualitative research. The principles that we use to guide qualitative research design cannot be applied in an inflexible way but must be adapted to the particular demands of the research. This need for adaptation creates perplexities because no clear objective way can determine how one should adapt principles to the circumstances. We may seek out principles such as “always pursue maximum variation in your sample” or “always use interview protocols to guide questioning,” but such principles can only ever be general guidelines—every project and every interview will require different orientations and approaches. Further, when we analyse our data, we group our interviewees’ responses according to codes we ourselves devise in the search for categories that allow us to make claims about the world we are examining. But every code does violence and is unjust to the individual interviewee’s singularity and uniqueness. No two responses are really the same, but we must seek out commonalities, patterns, and themes. And we also face time limits. We cannot interview and analyse forever. We must therefore rely on our practical wisdom to make good judgements in the face of these perplexities. In doing so, it will always be the case that our judgements are underdetermined by the facts. Practical judgement does not deliver definitive answers. We will not know for sure whether we are making the right decision; we will always be judging gaps and making leaps across a knowledge void.

A CASE EXAMPLE

To further exemplify these ideas, we present a short commentary on a recent set of field experiences. The study investigated a student placement program in an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. In our view, the vignette describes research dynamics that fit well with a picture of qualitative research driven by practical wisdom and attention to aporia. This commentary describes well the way in which qualitative interviewing requires practical wisdom. Clearly, the timing and flow of the interviews were not precisely and scientifically executed in accordance with a tight schedule, plan, or script. The researchers had worked out beforehand those they wanted to interview and clearly knew what questions they wanted to ask, but these plans could only ever be guidelines—loose scripts designed to orient their research efforts. They had to put their plans into action dynamically and flexibly, in line with a range of contingencies, including the willingness of the participants and sponsors, the peculiarities of the research site, and the subtle clues from the interviewees.


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The manager of the orphanage in Ho Chi Minh, a French woman who created the exemplary conditions we and our students faced, tried to steer us away from people she thought were ‘troublesome.’ When we explained that including such people was important for our research, she remained unconvinced. It appears that she feared that negative reflections could be destabilising. However, despite her anxieties, we felt that we needed to elicit such perspectives to gain a well-rounded view of the impact of the students on the environment and the orphanage staff. So we decided both intellectually and intuitively that despite the pressures to the contrary, we would pursue interviewing individuals who might be critical of the program. We had described and given names to our interpreter of the people we wanted to interview. However, the actual people confirmed as research participants were different. Nevertheless, we decided to accept the people presented as we felt that we would get a similar breadth of data from them. That is, as each had been involved with the students, we felt each had a potentially valuable perspective to add. Of course, it needs to be pointed out that all this occurred in 35 degree, 90% humidity heat in a non-air-conditioned setting in an overcrowded orphanage for children with disabilities. It is an environment where the real concerns are whether the children will have enough to eat and where they will put any newcomers. It also occurred through negotiated processes with an interpreter and in a cultural context where people were as wary of working with so-called ‘Western experts’ (which we desperately tried not to cast ourselves as) as they were to not offend or lose face. One of the most emotionally demanding moments with respect to making situation-based decisions occurred when we finally interviewed one of the care-giving staff who had been an outspoken critic of the programme. There were four of us in a tiny room. It was close, sweaty, and tense. The interpreter was working extremely hard, and we were working hard to make sure the participant could talk freely and critically. But she (the participant) was clearly struggling; she was visibly irritated and her tone of voice kept rising. She spoke about the demands of the care-givers’ jobs—so one of us decided to go with the personal dimension and commented that it must be a tiring job. At that point, the participant broke down and began to cry. She told us she was on a back-to-back double shift, had not slept for two nights, and had five children of her own. We turned off the tape recorder. It was upsetting to witness this and to hear how difficult this woman’s life was. We all sat with each other for a while, acknowledging the enormity of what was happening. For the participant, there was enormous loss of face, and yet it was authentic. Finally, the woman said to us, “You know, I did want to talk to you about the programme, and there are some things that could be better, but all up it’s important. That’s because, when your students come, it gives us hope.” To us, this was one of the most important reflections we received.

The resistance they faced from the manager of the orphanage was unexpected and required them to react appropriately to a complex challenge. They had to judge whether to defend their plans or comply with the wishes of an undoubtedly stressed and nervous administrator. No formula or rule book could direct their response in this situation. They had to go with what they thought and felt was best in the situation. They decided to push for the interviews, despite a risk that their persistence might create a stronger negative reaction from the sponsors. The study was being conducted in a relatively closed society and in a state-run facility; thus, its cancellation was always a real possibility.


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The researchers were aware of the sensitivity of the situation and thus were not overly demanding. They largely accepted, for example, the list of interviewees given to them, which, while different from their plans, nevertheless met their needs. Another equally loaded situation occurred in the interview with the caregiver. It would probably have been very easy for both interviewers to de-escalate this situation by allowing the interview to wind down. They could then have written off the caregiver as resistant or troubled in some other way and discounted her views. But they did not choose this option; rather, they chose to engage with the caregiver at a more personal level. This decision was a big risk. Reaching out across cultural, political, and wealth divides is not easy. The result, however, was an increase in insight and understanding among all participants. Again, no rule book prescribed their actions, which were sparked by an intuitive movement on the part of one of the researchers, influenced both by the demands of the context—the heat-laden, culturally, politically, and emotionally strained environment—and by, it would seem, the researcher’s own ‘feel’ for the situation. Risks and changed plans were central to the project and to the interviews in particular, but we suggest these characteristics should not be taken to imply recklessness. Researchers from a more quantitative background might be horrified by the malleability and intuitive nature of the process but one can argue that any attempt to import the strictures of the standard scientific method into this context would have led to failure. Instead, we offer an example of researchers using phronesis to deal with the complexity and contingency of everyday life in the field. In addition, we suggest that perplexities rippled through the study; aporia meant that the researchers needed to make judgements not decisions. Their decisions could not be programmed and, moreover, could never be made with certainty. They had to make leaps in the dark. In terms of Derrida’s aporia, for example, the researchers needed to reinvent the principles guiding their research to fit, in a dynamic and unsupported way, the specifics of unique situations. How to do this and by how much, could never be formulated into some kind of set procedure. The pull of more universal principles strained against the demands of unrepeatable circumstances. The researchers could rely only on good judgement and their courage to leap. Further, the clash between justice and care resonate in the interaction between the researchers and the caregiver. Respect for the otherness of another culture requires some measure of distance, some coolness in order for ‘face’ to be protected. But tears call for care and a reaching out to others who are suffering, regardless of cultural difference. A judgement, in the midst of an impossible puzzle and paradox (aporia) had to be made and the researchers opted for care and concern. They reached out and new insights were revealed. But then they faced another perplexity; care for the dignity of the caregiver and a need not to expose themselves clashed with the discovery of a real insight. Revisiting informed consent solved the formal demands of institutional ethics processes but the trace of a moral conundrum remained. Clarity versus care; which to choose? The researchers made a judgement in the midst of aporia, and opted, in this instance, for clarity. Finally, we would like to discuss the ‘aporia of urgency.’ The researchers needed to make their judgements in the moment. They had no time to use


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knowledge and thorough analysis to think through the alternatives. Even if they had taken time overnight to reflect on what had happened and what they had to do, inevitably the moment arrived, “a finite moment of urgency and precipitation” (Caputo, 1993, p. 105), when they had to leap into the unknown. They did not have a sharp picture of how the administrator would respond to their insistence, and they could not have known the ramifications of reaching out to the caregiver. Still they jumped. As professionals, they had to.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The implications of our arguments are that professional qualitative researchers should avoid judging themselves against the efforts of their physical, biological, and quantitative science peers. We qualitative researchers are involved in a different form of reasoning that has a different role and place in helping our institutions and communities to flourish. We will leave quantitative researchers to justify their own practices according to whatever rationality they deem fit. But, we suggest that as qualitative researchers, engaged in an important form of professional practice, our research efforts are designed to meet the needs of people who want guidance (not rules) on how they can act, or what we can do in the thick of everyday life and practice. Every research finding we offer or theory that we posit will never be simply universalisable, and we should never claim that they are. However, if the findings or theories resonate with and make sense to others, they can be used as guidelines or starting points for action. As professionals, we must be careful to communicate our intents adequately, and we must point out that our guidelines will always need to be adapted to the circumstances that face those who wish to use them, and this adaptation will require practical wisdom—phronesis—on their part. Moreover, we and those whom we seek to advise must always realise that leaps have been made over major perplexities. But this added level of complexity doesn’t make the task impossible or unworthy of the effort. Our arguments also hold implications for the teaching of qualitative research drawn from the recognition that such research follows a form or wisdom or rationality different from quantitative methods. In discussion of the philosophical underpinnings of research, for example, we suggest that rather than teach students a narrow scientific view of social science, they should be thoroughly introduced to the varieties of wisdom and reasoning that exist and that a clear association be drawn between practical wisdom and qualitative research. Students should be made aware that if they wish to become ‘professional’ qualitative researchers, they need to develop their practical reasoning skills, which, it can be argued, will not be achieved through the learning of correct procedures or formulae but through reflecting on their already developing practical wisdom and through ongoing practice and experience. Our conclusion is that learning how to be a professional qualitative researcher does not primarily involve technical training. Instead, to become professional qualitative researchers, novices must throw themselves into its practice and must


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realise that they will improve in their practice of qualitative research as their experience grows. Their practice can, and arguably must be done, under the guidance of more experienced qualitative researchers who have an eye not only for the novices’ practices but also for their impact on the subjects of research and the broader community. In this respect, we suggest that professional qualitative research practices require researchers to be responsible for their actions (regardless of the ambiguities and perplexities they face) and for the training of neophytes. The qualitative researcher is part of a community that uses phronesis to ‘judge’ whether a person after completing graduate research training qualifies for membership in that community, and whether that person continues to meet the demands of professional practice. Further, qualitative research is a form of professional practice that, like any other, must convince the broader community that its efforts make a contribution. This goal must not be pursued by trying to emulate the physical, biological, and quantitative sciences, for such an approach will fail, while ever it tries to live up to the standards of scientific rationality. Qualitative research must instead produce practically wise insights and theories that make sense to and resonate with the people who are engaged in the flux and flow of everyday life.

NOTES i In this paper, science refers to the common notion of science used in society. Specifically, we use

science here to refer to the physical and biological sciences ruled by ‘the scientific method’ and by quantitative approaches to social research that rely on surveys and probabilistic analysis. We accept our usage is perhaps too narrow for some commentators who would argue that science covers a potentially vast array of different sets of practices, each informed by what can be called a particular epistemic community. See Kinsella and Whiteford (2009) for a discussion of epistemic communities.

ii For ease of expression, from here on, we will use the phrase ‘qualitative research’ to refer to interpretive qualitative research. In doing so, we nevertheless recognise that some approaches to qualitative research do seek to emulate what we have called the scientific method.

REFERENCES

Alvesson, M. (2002). Postmodernism and social research. Buckingham, England: Open University Press.

Bernstein, R. J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science, hermeneutics, and praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Caputo, J. D. (1993). Against ethics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Cooper, D. R., & Schindler, P. S. (1998). Business research methods (6th ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (1994). Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage Publications. Derrida, J. (1990). Force of law: The mythical foundations of authority. Cardozo Law Review, 11,

919–1078. Dunne, J. (1997). Back to the rough ground: Practical judgement and the lure of technique. Notre

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succeed again. (S. Sampson, Trans.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.


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Halverson, R. (2004). Accessing, documenting and communicating practical wisdom: The phronesis of school leadership practice. American Journal of Education, 111(1), 90–121.

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Janesick, V. J. (1994). The dance of qualitative research design: Metaphor methodolatry, and meaning. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 209–219). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.


Koehn, D. (1994). The grounds of professional ethics. London: Routledge. Macklin, R (2009). Moral judgement and practical reasoning in professional practice. In B. Green

(Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 83–99). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Statler, M., & Roos, J. (2005). Practical wisdom: Reframing the strategic challenge of preparedness. Paper presented at the 4th International Critical Management Studies Conference, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ ejrot/cmsconference/2005/proceedings.asp

Van de Camp, K., Vernooij-Dassen, M., Grol, R., & Bottema, B. (2006). Professionalism in general practice: Development of an instrument to assess professional behavior in general practitioner trainees. Medical Education, 40(1), 43–50.

Rob Macklin Faculty of Business The University of Tasmania Gail Whiteford Pro Vice Chancellor (Social Inclusion) Macquarie University


FARRUKH CHISHTIE

PHRONESIS AND THE PRACTICE OF SCIENCE

INTRODUCTION

Originally coined by Aristotle, and concerned with context, ethics, particulars, and practical rationality, phronesis is a rich concept. From the text Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle, trans. 1976), it is usually translated as practical wisdom or prudence, a virtue related to moral thought. The main purpose of this chapter is to explore phronesis and to detail its relation to the creation of a scientific epistemology. In particular, this chapter focuses on phronesis and episteme and their relationship. Interrelated and relevant concepts are briefly mentioned but not fully elaborated as it is important to see the argument as part of a broader rereading of Aristotle’s original schema of knowledge and related concepts such as techne, poeisis, phronesis, praxis, sophia, and episteme. Phronesis sits in an intricate relationship to the other intellectual virtues proposed by Aristotle. He maps out sophia as philosophical wisdom related to episteme. Episteme is conceived as universal, context-independent knowledge. Techne, on the other hand, denotes practical, context-dependent, craft-based knowledge that produces an object or reaches a goal through craftsmanship, or poeisis. In contrast, praxis (the practice manifestation of phronesis) is considered as moral–political action and conduct, which has aims and value in itself. It should be noted that in their original form these concepts are related to each other, which informs the argument presented here concerning the relationship between phronesis and episteme. The privileging of episteme and, more recently, scientific knowledge has a long history, including support from Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Plato (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p. 56). Phronesis and other forms of knowledge have remained on the margins, especially since the Enlightenment era. The rise and dominance of instrumental rationality, or technical rationality, is prevalent today, especially in professions related indirectly or directly to the scientific disciplines (see e.g., Kinsella, 2007; Polkinghorne, 2004; Schön, 1983). A divide between theory and practice, it is commonly claimed, has arisen from this state of affairs. To consider the relationship of episteme and phronesis, I work with ideas by Thomas Kuhn (1962/1970, 1977), Michel Foucault (1961, 1963, 1980, 1982), and Bent Flyvbjerg (2001) in regard to the historical formation and functioning of contemporary Western professional scientific communities. In bringing together ideas, I have found useful Bernstein’s (1992) constellation metaphor. Drawing on Martin Jay, Bernstein depicts a constellation as a “juxtaposed rather than integrated cluster of changing elements that resist reduction to a common

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denominator, essential core, or generative first principle” (p. 8). The approach is to start with a constellation of relevant yet dissimilar thinkers (Bernstein, 1992, 2002) and to bring their ideas together to contribute to a new understanding.i I draw on Kuhn’s studies of the practice of science as a representation of the formation of scientific knowledge. Attention is drawn both to the insights provided and to some silences in Kuhn’s analysis. Flyvbjerg (2001) provides valuable insights to this work through his interpretation of Foucault’s findings and Aristotelian phronesis; however, Flyvbjerg’s focus is towards revitalising the contemporary social sciences. In this work, Flyvbjerg’s study of Foucault, and the role and nature of power in the enactments of phronesis, provide an extension to Kuhn’s work that informs a contemporary understanding of the relation of phronesis to episteme and other relevant concepts. It is suggested that such an interpretation has direct implications for the notion of phronesis in the work of scientists. This work may also have implications for professions whose epistemological compass is in the sciences, such as medicine, agronomy, and engineering (Schön, 1983). An interpretive reading of these thinkers leads to the claim that the episteme within which practitioners work is itself constructed through activities that resemble those associated with phronesis and the application of practical judgement. Moreover, considerations of power relations and the subject formation present in its enactment have implications for rethinking episteme and phronesis in a manner distinct from the original conceptions by Aristotle.

THE PRODUCTION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE: KUHN’S HISTORIC INTERVENTION

Aristotle (1976) held the idea that episteme, or theoretical knowledge, was distinct from phronesis, or practical knowledge grounded in morality, which guides human actions. The means towards episteme was through first principles and formal logic as a means of verification. The natural sciences have had long-held claims on value-neutral and objective knowledge, which presents itself as a form of episteme and a cornerstone of Western civilisation (see Flyvbjerg, 2001; Schön, 1983). A contemporary alignment of these views is found in the positivist representation of scientific knowledge, which is based on the application of formal logic and probability, the latter not known to Aristotle. Positivist epistemology mainly aims to draw upon certain verification criteria designed to distinguish empirical doctrine from non-scientific doctrine. Schön (1983) describes positivist epistemology as depending on three dichotomies. The first division is the separation of means from ends since instrumental problem solving is seen as a technical procedure to be measured by its effectiveness in achieving a pre-established objective. The second separation is that of research from practice, which implies practice as being the application to problems of research-based theories, verified by controlled experiments. Here, a closely held representation of scientific practice is the application of the hypothetical deductive method. In this method, a hypothesis is set up and then observational data (and other relevant data) are matched


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for consistency. If an inconsistency occurs, then the hypothesis is disconfirmed. The third separation is of knowing from doing, with action viewed as only an implementation and test of technical decision (Schön, 1983, p. 165). Karl Popper stands out as having challenged the positivist view, while not challenging its ontological assumptions. Popper (1999) posits that falsification is the means to seek the veracity of scientific theories. Hence, in a given situation, tentative theories that are contenders are to be systematically subjected to rigorous falsification procedures. In this process, elimination of error occurs, and theories that survive are viewed as best representations; these theories can then be applied to other situations, given their continuing passing of falsification strategies. In contrast to the positivist and Popperian representations of natural sciences, and using the history of science, Kuhn (1962/1970) posits that the natural sciences are not just methodologically motivated but are also situated historically and socially within their own communities. He states that “scientific knowledge, like language, is intrinsically of a group or else nothing at all. To understand we shall need to know the special characteristics of the groups that create and use it” (p. 210). The consideration of the nature of scientific knowledge and how it is generated has important implications for professions in which much of the practice is grounded epistemologically in science. The dominance of both positivist- and falsification-based representations of scientific knowledge and practice permeates various professions, including the medical profession and the health sciences. The medical profession, for example, borrows from the biomedical model (as in evidence-based practice), which arises from the natural sciences to provide detached, methodological approaches to professional conduct (see e.g., Holmes, Murray, Perron, & Genevieve, 2006). This view takes on a set of commonly held beliefs, what Bourdieu and Eagleton (1994) term as the doxa of the times, which permeate such professions as unquestioned, universal, and objective truth.

NORMAL SCIENCE: FOLLOWING THE DISCIPLINARY MATRIX

Ironically, Thomas Kuhn’s investigations started by observing that an Aristotelian view of scientific knowledge was markedly different from a Newtonian view of physics. Kuhn employed a historical study of shifts in scientific theories and practices within the domain of the natural sciences, leading to the landmark work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1962/1970). Kuhn (1962/1970) notes that science is practised in distinct ways within communities: one approach is normal science, conducted within a paradigm, whereas the other approach is a revolutionary means of conducting science that involves a paradigm shift. So-called normal science is conducted within a scientific collective or paradigm, which, in one sense of the term, is meant to be “an entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by members of a given community” (p. 210). Kuhn (1962/1970) posits that paradigms are necessary for scientific communities to pursue their craft. Further, these paradigms can shift and can do so drastically enough that incommensurability between different systems of thought can occur.

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In this way, Kuhn locates at the heart of Aristotelian episteme, an aporia, one that challenges the possibility of attaining universal and immutable knowledge. Here, aporia refers to “unresolvable problematics and paradoxes” (Green, 2009, p. 11). In this regard, one interpretation of Kuhn is that his work might be seen as a form of deconstruction (Derrida, 2000) of the Aristotelian concept of episteme—in that his insights pose a challenge to assumptions regarding the achievement of universal, timeless, and unchanging knowledge, by demonstrating how science actually proceeds and how scientific knowledge is generated. Kuhn’s challenge to Aristotelian episteme is demonstrated through time-dependent and changing paradigms as well as through the application of sets of epistemic values by scientists (Kuhn, 1977), which require practical judgement alongside skill and craft. In short, Kuhn’s description of how science proceeds is a challenge to Aristotle’s definition of episteme and involves a form of phronesis, or practical rationality, in and of itself. Based on a shared paradigm that demands a “commitment to the same rules and standards of scientific practice” (Kuhn, 1962/1970, p. 11), a community conducting normal science maintains a certain tradition. Those inducted into this community have undergone extensive training and apprenticeship, mostly dedicated to “puzzle solving” (pp. 35–42). According to Kuhn, “one of the reasons why normal science seems to progress so rapidly is that its practitioners concentrate on problems that only their lack of ingenuity should keep them from solving” (p. 37). Puzzle solving, he writes:

provides rules that tell the practitioner of a mature specialty what both the world and his science are like, he can concentrate with assurance upon the esoteric problems that these rules and existing knowledge define for him. What then personally challenges him is how to bring the residual puzzle to a solution. In these and other respects a discussion of puzzles and of rules illuminates the nature of normal scientific practice. (Kuhn, 1962/1970, p. 42)

Kuhn uses the term paradigm differently and for various purposes. However, he settled on the idea of a “disciplinary matrix” in his later work (Kuhn, 1962/1970, p. 182). The disciplinary matrix has four components, which are also required for puzzle solving to operate within normal science. These include:

- Symbolic generalisations: for example, in Newtonian laws (in what is denoted as ‘theory’);

- Metaphysical presumptions: for example, light as a wave and particle; - Exemplars: examples that students learn through textbooks or lab work. It is here

where Kuhn introduces the idea of tacit knowledge in the practice of science; - Values that involve accuracy of predictions, and also judgement related to theory

choice (see, for example, the discussion of epistemic values in the next section). (pp. 181–187)

Importantly, the disciplinary matrix involves the notion of exemplars, which are, according to Kuhn (1962/1970, p. 187), influential case studies or problems that are learned in the early to late training of scientists using textbooks, examinations,


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and laboratories. He also points out that the differences within such exemplars provide specialisations in different areas of the natural sciences, and, over the course of training, these become more pronounced towards different specialties. Citing the example of physicists, he states that all science students solve standard Newtonian problems; however, at a more advanced stage, exemplars specific to each specialty vary considerably (Kuhn, 1962/1970). While these shared exemplars portray a certain mode of knowledge, they also indicate that actual practices in the natural sciences are not simply textbook enactments. Instead of viewing scientific knowledge as a straightforward application of rules, Kuhn (1962/1970) states the following:

One of the fundamental techniques by which the members of a group, whether an entire culture, or a specialists’ sub-community within it, learn to see the same things when confronted with the same stimuli is by being shown examples of situations that their predecessors in the group have already learned to see as like each other and as different from other sorts of situations. (pp. 193–194)

In asking the question, “Ought we say that what has been acquired from exemplars is rules and the ability to apply them?” (Kuhn, 1962/1970, p. 194), he states that such systematic building of “recognition of similarity” may also be “involuntary, a process over which we have no control” (p. 194). Accordingly, he also states that:

those are things we cannot do until after we have had a sensation, perceived something. Then we do often seek criteria and put them to use. Then we may engage in interpretation, a deliberative process by which we choose among alternatives as we do not in perception itself. (p. 194)

In sum, “these are all deliberative processes, and in them, we [scientists] do seek and deploy criteria and rules. We try, that is, to interpret sensations already at hand, to analyze what is for us the given” (Kuhn, 1962/1970, p. 195). Exemplars introduce the notion of tacit knowledge, learned not by applying rules but by practising and doing science, as is the case when acquiring the ability to read certain instruments. Kuhn (1962/1970) introduces Michael Polanyi’s ideas of tacit knowledge: “so much past experience is embodied [emphasis added] in the neural apparatus that transforms stimuli to sensations” (p. 195). While theoretical and laboratory-based knowledge familiarise students with foundational knowledge and exemplars prior to engagement in their respective fields, the actual work or craftsmanship also requires deliberative and tacit processes. Practical judgement, or practical rationality, is interpreted as being implicit within Kuhn’s conception of the practice of science; that is, as being implicitly present within episteme itself. This implication is, in contrast to Aristotelian conceptions, a complex and different nexus of concepts in Kuhn’s representation of knowledge generation and practice in the natural sciences. By nominating deliberation (which may involve practical rationality) as a cornerstone in the production of knowledge in his conception of normal science,

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Kuhn notes that deliberation is at the heart of the production of so-called objective knowledge. However, “by concealing their skills and artfulness from themselves—their own craft and tacit knowledge—scientists reaffirm the objectivity of their findings and reproduce the assumptive framework of normal science” (Mishler, 1990, p. 422). The lack of acknowledgement of human judgement in the process of knowledge production within natural science communities undermines the recognition of practical rationality, or aspects of phronesis, as an active agent in bringing about such knowledge. In Kuhn’s study, he not only locates natural sciences historically and sociologically but he opens the door to appreciating the relevance of a rereading of phronesis in connection with techne and episteme with respect to knowledge production and the actual carrying out of scientific practices (poeisis) in disciplinary communities.

