AW: Practitioner

[Artur Ferreira da Silva]

Reinhard and all:

At 10:12 13-07-2003 +0200, Visuelle Protokolle wrote:

>very shortly I want to tell that I hate this word "Practitioner". Our
>"International  Forum of Visual Practitioners Association", which I a am a
>member of, uses this description also, and I am fighting for a new and more
>beautiful name - so now also you my OS friends come up with this name?
>Please don't!

I will not discuss what someone thinks to be a "beautiful name" or not. But
I suppose that the meaning of a name depends on the context in which we
understand that word and the references we join to the word.

As I have previously said there in no such word in Portuguese as
"practitioner" (but "practice" exists, of course). And I think, since many
years ago, that this is a big limitation of our language as it makes
difficult for us to understand a very important part of reality - and a
fundamental one as it relates to learning.

So, it is probably useful if I state what are my references about this.

I think the first one is the book "Theory in Practice", by Argyris and
Schon (1974) that is NOT a book on how to apply theory in practice - on the
contrary, is about how every practice has an underlying theory, that one
sometimes can not even recognize in self or others - hence the difference
between a Model 1 and a Model 2 and the absolute need for double-loop learning.

This is probably only a Preface to Schon's masterpiece, "The Reflective
Practitioner - How Professionals Think in Practice" (Schon, 1982) where a
lot of professions from Architecture to psychotherapy are analyzed to see
how "practitioners think in action" and how the professional skills are
normally acquired through the example and the guidance of older
"practitioners", much more than in "classes" and certainly not in
"Professional certification". That way of learning-by-doing,
learning-by-example and learning-by-being-coached has a long tradition in
the European Guilds and has been further developed by Schon in "Educating
the Reflective Practitioner - Toward New Design for Teaching and Learning
in the Professions" (1987).

More recently, a similar idea has been developed in a different direction
by Etienne Wenger, a Swiss living and working in the USA, in his
"Communities of Practice - Learning, Meaning and Identity" (1998) and later
with "Cultivating Communities of Practice" (2002). Communities of Practice
(ioners) are gaining acceptance as a powerful way to promote individual and
organizational learning. Something we all know in OST training and in this
list after a long time.

I have myself worked with Schon' s concepts (as well as Open Space and
Learning Organizations - de Geus version, not Senge's) in a there year
experiment (1996-99) to teach management skills to engineering students. I
have a paper presented to a Conference (in English) on that experience that
I can send to anyone interested. In fact I am also moderating a list to
discuss Communities of Practice in Iberian languages... (everything relates
to everything...)

So, I hope that you can understand now why "practitioner" and "community of
practitioners" make a lot of sense to me. But I respect that you "hate" the
word. Love and hate are normally very specific to one's own genuin context.

Regards

Artur

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