THEORY CHOICE: EPISTEME, PRACTICAL JUDGEMENT, AND PHRONESIS

The roles of theory and of theory choice in establishing the nature of the episteme of the natural sciences at a given time form important contributions of Kuhn’s work. Kuhn (1977) furthers the idea that theory choice by a scientific community is not limited to simple application of the scientific method and validation by data. Each such community applies certain epistemic values that are fleshed out over time and in various contexts. The term value is deployed as oftentimes epistemic values denote possible conflict, and judgement is employed towards preference of one over another and is typically comparative between one theory and other(s). Hence, the formation and practice of scientific knowledge emerges as requiring practical and technical judgement on the part of scientists, suggesting that a form of phronesis is involved in the practice of science. The epistemic values identified by Kuhn (1977, p. 325) are summarised as follows:

- Adequacy: This value indicates agreement with empirical observations. A good theory means good accord with existing experiments.

- Consistency: This value indicates agreement both with existing theories and with itself. A good theory demonstrates internal consistency and reduction to limits or findings of other established theories.

- Broadness of scope: This value indicates the range of applicability of the theory. A good theory extends its immediate scope of existing laws and makes predictions beyond simply explaining the current phenomena under study.

- Simplicity: This value indicates the nature of the theory. A good theory brings order to phenomena that, in its absence, would be individually isolated and confused.

- Fruitfulness: This value indicates the ability of a theory to lead to advancement in current understanding and the potential for disclosure of new phenomena or of previously unnoted relationships between those relationships already known.

The epistemic values, as proposed by Kuhn, are not a complete set, and they vary over time and context. Note also that the application of formal logic and


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probability as development is subordinated in the Kuhnian scheme of theory choice. Broadly speaking, these epistemic values point to the influence of scientists’ judgement on theory development in a social context. Kuhn (1977) points out that textbook science reflects little on the character of choices made by scientists in bringing about theory choice. The “choices scientists make between competing theories depend not only on shared criteria—those my critics call objective—but also on idiosyncratic factors dependent on individual biography and personality” (p. 329). The epistemic values, or criteria, used for theory of choice can be chosen differently or given different weights by different scientists (Kuhn, 1977). As Bernstein (1983) notes:

The shift from a model of rationality that searches for determinate truths which can serve as necessary and sufficient conditions, to a model of practical rationality [emphasis added] that emphasizes the role of exemplars [emphasis in original] and judgmental interpretation, is not only characteristic of theory choice but is a leitmotif that pervades all of Kuhn’s thinking about science. (p. 57)

Theory choice, then, depends on subjective and objective reasoning, which requires situated, practical judgement by scientists. Kuhn also states that in scientific communities, theory choice is discussable and debatable (Kuhn, 1977, p. 337). Thus, if one adopts a Kuhnian perspective, a form of phronesis may be seen as being involved in the practice of science. Theory choice and the exercise of situated judgement that is based on epistemic values may be seen to underpin the formation of episteme, disrupting assumptions regarding episteme as universal, generalisable, context-independent knowledge.ii

PARADIGM SHIFT: THE CRISES IN ‘NORMAL’

While scientific communities work towards creating certain theories, methods, and facts, a shift occurs when these practices fall short on issues that defy their scope and reach. The identification of certain anomalies leads to a crisis in normal science (Kuhn, 1962/1970), possibly resulting in a paradigm shift. The crisis and its resolution can lead to a radical shift of ideas and can shed light on the limitations of earlier modes of thinking within a disciplinary matrix. Thinking about science in terms of paradigm shifts can be seen to challenge assumptions regarding the universality and timelessness of theories and the associated methodologies as well as the role of objectivity in the practice of science. Kuhn (1962/1970) cites three classic paradigm shifts: the Copernican revolution, the discovery of oxygen, and the formation of modern physics in the late 19th century. He posits that an adaptation to paradigm shifts requires scientists to adopt a new frame of seeing and a new understanding. Incommensurability between older paradigms and the latest shift occurs as a result of crisis (Kuhn, 1962/1970). Following an old paradigm, instigating shifts in it, and changing towards a new paradigm requires both practical knowledge and judgement on the part of the scientist, thereby rendering aspects of phronesis relevant during such shifts.

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Importantly, these are not simply epistemological shifts (shifts in our assumptions regarding the nature of knowledge) but may also represent ontological shifts (shifts in assumptions regarding the nature of reality), implying that epistemology and ontology are also related. One example of a paradigm shift leading to an ontological shift is the case of classical and deterministic physics being replaced by probabilistic quantum mechanics. Kuhn (1962/1970) summarises his view in what can be interpreted as a challenge to Aristotle’s episteme (that is, universal, immutable knowledge practised and produced in scientific communities):

We are all deeply accustomed to seeing science as the one enterprise that draws constantly nearer to some goal set by nature in advance. But need there be any such goal? Can we not account for both science’s existence and its success in terms of evaluation from the community’s state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal? (p. 210)

In summary, the notion of paradigm shift is important in that it highlights the role of situated human judgement in the practice of science and makes explicit the non-eternal nature of epistemic structures. It emerges that epistemes may be seen as the constructs of communities of scientists that involve practical rationality and processes of situated judgement, akin to phronesis. In the next section, I will take up this concern with the role of power relations in the practical judgements of scientists and, consequently, on the idea of phronesis and the nature of scientific epistemic knowledge.

FOUCAULT, FLYVBJERG, PHRONESIS, AND EPISTEME

The way we understand the world to be (‘the way the world is’) depends on our best theories, which, in turn, are defined by the epistemology within which the theory is situated. As I have argued through Kuhn’s work, this epistemology is itself decided in relation to phronesis. From Kuhn, I have also taken the epistemic values and his analysis of how these values form the basis for practical judgements made by scientists in the formation and development of theoretical knowledge. A further dimension to practical judgement is not overtly addressed by Kuhn: the ways in which power relations embedded in the situated instance of professional judgement and the professional discourse influence how problems are seen and how practical judgements are made—and hence how epistemology is shaped. This consideration has dual importance. On one hand, it presents the opportunity for the reframing of Aristotle’s depiction of the subject. In his terms, the person is a “rational animal,” fixed in character. In contraposition, Foucault’s account posits a conception of the person as a rational animal, but one that, in a historicised socio-political context, is always a subject in formation. Thus, the


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reflective and practical judgements made by the scientist as subject are performed within a complex of the power relations that have themselves formed the scientist. While Kuhn’s work draws attention to the judgement of scientists, directed towards the ‘good’ in the sense of better understanding the world and the construction of an episteme, the power relations underlying scientific epistemology remain outside the scope of his characterisation. A version of phronesis that is sensitive to issues of ethics and power relations is proposed, further complicating the understandings of episteme. I suggest recognition of power relations within the concept of phronesis as posited by Flyvbjerg (2001). Flyvbjerg’s (2001) reading of practical rationality, which Foucault linked to techne, but which Flyvbjerg identifies as being closer to phronesis, provides an avenue for exploring how power relations play in the performance of phronetic activity and thus in the formation of episteme. In his discussion of Foucault’s work, Flyvbjerg draws attention to Foucault’s approach to practical rationality, observing that he studied it in relation to techne without a superstructure of episteme. He argues that through Foucault’s linking of techne to a particular type of goals, the connection is more properly with phronesis rather than with techne. Foucault, he writes, approached techne “ ‘from the other side,’ that is from values—what is ‘good and bad for man [sic],’ in Aristotle’s words...which is, in my interpretation, from phronesis” (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p. 111). The discussion here is based on Michel Foucault’s notion of power, which emphasises a dynamic and context-based view of particular situations and a consideration of where power is exercised. The relationship of power to knowledge and the considerations for subject formation also introduce a consideration of embodiment. Here embodiment is viewed as a combination of the Kuhnian notion of practical rationality, as in a body employing tacit knowledge towards scientific understandings in addition to the Foucauldian notion of the same body becoming a subject through power–knowledge relationships.iii The subsequent discussion of Foucauldian power relations can now be linked directly to the situated practices related to phronesis and hence to episteme, through the arguments of the first part of the chapter. From the Kuhnian representation, the construction of scientific episteme occurs within a socio-historical context. I argue that episteme and the discourse constructed for its expression arise through the practices of scientists and are consequently subject to the complexities of the power relations within that community. Thus, given the implication of phronesis in the formation of episteme, it becomes virtually impossible to unravel and separate the influences of these power relations on the construction of knowledge and scientific practices. According to Flyvbjerg (2001), little is said about phronesis by Foucault directly, yet his work has important implications for illuminating the significance of power relations for this phronesis, specifically through his interest in practical rationality. Foucault uses philosophy and history to reveal how subjects are created and constituted through power relations. The recognition of power relations within phronesis (based upon Flyvbjerg’s reading) includes awareness of the various institutional networks that allow individuals to act. Foucault asks a key but simple

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question in this regard: “How is power exercised?” (as cited in Flyvbjerg, 2001, p. 118). The manifestation of power within and acted upon the subject, whether the literal body (a professional scientist or practitioner) or a body of knowledge (a paradigm), informs both Foucault’s methodologies and his insights into power relations. Foucault analyses how the criteria for individualisation of discourses occur. These were depicted by Locke (2004) as criteria of formation (the statements that are allowed in a discourse), transformation or threshold (the nature of how a discourse changes over time and space), and correlation (how a discourse gains an autonomous status and how one can define it in relationship to other discourses and to its non-discursive context). Discursive correlation also points towards the possibility of connections between various and different disciplinary discourses. For example, the nature of such a correlation is illustrated by the discipline of chemistry as a discursive formation, through its relation to other branches of science (other discourses) and its relation to economics, political institutions, and other areas (non-discursive context). Such discursive relationships are not explored by Kuhn. In considering the nature of phronesis and episteme and the relation between them, Flyvbjerg again suggests how Foucault offers further insight. The later genealogical methodology of Foucault, he observes:

takes as its objects exactly those institutions and practices which, like rationality, are usually thought to be excluded from change. It tries to show the way in which they, too, undergo change as a result of historical developments; and it also tries to demonstrate how such changes escape our notice, how it is often in the interest of those institutions and practices to mask their specific genealogy and historical character. (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p. 115)

A consequence of this observation is that the very discourses of a group such as scientists may be seen to mask the historical contingency of their construction and appear as natural ‘givens.’ Foucault observed discursive shifts in scientific practices and communities and considered how ethical principles, power relations (within various disciplines), subject formation, and epistemology and ontology shift over time. His work points to shifts in subject formation via power and discourse, which in turn may be interpreted as both epistemological and ontological shifts over time, implying that epistemology and ontology are related. Foucault, according to Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982), “rejects the attempts to find a universal grounding in either thought or Being…Foucault (like later Heidegger) replaces ontology with a special kind of history that focuses on the cultural practices that have made us what we are” (p. 122). In another sense, Foucault locates an aporia within the idealisation of fixed, universal notions of epistemology and ontology, and he historicises their transformations and constructions in various contexts and time periods. For example, in Madness and Civilization (Foucault, 1961), he details the dominance of Reason


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over certain time periods with various epistemologies and constructions of ontologies to document the arrival in the 19th century of the construct of ‘mental illness.’ Foucault, in the interview “Truth and Power” (Foucault, 1980), sees something similar to Kuhn’s paradigm shifts, but reads such changes rather differently. In discussing the ‘discontinuity’ in theoretical trajectories in certain empirical forms of knowledge (Foucault, 1980), he observes that “these are not simply new discoveries, there is a whole new ‘regime’ in discourse and forms of knowledge” (p. 112). He goes on:

But the important thing here is not that such changes can be rapid and extensive, or rather it is that this extent and rapidity are only the sign of something else: a modification of the rules of formation of statements which are accepted as scientifically true. Thus it is not a change of content (refutation of old errors, recovery of old truths), nor is it a change of theoretical form (renewal of a paradigm, modification of existing ensembles). It is a question of what governs statements, and the way in which they govern each other so as to constitute a set of propositions which are scientifically acceptable, and hence capable of being verified or falsified by scientific procedures. In short, there is a problem of regime, the politics of the scientific statement. At this level it’s not so much a matter of knowing what external power imposes itself on science, as of what effects of power circulate among scientific statements, what constitutes, as it were, their internal regime of power, and how and why at certain moments that regime undergoes a global modification. (pp. 112–113)

From a Foucauldian perspective, the professional may be seen as being shaped as a subject within these discursive constructions and relations of power. This centrality of the subject is clear in “The Subject and Power,” where Foucault (1982) states that “it is not power, but the subject, which is the general theme of my research” (p. 209). In this work, he details three modes of objectification of the subject, which he views as means of creating subjects: claims to holding the status of the term science by certain disciplines, dividing practices, and finally the means by which human beings themselves turn into subjects. Above all, he declares that the subject is “placed in power relations which are very complex” (p. 209). In my thinking about the implications for phronesis, Foucault’s work calls for attention to the ways in which discourses of power act upon the subject and form the subject, such that thinking about scientists’ practitioner judgement must also bring to the fore a critical consideration of discourses of power and the ways in which the scientist as practitioner is formed in the context of power relations. For Foucault, power is not something that is possessed, as in a juridical view but rather, it is exercised within actions (Foucault, 1980, p. 121). He outlines three relationships within the sphere of power production: application of objective capacities and relationships due to communication, which in turn produce finalized activity. The adjustment of these relationships, as in defining sets of rules, is carried in what Foucault (1982, p. 219) terms as “disciplines.” These relationships reflect the nature of the power of the discipline.

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The domination of a positivist epistemology within science and in scientific professional education is an example of the product of such power and knowledge complexes and has implications for the formation of the subject, or, in this case, professionals in the natural sciences (and related professions). If the scientist as subject is also formed through power relations and discursive constructions, then the judgements the scientist makes and the episteme to which the scientist practises are consequently informed by such power relations. Thus, episteme can be understood as having been built relationally on the contextual, practical judgement of professionals and as being subject to the power relations that underpin their discourse. However, the arguments given above are not deterministic in nature, as these relationships change and, in certain instances, are also asymmetric. For example, one might ask how to address the dominance of episteme over phronesis in certain representations of science, such as positivist epistemology or dominant discourses such as evidence-based practices. Foucault’s contribution to understanding contextualised power–knowledge relations and the implications for the formation of the subject hold implications for a re-interpretation of phronesis, in the context of appreciating how power is implicated in practices of knowledge generation in the natural sciences, and how dominant discourses can be questioned in this regard.iv Drawing from the above discussions, I propose an interpretation of phronesis in the context of scientific practice as embodied, situated practical judgement that involves tacit knowledge, considerations of power–knowledge relations, and discursive constructions that influence subject formation. It is also suggested that the epistemologies within professional knowledge are constructed and related through and within scientific practices.v

CONCLUSION

The implications from the discussion above are that practical judgement is related to scientific episteme and is at the heart of professional scientific practice itself. Further, both the practice and the episteme are subject, in their formation and enactment, to the power relations that shape professional discourses and the epistemic base. Phronesis, then, is seen as an active, relational, and non-trivial aspect vitally involved in creating the nexus that joins knowledge generation and professional practice in scientific and related professional communities. One of the key findings that arises is that taking into account Kuhn’s, Flyvbjerg’s, and Foucault’s ideas provides a clearer role of phronesis in relationship to episteme, particularly in the generation of epistemic knowledge. The analysis leads to seeing episteme as being formed through the practical rationality and actions of scientists who, as subjects, are in a constant state of formation. This view differs significantly from that of Aristotle, who held to the set nature of the subject and to the universal and unchanging nature of episteme. The implications from the discussion above are that practical judgement links vitally to episteme and, thus, within the natural sciences, links also to the heart of professional practice itself. Taken-for-granted notions of phronesis are further challenged by a Foucauldian


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analysis of power, discourse, and the subject (Flyvbjerg, 2001) and pose further implications for considering the agency of the scientist/practitioner within the practice of science. There also appears to be implications for the desirable characteristics of epistemic reflexivity (Kinsella & Whiteford, 2009) and phronesis by practitioners in professions that draw their epistemic bases from science; epistemic reflexivity implies a healthy questioning of the epistemic knowledge on which practitioners base their practices. In conclusion, I have argued that a Kuhnian view of science presents a challenge to Aristotle’s episteme as universal, context-independent knowledge. I propose that the episteme within which practitioners work is itself constructed through activities that resemble those associated with the disposition of phronesis and with the application of practical judgement. This relationship also exists, it should be noted, in relation to contemporary notions of techne, poeisis, and praxis; however, a full consideration of such relations is beyond the scope of this chapter. Thus, drawing from contemporary representations of knowledge generation and practices, the dividing lines between phronesis and episteme are not as clear as their original conceptions imply.

NOTES i Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, I propose a constellation nexus that involves a

rereading of the relations between Aristotle’s original schema of knowledge and related concepts such as techne, poeisis, phronesis, praxis, sophia, and episteme. Inspired by Bernstein (1992, 2002), this nexus represents a reconfiguration of the network of Aristotle’s relationships between concepts (once Kuhn, Foucault, and Flyvbjerg are drawn upon). In this chapter, however, the focus is on the relationship between phronesis and episteme. The assumptions underlying the use of a constellation metaphor do not place concepts in certain hierarchies or relations in preferred directionalities, and the concepts and relationships are not proposed as fixed.

ii It should be noted that epistemic values that inform Kuhn’s theory choice are aesthetic and pragmatic in nature rather than ethical, beyond the intent for the ‘good’ of a better understanding of the world.

iii It is to be noted that ideas of subject formation have not been explored in detail by Flyvbjerg (2001) (as the focus in his work was the reinvigoration of the social sciences) and are developed here in the context of natural sciences.

iv Foucault’s work also has implication for a reinterpretation of praxis, although this argument is beyond the scope of this chapter.

v It should also be borne in mind that, although the case is not argued here, not only can a case be made for the construction of scientific epistemology but a similar argument might be mounted with respect to scientific ontology.

REFERENCES

Aristotle. (1976). Nicomachean ethics. (J. A. K. Thomson, Trans). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Bernstein, R. J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science, hermeneutics, and praxis.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bernstein, R. J. (1992). The new constellation: The ethical-political horizons of modernity/

postmodernity. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

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Bernstein, R. J. (2002). The constellation of hermeneutics, critical theory, and deconstruction. In R. J. Dostal (Ed.), The Cambridge guide to Gadamer (pp. 267–275). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, P., & Eagleton, T. (1994). Doxa and common life: An interview. In S. Zizek (Ed.), Mapping ideology (pp. 265–277). London: Verso.

Coulter, D., & Weins, J. R. (2002). Educational judgment: Linking the actor and the spectator. Educational Researcher, 31(4), 15–25.

Derrida, J. (with Dufourmantelle, A.). (2000). Of hospitality. (R. Bowlby, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Dreyfus, H. L., & Rabinow P. (1982). Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Brighton, UK: Harvester Press.

Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Foucault, M. (1961). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of Reason. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, M. (1963). The birth of the clinic: An archaeology of medical perception. London and New York: Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1980). Truth and power. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977 (pp. 109–133). New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power [Afterword]. In H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Green, B. (2009). Introduction: Understanding and researching professional practice. In B. Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 1–18). Rotterdam: Sense.

Holmes, D., Murray, J. S., Perron, A., & Genevieve, R. (2006). Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: Truth, power and fascism. International Journal of Evidence Based Health, 4, 180–186.

Kinsella, A. (2007). Technical rationality in Schön’s reflective practice: Dichotomous or non-dualistic epistemological position. Nursing Philosophy, 8, 102–113.


Kuhn, T. (1962/1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kuhn, T. S. (1977). The essential tension: Selected studies in scientific tradition and change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Locke, T. (2004). Critical discourse analysis. London: Continuum. Mishler, E. G. (1990). Validation in inquiry-guided research: The role of exemplars in narrative studies.

Harvard Educational Review, 60, 415–442. Polkinghorne, D. (2004). Practice and the human sciences: The case for a judgment-based practice of

care. New York: State University of New York. Popper, K. R. (1999). All life is problem solving. London: Routledge. Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Farrukh Chishtie Faculty of Education The University of Western Ontario


DEREK SELLMAN

RECLAIMING COMPETENCE FOR PROFESSIONAL PHRONESIS

INTRODUCTION

According to Dunne (1999), phronesis is Aristotle’s special virtue. It is the virtue that straddles cognition and emotion and provides guidance for the expression of other virtues. In this chapter, I offer a brief outline of the nature of phronesis before rehearsing the claim that phronesis has a special place in professional life. This claim for a professional phronesis is set within a discussion that acknowledges the influence of Schön’s (1983) critique of technical rationality on the way professionals think about their practice in general and on the way in which professional knowledge is conceived in particular. Schön’s exposition of the nature of professional knowledge has contributed to the idea that there are discrete knowledges or ways of knowing (see also Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Carper, 1978), an idea that many professionals find attractive. Undoubtedly, the growth of the idea of reflective practice can be traced back to Schön, and many professionals see this as an appropriate way of uncovering an alternative epistemology—an alternative, that is, to technical rationality. Schön’s recognition that practitioners know more than they can say is complemented by Race’s (2006) insights into the idea that we know more than we realise. Both Schön and Race have some interesting things to say about competence. For Schön, the competent practitioner is at the core of his account of professional practice; whereas, for Race, competence represents the scope of what we can know and can do. Here I continue this tradition of the use of the term competence so as to contribute to its reclamation from the clutches of those educational behaviourists who have commandeered the term to describe skills-based learning (as understood, for example, in the phrase ‘competency-based curriculum’). Schön and Race are not so very far apart in the way they understand that competence requires some form of emergent self-awareness or self-revelation; in professional life, this notion of a developing competence is necessary if practice is to be anything other than the mere routine application of technically derived protocols or algorithmic responses to the complex issues facing practitioners in their everyday work environments. Competence in this sense requires not only an awareness of what one currently knows (or can do) but also a recognition of the temporality of that knowledge, that is, a recognition that what one currently knows (or can do) may be inadequate at some undetermined future time.

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Schön’s call for an alternative epistemology (an alternative, that is, to technical rationality) that can accurately reflect the way competent practitioners operate in messy practice environments comes under fire from Luntley (2009), who claims that such calls are hasty because those parts of practice often understood as ‘know-how’ can, after all, be reconciled with existing propositional (or know that) accounts of knowledge. During the course of this chapter, I outline Luntley’s argument (insofar as I understand it) before attempting to bring these sometimes disparate threads together within a conclusion that reiterates the desirability of a phronesis for professional life.

PHRONESIS

Aristotle (trans. 1953) describes phronesis as the virtue that enables us to judge what it is we should do in any given situation. While the normative content of this description suggests a virtue of the character, Aristotle is at pains to point out that right reason is a crucial ingredient of phronesis; thus, phronesis occupies an unusual place in Aristotle’s taxonomy because it straddles the categories of character and intellect to which he assigns all other virtues. Dunne (1999) notes Aristotle’s inconsistency in categorising phronesis as a virtue both of character and of intellect in different parts of his writings, but the centrality of phronesis in Aristotle’s account cannot be denied: phronesis is his special virtue and he intimates that it is closely related to wisdom. Indeed, ‘practical wisdom’ is one of the two most commonly used translations of the term phronesis; the other is ‘practical rationality.’ While the attraction of ‘practical rationality’ is understandable because it emphasises the use of reason (and also because it offers a more obvious counterpart term to what Schön has called ‘technical rationality’), my own preference is for ‘practical wisdom’ because it seems to extend the idea of phronesis beyond reason alone. In either case, phronesis is Aristotle’s practical virtue and it is the virtue required for Aristotle’s phronimos (the ‘good’ or ‘wise’ person). I have argued elsewhere that phronesis has a place in professional life distinguishable from its place in everyday life and, as a consequence, the concept of something called professional phronesis is warranted (Sellman, 2008, 2009). Here I offer a brief summary of the main features of professional phronesis as expounded in those earlier accounts. The professional phronimos (the professionally wise practitioner) continually strives to be the best practitioner she or he can be given the constraints under which practice occurs. For practitioners, this endeavour includes but is not restricted to understanding the limits of their own personal professional competencies together with a willingness to identify and work toward rectifying relevant competency deficits. These are demanding requirements that imply a deep understanding of the turbulent and dynamic nature of practice, a recognition of the value of some form of critical self-reflection, and a resolve not to allow complacency to jeopardise future practice. Also implied is the need for a burgeoning awareness of the sometimes fraught relationship between agency and structure: this is to say, an awareness of the ways in which one’s personal practice can be, and often is, constrained by features of


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the working environment over which one has little influence or control. These constraints on personal professional practice tend to be overlooked not only by institutional and institutionalised features of the practice landscape by, for example, the way professional codes of practice tend to apportion blame to individuals (Pattison, 2001) but also by practitioners themselves as they accept the tenets of personal accountability. A danger then emerges that this culture of blame may be perpetuated by calls for practitioners to develop those virtues considered desirable (if not essential) for professional practice but this would only be the case if such calls were made (or indeed understood) in the absence of any concession to the role of institutions in encouraging or discouraging the development of those virtues in individual practitioners. Few would argue against the desirability of encouraging the development and expression of such virtues as honesty and trustworthiness among professionals; yet, to ensure well-intentioned actions do not cause harm, such virtues require some overarching guidance. I contend that such guidance is provided when phronesis is understood as practical wisdom and when the designation of ‘professional,’ as in professional phronesis, is added so as to acknowledge both the restrictions and requirements of professional practice. One of the features of professional practice is the requirement for competence, usually understood as the ability to perform a specific set of skills related to the tasks that are partly constitutive of that particular professional practice. Thus, an occupational therapist is required to demonstrate competence in those skills considered to be the skills of occupational therapy; a nurse is expected to have the skills thought to be essential for effective nursing practice, and so on. However, as already intimated, I use competence in the broader sense, as used by Schön to describe those practitioners who have transcended the technical application of protocols; so a competent practitioner in this sense has not only recognised the limitations of the purely technical approach to solving or resolving messy practice situations but has also begun to operate in ways that cannot be adequately described in technical rational terms. In this sense, competence acts as a precursor for professional phronesis.

THE LIMITS OF TECHNICAL RATIONALITY

It would be foolish, even disingenuous, to fail to acknowledge the improvements occasioned by the rise of science. Science, after all, has provided humanity with myriad opportunities to escape the worst myopic excesses of superstition and of received dogma, both of which have the habit of silencing dissent and generating oppressive environments largely antithetical to human flourishing. And while the fruits of the science project are not evenly distributed across the globe, they have nonetheless led to technical solutions to many obstacles to human well-being. Of course, some of these solutions have created additional obstacles for which further technical solutions are required; and so pervasive is the belief in the technical fix that there is an expectation that science will (ultimately) provide solutions for each new and existing problem. It is unclear if this technical fix mentality is engendered by or is the result of human investment in the idea of the power of science. Either way, the

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seemingly insatiable human appetite for certainty that science in its most positivist incarnation holds out as a realistic possibility continues apparently unabated: the danger in this view is, of course, that science becomes the new dogma that merely engenders a different, perhaps even more powerful, form of myopia. Few scientists remain welded to a strictly positivist view, yet science is frequently portrayed in the literature (sometimes by those who should know better) as a solely positivist pursuit. In so doing, science is often set up as a straw man to be demolished with consummate postmodern ease. One possible reason for this arable attack on the foundations of science is the suspicion that the cold hard thinking said to accompany science has come to dominate the assumptions of those who dictate the policies under which social practices, such as teaching, nursing, occupational therapy, and so on, are organised. And this, as many front-line practitioners recognise, is very often at the expense of the human aspects of such work: Drummond and Standish (2007) refer to this as a ‘technicist’ and ‘empiricist’ dominance. The perceived impersonal nature of the imperatives that have come to dictate how individual practitioners engage with their client group(s) may lead educators as well as health and social care practitioners to examine more carefully the epistemological assumptions of their practice. While not always expressed in such terms, the growing body of writing critical of the dominance of what Schön (1983) refers to as ‘technical rationality’ reflects this search for a richer epistemological account. By adopting the term technical rationality, Schön gives voice to the epistemological assumptions of positivism that science can provide a solution to each and every problem that besets humanity, and that it is only a matter of time before science will discover the knowledge needed to develop the technical solution(s) necessary for any given problem. On this account, a technician is needed to deliver the solution—as understood in the way that the photocopier technician connects her laptop to the errant office multifunctional device to allow computer-assisted diagnosis of the problem prior to effecting a repair. But by describing (in his influential book, The Reflective Practitioner) the way practitioners actually think about and respond to the everyday problems of practice, Schön (1983) challenges the idea that effective professional practice is merely the application of technical solutions; as he explains, the competent practitioner is no mere technician. However, this approach to problem-solving may not be that simple even for our photocopier technician, insofar as she may not be the slave to the kind of algorithmic decision-making that we imagine, particularly in situations where she recognises the limitations of the protocols by deviating from or going beyond what any given protocol dictates. In just the same way, we know that at times in our everyday lives, what seem to be purely technical problems cannot be resolved by merely following technical instructions. For Schön, descriptions of professional practice as merely the application of technical rationality fail to recognise the uncertainty and unpredictability inherent in professional practice. Such descriptions also fail to account for the way in which competent and experienced practitioners sift through potential solutions to pressing problems by drawing not only from technical or scientific knowledge, or both, but


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also from what they have learned by witnessing prior similar and not-so-similar situations. For these, among other, reasons, Schön claims not only that technical rationality cannot account for the rationality that practitioners actually use in their everyday practice but also that such an approach is ill-suited for preparing aspiring practitioners. The shortcomings of the technical solution approach are readily found in the literature, and many professionals find this critique compelling as they encounter first-hand the limitations of technical rational approaches to resolving the complex problems of practice. The arguments against the overuse of technical rational approaches are well rehearsed and have been reinforced by a growing unease among practitioners regarding the increasing predominance of managerialist forms of efficiency: that is, the perception that policy imperatives (and thus professional practices) continue to be increasingly driven by an economic version of efficiency from which the value of human relationships is becoming more and more abstracted. The resultant pernicious form of managerialism has become so pervasive that its corruptive influence appears not only inexorable but also inevitable. The power of this managerialist rationality is awe-inspiring as it is marshalled both to dismiss its critics as reactionary and to set the terms of debate in ways that marginalise dissent. Several challenges to this predominant managerialist orthodoxy have emerged. The front-runners in the search for an alternative version about how education and health care should proceed seem to be of two kinds: i) the phenomenological and ii) the epistemological. The first, the phenomenological turn, focuses on subjective and interpretive first-person accounts of the experience of education and health care (see, for example, Cameron, 2006; Carel, 2008; Montgomery, 2006). On these sorts of accounts, science comes under fire for pandering to the seemingly fundamental human desire for certainty. The claim is that the transfer of positivist scientific thinking from the physical to the social world encourages unrealistic expectations of human behaviour in terms of learning and responding to illness, which, in turn, generates misleading forms of performance measurement. League tablesi that are based on educational scores or waiting times for treatments do not capture the human narrative involved in being, respectively, a school pupil or a hospital patient. Phenomenological accounts attempt to add the human story to these otherwise impersonal systems. The second, the epistemological turn, challenges the fundamental epistemological assumptions of science as an appropriate way of knowledge development for social practices, either by developing alternative accounts of how we know what we know (see, for example, Belenky et al., 1986; Carper, 1978) or by returning to the Aristotelian distinction between techne and phronesis (see, for example, Dunne, 1993). The former has morphed into a focus on reflection as way to articulate and develop practical knowledge; the latter, into an extended discussion of how phronesis can add to what is claimed as an otherwise impoverished knowledge base for practice that arises from positivist science. Rather than focusing on the difference between Aristotle’s techne and phronesis, Montgomery (2006) emphasises the distinction between episteme and phronesis in order to contrast epistemology with ‘phronesiology,’ claiming the

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former’s association with positivist science marks it as unsuitable to describe the rationality that guides doctors in their everyday work of diagnosis and prescription. For Montgomery, it is obvious that although medicine relies on science, the practice of medicine is not, and cannot, be a science; rather, the practice of medicine requires doctors to interpret the narratives of patient and illness alike. And while doctors accept the value of clinical judgement, they resist (or are perhaps blind to) the role of practical rationality in enabling that judgement. Montgomery may be hasty in claiming that clinical judgement is the same as phronesis but is surely correct in noting that clinical judgement has more in common with practical wisdom than has been typically acknowledged. Among other health care professional groups, nursing has followed medicine in pursuing the claim that its practice is a science; and as with medicine, debates can be found in the literature regarding whether nursing is a science or an art, or some combination of both. Nursing has (at least in some quarters) attempted to ape some of medicine’s more cherished accomplishments, perhaps in the hope that such a route might lead to acceptance in the academy and respectability as a discipline in its own right; examples include the nursing diagnosis movement and the adoption of evidence-based practice (although additional political imperatives drive the latter). Critics point to the tendency of individual practitioners and professional regulators to adopt such movements in a predominately technicist manner. Thus, the thrust of arguments against a solely (or even a predominant) technicist view is that while science may be an essential feature of the evidence base of social practices, this feature of itself does not make any one of those practices a science. Despite the development of protocols, decision-making trees, and various algorithms to guide practice-based decisions, science (and the technical rationality that underpins these developments) is unlikely to equal let alone replace the human judgement necessary to make the best decision in any individual instance. Indeed, the variation of decision-making (or rather, the variation of the outcomes of decisions) has led to calls for standardisation across the health sector to improve outcomes for all (rather than merely for those lucky enough to have access to the best decision-making). Nevertheless, some evidence suggests that “decisions based on research evidence are usually better that decisions based on clinical judgement” (Paley, 2006, p. 82), although Paley’s argument is predicated on the assumptions inherent in clear-cut diagnostic category types. In this sense, Paley may be merely emphasising what we have already suspected insofar as human beings are prone to bias and that bias can disrupt our judgement and decision-making, which, in turn, can distort or compromise professional competence.

RECLAIMING COMPETENCE

When Schön noted “that competent practitioners usually know more than they can say” (1983, p. viii, emphasis added), he was surely thinking of an expert rather than a novice, and of a thoughtful and well-informed professional rather than someone taught to perform a set of restricted and prescribed skills. A certain irony, then, accompanies the appropriation of the term competence by those who understand it in


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technical rational terms and regard it as representing nothing more than simple or step-by-step tasks performed under limited and highly regulated conditions. This impoverished view of competence is in need of rehabilitation, and Race (2006), in developing a model of competence, may be helping to restore its reputation despite claiming that competence is simply a fancy word for ‘can do.’ In his model, Race divides individual competence into four representational quadrants:

Quadrant 1ii - Knowing our competencies (i.e., knowing what it is we can do or what it is we know) Quadrant 2 - Knowing our uncompetenciesiii (i.e., knowing what it is we cannot do or what it is we do not know) Quadrant 3 - Not knowing our competencies (i.e., not knowing what it is we can do or what it is we know) Quadrant 4 - Not knowing our uncompetencies (i.e., not knowing what it is we cannot do or what it is we do not know)

Quadrant 1 (knowing our competencies) is relatively straightforward and relies merely on an honest assessment of whatever evidence we have to confirm what it is we think we can do or what it is we think we know—without such an honest assessment, we may exaggerate our claims of personal competence and knowledge. Similarly, quadrant 2 (knowing our uncompetencies) requires an honest admission of the limitations, both of our competencies and of our knowledge. For Race, an understanding of the importance of these two fundamental features of his model allows us to assess our existing competence and knowledge base, to set our own educational goals, and to develop effective evaluation strategies to enhance our personal and professional learning. Both quadrant 1 and quadrant 2 are relatively straightforward because they rely on conscious awareness of what it is we can and cannot do and what it is we do or do not know. In contrast, quadrant 3 and quadrant 4 are complicated by their relationship to the unconscious aspects of what it is we can and cannot do and what it is we know and do not know; and in this lack of self-awareness, Race’s model relates to issues of reflection and phronesis. In terms of professional competence, quadrant 3 (not knowing our competencies) resembles Schön’s observation that professionals know more than they can tell and, by implication, reflection is one method by which we might gain access either to the things we do not know that we can do or to those things we do not know that we know. This uncovering of the difficult-to-articulate aspects of professional competence is put forward as (at least one part of) the raison d'être of reflective practice, and the arguments in support of its inclusion in professional curricula do not need to be rehearsed here. It is sufficient to note once more that reflection is one arm of the epistemological turn to which practitioners are drawn in their attempts to articulate satisfactorily those aspects of practice knowledge purportedly marginalised by the predominant technicist account. However, concluding that Schön and Race are describing the same thing may be misleading because while the purpose of Schön’s reflection is to assist the practitioner to articulate the otherwise opaque knowledge of practice (we know more than we can tell), Race’s

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quadrant 3, or what he refers to as the ‘magic’ box, encourages individuals to identify previously unknown competencies (we can do more than we think we can do, and we know more than we realise we know). And while reflective practice offers a method by which we can better articulate those things that we already know that we can do or know (we just can’t express this very well), Race provides us with the insight that there are things we do not realise that we can do or that we know; or that we do not recognise these things as being out of the ordinary and thus play down their significance. However, this same insight may be what Schön had in mind as part of knowing-in-action as revealed through intelligent action; if so, perhaps Race and Schön are not so very far apart in this respect. Race appropriately refers to quadrant 4 (not knowing our uncompetencies) as the ‘danger’ box, for those who do not know what it is they cannot do or who do not know what it is they do not know are forever at the mercy of their ignorance. In professional life, such practitioners place the recipients of their practice at risk precisely because of their incomplete understanding of the limits of their competence. Hence Socrates’ observation that wisdom requires insight into one’s own ignorance is of immediate relevance in the 21st century, for this incomplete understanding of the requirements of professional practice is significant in differentiating the novice from Schön’s competent practitioner and may point to a need for the development of practical wisdom (phronesis). And it is this kind of practical wisdom in judgement and decision-making that I have in mind when describing the professional phronimos. Thus, in Race’s scheme, the importance of that which resides in our unknowing quadrants (quadrants 3 and 4) cannot be over-emphasised, for in these quadrants Schön would recognise many of the features of his reflective and competent practitioner. One point of note here: once an individual identifies something in the not knowing quadrants, that item is immediately transferred to one of the knowing quadrants. Thus, insofar as we can never know the contents of our own ‘magic’ and ‘danger’ boxes, these quadrants remain, at least from our own perspective, empty. Of course, they are not empty from the perspective of others (for not one of us knows all or can do all), and, thus, the very first requirement of professional phronesis may be a willingness to acknowledge the possibility that things, unknown to us, can get in the way of competent practice. Thus, we might begin to demonstrate professional phronesis by first acknowledging that we do not know what it is we cannot do and what it is that we do not know. Armed with this insight, we can then set out on a voyage of discovery to uncover the professionally relevant contents of our own not knowing boxes in general and of our danger box in particular. This task requires not only an active desire to seek out strategies to reveal those things previously hidden to us but also a willingness to act on the findings. Reflective practice and seeking out constructive critical feedback from colleagues, clients, and others are but two suitable strategies. The recognition of the existence of a personal danger box seems to be a minimum level of self-awareness for any professional serious about being a good enough (if not a competent) practitioner. And with identification comes awareness: the previously unknown things become known things and, thus, are no longer quadrant 3 or quadrant 4 items.


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Thus, the deceptively simple statements i) that we do not know what we cannot do and ii) that we do not know what we do not know have profound and often unacknowledged implications for professional practice. Those practitioners who take seriously their work for human betterment will recognise that competence is not merely a matter of skills acquisition, or of merely developing and maintaining the skills necessary for safe and effective practice. Rather, the individuals who strive to be competent practitioners will be aiming to be the best they can at whatever practice they profess to be skilled in and will recognise the danger of ignoring the fact that there are indeed both things they do not know that they cannot do and things they do not know they do not know. Furthermore, they recognise that striving to be competent requires their long-term commitment to revealing and addressing whatever contents of their not knowing boxes get in the way of competent practice as they move toward professional phronesis.

MOVING TOWARD PROFESSIONAL PHRONESIS

For Schön then, the competent practitioner is one whose skills have moved beyond those required simply to apply the protocols determined by the limited technical rational approach to practice. Rather, the competent practitioner demonstrates in her actions an understanding of the deeper requirements occasioned by the need to respond to the messiness of everyday practice. In addition to this willingness to admit fallibility of competence and knowledge, numerous other characteristics will assist the practitioner in pursuit of professional phronesis, including inter alia honest inquiry in the sense of attempting to know, as far as is possible, the truth of things. As Haack (1998) puts it in her discussion about the nature of genuine inquiry:

The genuine inquirer…does want the true answer to his question: if he is inquiring into whether cigarette smoking causes cancer, he wants to end up believing that cigarette smoking causes cancer if cigarette smoking causes cancer, and that it doesn’t if it doesn’t (and that it’s a lot more complicated than that if it is a lot more complicated than that). (p. 9)

Haack goes on to argue that this intellectual integrity is not only a virtue essential for the activity of genuine inquiry but also an epistemic (and instrumental) obligation for anyone who wishes to find out how things really are. Haack is concerned about the ever-present dangers of ‘over-belief’ and ‘under-belief’ that accompany relativist and postmodern epistemological and ontological positions in the academy, but her point transfers easily to the practical world of education and health care. As Hussey (2004) notes, the very dispositions so valued in philosophical debate (if not elsewhere) of creativity, tolerance, and profundity can so easily lead us astray if adopted uncritically or over-earnestly. In pointing to the misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and misappropriation of ideas from other disciplines, Hussey takes to task those scholars in nursing (and by extension, in other similar types of practices) who perpetuate seductively simple and sometimes simply bizarre connections and explanations regarding the human experience. As a warning against credulity or closed-mindedness, the positions of Haack and Hussey

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offer a degree of immunity from the worst excesses of the relativism that accompanies some attacks on the dominance of the empirical. It is perhaps a failure to acknowledge the importance and the achievements of science and a failure to acknowledge pure positivism as something of a mythical beast that weakens relativist positions; and it may be a failure to recognise the limitations of positivism that gives ammunition to the critics of the rampant managerialism typical of large bureaucracies in the 21st century. These insights provide the basis for a form of practical wisdom that I have elsewhere termed professional phronesis (Sellman, 2008, 2009). On this account, the practitioner with professional phronesis (the professional phronimos) will not only admit to the existence of a personal danger box but also recognise the professional obligation to identify ways to reduce the potential for harm occasioned by remaining ignorant of the relevant contents of that box. As Haack notes, tasks of this nature require integrity, openness, and honesty; and it may be that these features are essential for competent practice. She writes, “It can be hard, very hard, just to admit that you were wrong… It can be hard, too, just to admit that you don’t know…” (1998, p. 11). Yet if practitioners are serious about wanting to do their best for those whose interests they are charged with promoting, then they need to understand that doing their best requires, along with their uncertainty about the most appropriate action for any given recipient of their practice, the ability, as Montgomery notes, to particularise general forms of knowledge in the light of individual circumstances. This ability, in turn, requires discrimination, discernment, and judgement: the ability to discriminate between cases that appear prima facia indistinct; the ability to discern the relevant from the irrelevant subtleties of particular cases; and the judgement to know which, if any, heuristics apply. Drawing from the work of Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1979, 1980), Benner initially claims this ability to be a function of “knowledge embedded in expertise” (1984, p. 4) and subsequently suggests it may be an “embodied knowing of phronesis described by expert nurses” (Benner, 2000, p. 6, original emphasis). According to Benner, this illustrates the movement from novice to expert, in which the former relies on a checklist approach to judgement and decision-making, whereas the latter embodies the knowledge necessary for expert practice. To the uninitiated, the expert seems to practise effortlessly, knowing as if by intuition what to do in both ordinary and extra-ordinary situations: although the suspicion remains that in the former (the ordinary situation), the expert is responding in ways that merely reflect an internalised set of heuristics; and in the latter (the extra-ordinary situation), the expert may be demonstrating the capacity to rapidly process a set of internalised algorithmic decision-making protocols; and the pilot in the 2009 Hudson River incident may be a case in pointiv. Benner may be describing the practical wisdom (the phronesis) of expert practice illustrated by the type of skilled practice displayed by the professional phronimos (the professionally wise practitioner) but, in so doing, she also seems to be describing the competent practitioner recognisable in Schön’s account.


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LUNTLEY’S CHALLENGE

Schön’s claim of a need for an alternative epistemology of practice (an alternative, that is, to technical rationality) has been embraced both implicitly (via the widespread acceptance among professional groups of the desirability of reflective practice) and explicitly (in the various claims of a need for different ways of knowing, such as those advanced by, among others, Belenky et al., 1986 and Carper, 1978). However, this assumption of a need for an epistemological alternative to technical rationality is not without its critics. One such critic, Luntley (2009), provides a timely reminder that while the commonly referred to putative distinction between propositional and tacit knowledge may be of phenomenological significance (i.e., may have relevance to individuals in terms of how they experience the world of practice), the subsequent epistemological leap toward the idea of the existence of distinct or multiple ways of knowing is unwarranted. Luntley argues that claims about the distinctions between, for example, ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how’ have been greatly exaggerated and accepted far too readily; and that such differences as do exist can be accounted for within existing accounts of epistemology, which makes the search for alternative epistemologies both unnecessary and unhelpful. Luntley indicates that proponents have adopted the idea of a separate epistemology for practice before developing sufficiently an account of how ‘know-how’ relates to judgement, decision-making, and rational action. Using the terminology of “activity-dependent knowledge” (p. 360) in preference to ‘know-how,’ Luntley notes that the failure to explore sufficiently the full extent of general theories of epistemology has led to a hasty acceptance of the need for alternative theories of rationality. Encouraged by, for example, the work of Schön (1983) and Benner (1984), professionals in general and nurses in particular may have been too ready to be convinced by accounts that purport to explain the difficulty of articulating so-called ‘know-how’ as a function of a distinct epistemology of practice; whereas the difficulty may be simply a reflection of the linguistic limitations of English. We may not have a language with which we can do justice to whatever rationality the baker in Luntley’s example uses to know that when a loaf looks ‘like this’ it is ready to be removed from the oven; but, by definition, the same form of conceptual recognition that allows the baker to know that ‘this loaf’ is ready must also recognise that ‘that loaf’ is not. Thus, according to Luntley, we have mistaken the attributes that distinguish expert from novice practice as evidence of a distinct practice epistemology. Luntley does not deny the existence of something that might be called ‘expert practitionerness’; but he does pose a serious question about the existence of a distinct practice epistemology. For Luntley, it is not the epistemology of expertise but “the epistemic standpoint of experts” (p. 358) that differentiates the expert from the novice practitioner, noting that:

[it] is not what or how they [expert practitioners] know, let alone how they deploy knowledge in decision-making, but their capacity for learning. This capacity for learning is plausibly a function of their epistemic station broadly conceived, in particular the nature of their capacities for attention. (p. 358)

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While Luntley’s position may require us to be more cautious in making claims about a distinct epistemology for practice, it does not challenge the idea of expert practice as such: for, by suggesting ‘epistemic standing’ and a certain capacity for “nifty thinking” (2009, p. 362) are necessary attributes of experts, he helps to differentiate expert from novice practice. Neither does his account challenge reflection: he says that “the only distinguishing feature of expert practice is the availability of knowledge that is subject to limited codifiability” (p. 363, emphasis added). This kind of knowledge (that others might term tacit knowledge or knowledge in action) is, in Luntley’s terms, only differentiated from propositional knowledge by the human difficulties of articulation, which, in turn, results from our failure to understand knowledge that is difficult to categorise. Luntley may be on to something here insofar as it is possible to accept Schön’s account of the dominance of technical rationality without needing to accept his conclusion of a requirement for an alternative epistemology. Rather, by emphasising the limitations of technical rationality, Schön’s account may remain partial, and what may be required is a rebalancing of the domains of knowledge within a general framework of epistemology. For Luntley, then, difficulties of articulation do not distinguish ‘know how’ from ‘know that’ but make it a form of ‘know that’; that is, a form of propositional knowledge that we find hard to categorise and codify. The baker might not be able to describe well in words what a ‘perfect’ loaf looks like but this linguistic limitation is not evidence of a lack of conceptual clarity, nor of a lack of knowledge and on this last point at least, Luntley and Schön seem to be in agreement. In other words, the reason we cannot articulate the propositions that underpin activity-dependent knowledge may be that we lack a sufficiently expressive oral or written language. For Luntley, this explanation is at least as good as the explanation offered by those who would have us believe in a distinct practice epistemology. While many disagree on the precise nature of expert practice, few doubt that distinctions exist between novice and expert practice. The arguments for a distinct epistemology of practice seem to rely on the inability of existing epistemological accounts to explain the way expert practitioners engage with their work. This argument takes various forms, ranging from Schön’s insight that practitioners know more than they can say, to more explicitly phenomenological accounts that aim to recover those ‘difficult to articulate’ aspects of the human narratives of practice. These approaches seem to have attracted interest among those practitioners discontent with the predominance and, perhaps, the insufficiency of scientific and managerialist discourses in the service professions.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

I have suggested here that professional phronesis offers a distinction between novice and expert practice. The professional phronimos (the professionally wise practitioner) exhibits the features of expert practice as described by Benner, together with the reflective capacities of the competent practitioner as anticipated by Schön. Indeed, we expect the expert practitioner to have, as a minimum, expertise either in the sense of superb technical skill or in the form of extensive specialised knowledge (or some


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amalgam of both), together with Schön’s reflectivity and Benner’s intuition, but even this combination may not sufficiently describe the professional phronimos. In the absence of phronesis, individual practitioners may find it difficult to resist the overtures of the dominant managerialism in which success is measured in terms that tend to exert pressure for ever-greater efficiency. Indeed, the modern mantra of being required to ‘do more with less’ is a refrain heard with increasing frequency by teachers, nurses, occupational therapists, and others; and with the dawn of the recent global economic downturn, that refrain now comes to professionals as a need ‘to do even more with even less.’ Phronesis (understood either as ‘practical rationality’ or as ‘practical wisdom’) is the central feature of any practice that aims for human betterment. In this sense, professional phronesis is teleological and ultimately aspirational; and it finds expression in the intentions and actions of the competent practitioner. The competent practitioner then is not concerned with merely getting through the work, not even with mere skills acquisition; rather, the competent practitioner aspires toward the Aristotelian ideal of doing the right thing to the right person at the right time in the right way and for the right reason. As a minimum, this ideal requires the competent practitioner not only to recognise what it is she or he knows and does not know (and can and cannot do) but also to acknowledge that she or he is ignorant of what she or he does not know (and cannot do). Without this level of insight, the practitioner will remain at the mercy of her or his ignorance and will continue to fall short of the ideals of competent practice. Some of the virtues necessary for competent practice have already been indicated in this chapter: the integrity, openness, and honesty that Haack (1998) refers to as required for genuine enquiry. To these, we might add the humility necessary to acknowledge that there are things we do not know we do not know and the willingness to act so as to rectify any identified deficits that threaten our claims to competent practice. This willingness to act is an essential feature of all Aristotelian virtues but it is strongest as a requirement of phronesis because it includes not only the need to rectify knowledge or competency deficits but also to act so as to rectify such deficits of virtue that compromise the virtue of phronesis itself. The search for an epistemology of expert practice that provides a richer account than that offered by technical rationality continues apace and may be explained (at least in part) by the increasing dominance of technicist managerialism in the early part of the 21st century. This search may also represent an increasing frustration among those who feel their aspirations to deliver on the difficult-to-articulate aspects of their practice thwarted by overly bureaucratic systems of (ac)counting from which no escape seems possible in the modern landscape of professional practice. As a response to what is often categorised as an attack on the values that differentiate practices such as teaching, nursing, and occupational therapy from other forms of work, the search for a richer epistemology can be seen as an attempt to defend those practices from the harshest onslaughts of marketplace ideology. The economic need to drive down costs while increasing quality and output (doing more with less) encourages a focus on targets in a way that distorts subsequent behaviour and threatens to corrupt the values inherent in professional practice. Few

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deny the need for practitioners to aspire to those values that make the practices of teaching, nursing, and occupational therapy the kinds of practices they are; but equally, few are willing to allow more than the rhetoric of those values to interfere with policies and protocols, especially when financial short-termism holds primacy of place in institutions such as schools, universities, hospitals, and other organisations designed to deliver on the promise of human betterment. Yet the demand for competent practice continues unabated. The graduates of today are expected to be competent practitioners at the point of initial practice. Unfortunately, the dominance of technical rationality manifested as the maximisation of efficiency in, for example, the form of meeting targets, does little to encourage (and in some cases actively discourages) the development of those essential values necessary for the development of the competent practitioner. In other words, and as Schön notes, technical rationality as an explanation of professional practice is poorly placed to deliver the competent practitioners of the future precisely because the foundation for building that future is absent in the technicist present. The phronesis of Aristotle (the knowing what to do to whom, when, and for what reason) is not, and cannot be, formularised and codified because it relies on a capacity for reasoning that depends on context in a way that protocols do not. The development of phronesis in professional practitioners requires a nurturing of the type seemingly unavailable within technicist-driven educational establishments; yet some practitioners (those sufficiently determined) do aspire and work toward becoming the professional phronimos despite institutionalised obstacles. But doing so comes at considerable personal cost—the cost of constantly accommodating technicist demands while attempting to maintain professional integrity—while space for the expression of those difficult-to-articulate features of practice becomes evermore squeezed into the margins until those expressions become the mere luxury items of practice, accessible only when all other demands have been met. Thus, we have a modern paradox. Current technicist-driven institutions expect competent practitioners but are unwilling to provide the environments in which competent practice can thrive. This failure to invest in suitable practice and educational environments represents a myopic perspective blind to the detrimental long-term effects of short-term efficiency gains; but just so long as the political imperatives continue to drive the cost-cutting consequences of policy dictates, so the pool of professionals aspiring toward phronesis will diminish. If the triumph of technical rationality becomes complete, then the danger to which Schön was alerting us will leave us with few competent practitioners, and, as a result, we will all be impoverished. In this dystopian vision of the future, technical skill will be an unsatisfactory replacement for professional competence as we suffer from a deficit of practitioners who can transcend the algorithmic responses of approved policies and protocols. And yet, while the literature critical of the dominance of technical rationality continues to expand, the possibility of reclaiming some of those difficult-to-articulate aspects of practice remains. And just as we seem to rely more and more on those sufficiently determined to work toward professional phronesis to provide more than mere skills-based practice, so we may come to rely even more


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on those very same practitioners to offer a future in which technical rationality is seen for the limited application in practice for human betterment that it is.

NOTES i Despite their shortcomings, league tables have become common in the United Kingdom in relation

to a wide range of organisations. For example, school league tables show which schools receive the highest number of ‘good’ grades at GCSE (general certificate of secondary examination, the standard end-of-school qualification taken by 16-year-olds in the United Kingdom). So those schools where students receive the most grade A–C GCSE results will be top of the league table. Of course, because these sorts of figures are analysed in different ways, any one school my find itself in different positions for different subjects: a school might be in the top ten for one subject but outside the top ten in another subject. Obvious weaknesses in this system include the fact that no account is taken for the relative improvement in performance of children: thus, the achievements of an inner-city school in improving the overall number of children who achieve in their GCSE results will not be acknowledged in the league tables, as these record only the absolute number of GSCE passes at particular grades. Similar systems are in place at other organisations, such as hospitals and universities: universities that attract the brightest academics invariably find themselves at the tops of league tables of research income; and those hospitals that serve areas with a relatively high proportion of older people are likely to perform less well in tables that measure length of patient stay as a negative outcome.

ii I have added numbers to these quadrants for ease of reference; Race does not number the quadrants in this way.

iii Race uses uncompetence in preference to incompetence to avoid the negative connotations of the latter.

iv In January 2009, Chesley B. Sullenberger III saved the lives of all 155 persons on board US Airlines flight 1549 by bringing an Airbus A320 safely to rest in the Hudson River just minutes after taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York. In subsequent interviews, the pilot described discussions with air traffic controllers and his co-pilot as they reviewed their options, then discarded them in algorithmic fashion, until only the Hudson River option remained. Both the pilot’s ability to make decisions rapidly and his skill of ‘landing’ safely on water can be adequately described in terms of embodied responses guided by an internalised set of protocols and procedures.

REFERENCES

Aristotle. (1953). The Nicomachean ethics. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., & Tarule, J. M. (1986). Women’s ways of knowing:

The development of self, voice and mind. New York: Basic Books. Benner, P. (1984). From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice. London:

Addison Wesley. Benner, P. (2000). The roles of embodiment, emotion and lifeworld for rationality and agency in

nursing practice. Nursing Philosophy, 1(1), 5–19. Cameron, B. L. (2006). Towards understanding the unpresentable in nursing: Some nursing

philosophical considerations. Nursing Philosophy, 7(1), 23–35. Carel, H. (2008). Illness: The art of living well. Stocksfield, England: Acumen. Carper, B. (1978). Fundamental patterns of knowing in nursing. Advances in Nursing Science, 1(1), 13–

23. Dreyfus, S. E., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1979). The scope, limits and training implications of three models of

aircraft pilot emergency behaviour. Unpublished report supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFSC), United States Air Force (grant AFOSR-78-3584), University of California, Berkeley, CA.

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Dreyfus, S. E., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1980). A five stage model of the mental activities involved in directed skill acquisition. Unpublished report supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFSC), United States Air Force (contract F49620-79-C-0063), University of California, Berkeley, CA.

Drummond, J. S., & Standish, P. (2007). Introduction: Philosophical enquiry into education. In J. S. Drummond & P. Standish (Eds.), The philosophy of nurse education (pp 1–33). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dunne, J. (1993). Back to the rough ground: Practical judgment and the lure of technique. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Dunne, J. (1999). Virtue, phronesis and learning. In D. Carr & J. Steutel (Eds.), Virtue ethics and moral education (pp. 49–63). London: Routledge.

Haack, S. (1998). Manifesto of a passionate moderate. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Hussey, T. B. (2004). Intellectual seductions. Nursing Philosophy, 5(2), 104–111. Luntley, M. (2009). Understanding expertise. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 26(4), 356–370. Montgomery, K. (2006). How doctors think: Clinical judgment and the practice of medicine. Oxford:

Oxford University Press. Paley, J. (2006). Evidence and expertise. Nursing Inquiry, 13(2), 82–93. Pattison, S. (2001). Are nursing codes of practice ethical? Nursing Ethics, 8(1), 5–18. Race, P. (2006). The lecturer’s toolkit (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Aldershot, England:

Ashgate. Sellman, D. (2008). Teaching ethics to nurses in higher education: Just another subject or an exercise in

moral education? In S. Robinson & J. Strain (Eds.), Ethics for working and living (pp. 108–120). Leicester, England: Troubador.

Sellman, D. (2009). Practical wisdom in health and social care: Teaching for professional phronesis. Learning in Health and Social Care, 8(2), 84–91.

Derek Sellman Faculty of Nursing University of Alberta, Canada


ALLAN PITMAN

PROFESSIONALISM AND PROFESSIONALISATION:

Hostile Ground for Growing Phronesis?

INTRODUCTION

The professions represent a privileged group of occupations in society as an outcome of institutional and political histories, the relation between their practitioners and society, and the formalisation of organisational and legal structures surrounding their practice. In this chapter, I focus on the tensions (perhaps inextricably embedded) in the notion of a modern profession, between, on the one hand, the call for a practical wisdom and reflective judgement using one’s knowledge in service of some good—a disposition characterised by a form of phronesis—and, on the other hand, the demands of conformity and adherence to forms of protocol mandated to practice within a professional structure. The demands imposed on an occupation as it takes on the mantle of a profession under the aegis of legislation bring increased surveillance over practice and regulatory frames that influence the ways in which situated judgements by members are exercised. Elsewhere, I have referred to this situation as the conflict between responsibility and accountability (Pitman, 2007). It is not my intention here to examine closely the various ways in which phronesis, practical wisdom, and so on are interpreted, but to concentrate on how the ways in which we structure the professions renders problematic the enactment of, and, consequently, the advocacy for the practice of phronesis. While the claims surrounding the professions and their special status are embedded in notions of their serving some ‘higher good’ for society in ways that other occupations do not, it is worth scrutinising how these claims play out in the practice of individuals within these occupations. As certain occupations have been legislatively recognised as professions, and legislation has established institutions intended to ‘professionalise’ other occupations, the relationship of the practitioner to his or her colleagues and to the state are impacted in significant ways that both support and threaten the aspirations for good professional practice. A particular characteristic of the professions is the use of a body of knowledge that is both characteristic of the group and differentiates it from others. For example, in the case of teaching, Shulman (1987a) identifies this body of knowledge as pedagogical knowledge, existing at the intersection of content, learning theory, and pedagogy. Hall (1969) outlines five further characteristics of professional occupations, which fall into two distinct groups: those of the

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individual in his or her practice, and those relating to the occupational group as an entity. In the former, we find a sense of calling, autonomy in practice, and a belief in public service; in the latter, the professional organisation serves as a major reference and a vehicle for self-regulation of standards. I argue in this chapter that the tensions between these two sets of descriptors provide an unavoidable contradiction in which practitioners are caught between, on the one hand, demands for reflective judgement or phronetic dispositions and actions, and, on the other hand, technical, protocol-driven patterns of behaviour. An insight into the underlying issues is to be found in a 1987 exchange between Lee Shulman and Hugh Sockett. Although the dispute took place more than two decades ago, it is relevant to us here, both for the philosophical issues therein and because of the influence of Shulman’s position in subsequent decades’ thinking about teaching.

THE SHULMAN–SOCKETT EXCHANGE

In the late 1980s, a rather acrimonious exchange occurred between Lee Shulman and Hugh Sockett. At the time, Shulman was arguing with some success for the establishment of teaching as a full and formally recognised profession in the United States. He based his argument and actions on two premises: that teaching has a distinct body of knowledge—pedagogical knowledge—and that both formal structures for governance and a definition of standards of practice were needed. In his endeavours, Shulman was supported by the Carnegie Corporation, a funding foundation of long standing, which had underwritten the reorganisation of the medical profession in the 1910s. In the educational field, practitioners generally recognise the importance of Shulman’s paper “Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform” (Shulman, 1987a) with respect to their thinking about pedagogy and the professionalisation of the teaching occupation. Less known is Shulman’s ensuing exchange in the Harvard Education Review with Hugh Sockett (Shulman, 1987b; Sockett, 1987), which is unfortunate: much is revealed in these two critically different views of the professional practice of teaching, in an exchange that goes to the heart of significant differences in conceptions of professional knowledge and practice. At one level, the dispute is over forms of language, but underlying this disagreement is a fundamental difference about the nature of situated judgement and the moral purpose of professional practice. At the core of the confrontation is Sockett’s differentiation between professionalisation and professionalism, and the implications for how practice is described. In his original paper, Shulman (1987a) outlines an argument for pedagogy as being at the centre of what makes teaching a profession. He argues that, if one takes this idea seriously, the development of systematic ways of understanding and recognising good practice are essential to the recognition of the occupation of teaching as a profession. Shulman also argues for ‘professionalising’ teaching, by calling for a national certification program that identifies measures of competency. This strategy thus links the political/structural establishment and organisation of the professional collective body to considerations of notions of good practice of individuals.

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Specifically, the linkage is through the codification of good practice as assessed by the measures of competency and the use of gate-keeping and surveillance strategies to develop and maintain these standards of practice. Shulman (1987a), in his argument for reform, puts forward the case for the political positioning of teaching as a recognised profession overseen by a National Board of Professional Teaching Standards that has the power to set standards, which are to be determined through observation of good pedagogies. Shulman’s paper, then, is an amalgam of arguments supporting the processes for identifying good practice and a plan for the political/institutional establishment of teaching as a formal profession. I will deal first with the key points of Sockett’s (1987) response to the seminal Shulman paper. Central to Sockett’s argument is that “an adequate conception of professionalism is needed to build the foundation of a new reform” (p. 209). In particular, one must differentiate between the nature of professionalism as a practice and the political act of professionalisation (p. 216). Briefly, Shulman argues that teaching, as a profession, lays claim to special access to pedagogical knowledge; that through systematic study of exemplary teachers, good pedagogical practices can be identified and used as the basis for establishing standards of practice; and that a national body be established to implement these standards. What, then, is at the core of professionalism for Sockett? He identifies four elements: an ideal of service, an epistemology of practice, the professional community, and a code of ethics (1987, p. 217). He writes:

Professionalism is the manner of conduct within an occupation. It refers to how members integrate their obligations with their practical and theoretical knowledge and skill in a context of collegiality and contractual relationship with their various clients. (p. 216)

Elsewhere in his paper, Sockett focuses on the contextual nature of teaching and, within it, the significance of situated judgement, or what he refers to as “reason-in-action—that which connects wisdom, tacit knowledge, plans, techniques, ideals, and justification within experience” (p. 215). In appealing to the reflective practice of Schön (1983), he maintains: “But the per-hoc is all. Here reason and action meet as practice; and they meet in that unpredictable, changing, and uncertain context, the classroom” (Sockett, 1987, p. 205). The actions of a professional are based on what is best, and what is best is a matter of practical judgement:

At the root of teaching in practice, therefore, are not items of knowledge as discrete measurable techniques, but judgment, which is itself a form of knowledge. Tempered by growing practical understanding, that judgment emerges as wisdom. (p. 210)

This text looks remarkably like a call for a version of phronesis: practical judgement embedded in a moral purpose and the achievement of the good. The nub of the difference between Sockett and Shulman is that Shulman argues for the analysis of good teachers’ procedures through the identification of competencies and standards and the use of these competencies as a framing device for evaluation. Thus, the initial Shulman paper includes an inferred criticism of the methods

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employed by a teacher who is teaching a subject that is not her speciality; thus, she teaches the lesson didactically rather than in her characteristic style. Sockett reads her actions differently: given the situation the teacher finds herself in, she makes a judgement as to what is best for the students, abandoning methods she would use as a matter of course under more benign circumstances and working instead to the best of her ability within the current context. If Socket’s view of professionalism holds weight—and I believe it does—then the current professional language that is based on accountability is problematic as a vision for supporting good practice. While Shulman is not directly responsible for the language of accountability, its capacity to take hold is not in opposition to the basic thrust of his proposals, which carries the implication for the codification of ‘best practices.’ Indeed, in his response to Sockett, Shulman accepts such a possibility as one he is prepared to risk as a consequence of his position (Shulman, 1987b, p. 482). A central locus of the dispute involves the centrality, or otherwise, of a moral language within professional practice, and what that situation entails. Central to Sockett’s conception of professional practice is a moral endeavour. Consequently, he argues, our language in describing teaching should be framed in a moral language: “The language of the means of teaching is as much a moral language as the language of educational ends” (Sockett, 1987, p. 212). Sockett argues that teaching is, in essence, a moral enterprise, and, consequently, the language of teaching and for the understanding of teaching must be a moral language: “We have to use a version of objectivity, which we may call the intersubjective, that allows for the use of the richness of moral language, but describes agreement on judgments rooted in evidence” (p. 212). The connection between action and language is well expressed:

being fair is not simply resolving interpersonal matters between children, but how, in the complex of individuals in a class, the teacher’s attention is divided, and much else … The language of the means of teaching is as much a moral language as the language of educational ends. (p. 212)

Sockett’s concern with Shulman’s approach is in the language through which field research is depicted. For Sockett, this language is technical by nature and has implications for how categorisations and descriptions of good practice might be arrived at. Shulman’s response to the critique is not to deny the moral dimension of teaching but rather to argue that the moral dimension is only one way to describe the act of teaching; and for the purposes of identifying good pedagogy, the descriptive language of pedagogy is the appropriate choice (see Shulman, 1987b, p. 477). Although the moral language called for by Sockett has failed to take hold, it is noteworthy that, in Ontario at least, the Education Act is very clear in regard to this dimension of the character of a teacher (albeit with a particular bent):

264.(1) Duties of a teacher – It is the duty of a teacher and a temporary teacher,…

(c) religion and morals – to inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judeao-Christian morality and the highest regard for truth, justice, loyalty, love of country, humanity, benevolence,


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sobriety, industry, frugality, purity, temperance, and all other virtues (sec. 264.(1))

Not only is a teacher expected to be technically competent in fulfilling the responsibilities of curriculum delivery but he or she is to exemplify a moral person and to act in an ethical manner consistent with that morality. Clearly, the implication here is that teaching has a moral purpose, and, thus, to exhibit characteristics antithetical to that purpose—even outside the school environment—renders one unacceptable for the task (Ellett & Pitman, 2001; Piddocke, Magsino, & Manley-Casimir, 1997). A second dispute focuses on the role of tacit knowledge in the practice of teaching: that which a practitioner knows but cannot express. Sockett, drawing on Schön, holds that such knowledge is necessarily present and, indeed, is one of the characteristics of “reason-in-action—that which connects wisdom, tacit knowledge, plans, techniques, ideals, and justification within experience” (Sockett, 1987, p. 215; italics in original). Here, Sockett takes the position that tacit knowledge is intrinsic, and suggests that it is not fully susceptible to being made explicit. He does, however, argue that while tacit knowledge may be unarticulated by the knower, it may nevertheless be unearthed and described by insightful observers: “Observers can describe what agents find difficult to articulate” (p. 214). Shulman, while defending his belief in the role of judgement in practice, rejects the place of tacit knowledge granted by Sockett. Shulman posits that “the reason we study what we do, talk to them endlessly, and attempt to make the implied more explicit [is] so that it can be shared and deliberated upon” (Shulman, 1987a, p. 480). In taking this position, he specifically rejects Schön’s position, which he likens to Sockett’s. I suggest that the dispute here touches on theories of knowledge: Shulman takes the position that the forms of reason of empirical research and of episteme hold; Sockett argues for a different form of knowledge—a form of phronesis. Further, like Schön, Shulman is not arguing that we happily accept that we are not aware of some aspects to our knowledge but that, by using both reflective practice and the insights of others about our practice, we can make aspects of tacit knowledge overt. Sockett, however, contends that there is always more than can be fully revealed; whereas Shulman seems to emphasise, as significant for practice, only the tacit knowledge that becomes explicit and is subsequently shared and deliberated on. The dispute between these two scholars highlights the distinctions between the two categories that define a recognised profession and their inherent tensions. As mentioned earlier, the following criteria are common for defining a profession: a sense of calling, autonomy in practice, a body of knowledge used in service, reference to a professional body, and self-regulation of members of the profession. The first three of these characteristics relate to the individual and that person’s action and purposes; the last two refer to the group organisation of the occupation that sits in a political context in relation to its governance. It is my premise in this chapter that the implications of this bifurcation and the political/historical context of the construction of the recognised professions lead to an inevitable tension between the individual acting for ‘what is best’ and acting to

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comply with the regulatory frameworks arising from the self-regulatory demands on the profession. I will use teaching in a public system as an example. I will make the tension concrete by considering the conditions under which a public school teacher acts in a given instant. First, he or she is open to legal scrutiny by a plethora of authorities: in the case of Ontario in Canada, the teacher has the school board as employer; the Ministry of Education, whose curriculum must be interpreted and taught; the College of Teachers with its Standards of Practice, to which the teacher must conform; the civil authorities and the statute laws relating to criminal behaviour; and other laws and regulations with redress to civil legal action. Thus, the practitioner in any situation is subject to quintuple jeopardy with respect to his or her actions. With so many authorities acting on the practitioner, what, then, is the proper action? The best action? And how does one know? The very nature of professional work involves judging and acting under conditions of uncertainty and incompleteness of information. One can never be certain whether the action taken is indeed the best option, but only that one’s experience, knowledge, and insight lead to the course taken. Bill Green (2009) argues that when looking at the reality of professional work, Derrida’s notion of aporia—which Green describes as “the ethics of undecidability and the politics of decision” (p. 4)—is inescapable. Green goes on to share his own view of aporia as:

the fundamental dilemma of professional practice, enacted constantly and even unceasingly, at all levels: the impossibility of having enough information on the basis of which to make the right decision, in all the urgency and drama of the moment; and yet, the necessity of doing so, of acting, of moving on—the imperative to act, and doing so, but without guarantees. (pp. 4–5)

If such is the case, the practitioner is always at heightened risk in exercising judgement and acting with good intent, which brings with it the possibility of negative rather than positive consequences. Given the risk of negative consequences in professional practices, the pressure is strong to assure that technical protocols are met. The norms of managerialism—the view that efficient organisations can be designed and operated rather independently of the nature of the task assigned to the particular organisation—have become entrenched not only in the organisational structures of the professional organisations but increasingly in the institutional structures within which professional practice is conducted. In particular, the effectiveness of the institutions in which professionals practice are increasingly being evaluated on the basis of output measures linked to concepts of productivity and outcome measures. For example, hospitals are evaluated on the basis of patient turnover and of efficiencies in resource usage; governments base their assessments of universities on graduation rates, on time to graduation (the quicker the better), and, increasingly, on contribution to economic and social policies. Public school systems are evaluated on the basis of standardised test scores administered at ‘key points’ in the progression of students through the schools.


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In a time of the shift to greater accountability, analyses of changes in teachers’ work, both as mandated and experienced, illustrate the tensions between behaving as morally committed professionals making judgements in the interests of pupils and ascertaining that they are meeting their legislated obligations as servants of the state (see, for example, Valli & Buese, 2007, for the United States case). In her analysis of the nature of the evaluation of teachers in Canada and Australia, Larsen (2005) points to the detrimental effects of the prescriptive forms of student assessment, under a rationale that teachers are thus held accountable for student performance. Stevenson’s depiction of the contradictions in the restructuring of teachers’ work and the strategies employed by their unions carries echoes of Karl Weick’s characterisation of loose and tight coupling in organisations (Weick, 1976, 1982). A managerial systems approach is presented as underlying the English reform processes under which the “sector productivity” is raised by “driving up the output of those who plan, monitor and evaluate while driving down the costs of those who deliver” (Stevenson, 2007, p. 238). Stevenson observes the loss of the traditional pastoral role of teachers in England, and that

what appears to be the case is that a complex, and professionally rewarding, feature of teaching is in some cases being eclipsed from the role as teachers are compelled to focus on a much more narrow conception of teaching—one in which the pedagogical processes are not conceived in terms of teaching the whole child but rather in relation to the technical delivery of subject content and the achievement of prespecified learning outcomes. (p. 236)

Control is exercised, Weick argues, in two ways: over the work done and over the workers themselves—that is, over the definition of the actual work and over how that work is done (Weick, 1976). The levels of downward control (tight coupling) or local autonomy (loose coupling) of the work to be done, and of the works themselves, can vary in quite different ways. One value in thinking of the ways in which institutional power is exercised is that one is able to see the complexities of devolution and centralisation of power and control and how these may occur simultaneously. In the past four or five decades, we have seen massive shifts in the location of teachers’ work in public schools in many countries. In the 1960s, ministries of education largely abolished highly prescriptive curricula, at least until the final few years of schooling. At the same time, systems of inspection and teacher evaluation were often ceded to the local level. Thus, the systems of public schooling became loosely coupled in respect to the nature of the work (curriculum and pedagogy) and the evaluation of the workers (teacher supervision, performance measurements through systemic testing). In the past two decades, we have seen a return to tight coupling over both aspects. In the case discussed by Stevenson, the managerial approaches adopted in treating education as a mode of production of outcomes has resulted in a tightening of the couplings over both the work of teachers (curriculum) and of how they do that work (pedagogy). The effects of loose coupling are often contradictory. For example, Olsen and Sexton (2009) report that loose coupling led to a school culture that discouraged collaboration and honest conversations; however, I suggest this is not always the

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case. For example, in a 1970s era of school-based curriculum responsibility in Australia, staff and department members had to work together to make things work. Accountability did exist: colleagues knew who was and who was not holding their end of the bargain, and participation was encouraged by in-school communal pressures. On a recent visit to Australia, my wife and I visited a principal we have known for many years. The system has now become one of tight central control over curricular content, through extensive prescriptive curricular documents and comprehensive system-wide testing regimens as measures of accountability. Her school had been recognised for the high level of student performance in a system characterised by its swing to the structures and language of accountability. When asked whether she was involved in helping other principals with her insights as to how she had achieved such success, the response was one of dismay: “No! I am evaluated by being ahead of the game—not giving away my secrets!” Accountability to the efficiency of the system has thus displaced the collegial accountability of former years. This displacement has implications for the exercise of phronesis in practice—or phronetic action—in that the system has shifted the reward structures from responsibility to students and colleagues in terms of what is best for the general good with moral overtones, to one of rewards for performing well individually on external measures. Thus, the primary focus has shifted from what is best for the student(s) to satisfying the systemic demands for performance. This new focus creates a barrier to the implementation of wise action, or phronesis, in professional practice. As a result of pressures having increased for so-called accountability measures, systems of regulation of practice are being amplified. For example, in both Canadian and Australian school systems, among other jurisdictions, the political drive for the use of system-wide testing of students has led to cases in which the dilemma of making professional judgement occurs in the context of two obligations being thrown into conflict. Consider a teacher who, for good reason, fears the effects of sitting a series of tests that will lead to some students becoming painfully aware of their inability to perform well. The government (which has mandated the occupation as a profession) and the employer (either the government directly or a surrogate such as a local board) demands that all students must sit the tests. In one direction lies possible damage to those students entrusted to the teacher, whereas awaiting in the other direction are legal, financial, and employment sanctions. At the time of writing, the issue of professional action situated in the demand for system-wide testing has emerged in Ontario and in Victoria, Australia. The Ontario case (“Governing Ourselves: Dispute Resolution,” 2009) involves a school principal who acted to effectively subvert the provincial testing in her school. In Victoria, the opposition to a new system-wide national test has led to a legal standoff, with the teachers’ union in technical breach of the law by advocating its members not comply with the administration of the instrument. These conflicts arise in a professional context of legalistic self-regulation of the occupation. In Ontario, the relevant body is the Ontario College of Teachers. One can well ask from whence comes the mandate of self-regulation? Clearly, in


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modern Western societies, this mandate comes from the state, by means of formal legislative authority. Thus, in Australia and Canada, the medical, engineering, teaching, and other recognised professional occupations are given the rights and responsibilities of self-regulation by virtue of state or provincial acts of parliament respectively. In the case of Ontario, for example, teaching in the public system is regulated by a set of acts and regulations, key being the Education Act, the Ontario College of Teachers Act, and the Teaching Profession Act, and their attendant regulations. Other legislation, such as the Child and Family Services Act, also has an impact on practitioners’ judgements and actions. With this legislative structure comes a codification of the discipline of membership. Discipline in this context has multiple meanings: the discipline ‘intellectually, morally, and practically’ of the work, and the disciplinary arrangements put in place to police the practice of members. Thus, requirements and sanctions related to the work of teachers are embedded in the legislation. Additionally, teachers face other avenues of control over their actions: teachers are obliged to behave in a manner consistent with the Education Act and its regulations, and hence meet the requirements of the Ministry of Education; and teachers are employed (in the case of Ontario) by a (district) school board, and hence have contractual obligations to their employer. Teachers are also members of the Ontario College of Teachers, and hence are subject to discipline according to its act and regulations; they are also, by law, members of the union body, the Ontario Teachers’ Federation. Teachers are also open to proceedings under both statute and civil law. Thus, the statutory and other formal accountability pressures on teacher are multiple and very broad.

DOING THE RIGHT THING: THE TENSION BETWEEN PHRONESIS AND COMPLIANCE

What are the implications for critical reflection, judgement, and phronesis in practice? Practice refers to the practising of professional obligations. But what are these obligations? In medicine, the Hippocratic formulation of ‘do no harm’ is a partial characterisation, but clearly more is needed, such as the intent and disposition to make the patient’s life better through cure or amelioration. A more positive demand on practice is tied to the notion of the use of professional knowledge in service of others. For a teacher, this notion might be thought of as the application of one’s knowledge of content, pedagogical practice, and theories of how people learn. The teacher’s purpose is to have his or her students learn the content and dispositions that are deemed of value to that person. An issue to consider (and to which we will return) is what those contents and dispositions might be, and how political, social, and organisational interests and demands might conflict with the considered and embodied judgements of professionals in a given context. For example, the recent formal disciplining of a school principal might illuminate the problem (“Governing Ourselves: Dispute Resolution,” 2009). In Ontario, teachers and principals have a specific requirement to co-operate in the effective conduct of the tests set by the Education Quality Accountability Office.

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For one reason or another, one school principal saw fit to ‘prepare’ students for the test by using prior years’ questions, a practice forbidden in this system. What might have been the motivations for so breaching the legislative requirements as laid down in the Education Act and enforced through the disciplinary structures of the Ontario College of Teachers? Certainly, there have been instances of teachers having encouraged students to stay home for the duration of the testing period: the act was amended to enforce compliance. The reasons underlying such actions were, in many cases, grounded in claims that the teacher knew that taking the test would be a bad experience for the student who understood the test to be beyond his or her capacities at the time. This teacher had acted on a professional decision, based on making the best choice for doing the best for the pupil. Another motivation for having some students not take the test might be much more self-interested: good aggregate scores on the test reflect well on both the school and the school’s teachers. By excluding those students who are not likely to do well, the school can inflate its apparent level of performance. So we have here an instance of one action that may be taken for quite different reasons. On the surface and in their organisational effects, these actions are identical. However, the teleological underpinnings of the action might lead us to judge the teacher’s actions differently. Motive, then, is important. It is worthwhile to put this example in its context: a point of contention has surrounded the purpose of such system-wide tests and their relationship, if any, to the interests of individual children. As long ago as 1913, Charles Bobbitt (1913) argued that the true purpose of system-wide testing was not primarily to assess students, but to assess the efficacy of those running the system. In his view, superintendents were the focus of such an evaluation; in the present context, at a political level, this focus is still the case, with superintendents, principals, and teachers being held to account. The downward effect into schools and on the work of individual teachers is a natural consequence. In the case of the Ontario test, to be fair, the grade-level detailed analysis can be useful for curricular planning purposes, yet the tension created for individual teachers is indisputable. What, then, constitutes recognised professional practice under such a circumstance? The tension is, basically, between the exercise of professional action as a form of phronesis and as compliance with the organisational and administrative disciplines surrounding practice.

A DILEMMA: A PLACE FOR PHRONESIS?

How compatible, then, are notions of phronesis and critical reflection to standard models of organisations and management in the professions? In many systems, the mantra of critical reflection and of professional learning communities is endemic. A serious concern must be addressed in respect to this phenomenon. When does it become a co-option of the methods, but corralled within accepted bounds of critique (or non-critique)? What are the dangers to individuals and groups engaged in critical reflection?


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If we are to take the role of phronesis as a disposition to do—and attain—the good, expressed through action, then a teleology, or purpose, is tied to this role. It involves not only judgement, values, and the knowledge of the cognate area in which expertise is held but also the knowledge of the experience of practice. Further, the role of phronesis holds no guarantee that the judgement and ensuing action will in fact lead to the best—or indeed even a positive—outcome: the uncertainty of aporia, that is, the unresolvable problematics of practice, is an integral part of professional practice. The interplay of values, experiential and epistemic knowledge, and judgement in context is essential to understanding the work of a professional: the application of a body of knowledge, in practice, for service. Thus, at the heart of professional practice exists a dialectic of theory and practice. It is in this dialectic that we seem to have the basis for a consideration of good professional practice as a form of phronesis. Professional practice occurs within a community of practice, with its associated organisational and legalistic structures and established protocols and standards of practice. These standards and protocols of practice, and professional practices themselves, are theory driven. Thus, theory informs the codification of ‘good practice’ at the organisational level, and also the observation and interpretation of both observation and the sensations experienced in the situations of practice. In this context, experience further informs and interacts with the theory-in-practice in two ways: positively, by contributing to the development of that wisdom of judgement in praxis, and negatively, by learning primarily to assure that all prescribed protocols are followed and the rules adhered to technically. Thus, practitioners are engaged in an interactive process of theory-building: Theory derived from the epistemology of the profession modified through experience. Deep within this process is the generation of a ‘tacit’ knowledge—the knowledge that one cannot express, the knowing more than one can say. One central element in the Shulman–Sockett exchange is their fundamental disagreement on the role of this tacit knowledge. This knowledge is, however, a double-edged sword, which can manifest itself as a form of situated wisdom, and also as a prejudice in action or as an adherence to technical demands of the protocols of good or required practice. Tacit knowledge carries all of the individualistic characteristics of personal experience, framed within the epistemic structures of the knowledge discipline that is utilised in the professional’s practice. If we consider a profession as a community of practice within a formalised organisational structure, then the work and discipline of that profession can be scrutinised from the viewpoint of Kuhn’s identification of epistemic values in the context of the work of scientists (Kuhn, 1970). What becomes evident is that such practice does not—and indeed cannot—take place outside of the sets of values revealed through the structures of discourse within the community and through the nature of judgements made in situated practice. These values inform decisions in judging and building theory and in making practical judgements. We are left with a fundamental question: Is the capacity to behave as a professional (that is, as a member of a profession) defined by its intrinsic characteristics or by the sociopolitical conditions of time and place, or by both?

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Further, is a professional a person who has a calling to service, or a person who is a skilled (paid) technician? These questions are important, as they go to the core of the expectations of the practitioner, and very often to the regulatory, accountability, and decision-making frameworks within which a practitioner must act. I have argued that an essential tension exists between service that is based on the moral, ethical dispositions associated with a sense of moral purpose or calling and the regulatory, disciplinary, and accountability frameworks that are embedded at a particular time and place. I have found two metaphors useful in thinking about the limits of the problem: the professional and the bureaucrat.

TWO METAPHORS: THE MEMBER OF A PROFESSION AND THE BUREAUCRAT

Tatto and Plank (2007) provide a useful typology for tracking the fluidity of the “professional status” of teaching in a number of countries (p. 274). A similar analysis could be applied to other occupations aspiring to or assumed to be professions. The first of this typology’s two dimensions is “Teacher as Bureaucrat”/“Teacher as Professional” within formal and organic systems of control respectively. The second dimension is central to the issues being addressed here. The second differentiation is between “Teaching as procedural (independent of context)”/“Teaching as critical reflection (contextual),” with its concomitant implications for teacher preparation of “Technical teacher training (‘scripted’ knowledge)”/“Professional teacher preparation (discretionary knowledge).” Importantly, the analysis should not be read as a simple dichotomy, but rather more as a rather messy continuum. An important distinction arises here: on one side are the formal structures that are put in place legislatively to give legal standing to a profession; for example, the establishment of a college and the formal granting of accreditation and disciplinary powers to that college. On the other side is the nature of the control over the work of practitioners put into place by the college and hence the capabilities of its members to operate as members of a profession as described above. It becomes problematic, for example, as to the extent to which a teacher might act as one ‘engaged in critical reflection’ in a context of being understood as a ‘bureaucrat.’ The conflicting ideologies are apparent in the case of teaching. Tatto and Plank’s analysis is relevant here, and some historical perspective is of use, particularly in light of the managerialism, which has come to characterise the systems in which many teachers work. Those with an interest in other professions might reflect on the historical antecedents for similar trends in their areas of interest. Since 1867, as described in Ontario’s Education Act, the duties of a teacher have been instructive; that is, all the listed duties in the act itself and in the relevant Regulation 298 are in terms of hierarchical authority, demanding compliance both with directives from principals and higher ranked authorities within the system and with the implementation of the mandated curriculum. Also, teachers have the duty not only to be technically competent but also, according to the Education Act, “to encourage the pupils in the pursuit of learning” (sec. 264(1)(b)). Textbooks may only be used if they appear in the ministry’s list of approved texts. Amendments to


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the Regulation 298 in the last decade include the requirement of teachers to co-operate and assist in the administration of the system-wide testing program under the jurisdiction of the Education Quality Assurance Office (EQAO) (sec. 20(j)) and, for the first time, the act was amended to make it an obligation of teachers to inform parents of the progress of their children.

TIME AND PLACE: CHANGING EXPECTATIONS AND PRE-PRACTICE EDUCATION

In the past three decades, overwhelming public trust in professional practitioners has shifted significantly along the spectrum to an environment characterised by greater scrutiny of practice and widespread calls for accountability. In the field of teaching, this shift has been accompanied by what, on the surface, appears to be a contradictory pair of developments—increased systems of surveillance and reduction in the scope within which teachers can exercise the professional judgement with which they are attributed—both as a result of moves to formalise the recognition of teaching as a profession by implementing mechanisms for self-regulation. In Ontario, for example, these changes have come about institutionally by virtue of the establishment of the new regulatory body, the Ontario College of Teachers; its codification of Standards of Practice; and the setting up of disciplinary committees. These developments occurred in a political context in which trust has been diminished and a discourse of accountability has taken hold in the polis. In Ontario, a profound contrast exists between the system as it operates today, in 2010, and the vision of the two influential Ontario reports on education—the Hall–Dennis Report, Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario (Hall & Dennis, 1969), and the Radwanski Report, the Ontario Study of the Relevance of Education, and the Issue of Dropouts (Radwanski, 1987). The 1969 Hall–Dennis Report, which advocated a progressive approach to child-centred education, envisioned a system comprising multiple types of schools enacting curricula appropriate to local and individual needs and offering teachers and school staff a high level of autonomy in their construction and delivery of curriculum. By contrast, Radwanski, in 1987, proposed a centralised subject-based curriculum focused on prescribed outcomes and tied to a system of testing across key subject areas. From an earlier view that teachers were the best placed to develop appropriate curricula for the children in their care, with little external supervision (Hall & Dennis, 1969), the pendulum has swung to systemic standardisation and standardised protocols for teacher evaluation (Pitman, 2007). The changing structures found in pre-service teacher education provide insights into the expectations made of practitioners of an occupation and illuminate the challenges of engaging in phronesis in practice. In the case of teacher education, two fundamentally different understandings of the duty of practice of teachers emerge when the programmatic course structures of two faculties of education are compared. I take as examples two faculties in which I have worked, some two decades apart. The first instance, that of Deakin University in Victoria, Australia,

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in the late 1970s and early 1980s, contained courses on Philosophy of Education, Sociology of Education, Curriculum Evaluation, Curriculum Development, Educational Psychology, and Methods of Teaching and School Experience. Although a similar slate of courses comprised the 1970s and 1980s curriculum at The University of Western Ontario, my current faculty, the current curriculum now consists of Social Foundations of Education (with specific reference to the organisation of Ontario public schooling), Psychology of Education, Special Education, and Methods of Teaching and School Practicum. Notably, in the former case, in Victoria, Australia, teaching was organised neither formally nor legally as a profession. On the other hand, all the apparatus of a profession is in place in Ontario. How, then, do governance structures define the nature of the work contingently, and what dilemmas are thus raised with respect to the ethical obligations of the fulfillment of the role of a professional? In looking at the organisation of the school systems into which graduates of these programs were largely expected to be employed, distinct differences are evident in respect to the required work of teachers and their concomitant relation to their professional knowledge and situated practice (Pitman, 1993, 2007). What, then, do these two situations tell us about the conditions under which teachers practise their profession? First, that the nature of the work is fluid over time. Second, that the scope for exercising practical judgement and remaining within the organisational and social constraints is not temporally constant. And third, that the operating definition of what it means to act as a professional moves back and forth between a dominance of the metaphor of bureaucrat/professional as paid employee and that of the member of a professional group/professional as knowledgeable autonomous maker of practical judgements. Of course, the actuality of practice is such that practical wisdom, growing out of practice, is an integral part of good practice by virtue of the nature of the task (of course, experience can lead to other habits, such as slavish compliance with protocols). When the criteria applied to evaluate the practitioner are instrumental and at variance to the necessity of situated judgement in context, then the good practitioner is increasingly at risk of censure, either because of the need to act outside the regimens of prescribed protocols (for example, the student instructed to stay home on the day of formalised testing) or because the criteria fail to take into account the constituents of good practice in the service of the students entrusted to them (for example, the principal who, to stay ahead, wasn’t giving away “the secrets of her success”). A challenge then is presented for those bearing the responsibility for the preparation of new professionals (in this case, teachers). If the actuality of the work of a professional is one of exercising practical judgement in real and unique situations, then how might students—soon to be professionals—be instilled to value this aspect of their vocation and be sensitised in such ways that they are led to a disposition to think critically about their work, to act for the best, and to develop into individuals characterised by the phronesis that informs their actions? Truly reflective practice has a central place within the structures of modern professions. However, given the levels of surveillance and regulatory accountability and discipline, is there tolerance for the practitioner who moves beyond the technical concerns of the quality


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or qualities of his or her work? If the educators of professionals fail to motivate their students toward a phronetic professional life, they will fail not only the profession but all in the society it professes to serve. Professional education reflects and responds to the political conditions of the organisation of the professions. Given the spectrum over which such conditions play over time (from the overly trusting of practitioners to the types of skeptical assumptions and distrust of practitioners that underpins the accountability movement), a proper place can only be achieved for the types of practice that invoke phronesis, wisdom of experience, or critical reflection if the language of the discourse within and surrounding the professions is relocated from one of managerial outcomes and accountability to one based on the moral imperatives of the tasks intrinsic to the practices. The profession of teaching has spent an inordinate amount of time on the managerial technical rational aspects of professionalisation. I contend that accountability should not be at the expense or exclusion of attention to professional judgement in context—phronesis. Stout (2001) reminds us that it is in the “uneasy relations between our social practices and our institutions that many of the most deeply felt problems of our society lie” (p. 275). If we shine a light on the source of the dominant technical rational context and its capacity to negatively impact one’s ability to exercise practical wisdom, perhaps we will illuminate the folly of the practice to the point of effecting some retreat.

REFERENCES

Bobbitt, J. F. (1913). The supervision of city schools. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ellett, F., Jr., & Pitman, A. (2001). Review [Review of the book Teachers in trouble: An exploration of

the normative character of teaching], Education and Law, 11(1), 119–120. Governing ourselves: Dispute resolution. (2009, December). Professonally Speaking, December 2009,

75. Retrieved October 26, 2010, from http://professionallyspeaking.oct.ca/publications/ professionally_speaking/december_2009/go/dispute_resolution.asp

Green, B. (2009). The (im)possibility of the project. Radford Lecture. Delivered to the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, December 1, 2009, Melbourne, Australia.

Hall, R. (1969). Occupations and the social structure. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hall, E. M. & Dennis, L. A. (1969). Living and learning. The report of the provincial committee on

aims and objectives in the schools of Ontario. Toronto, ON: Ontario Department of Education. Kuhn, T. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Larsen, M. A. (2005). A critical analysis of teacher evaluation policy trends. Australian Journal of

Education, 49(3), 292–305. Olsen, B., & Sexton, D. (2009). Threat rigidity, school reform and how teachers view their work inside

current education policy contexts. American Educational Research Review, 46(1), 9–44. Piddocke, S., Magsino, R., & Manley-Casimir, M. (1997). Teachers in trouble: An exploration of the

normative character of teaching. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Pitman, A. (1993). Centralised control and teacher education in Australia. In T. Popkewitz (Ed.),

Changing patterns of power: Social regulation and teacher education reform in eight countries (pp. 347–368). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

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Pitman, A. (2007). Ontario, Canada: The state asserts its voice or accountability supersedes responsibility. In M. T. Tatto (Ed.), Reforming teaching globally (pp. 97–118). Oxford, UK: Symposium Books.

Radwanski, G. (1987). Ontario study of the relevance of education and the issue of dropouts. Toronto, ON: Ministry of Education.

Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Shulman, L. (1987a). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational

Review, 57(1), 1–22. Shulman, L. (1987b). Sounding an alarm: A reply to Sockett. Harvard Educational Review, 57(4), 473–

482. Sockett, H. (1987). Has Shulman got the strategy right? Harvard Educational Review, 57(2), 208–219. Stevenson, H. (2007). Restructuring teachers’ work and trade union responses in England: Bargaining

for change? American Educational Research Journal, 44(2), 224–251. Stout, J. (2001). Ethics after Babel: The language of morals and their discontents. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press. Tatto, M. T., & Plank, D. N. (2007). The dynamics of global teaching reform. In M. T. Tatto (Ed.),

Reforming teaching globally (pp. 267–277). Oxford, UK: Symposium Books. Valli, L., & Buese, D. (2007). The changing roles of teachers in an era of high stakes accountability.

American Educational Research Journal, 44(3), 519–558. Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science

Quarterly, 21, 1–19. Weick, K.E. (1982). Administering education in loosely coupled systems. Phi Delta Kappan, 63, 673–

676.

LEGAL DOCUMENTS

Ontario Statutes and Regulations

Child and Family Services Act, R.S.O. 1990, c.C11. Education Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. E.2. Ontario College of Teachers Act, 1996, S.O. 1996, c.12. Operation of Schools – General, O. Reg. 298/90, (Education Act, 1990). Allan Pitman Faculty of Education The University of Western Ontario


STEPHEN KEMMIS

PHRON SIS, EXPERIENCE, AND THE PRIMACY OF PRAXIS INTRODUCTION

There has been a long debate about how research contributes to theoretical knowledge (epist m ) about practice and to the development of technique in the professions (poi sis). There has also been debate about how research can contribute to praxis as ‘right conduct’ (on a neo-Aristotelian view of praxis) and as ‘socially responsible, history-making action’ (on a post-Marxian view) in the professions, and also to phron sis, the disposition that Aristotle described as guiding and informing praxis. There is a danger in contemporary times, however, that phron sis comes to be regarded simply as a form of knowledge ‘in the heads’ (and moral commitments) of practitioners rather than in terms of practical reasoning and practical philosophy—that is, as something to be taught as opposed to something that develops through experience as a capacity to approach the unavoidable uncertainties of practice in a thoughtful and reflective way. In many fields, the aim of contemporary professional education is to develop practitioners’ professional practice knowledge. Following Michael Eraut (1994), Higgs, Titchen, and Neville (2001, p. 5) outline three forms of knowledge that clinicians bring to the clinical encounter:

– propositional, theoretical or scientific knowledge—e.g., knowledge of pathology; – professional craft knowledge or knowing how to do something; and – personal knowledge about oneself as a person and in relationship with others.

“Each form of knowledge has a distinct nature,” they argue (p. 5). They describe the nature and importance of each form of knowledge, and the blurred boundaries between them. They also indicate that professional practice knowledge expresses itself in unique and changing ways as individual practitioners encounter particular patients, situations, and contexts. This characterisation of professional practice knowledge as something that is more than propositional knowledge—in this case, also involving craft knowledge and personal knowledge—is an instance of a broader class. It is an attempt to define something that comes to life in professional practice and is more than can be put into words, more than ideas. In the case of Higgs, Titchen, and Neville, professional practice knowledge involves the knowledge that comes to life in the doing of the practice, the craft of the practice, and is embodied in the relationship of the practitioner to the practice and to others involved in and affected by the practice, that is, a kind of personal knowledge. I believe that our contemporary interest in phron sis is prompted by a commitment of the kind expressed by Higgs, Titchen, and Neville to developing the professional

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practice knowledge of rising generations of practitioners and their intuition that professional practice knowledge involves something more than propositional, theoretical, or scientific knowledge. Today, we want practitioners of the professions to have qualities that extend beyond professional practice knowledge toward wisdom in the form of the disposition to wisdom and prudence that Aristotle called phron sis. As I have argued elsewhere (Kemmis, 2005, 2009, 2010; Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008) however, our task in understanding professional practice, in researching iti, and especially in developing or changing it, is greater than the task of understanding the professional practice knowledge that resides ‘in practitioners’ heads.’ Our task requires understanding, researching, and working to develop professional practices both ‘in the heads’ of practitioners and in the settings in which they work, in which their practices are formed and daily re-formed in practice—or, one might say, from the perspective of the one who acts, in praxis. Following Schatzki (2002), to say ‘in practice’ is to mean in the sites where people act and interact with one another, where social practices come into being and where they shape and prefigure what professional practitioners can and will do. On this view, to change practices—or praxis—also requires changing the ways that practices are socially, materially, and discursively constructed (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). To make such changes requires being able to see and understand practice and praxis beyond the realm of the practitioner’s professional practice knowledge and the practitioner’s intentions—it requires us to see the ‘happening-ness’ of practice/praxis—how it unfolds in history and society in ways not entirely controlled or conceived by the individual practitioner. To confront the profound consequences of the ‘happening-ness’ of practice/praxis in turn requires us to understand our own action—especially our praxis—as happening in the living process of history, and as a contribution to a history we share with others who inhabit the planet. Confronting the consequences of what happens as a consequence of our practice/praxis may begin to dislodge us from the notions that the world is within our control and that we can be adequately prepared for every eventuality. It may also dislodge us from thinking that what we most want to develop in professional practitioners is phron sis, especially if phron sis is understood as ‘professional practice knowledge plus.’ Perhaps, for the time being, the real focus of our collective thinking about these problems should be on praxis more than, or at least as much as, on phron sis. I have arrived at this last position because, for me at least, a question has arisen as I have pondered our collective quest, in professional education, for what we might call ‘professional practice knowledge plus.’ We want something more than knowledge and technical skill in those we aim to educate into professional practice. It is this desire for something more, I believe, that underpins our aspiration to develop phron sis in professional education. We not only want good professional practitioners, we want practitioners who will do good. But can this desire be fulfilled? Can we develop phron sis in initial professional education, for example? If so, how can we have it—by what means might it be developed? In this chapter, I argue that phron sis cannot be developed directly. Generally speaking, I believe that phron sis is not something that can be taught; it

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can only be learned, and then only by experience. To the extent that phron sis can be taught at all, it can only be taught indirectly.

PHRON SIS

Phron sis cannot be understood outside of its relationship to praxis. Praxis is today understood in two broad ways. In the Anglo-American tradition, praxis is generally understood as ‘right conduct,’ whereas in much of Europe it is understood as social action with moral and political consequences, that is, as ‘socially consequential history-making action.’ For the ancient Greeks, however, phron sis was the disposition toward wisdom and prudence that orients praxis.

(a) Phron sis and Praxisii

In the Ethics (trans. 2003), Aristotle (384–322 BCE) drew distinctions between different kinds of actions, guided by different kinds of dispositions. These are presented in Table 1 below (excerpted from Kemmis & Smith, 2008), supplemented by another kind of action and disposition that I have adapted from Habermas’s (1972) Knowledge and Human Interests (in which Habermas suggests replacing the ancient idealist notion of epist m with a critical-emancipatory disposition):

Table 1. Four perspectives on dispositions and action

Theoretical perspective

Technical perspective

Practical perspective

Critical-emancipatory perspective

Telos (Aim)

The attainment of knowledge or truth

The production of something

Wise and prudent judgement; acting rightly in the world

Overcoming irrationality, injustice, suffering, felt dissatisfactions

Disposition Epist m : The disposition to seek the truth for its own sake

Techn : The disposition to act in a true and reasoned way according to the rules of a craft

Phron sis: The moral disposition to act wisely, truly, and justly; with both goals and means always open to review

Critical: The disposition toward emancipation from irrationality, injustice, suffering, felt dissatisfactions

Action Theoria: Contemplation, involving theoretical reasoning about the nature of things

Poi sis: ‘Making’ action, involving means—ends or instrumental reasoning to achieve a known objective or outcome

Praxis: ‘Doing’ action, involving practical reasoning about what is wise, right, and proper to do in a given situation

Emancipatory: Collective critical reflection and action to overcome irrationality, injustice, suffering, harm, unproductiveness, or unsustainability

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For the moment, I want to highlight the concept of praxis. In Table 1, praxis is used specifically in an Aristotelian sense, that is, to be understood in terms of ‘right conduct’ or, as Kemmis and Smith (2008) put it:

Praxis is a particular kind of action. It is action that is morally-committed, and oriented and informed by traditions in a field. It is the kind of action people are engaged in when they think about what their action will mean in the world. Praxis is what people do when they take into account all the circumstances and exigencies that confront them at a particular moment and then, taking the broadest view they can of what it is best to do, they act. (p. 4; emphases in original)

It is important to note that praxis is the action. Of course, one’s thinking may be part of one’s doing, but praxis is not the thinking that may precede action (cf. Aristotle’s notion of the guiding disposition of phron sis, and practical deliberation that may also come before an action; Schwab, 1969; Reid, 1978). Praxis is the action itself, in all its materiality and with all its effects on and consequences for the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political dimensions of our world in its being and becoming. Praxis emerges in ‘sayings,’ ‘doings,’ and ‘relatings’ (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008) that are more or less coherently ‘bundled together’ (Schatzki, 2002). As praxis is realised (in action) in the world, guided by good intentions for individuals and humankind, and shaped by traditions of thought about a particular field of practice, it begins to change the world around it (as do all actions, whether praxis or not). The person who aims at praxis aims to be wise and prudent, but as it happens, praxis immediately begins to affect the uncertain world in uncertain and indeterminate ways. Consequences begin to flow, whether for good or for ill. Now those who act begin to learn the measure of their wisdom and prudence: do things turn out as they had hoped, anticipated, and intended? Of course, the action that is praxis does not have its origins solely in the actor, either. She is always already pre-formed by the ‘sayings,’ ‘doings,’ and ‘relatings’ that have made her who she is today. In the past and present, she has been changed by ‘sayings,’ ‘doings,’ and ‘relatings’—her own and others’—and she has inherited a world partly made by her history of action in the world. She is both a ‘subject’ who has been formed and a person who forms herself and others. The action that is praxis comes into a world always already pre-formed for this particular possibility of action, for this particular instance of praxis. At the moment of action, it is a world ready for this action. It is a world in which such an action as this is possibleiii, and is usually relevant and appropriate. It may be a moment when it is time to speak out. It may be a moment when the most important thing to do is to show care. It may be a moment when one must listen. It may be a moment when it is necessary to tell the patient his illness is terminal, or the student that he must leave the room. I want also to emphasise, however, that praxis is action in which the practitioner is aware of acting in history, that it is history-making action, that it has, for the one acting, some world-historical significance (even the action is a small thing in itself). This second sense of the term praxis was taken up and developed by Marx


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from Hegel. If the Aristotelian sense of praxis finds its locus in the one who acts—the actor—praxis in the post-Hegelian, post-Marxian sense finds its locus in the world acted within and upon, and in the unceasing flow of history made by human social action. This sense of praxis was discussed by Bernstein in his (1971) book Praxis and Action. So: praxis comes into the world through the actions (sayings, doings, and relatings) of people, individually and collectively, changing the world through the immediate effects and long-term consequences of their actions, and these effects and consequences become conditions that in turn shape actors and the media in which they can act in the world—the medium of language in the cultural-discursive dimension of human sociality, the medium of activity and work in the material-economic dimension, and the medium of power in the social-political dimension. Phron sis and the intentional fallacy Kemmis and Smith (2008) explored the formation of the disposition toward wisdom and prudence on the Aristotelian sense of praxis, and the way these dispositions are realised and express themselves in praxis. There is a danger, however, that we might think we cannot have praxis in the absence of guidance by the disposition of phron sis. To think thus would be a species of the fallacy that all action is caused by, and is the effect of, intentions—the intentional fallacy. Hindess (1977) discusses Weber’s ‘rationalistic theory of action’ as an example of this fallacy. The intentional fallacy may, for example, lead us to hope that if we first develop phron sis in rising generations of professional practitioners, then praxis will follow. I suggest that such thinking may have this relationship the wrong way around. I suggest that it is praxis that allows phron sis to develop. Before returning to this theme, however, I want to explore the relationship between phron sis, praxis, and uncertainty, which in turn will lead to a preliminary conclusion about our hopes—perhaps to be disappointed—that phron sis can provide the kind of knowledge professional practitioners need (what might be called ‘professional practice knowledge plus’). I then consider the relationship between phron sis, praxis, and experience.

(b) Phron sis, Praxis, and Uncertainty

Uncertainty is crucially important to the notion of praxis. In uncertain situations, it is not clear what the best means are to deal with the situation, nor, more importantly, is it clear what the appropriate ends are in the situation—what we should be aiming to do. An uncertain practical situation is, by definition, not a situation of a known and decided type, for which pre-existing aims, means and strategies are clearly relevant and applicable. One must first decide—by practical deliberation—what kind of situation we are encountering, what is at stake, and how we might best respond. Having deliberated, we might then proceed according to a known rule or strategy (if we find that the situation is of a known kind, routinely addressable by a known means toward known ends).

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I mention the question of uncertainty and the process of deliberation to point toward the blurry boundary between techn and poi sis on the one hand, and phron sis and praxis on the other. For example, young men came to Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum to learn how to be warriors, as was expected of men of their aristocratic status. They learned the technical skills that would allow them to act (poi sis), to fight like warriors. In a particular uncertain situation, they might need to decide—by practical deliberation—whether to fight, but once they had decided that to fight was the right thing to do under the circumstances, they would then depend on their skills if they were to prevail. The same is true in many uncertain practical situations encountered by professional practitioners. The problem for the medical practitioner may be to determine a diagnosis for a particular patient with particular signs and symptoms. After a diagnosis has been decided, a regime of therapy might be constructed—not quite the same as in other cases, perhaps, but a regime that might suit the circumstances of this patient in these circumstances. Practical deliberation spills over into decisions regarding the regime of therapy, such as by customising the treatment for such-and-such given circumstances. But the efficacy of the regime of therapy may now be a more straightforward matter of skill and technique, a matter of poi sis—the application of known means in pursuit of known ends.

Phron sis: A false promise? At this point, a disturbing question arises. Is our current increased interest in phron sis and the development of phron sis in programs of professional education one form of response to our growing knowledge that praxis (in both Aristotelian and post-Hegelian/post-Marxian senses) is needed because we are coming to recognise the limits of techn and poi sis? That is, are we interested in phron sis (and praxis) because we recognise the limits of our technical capacities to diagnose and to treat the problems that beset us in every field of practice, from medicine to education to the care of the planet? Are we finding what Gadamer (1983) told us long ago: that the Age of Science has not solved and cannot solve the problem of being and doing good, and the problem of the nature of the good for humankind? The question is worth examining because I suspect that some who are interested in phron sis (and praxis) today hope to wring from phron sis what we no longer expect techn to provide: an answer to those unsettling questions of the limits of our technical knowledge and capacities to deal with the uncertain world in which we live. In short, I suspect we ask for phron sis because we want an ally with which to confront the unimaginable, unspeakable void of uncertainty we face in this fragile world—a void inhabited by horrors and monsters like the obstinate ineradicability of professional malpractice, our enduring impotence in the face of the sufferings caused by war, and our gathering frustration in the face of the global environmental crisis. We want phron sis perhaps because we want to be secure in the kind of knowledge that will proof us against uncertainty and dread. And if we cannot have theories and techniques that will proof us against uncertainty and dread, then in their place let us have—or ask for—wisdom. Let us ask for the capacity to deal


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with life in the face of uncertainty. Let us have phron sis—in the form, perhaps, of those kinds of magical powers possessed by sages and superheroes who are endlessly courageous in the face of danger, and endlessly creative in the face of apparently insoluble problems. And let us have phron sis in the manner and the identity of the consummate professional who has access to the deep well of professional practice knowledge from which the solutions to all human problems can spring—the consummate professional who always triumphs over uncertainty, indecision, and impotence. Is this magical phron sis the phron sis we secretly desire? If this is indeed what we desire, then what we desire is not phron sis at all but just another trickster image of techn , now appearing in the guise of a knowledge that escapes uncertainty and experience, a knowledge that will salve and reassure us when we come to confront the void. And do we desire such a phron sis because we want professionals who will always act for the good of their clients, and who will always act wisely and well for the good of humankind? Do we want such a phron sis because we want to re-enchant a disenchanted world of de-moralised, desecrated, and devalued professionalism? Do we want to recover the honour and nobility of that ‘ideal’ professionalism that acted for the good of clients and community from the wreckage of professional misbehaviour and associations in which professionals have pursued their own interests at the expense of the interests of clients and communities? That is, do we want to re-moralise the professions so that every profession will recover its own version of the intention to care above all else for the life and health of the client and the community, and to do no harm? If so, is our desire that these professionals will always know the good in advance and for all times and circumstances, and therefore act correctly in every case? If we do, then once again we may be hoping for another version of techn , a set of universal moral principles from which we can deduce the correct way to act, in every circumstance. In short, perhaps, we are asking for a set of principles that will function as moral rules (as in techn ). Phron sis, however, does not and cannot escape uncertainty; it simply acknowledges uncertainty and aims to act constructively within it. Phron sis acknowledges the possibility of tragedy that is to be found deep within conflicts of values and interests, and conflicts of viewpoints and loyalties. If this reading is correct, then phron sis is no more than a commitment to do our best under uncertain and thus more or less unpredictable circumstances—to act for the best for all of those involved and affected. Phron sis cannot guarantee that the good will be done, for anyone, let alone for everyone. If this is so, then phron sis is not a kind of positive knowledge that we can hand on to rising generations of professional practitioners. As we shall see, the idea that phron sis is not a kind of positive knowledge has some powerful advocates.

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(c) Phron sis, Praxis, and Experience

In our (2008) chapter “Personal Praxis: Learning from Experience,” in Enabling Praxis, Tracey J. Smith and I considered the role of experience in praxis, and especially the question of ‘becoming experienced.’ To assist us in this consideration, we drew on the work of Joseph Dunne (1993), who drew, in turn, on Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hannah Arendt. The following is based on our remarks in that chapter (pp. 20–21). Quoting Gadamer, Dunne wrote (p. 131):

We never really graduate from the school of experience to a university of higher knowledge: “the perfect form of what we call ‘experienced’ does not consist in the fact that someone already knows everything and knows better than anyone else ... the dialectic of experience has its own fulfilment not in definitive knowledge, but in that openness to experience that is encouraged by experience itself.”

A little later, once again quoting Gadamer and referring to an earlier discussion of Arendt, he writes (p. 131):

The truly experienced person is the one who has learned this lesson, “who knows that he is master neither of time nor the future,” who has discovered “the limits of the power and the self-knowledge of his planning reason,” and who has come to see that “all the expectations and planning of finite beings is finite and limited.” (What Gadamer is saying here is closely akin to what we have already seen in Arendt. The uncertainty and irreversibility which were so central in her account of action—and which underlay the need for promising and forgiving as remedies against an otherwise overwhelming hazardousness—find an exact parallel in Gadamer’s insistence on “the limitedness of all prediction and the uncertainty of all plans” and on the fact that the experienced person has learned that “it proves to be an illusion that everything can be reversed.” ...).

According to Dunne, Gadamer, and Arendt, professional practitioners and those learning the practices of their chosen professions do not just ‘gain’ experience; they must become experienced by learning from—reflecting on—their experienceiv. People cannot be prepared for praxis (in professional education, for example) by gathering ‘book knowledge’ alone; on the contrary, we are prepared by experiencing the irreversibility of own actions, and the irreversible consequences of our actions. If we are exceptionally capable and lucky, we may also learn some of this from history—the history of our profession and the life histories of other practitioners of their professions. By experiencing the irreversibility of our actions and the consequences of our actions (and perhaps the actions of others, and the consequences of their actions), we become open to experience and wiser about considering what is going on when we encounter an uncertain practical situation. As the Athenian poet Agathon (448–402 BCE), friend of Euripedes and Plato, and quoted by Aristotle (trans. 2003, p. 120), put it:


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For one thing is denied even to God: To make what has been done undone again

This is what the experienced person has learned, and it is what she or he brings to new uncertain practical situations: a knowledge that, as they act, something will be written, indelibly, in the pages of historyv. The wise person who knows that this is so is not frozen in the face of uncertainty, however, nor is the wise person indifferent to how things turn out. On the contrary, the wise are aware and acknowledge that they must act in uncertainty. What distinguishes these wise people from others is that, more often than not, they avoid both haste and indecision, both excitability and detachment, and they act as best they can for the good (not just in ways that are convenient or self-serving). What also distinguishes the action of the wise is that they act in ways that avoid some of the traps and pitfalls that less experienced people do not see—especially if the less experienced are misled by appearances so that a situation appears to be of one sort, but turns out to have other faces that may be more important or involve trickier judgements about what action is best to take. (For example, an inexperienced manager may wrongly choose to deal with a complaint of sexual harassment by soothing a complainant who then withdraws the complaint instead of by removing the causes of the complaint—the harasser or the harasser’s behaviour.)

(d) Re-thinking Phron sis

What we might conclude about the disposition of phron sis, then, is not that phron sis is a positive knowledge or kind of knowledge, but rather that it is a kind of negative space for knowledge. Of course it thrives in those who are knowledgeable, those who have learned many things and learned from their own and others’ experiences, from the consequences that roll out from action in lives and in collective histories. On the basis of the argument so far, we may also draw several other conclusions about the nature of phron sis. Phron sis consists, first, in a preparedness to understand a given situation in different ways, and not to accept immediately that the situation is what it appears to be. It is a preparedness to explore different already-available ways of understanding a situation when we are in a situation in which we must act—for example, to see a situation not only as a health professional might see it but also as an educator might see it, or as a person committed to human rights and social justice might see it. Second, as we saw in Dunne and Gadamer, phron sis as a kind of negative quality also consists in openness to experience—a preparedness to see what the situation is, in what may be new terms or new ways of understanding a situation. When we have a rich disposition for phron sis and encounter another language or culture or perspective, we are willing to try to see things from another’s point of view, and to be open to develop our own interpretive categories in the light of others’ knowledge and perspectives. Third, when we have a rich disposition for phron sis, we are also open to experience itself—simply to experiencing the world in new ways, by trying out a new way of being in the world, for example, by whitewater rafting, working as a

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volunteer in community work, travelling to encounter other ways of living ordinary lives, reading literature and history, or following the arts. The person who wants to develop phron sis as wisdom and prudence wants to understand the variety and richness of different ways of being in the world. But the person who wants phron sis does not want to experience just any way of being, of course—the wise and prudent person also recognises that to have an experience is to be formed by it (as experience is always a process of self-formation), and thus some kinds of experience might deform one’s being and capacities for being, rather than transform them for the better. Thus, the person who wants phron sis also wants what is for the good—the good for each person and the good for humankind, in the knowledge that these will always be contested and always be problematic in every new situation. To reiterate the words of Gadamer, as quoted by Dunne (1993, p. 131):

the perfect form of what we call ‘experienced’ does not consist in the fact that someone already knows everything and knows better than anyone else ... the dialectic of experience has its own fulfilment not in definitive knowledge, but in that openness to experience that is encouraged by experience itself.

And to emphasise: “the dialectic of experience has its … fulfilment not in definitive knowledge…” (emphasis added). What comes from experience is not definitive knowledge, although the person who has learned from experience may capture some of that experience in words and memories, in narratives and a personal history, and may call upon this knowledge when interpreting, understanding, and evaluating new situations. The person who is ‘experienced’ learns a way to be open, sensitive, and responsive in and to new situations. The person who is ‘experienced’ does not always follow a rule or a principle, or interpret every situation as if it were the usual situation or the same as situations met in the past. Those who are ‘experienced’ know both that they must act, taking into account many dimensions of a given situation, and that history will test and judge them more probingly than any human evaluator. Those who are experienced know that, by their actions, they enter the sea of history and that they may enjoy its calms but they must also endure its storms. And they know also that it is not up to them alone whether the history they enter will be one to enjoy or to endure. Fourthly, we can also affirm that phron sis is a virtue. It is a quality of mind and character and action—the quality that consists in being open to experience and being committed to acting with wisdom and prudence for the good. The person who has this virtue has become informed by experience and history and thus has a capacity to think critically about a given situation—whether a situation is what it appears to be—and then to think practically about what should be done under the circumstances that pertain here and now, in the light of what has gone before, and in the knowledge that one must act (and that even not acting, or not appearing to act, may be the right action). When we have phron sis, we are thus prepared, for better or for worse, to take moral responsibility for our actions and the consequences that follow from them. The virtue of phron sis is thus a willingness to stand behind our actions, even though we are not the sole author of our actions,


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and far less the sole author of every practical situation (a situation requiring that we act) in which we find ourselves.

(e) Phron sis or Praxis?

We can hope (as we should) for the best for each person and the best for humankind, and we can hope and even promise to act always toward those overarching though endlessly contested aims, in both the individual (Aristotelian) and collective (post-Hegelian, post-Marxian) senses of praxis. We can hope for right conduct, and we can hope for history-making action that will bring about the good for humankind. We can also prepare ourselves to act on the disposition of phron sis toward the good for each person and the good for humankind. But our hopes and our promises, our preparation, and our disposition, are not always sufficient to ensure that the good for each person and the good for humankind will be done in any particular case or situation. We may not see the situation clearly or responsively enough; or we may act self-protectively, in our own interests or the interests of those close to us at the expense of others whose legitimate interests should also have been protected. Our desire for the good for each person and for humankind cannot guarantee that both will be achieved. We cannot always interpret the uncertain wisely or cleverly enough, and we may lack the experience in this particular field or this particular kind of situation to know the likely consequences if we take this rather than that course of action. Phron sis does not dissolve uncertainty or furnish us with all the necessary experience to meet the next challenge we are to face. Phron sis furnishes only the readiness to act in uncertainty and to use and learn from experience. If phron sis by itself does not supply the necessary knowledge to act wisely—if, for example, it does not supply the necessary professional practice knowledge—then what can provide such knowledge? Perhaps techn can—for known situations where the ends and the means are known, and all that is required is to apply them. Or perhaps epist m can—for situations where contemplative scientific knowledge might be applied. But phron sis is not that kind of knowledge. The disposition—the virtue—of phron sis belongs to wisdom, a more elusive, negative kind of knowledge. I believe that we want and value phron sis because we know and value people who have the disposition and the virtue to act wisely and prudently in uncertain practical circumstances, and who steer carefully and courageously through such circumstances. But phron sis is not a positive form of knowledge that we can learn or take from such people and then possess for ourselves. We can only gain it through our own experience and through our own attempts to do the good for each person and for humankind. The longing for phron sis, for wisdom, I believe, is really a longing for something else. It is really a longing for a world in which people honestly and capably strive to act rightly and to avoid harm. More precisely, that longing is a longing for praxis. We want the good for each person to be done in uncertain practical circumstances, and we want the good for humankind to be done, even though we cannot guarantee that these goods will be done. It is the praxis that we value.

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Our love of phron sis is a tribute to and an admiration for those who have it. Those who have phron sis gain it through (successful and unsuccessful) experiences in which they have aimed to ‘do’ praxis in the individual and in the collective senses—the good for each one and the good for humankind. Living in, and contending with, a messy and uncertain world demands that the wise person strive for what is for the best—what is for the good for each person and the good for humankind. And doing what is best usually involves working through contestation over what those goods might consist in, in this situation, in this case, and then, in the light of that deliberation, acting (praxis) and then being willing to confront and learn from the consequences. It requires drawing on experience. It is in praxis that we submit ourselves—that all of us are submitted—to the discipline of reality. We do our best and then we hang around to see whether what we did was good enough. Although we may proceed with care and courage, we also proceed with the humility of knowing (as we earlier saw from Gadamer, quoted by Dunne) that “all the expectations and planning of finite beings is finite and limited”; and that “it proves to be an illusion that everything can be reversed.” So we try to interpret and understand what comes of our actions in that sea of uncertainty—did we arrive at a good enough destination after we passed through those stormy seas? We arrive at knowledge and understandings borne of experience, but experience also teaches us the limits of what we know, of what we have learned. A new present is always awakening before us, calling us to new practical deliberation and new practical action, requiring that we once more approach the world prepared to act with the virtue of phron sis. It is the happening-ness of praxis that we must commit ourselves to if we want to learn or develop phron sis. I am not sure that phron sis is an end in itself; I think we value it chiefly because it is a virtue evident in the honour and the nobility of persons who have committed themselves to praxis as a way of life. We do not value such people because they adhere to a principle or a pose in the face of new and uncertain situations (or if we do, we are wrong to do so), but because the consequences of their actions were, by and large, for the good—they avoided what might have been worse outcomes. It is for their praxis that we value them, not for the glory that is their phron sis. If I am right, then it follows that we should teach people to value praxis as greater than phron sis. Equally, we should value those who have learned to do praxis better or more reliably because of their praxis rather than because of the phron sis they demonstrate as a result of having disciplined themselves to learn from their own experience of praxis. If I am right, then I conclude that people learn phron sis by valuing and committing themselves to praxis—and not in any other way. Phron sis follows praxis; phron sis does not necessarily lead praxis. We cannot “put old heads on young shoulders” by teaching phron sis as if it were a positive kind of knowledge to be possessed and transmitted. As I have suggested, I believe that we cannot teach phron sis at all, except in the sense that we can say that such a thing exists and that some people (we can point to examples) seem to have it. If we want to teach phron sis, I believe, we can only do


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so indirectly. We can only encourage people to submit themselves to the disciplines of individual and collective praxis, on the one hand, and, on the other, to submit themselves to the disciplines of reflection and critical self-reflection about what consequences followed when they enacted praxis—when they did their best—to bring about the good for each person and the good for humankind through their individual and collective actions. I will concede, however, that phron sis can be learned (still indirectly) from others’ experiences as well as one’s own—especially from others’ experiences or accounts of their practice or intended praxis. For example, people learn from others’ experiences as they are represented in conversations, in history and biography, in art, in case studies, and in the study of cases and case histories in problem-based approaches to learning. We can learn from such sources that things are not always what they seem, that things do not always turn out for the best, that we must attend to sometimes deceptively insignificant details, and that we often need to adapt and re-adapt our approach in the course of acting under particular kinds of conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

It thus might be that we are making a mistake when we hope to or try to teach phron sis directly. If I am right, phron sis can only be learned indirectly, as a result of committing ourselves, with others, to praxis and acting in praxis. Praxis teaches us when our actions are directed toward forming a better world for each and for all, and when it thus forms us because we pay attention to what happens to ourselves, to others, and to the world around us as a consequence of our actions. And if this conclusion is right, then phron sis may be nothing more than the label we give to the disposition that has been formed in us by our acting in the uncertain and contested world toward the good for each person and the good for humankind and by learning, from experience, that we cannot always succeed in these noble aspirations, that our human powers are limited, and that tragedy cannot always be averted. Perhaps controversially, then, I conclude that phron sis is a noble thing, a glory, a thing to be honoured in the person who has it, and that it comes to those who are resiliently, capably, courageously, and continuously committed to praxis—to acting for the good for each person and for the good for humankind. This conclusion prompts another: that a collective parallel for this individual glory, this individual phron sis, exists in the kind of professional community that commits itself collectively to the good through its practice as a profession. Such a professional community commits itself not only to the good of the profession as such but also to the good of its clients and the good of others affected by the evolving practice of the profession. Such a professional community continuously asks and answers, in words and in practice, what constitutes ‘the good’ for each new day and era, and for each new site and situation for practice. Such a community is one that aims to preserve what MacIntyre (1983) called “the internal goods” of the practice—that is, those goods that can only be had by the practice of

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the practice—as (for example) we can have the goods of history only by the practice of history, the goods of medicine only by the practice of medicine, and the goods of education, finally, only by the practice of education.

NOTES i On understanding and researching professional practice, see Green (2009). ii This section is excerpted from my (2008) “Practice and Practice Architectures in Mathematics

Education.” iii On the question of what and what is not possible, consider James Joyce’s (1922/1998) Ulysses, in

which Stephen Daedalus, faced with his students’ sense that the events of ancient history are no more that myths and legends, muses:

Had not Pyrrhus died in Argos by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death? They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind. (p. 25)

iv On experience and how it can be re-understood in the context of professional practice and its development, see Bradley (2009).

v Cf. Quatrain 71 of Edward Fitzgerald’s (1872) translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (3rd edition):

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

REFERENCES

Aristotle. (2003). Ethics. (J. A. K. Thompson, Trans., 1953) (revised with notes and appendices by Hugh Tredennick, 1976; with an introduction by Jonathon Barnes, 1976, 2003; and with a preface by A. C. Grayling, 2003). London: The Folio Society.

Bernstein, R. J. (1971). Praxis and action: Contemporary philosophies of human activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bradley, B. (2009). Rethinking “experience” in professional practice: Lessons from clinical psychology. In W. Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 65–82). Rotterdam: Sense.

Dunne, J. (1993). Back to the rough ground: “Phron sis” and “techn ” in modern philosophy and Aristotle. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Eraut, M. (1994). Developing professional knowledge and competence. London: Falmer. Fitzgerald, E. (1872). The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (3rd ed.). London: Oxford University Press. Gadamer, H. (1983). Reason in the age of science (F. G. Lawrence, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press. Green, B. (Ed.). (2009). Understanding and researching professional practice. Rotterdam: Sense. Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests (Jeremy J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston: Beacon. Higgs, J., Titchen, A., and Neville, V. (2001). Professional practice and knowledge. In J. Higgs and A.

Titchen (Eds.), Practice knowledge and expertise in the health professions (pp. 3–9). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Hindess, B. (1977). Philosophy and methodology in the social sciences. Hassocks, England: Harvester Press.


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Joyce, J. (1998). Ulysses (introduced by J. Johnson). London: Oxford University Press (contains a reprinting of the original 1922 Paris edition published by Shakespeare and Company, available as a Google book from: http://books.google.com/books?id=WVofz29Hx9UC&printsec=frontcover#PRA1-PR73,M1)

Kemmis, S. (2005). Knowing practice: Searching for saliences. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 13(3), 391–426.

Kemmis, S. (2008). Practice and practice architectures in mathematics education. In M. Goos, R. Brown, & K. Makar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (pp. 17–28). Wahroonga, Australia: MERGA Inc. Available at: http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED503747&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED503747

Kemmis, S. (2009). Understanding professional practice: A synoptic framework. Chapter 2 in W. Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice. Rotterdam: Sense.

Kemmis, S. (2010). What is professional practice? In C. Kanes (Ed.), Elaborating professionalism: Studies in practice and theory (pp. 130-166). London: Springer.

Kemmis, S., & Grootenboer, P. (2008). Situating praxis in practice. In S. Kemmis & T. J. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp. 37–64). Rotterdam: Sense.


MacIntyre, A. (1983). After virtue: A study in moral theory. London: Duckworth. Reid, W. A. (1978). Thinking about the curriculum: The nature and treatment of curriculum problems.

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Schatzki, T. (2002). The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and

change. University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schwab, J. J. (1969). The practical: A language for curriculum. School Review, 78, 1–24. Stephen Kemmis School of Education Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia


ELIZABETH ANNE KINSELLA AND ALLAN PITMAN

PHRONESIS AS PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE:

Implications for Education and Practice

INTRODUCTION

The contributors to this book have brought to the surface the complexity of thought surrounding current understandings of phronesis—what it means and what it may mean for professional work and education. In our concluding thoughts, we first draw together reflections from the chapters to consider emerging insights concerning phronesis as professional knowledge. We then explore some of the implications of taking phronesis seriously as an organising framework for professional practice. Finally, some concluding reflections are presented.

PHRONESIS AS PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE: EMERGING INSIGHTS

The concept of phronesis for our world and for professional practice is elusive. Arthur Frank shows just how elusive it may really be, observing that: “Phronesis comes into being but has no specific beginning: we evoke it, but any description seems incomplete” (Frank, chapter 4, p. 53). His suggestion that practical wisdom can develop but can “never be fully articulated,” that rather it is “felt as a guiding force” is provocative in this regard (Frank, p. 57). While there appears to be no clear consensus in pinning it down, it does appear that phronesis cannot be reduced to propositions; it cannot be instrumentalised. We know it when we see it, yet to put it into words is a challenge. The story comes to mind of the two farmer-brothers who, at great known risk, gave shelter to those being hunted down in occupied France during the Second World War. After the war, when asked why they had taken such risks, they claimed not to understand the question: it was what one did. Phronesis seems to be a ‘strange attractor’ for those of us seeking to fill a void in our understandings of professional work; work that often focuses on technical rationality to the exclusion of ‘something else’ that would seem to be important. Stephen Kemmis argues that our search for phronesis is an attempt to fill a void: a negative space into which we wish to put something to satisfy our sense that our professional practices are more than the technical application of our knowledge in a service role. He questions whether we are interested in phronesis because we recognise the limits of our technical capacities to respond to the problems that face every field of professional practice. Kemmis suspects “we ask for phron sis because we want an ally with which to confront the unimaginable, unspeakable


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void of uncertainty we face in this fragile world” (Kemmis, chapter 11, p. 152). Along similar lines, Kathryn Hibbert draws attention to Eikeland’s contention that phronesis “springs from a deeply felt desire for finding concepts to grasp kinds of knowledge and skills that are directed towards understanding and acting in accordance with requirements of the concrete situations we find ourselves in” (Eikeland, 2006, p. 6). Phronesis responds to the “search for non-technical, non-mechanical ways of recognizing the sovereignty and independence of our everyday cognitions and judgements without constantly being referred and subordinated to ‘science’” (Eikeland, 2006, p. 6). Phronesis is frequently acknowledged as one of Aristotle’s special virtues. Aristotle describes phronesis as the virtue that enables us to judge what it is we should do in any given situation; phronesis straddles the categories of intellect and character, of cognition and affect, and is closely related to wisdom (see Sellman, chapter 9, for an elaboration). This virtue is described eloquently by Kemmis as:

A quality of mind and character and action—the quality that consists in being open to experience and being committed to acting with wisdom and prudence for the good. The person who has this virtue has become informed by experience and history and thus has a capacity to think critically about a given situation...and then to think practically about what should be done...When we have phron sis, we are thus prepared...to take moral responsibility for our actions and the consequences that follow from them. The virtue of phron sis is thus a willingness to stand behind our actions. (p. 156)

It is hard to argue that phronesis is not a virtue worth aspiring to in the professions. As Fred Ellett notes, following Stout (1990), the virtue of phronesis has a significant place in the everyday social practices of professional practitioners. Phronesis is frequently depicted as either practical rationality or practical wisdom, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, as pointed out by Derek Sellman. Practical rationality emphasises the use of reason, an important dimension of the phronesis highlighted by Aristotle. Sellman argues (and we are inclined to agree) that practical wisdom is a superior term because it extends the idea of phronesis beyond reason alone. If we think of phronesis as extending beyond reason, it raises the question: Are there types of reflection that move beyond intentional, cognitive, and reasoned reflection that might inform practical wisdom and perhaps even distinguish it from practical rationality? Many commentators agree that phronesis is informed by dispositions. There must be a disposition to act in particular ways. Hibbert considers whether phronesis might be viewed as the cultivation of what Birmingham (2004, p. 314) referred to as a “unifying and essential habit of the mind.” Elizabeth Anne Kinsella reflects on implicit criteria that practitioners might use to inform judgements in practice and wonders whether making such criteria explicit might help to inform habits of mind or dispositions oriented toward phronesis. Just what the dispositional nature of phronesis is needs to be clarified in ways that differentiate its present form from that held by Aristotle, as Fred Ellett makes clear.

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Practical wisdom requires discernment and implies reflection. Serious consideration of phronesis as professional knowledge draws attention to various forms of reflective judgement at the centre of professional practice. Of central concern, then, are explications of various types of reflection such as those discussed by Kinsella—i.e., phenomenological reflection, intentional reflection, embodied reflection, critical reflection, and critical reflexivity—and how these types of reflection might shape action both explicitly and implicitly. Interesting questions that emerge are the extent to which practitioner reflection implies judgement through reason and rationality alone, and the extent to which such discernment might be informed by receptive or embodied forms of reflection such as that revealed in tacit knowledge or through intelligent action. It is clear that practitioner judgement lies at the heart of phronesis in professional practice. For Joy Higgs, phronesis could just as easily be called wise judgement in practice. In How Doctors Think, Montgomery (2006) elaborates on this idea, arguing that practice, even medical practice, is interpretive in nature and grounded in practical judgements in context. Montgomery points out, as Sellman reminds us, that although the professions rely on science, professional practices are not sciences; rather, they require practitioners to make constant interpretive judgements. Similarly, Nussbaum (1990) draws attention to all of the generals and particulars that the agent must weigh in trying to decide the reasonable action to perform in a concrete situation. Ellett draws on Nussbaum to hold that an adequate characterisation of good professional judgements is seen in the “typically deliberative judgements involving complex interactions of the generals and particulars” (chapter 2, p. 19) in which practitioners engage. Ellett goes further to suggest that our world view is now so infused with the notion of probability that it is a hidden part of our situated judgement in decision-making, and that probabilities related to the judgements that practitioners make, require further attention in current considerations of phronesis. One thing that is clear is that phronesis, existing only in the ‘heads of men and women,’ is not enough; action is also required. There is a purpose to phronetic action, and this purpose has ethical and moral overtones. Kemmis and Smith (2008) make the distinction between praxis and phronesis: “Praxis is the doing. It is an act done by an actor. The relationship between praxis as doing and phronesis as a disposition towards acting rightly has been of some interest” (Kemmis & Smith, 2008, p. 9). Kemmis goes so far as to contend that it is not phronesis but rather praxis that is required, and that praxis precedes phronesis. The dialectic between the two concepts, and the lines that distinguish where one begins and the other ends are areas of contention worthy of ongoing investigation. In this, Kemmis makes a clearer distinction than others, with an emphasis on the dispositional character of phronesis, as opposed to the phronetic action emphasised by Hibbert and others. Nonetheless, it is clear that to simply ‘think’ the right thing is clearly not enough; one must also ‘do’: action is required. Phronesis recognises the aporias of practice. Throughout this book, the authors have drawn attention to the centrality of uncertainty, complexity, and aporias—unresolvable dilemmas and uncertainties—in the contexts of professional practice,


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and the consequent need for phronesis. In chapters by Macklin and Whiteford, Pitman, Hibbert, and Higgs, attention is drawn to the “confrontation in one’s practice with unresolvable problematics, or paradoxes—‘perplexities and impossibilities’” (Green, 2009a, p. 11). In Bill Green’s consideration of the importance of aporia for professional practice, he writes:

All decision-making—even that which is, properly speaking, mundane, or “practical”—is “haunted” by the aporia, by aporias.... In professional practice there are always moments of undecidability and decision, moments when one must act, even if the way forward is not clear, or—more radically—is uncertain. (Green, 2009a, pp. 11–12)

Green argues for attention to the link between aporia and the practical judgement (at the heart of phronesis) in professional practice. The irony here is that the aporia that many commentators argue is at the centre of practice is frequently denied in dominant conceptions of practice that claim to be based on certainty and evidence, while failing to recognise uncertainty and complexity. There is undoubtedly a moral dimension to phronesis and phronetic action. Many of the authors contributing to this collection have argued that phronesis is linked to morally committed action and, further, that the moral overtones of phronesis might best be revealed through story and narrative. The consideration of the moral goes beyond considerations of the individual practitioner’s ethical behaviour. Arthur Frank, in asking “Who is sick?” (p. 53) shines a light on the moral obligation of the medical practitioner to recognise his or her own condition vis à vis the patient. One could also ask of a teacher, “Who is the student?” The necessity is present for the good physician to recognise that he or she is also sick and, by extension, that the teacher is also the student: the learned is also the ignorant. Frank’s work reveals that morally committed action may well be dialogic and relational and that, although this view may be distinct from Aristotlean conceptions, it is worthy of elaboration in current considerations of phronesis for practice. The paradox here, reflected in several chapters in this book, and most strikingly by Allan Pitman, is that, as the mechanisms of professionalisation have been put in place, the levels of prescription have increased, circumscribing the capacity of members to act autonomously in situations that demand that judgement be exercised. Ellett has drawn on MacIntyre (1984) and Stout (1990) to draw attention to how social practices are embodied in institutions, which typically trade in the ‘external goods’ of money, prestige, and their accompanying power relations, as opposed to the ‘internal goods’ of human cooperation, excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved. While external goods are important for sustaining the social practice, they also have the potential to seriously corrupt, distort, or disrupt the achievement of internal goods. Perhaps one of the primary attractions to phronesis is the possibility it offers of a discourse for practitioners, individually and collectively, to resist the moral compromise and despair that a focus solely on external goods may invoke, and that the trend toward pervasive technicism, instrumentalism, and managerialism may fuel. Perhaps phronesis represents a beacon of light, hope, and belief that there might be, indeed must be, a


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way for practitioners to negotiate the internal goods of their professional practices with wisdom, integrity, and authenticity and on morally respectable grounds amidst the aporias of uncertainty and in contexts where external goods such as money, prestige, and power are at play.

TAKING PHRONESIS SERIOUSLY: PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION AND PRACTICE

What, then, are the implications of taking phronesis seriously, as being at the heart of professional knowledge? A direct consequence of taking phronesis seriously is the need for professional education to emphasise the cultivation of professional judgement, grounded in the moral purpose of judging how to act for the good of the student, client, patient, and society (recognising that what constitutes ‘the good’ cannot be essentialised). The cultivation of such judgement implies nurturing processes of reflection, dispositions, or habits of mind oriented toward phronetic action and praxis. It is crucial here to recognise, as Green does, that it is not only intentional cognitive reflection, or rationality, that informs practitioner judgement. Green argues that practices also happen in excess of the subject: “Practice is prior to the subject, to subjectivity and to agency alike. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a reflexive aspect to the relationship between practice and agency, with the practitioner attending to practice in its unfolding and learning how to go on” (Green, 2009b, pp. 48–49); however, it does mean that we can’t assume that rationality alone will lead to phronetic action: experience in practice is key. Professionals in everyday practice are faced with an impossible bind: the need to decide on action in a context where the information available is incomplete, while operating within the dominant discourse of evidence-based practice that assumes certainty is present. An orientation toward phronesis in professional practice requires embracing the unknown rather than fleeing from it and adopting an educational approach that embraces the uncertainties, complexities, and aporias of practice, as opposed to working from a pretention that they do not exist. Thus, a means of cultivating phronesis in professional education and practice may well be to encourage professionals to talk about, share, and document the aporias of practice with one another and with emerging professionals in spaces where professionals feel ‘safe’ to discuss the ambiguities of practice. Real and sustained change in the cultures of the professions requires a stance that embraces aporia on a widespread scale amongst the epistemic communities of various disciplines and professional fields. The responsibility of the professional is to act. Consequently, attention to praxis and its relation to phronesis suggest that any program of professional education must have action at its core; not only the technical aspects of action in the workplace but also the orientation for considering that action in ways that reflect the necessity to promote the competent practitioner as phronimos. Here the concern raised by Stephen Kemmis brings into relief the relation between phronesis and praxis: characteristically, the assumption is that one must develop phronesis before praxis is possible. Is this sequence necessary—or even desirable? Further attention to praxis and its complementary relationship to phronesis is no doubt warranted.


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If phronesis is considered as a disposition, the question arises as to whether phronesis can be taught. Even if it cannot be taught, it does not imply that the disposition cannot be nurtured, and the nascent and practising professionals cannot be provided with conditions under which phronetic action is both encouraged and rewarded. Perhaps one of the most significant transformations would be seen in the language of and criteria for evaluating professional practice and professional education. As Sockett (1987) made clear in his exchange with Shulman (1987a, 1987b), language is vital both to enabling things to be said and unsaid and to directing our attention to what is seen to be important. This is a significant claim, as it is grounded in how the discourse surrounding a profession and its practice is not only formed by but, in its turn, forms the realities within which a professional decides what to do in a given instant. Changing the language of professional practice and education in ways that embrace phronesis, phronetic action, and praxis as core dimensions of professional life is proposed as a way forward. In professional education and practice, the inclusion of phronesis and praxis as core aims of the curriculum and as complementary to episteme and techne offers a discursive and practical move with the potential for radical and profound implications. A critical interrogation seems important of the political, ideological contexts in which practice occurs and the ways in which regulatory bodies and accountability mechanisms shape action in practice. This is particularly germane, given the fluidity over time and place of the power dynamics within which professionals practise their craft. Attention to the power relations associated with practice is seen both in professions’ language and in the structures of the professional. How the language employed carries significations of power, in the words and structures employed and in the ways in which asymmetries exist in the discourse between professionals and those they profess to help, are important considerations. The role of professions as instruments of the state and the institutional mechanisms employed to regulate what constitutes good practice (as opposed to practice for the good) becomes a vital subject for interrogation, not least because of the implications of the realities of situated practice and the uncertainties and dilemmas—the aporias—associated with the daily exercise of professional judgement. How political and ideological contexts shape what practitioners can and cannot do in their efforts toward phronesis, and the nature of the double binds in which practitioners may find themselves as a result, become significant. What are the implications of taking phronesis seriously for the education of professionals, particularly in the pre-induction, induction, and continuing education stages of their preparation for entry to the profession? In the case of professional education, an increased emphasis might be placed on repositioning professional ethics within the education and practice of professionals. Attention to phronesis calls for a switch in emphasis toward the moral purpose of the work, rather than on the ethics of practice as simply representing compliance with codes of proper conduct. This is a subtle shift linguistically, but a significant one both practically and conceptually. Adopting a professional language that is based in a moral framework involves a shift in the foci of what is central, a repositioning of the programs of


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study, and a recasting of the ways in which the epistemological and technical cores of much of the educational foundations of professional schools are cast. The power of story and narrative for conveying what phronesis might look like suggests that they might be used to introduce phronesis into pre-induction, induction, and continuing education stages of professional preparatory programs. The development of storied case studies that reveal examples could be instructive in terms of the cultivation of phronesis in the professions. In addition, if phronesis is best learned through experience, preceptors and educators in professional programs might be sensitised to phronesis (through education and research) and encouraged to begin to reflect, document, and communicate when phronesis occurs. Also worthy of attention is case study research that investigates and documents individual and collective experiences of phronesis in professional practice; such research would make a valuable contribution to education in the professions. The case has been strongly made that professional competence involves much more than refined technique. The experienced competent professional is called upon to be able to reflect non-trivially on his or her practice(s), to make situated professional judgements, and to interrogate those judgements in social, discursive, material, political, economic, and ideological contexts. In addition, dialogical exchange within epistemic communities and with others, such as patients, clients, colleagues emerges as being significant if wise action in context is the aim. If phronesis is a goal, then education about ways of engaging various types of reflection in professional life is proposed as a cornerstone of the structure of professional education and of the educational experience of students. A caution here, however, points to the importance of introducing reflection with care, in such a way that it does not simply become another means of regulation or surveillance or enforced compliance of the practitioner. Rather reflection for phronesis might be viewed as a means to foster the agency of the practitioner, to link with action, to enable practitioners to critically interrogate the systems within which they find themselves, and to inform the practitioner’s capacity to make the best possible judgements in complex and uncertain practice contexts. If reflection frequently begins with interruption or disruption of habit or routine, then the question “of how to break into, and out of, routine—how to interrupt or disrupt the routinization of practice” (Green, 2009b, p. 49) as a means of moving toward phronesis is raised. Such disruptions are frequently hidden and presented in sanitised versions of professional practice: what might it mean to embrace these disruptions and recognise them as potent spaces for the cultivation of professional learning and phronesis? Indeed, Sellman asks how we might reclaim competence from those who have “commandeered the term to describe skills-based learning,” toward “some form of emergent self-awareness or self revelation” in professional life (Sellman, chapter 9, p. 115). Might the possibility arise through disruption to become aware of aspects of practice that have been previously unknown—as Sellman describes it—those things which we do not know that we do not know? Although phronesis is often depicted as it relates to the individual practitioner, perhaps the most powerful means of ‘taking phronesis seriously’ as an organising framework for professional practice involves bringing phronesis to the attention of


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epistemic communities within the professions. If the professions were to take phronesis as a serious complement to episteme and techne in the preparation and evaluation of professional practitioners, doing so would constitute a veritable revolution. The significance of phronesis and the breadth of the issues at hand can potentially be brought to the fore by engaging disciplinary communities in critically reflexive dialogue concerning the philosophical assumptions about knowledge that inform the ways that professionals are educated, how they engage their practices, and their response to the silences and perceived dangers regarding the aporias of practice. In addition, as Farrukh Chishtie and Fred Ellett point out, recognition of the centrality of phronesis in the construction of episteme offers significant insights for rethinking assumptions about universal, context-independent knowledge and reveals how the lines between episteme and phronesis may not be as clear as Aristotle envisioned. Indeed, if one follows Kuhn’s thinking, phronesis and processes of scientist judgement are seen to inform episteme itself, such that episteme can no longer be viewed from its original universalist foundation. This raises further issues with respect to how hidden power relations (Flyvbjerg, 2001) are implicated in the generation of episteme and, consequently, in the generation of foundational knowledge in the professions. Practical and organisational dimensions are also implicated, such as issues of evaluation of professional performance. In particular, if phronesis is at the fore, the increasingly prevalent trend for managerially derived measures of effectiveness, grounded in (often financial) efficiency becomes less central. This is not to argue that such considerations are unimportant in the ability of society to provide for its members, but rather that those concerns be measured against the system’s capacity to enable the professionals in the community to be able to function deliberatively rather than needing to be preoccupied with meeting criteria and standards of practice alienated from professional judgement in context.

CONCLUSION

Professions are grounded in practice, the application of knowledge for a good purpose. The idea of situated application of one’s knowledge is intrinsic to the idea of a profession. What, then, is the nature of the knowledge that is used in service? It is the general argument of this book that multiple forms of knowledge come into play: There is a general body of knowledge—for instance, in the practice of medicine, aspects of physiology, anatomy, and pharmacology are significant; in the teaching profession, subject content, pedagogical theory, and learning theory are important; and so on. Secondly, technical and practical knowledge is also required to be able to perform the tasks demanded by the practice. But that is not all: there is also another knowledge—of experience and the wisdom of practice—that is developed and refined through practice. There are however, two ways in which the knowledge derived from experience can lead: in the positive case, to a reflective practice of judgement based on a quest for wise practice and directed toward doing what is best; alternatively, to a practice


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grounded in fear, of doing what is safest from a self-interested and protectionist perspective. In other words, knowledge can lead one from doing what is morally responsible to doing only that for which one might be held accountable. Taking phronesis seriously as a significant form of professional knowledge holds potential for promoting the former, and for counterbalancing what seems to have become an emphasis on the latter, in professional practice. Yet, attention to phronesis at the level of the individual is not enough if true change is to occur. The importance of epistemic communities advocating for phronesis and engaging in collective phronesis about the broader aims of professional work cannot be overstated. Phronesis provides a language and a vision for practice that resists a passive acquiescence to the discourses of professional life that are increasingly instrumentalist, technicist, and managerial. The professional is not simply a technician; rather, the professional is charged with the tasks of making complex interpretive judgements and taking action amidst uncertain practice situations, and of attending to the ruptures and disruptions of practice, as spaces for learning and for professional development. Rather than dwelling in despair about the impossible binds in which practitioners find themselves, we propose that practitioners and professional disciplines face the complex and uncertain conditions of practice and embrace phronesis as a complement to episteme and techne. Phronesis is a concept of interest, and of hope, for elaborating current conceptions of professional knowledge and for advancing an approach to practice in the professions that seeks to fill a void in current practices—an approach that is felt as a morally informed guiding force oriented toward a wiser path.

REFERENCES

Birmingham, C. (2004). Phronesis: A model for pedagogical reflection. Journal of Teacher Education, 55(4), 313–324.

Eikeland, O. (2006). Phronesis, Aristotle, and action research. International Journal of Action Research, 2(1), 5–53.

Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Green, B. (2009a). Introduction: Understanding and researching professional practice. In B. Green (Ed.), Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 1–18). Rotterdam: Sense.

Green, B. (2009b). The primacy of practice and the problem of representation. In B. Green (Ed.). Understanding and researching professional practice (pp. 39–54). Rotterdam: Sense.


MacIntyre, A. (1984). After virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame. Montgomery, K. (2006). How doctors think: Clinical judgement and the practice of medicine. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1990). Love’s knowledge: Essays on philosophy and literature. New York: Oxford

University Press. Shulman, L. (1987a). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational

Review, 57(1), 1–22. Shulman, L. (1987b). Sounding an alarm: A reply to Sockett. Harvard Educational Review, 57(4),

473–482.


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Sockett, H. (1987). Has Shulman got the strategy right? Harvard Educational Review, 57(2), 208–219. Stout, J. (1990). Ethics after Babel: The languages of morals and their discontents. Boston, MA:

Beacon Press. Elizabeth Anne Kinsella Faculty of Health Sciences and Faculty of Education The University of Western Ontario Allan Pitman Faculty of Education The University of Western Ontario

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Farrukh Chishtie, PhD, has a doctorate in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. His scientific research interests are elementary particle physics, quantum field theory, gravitational waves, and cloud physics. He is undertaking research in mathematics, science, health and environmental education, both at the schooling and professional levels. He is completing a PhD in Education. Frederick S. Ellett, Jr. received his PhD from Cornell University in 1967 in Philosophy of Education. He taught Philosophy of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Education from 1976 to 1988. Since 1988, he has been Associate Professor, Philosophy of Education, Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, Canada, where he became Emeritus Professor in June 2010. His interests include the conceptual, epistemological, and ontological aspects of educational policy and assessment, with special interests in theories of rationality and morality. Arthur W. Frank, PhD, is Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary, Canada. He is the author of At the Will of the Body (1991), The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics (1995), The Renewal of Generosity (2004), and Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-narratology (2010). During 2010–11, he was senior consultant to the foundation Associated Medical Services, where he worked on enhancing reflective practice through medical education. Kathryn Hibbert, PhD, is Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, in the Faculty of Education and the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. After 16 years of professional practice in Education, Kathryn became a teacher–educator and researcher. She views diversity as one of the key challenges facing educators, and believes that practical wisdom has much to offer to the 21st-century teaching and learning context. Joy Higgs, AM, PhD, is the Strategic Research Professor in Professional Practice and the Director of The Education for Practice Institute at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Her primary role is the advancement of practice-based education and professional practice through collaborations in research, scholarship, student supervision, and education. She has many publications to her credit, including over 20 books in professional practice and education. Stephen Kemmis, PhD, is Professor of Education in the School of Education, Charles Sturt University, Australia. His current research investigates the nature and study of educational practice. With colleagues, he is developing theories of practice architectures and ecologies of practices.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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Elizabeth Anne Kinsella, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Her work draws on social science perspectives in the study of professional education and practice, with a particular focus on the health professions, epistemologies of practice, and reflection in professional life. Robert Macklin, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Tasmania in Australia. He has a PhD from Charles Sturt University. Robert teaches in the area of management, including human resource management and business ethics. His research interests include human resource management and ethics, qualitative research, and the role of phronesis and aporia in professional practice. He is currently investigating the concepts of professional identity and embodiment. Allan Pitman, PhD, is Associate Professor in Education at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He holds a doctorate in Education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His teaching and research cover mathematics education, the work of teachers, action research, and the internationalisation of higher education. Derek Sellman, PhD, RN, is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, Canada. His publications include explorations of aspects of virtue ethics in relation to the professional practice of nursing. He is editor of the journal Nursing Philosophy. Gail Whiteford, PhD, is Pro Vice Chancellor Social Inclusion, Macquarie University, Australia. Gail is passionate about issues of inclusion and social justice and, in particular, the use of interpretive research to both highlight these issues in society and serve as a basis for reflexive practice by professionals. Gail’s past and current work has taken her through a range of practice and sectoral contexts, making her a sought-after speaker and facilitator.

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INDEX

A accountability, 5, 8, 58, 69, 117, 131, 134,

137–139, 142–145, 168 aesthetic appeal, 4, 47–48, 50 aporia, 6–7, 87–99, 104, 110, 136, 141,

165–168, 170 autonomy, 13–14, 22, 56, 132, 135,

137, 143

C calling, 8, 59, 132, 135, 142, 158 clinical judgement, 65, 120 competence, 7–8, 10, 115–129 competency model, 69, 127 competent practitioner, 38, 115–118, 120,

122–124, 126–128, 167 consequences, 9, 22, 25, 43, 128, 136,

148–151, 154–159, 164 constellation nexus, 113 construction of ontologies, 111 coupling (loose and tight), 137 critical ontology, 82, 110 critical reflexivity, 4, 35, 46, 165 critical self-reflection, 116, 159 critical-emancipatory perspective, 149

D decision-making, 68, 78–79, 118, 120, 122,

124–125, 142, 165–166 dialogic interaction, 61 dialogic intersubjectivity, 4, 47, 49–50 disciplinary matrix, 103–107 discipline, 101, 110–111, 120, 123,

139–141, 144, 158–159, 167, 171 discourse, 2, 8, 22, 47, 49, 65, 108–113,

126, 141, 143, 145, 166–168, 171 doings embodiment, 41

E embodied reflection, 9, 35–37, 39, 41,

46, 165 episteme, 2–3, 6–7, 10, 35, 37, 73–74, 78,

83, 92, 101–102, 104–106, 108–113, 119, 168, 170–171

epistemological shifts, 108 epistemology of practice, 43, 125–126, 133 ethical imperatives, 47–50 ethical practicality, 67 ethical practice, 82

ethics, 2, 10, 48–49, 65 experience, 5–6, 9, 36, 62–64, 76 external goods, 18, 26, 29, 166–167

F flourishing, 117

G good

the good for humankind, 152, 156–159

I incommensurability, 103, 107 internal goods, 3, 14, 17–18, 24–30, 159,

166–167 intentional fallacy, 151 intentional reflection, 9, 36–42, 46, 165 interpretive qualitative research, 87, 99 interruption, as enhancing reflection, 4,

54–55, 169

J judgement(s), 35–50

K know-how, 29, 40, 125 knowledge, forms of, 2, 14, 29–30,

101–111, 124, 147, 170

L language, 36, 41, 45, 64–65, 103,

125–126, 132, 134, 138, 145, 151, 155, 168, 171

M managerialism, 8, 119, 124, 127, 136, 142,

166 medical education, 64–66, 68 medical work, diverse claims upon, 68–69 moral purpose, 132–133, 135, 142,

167–168

N normal science, 103–107

INDEX

176

O ontological shifts, 108, 110

P paradigm, 89, 103–104, 110 paradigm shift, 103, 107–108, 111 participatory, 61, 87 pedagogical knowledge, 14, 131–133 persuasiveness, 4, 47–48, 50 phronesis

aristotle’s conception of, 13, 21, 29, 35 as disposition, 47–48 as false promise?, 152 as negative versus positive knowledge,

153, 155 as openness to experience, 154–156 as promise, 157 as practical rationality, 13–29 as virtue, 3, 7, 16–17 collective phronesis, 9, 171 learned indirectly, 159

phronetic action, 66–69 phronetic judgement, 35–50 poiesis, 74 power relations, 7, 18, 36, 102, 108–112,

166, 168, 170 practical deliberation, 150–152, 158 practical judgement, 2, 6, 28, 87–88, 95,

102, 104–109, 112–113, 133, 141, 144, 165–166

practical knowledge, 5, 75, 102, 107, 119, 170

practical philosophy, 147 practical rationality, 13–29 practical reason, 13, 15, 20–21, 65, 67–68,

88, 94–95, 98, 147, 149 practical reasoning, 65, 68, 88, 95, 98, 147,

149 practical wisdom, 73–83 practice, 73–83 practice epistemology, 82, 125–126 practice knowledge, 6, 43, 76–78, 80, 121,

147–148, 151, 153, 157 practice ontology, 82 pragmatic usefulness, 4, 47–48, 50 praxis

as history-making action, 147, 149–150, 157

neo-Aristotelian view, 147 post-Marxian view, 147

praxis artistry, 74, 76, 83 probability, 3–4, 15, 23, 28, 102, 107, 165 professional body, 135 professional community, 9, 133, 159

professional education, 1, 5, 37, 61–70, 112, 145, 147–148, 152, 154, 167–170

professional judgement, 8, 10, 15–17, 19, 24, 37, 47, 50, 79, 108, 138, 143, 145, 165, 167–170

professional knowledge, 163–171 professional practice knowledge, 147–148,

151, 153, 157 professionalism, 13, 89, 131–145, 153 professionalisation, 5, 8, 62, 131–145, 166 propositional knowledge, 39, 77–78, 126,

147 protocol, 5, 7, 57–59, 95, 115, 117–118,

120, 123–124, 128–129, 131–132, 136, 141, 143–144

Q qualitative research, 6, 87–99

R rationalistic theory of action, 151 reason-in-action, 135 receptive reflection, 36–37, 41–43 recovery of Aristotle’s phronesis, 13–30 reflection, 35–50 reflective judgement, 131–132, 165 reflective practice, 4, 35, 37–39, 42–44, 46,

50, 54, 59, 66, 115, 121–122, 125, 133, 135, 144, 170

regulation, 18, 22, 26–28, 136, 139, 169 related virtues, the, 24, 27–29 relatings, 9, 150–151 responsibility, 5, 26, 49, 56, 58, 62, 64–67,

69, 82, 131, 138, 144, 156, 164, 167

S sayings, 9 sayings, doings, and relatings, 9, 150–151 scientific method, 87, 89, 99, 106 scientific reason, 6–7, 87, 89–91 self-awareness, 7, 115, 121–122, 169 self-regulation, 132, 135, 138–139, 143 service, 13, 46, 83, 88, 126, 131–133, 135,

139, 141–144, 163, 170 sickness, nature of, 58, 166 social practice, 3, 14, 16–18, 24–28, 30,

118–120, 145, 148, 164 subject formation, 102, 109–110, 112

T tacit knowledge, 39–41, 104–106, 109, 112,

125–126, 133, 135, 141, 165 teacher education, 143

INDEX

177

techne, 2–3, 6–7, 10, 35, 37, 67–68, 73–74, 77–78, 83, 92, 101, 106, 109, 113, 119, 149, 152–153, 168, 170–171

technical rationality, 37, 75, 101, 115–120, 125–129, 163

technical skill, 15, 20, 65, 126, 128, 148, 152

telos, 149 theoretical reason, 23–24 transformative potential, 49–50 typification, 55

U uncertainty, 5, 10, 23, 65, 76, 79, 118,

124, 136, 141, 151–155, 157–158, 164–167

V values, 1–2, 7, 24–27, 49, 67, 76–77, 87,

89–91, 94, 103–104 virtue(s), 2–3, 7, 9, 14, 16–17,

65–66

W well-being, 26, 117 wisdom, 73–83 wise practice, 5–6, 73–82, 170

A Agathon, 154 Arendt, H., 38, 154 Aristotle, 1–3, 6–7, 10, 13–30, 35, 37, 50,

57, 65, 67–68, 73, 79, 83, 91–93, 101–102, 108–109, 112–113, 115–116, 119, 128, 147–150, 152, 154, 164, 166, 170

B Benner, P., 124–127 Bernstein, R., 21, 87, 101–102, 107,

113, 151

D Dewey, J., 5, 15, 20, 25, 38, 43, 48, 67 Dunne, J., 1, 5, 30, 67–68, 92–94, 115–116,

119, 154–156, 158

F Fischer, N., 53–54

Flyvbjerg, B., 1–2, 7, 67, 75, 93–94, 101–102, 108–110, 112–113, 170

Foucault, M., 101–102, 108–113

Frank, A., 1, 4–5, 53–59, 163, 166

G Gadamer, H., 152, 154–156, 158 Goodman, N., 39, 43–44 Green, B., 37, 41–42, 45, 47, 76, 104, 136,

160, 166–167, 169

H Habermas, J., 22–23, 45, 49, 94, 149

K Kemmis, S., 2, 4, 8–9, 13–14, 37,

43–44, 51, 76, 147–160, 163–165, 167

Kuhn, T., 7, 23–24, 30, 45, 48, 101–113, 141, 170

L Luntley, M., 116, 125–126

M MacIntyre, A., 1, 15, 17–18, 20–21, 24, 30,

65, 159, 166 Miksanek, T., 58–59 Montgomery, K., 1, 47, 65, 67–69, 119–120,

124, 165

P Polanyi, M., 39, 105 Polkinghorne, D., 1, 47, 101

R Race, P., 115, 121–122, 129 Ryle, G., 39–40, 77

S Sacks, H., 55 Sandywell, B., 1, 38, 41, 44–47, 75 Schön, D., 1, 4–6, 35, 37–48, 50,

65–66, 75, 101–103, 115–128, 133, 135

Schatzki, T., 148, 150

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Kinsella Phronesis as Professional Knowledge