Critical judgment and professional practice

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CRITICAL JUDGMENT AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE David Beckett

Department of Educational Policy and Management The University of Melbourne

HOT ACTION The doctor has a little, though not much, time to reach a decision as the queue in the waiting- room lengthens. The lawyer preparing a brief has more time, as does the clergyman visiting a bereaved person; although both have to he prepared to meet the unexpected. But the teachcr has no time at all to reflect: choices made during the preparation of teaching may be decision- governed, but those made during the course of teaching are largely intuitive. The pressure for action is immediate, and to hesitate is to lose. The whole sltuation is far less under control. To adipt a metaphor of Marshall McLuhan’s, action in the classroom is hot action, while action in the consulting room is usually much cooler.’

This is an essay about professionals’ “hot action.”.It seeks to make sense of those processes and acts of judgment endemic to professional work, be it that of teachers, nurses, physicians, surgeons, engineers, lawyers, and the like, from which such workers learn how to go on. Such learning has an epistemological basis in “know how” - and philosophers have a rich literature in “knowing how” to go on.

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND WORKPLACE LEARNING^

Rather than take a stance on the old debates over the boundaries of “professionalism” and on whether certain kinds of work are exclusive to a “profession,” we can start with the assumption that one of the central distinguishing features of a professional’s work (wherever it is found and by whomsoever it is being done) is the expectation of discretionary judgments. Such judgments mark out the very practice of professionals’ work; we may call such discriminatory processes “critical” because they admit of substantial but astonishingly flexible evidential justification. What to do in the heat of the moment? How do I go on? These questions OCCUT every day in professional practice, although they are rarely asked explicitly. Yet they require substantial judgments, made in the flux of practice, and these judgments contribute powerfully to epistemological claims about workplace learning, claims currently generating considerable explicit attention in policymaking and provision in nonschool settings as well as in schools and teaching3

1 , Michael Eraut “Knowledge Creation and Knowledge Use in Professional Contexts,” Studies in Higher Education 10 no. 2 (1985): 128.

2. This scction draws from David Beckett, “Professional Practice for Educators: The Getting of Wisdom?“ Educational Philosophy and Theory 27, no. 2 (1995): 15-33.

3 . For examples in nonschool settings, SCC David Beckett, ”Straining Training: the Epistemology of Workplace Learning,” Studies in Continuing Education 14 , no. 2 (1992): 130-41; David Beckett, “Work- place Learning: Managing Cultural Change,” in The Workplace in Education: Australian Perspectives, ed. Frank Crowther et al. (Sydney: Edward Arnold, 1994) 276; and David Beckett, ed., Educational Philosophy and Theory: Theme Issue: Vocational Education and Training 28, no. 1 (1996) [in press]. For examples in schools and teaching, see: Peter P. Grimmett and Gaalcn L. Erickson, eds., Reflection in Teacher Education

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Some examples show this explicit attention. Informal and incidental learning in the workplace, for professionals and nonprofessionals alike, is being addressed through nonclassroom provision such as mentoring, appraisal, and personal development plans, and through structural innovations such as Total Quality Management and the Learning Organization. The pedagogical point of these is to make adults’ work experiences educationally significant. What seems to be missing is a philosophically rigorous account of this pedagogical point. This essay homes in on the phenomenological assumptions required of such pedagogy.

Professionals’ practice arises in the freedom to discriminate appropriately in the midst of flux - the here and now of the courtroom, the consulting room, the classroom, the ward, the theater, the site visit, the briefing, and so on. Professionals, such as teachers, find themselves making all manner of decisions when faced with the inevitable contingencies arising from their leadership situations amongst other people. When the heat is on, in settings where professional judgment is called for, professionals are expected, and themselves expect, to get it “right.” This rightness is really what an appropriate discrimination will deliver, but of course the claim that thus and so turns out to be “right” does not advance the analysis of judgment very much. Can we get further than this?

Clearly, claims of “rightness” have both epistemological and ethical dimensions. In unpacking these, we can do no better than turn to Aristotle. Within Aristotle’s epistemological trichotomy - the pursuit of truth (theoria), the pursuit of goodness (phronesis), and the pursuit of beauty (poiesis) - professional practice concerns the second pursuit. Phronesis, or practical wisdom, aims at the ethically appropriate, at what it is to be “~t ree twise .”~ What did Aristotle mean by such wisdom?

PHRONESIS

The use of the term “right” for an epistemological claim as well as for an ethical claim is not semantic legerdemain. On the contrary, upon knowledge we can build wisdom, at least according to Aristotle. In his Nicomachean Ethics, knowledge in general, and the understanding to which it gives rise, are both indicative of intellectual virtues, the complementary aspect of moral virtues:

(Columbia: Teachers College Press, 1988); fournal of Curriculum Studies 25, no. 2 (1993) series of articles by Gary Fenstermachcr and Virginia Richardson, Barbara Morgan, Dorothy Vasquez-Lcvy, and Shirley Pendlebury: 101-51; Matthew Lipman, Thinking in Education [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 J; Shirley Pendlebury, “Practical Arguments and Situational Appreciation in Teaching,” EducnfionaZ Theory 40 no. 2 11990): 171-79; and Robert Welker, The Teacher as Expert: A Theoretical und HistoriralExnrnination [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).

4. Jim Mackcnzie, “Street Phronesis,” Iournnl of PhiIosophy of Educaiion 25, no. 2. (1991 I: 153-69

DAVID BECKETT is a Lecturer in Adult Education, Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Policy and Management at the University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia 3052. His primary arcas of scholarship are adult and vocational education, professional development and training, practical knowledge, and workplace learning.

BECKETT Critical Judgment and Professional Practice 137

for we say that some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, libcrality and temperance moral. For in speaking ahout a man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding, hut that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also with respect to his state of mind; and of states of mind we call those which merit praise virtues.;

Virtues of both kinds are acquired, argues Aristotle, by practice: ‘‘we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.” We learn by doing: “men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so, too, we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”6 He expects the virtues to emerge from experience, in practice, as it were.

So, following Aristotle, practical wisdom involves know-how, with the addi- tional ethical dimension that the doing of Xbe for the right reason- the instantiation of virtue. Aristotle’s practical wisdom looks not only dispositional (that is, called forth by the appropriate circumstances), but is also value laden. Moreover, it is context dependent: the rightness, both epistemologically and ethically, which we attribute to successful practice is specific to the nature of that practice.

But here it is essential that we understand what rightness of context means for Aristotle. David ROSS, in his well-known commentary summarizing Aristotle, puts it well:

[Plractical wisdom does producc an effect. Virtue, no doubt, makes us choose the right end to aim at, hut practical wisdom makcs us choose the right means. Practical wisdom, however, cannot exist independently of virtue. The power to attain one’s end, be it good or bad, is not practical wisdom but cleverness. Let the right end be aimed at -and only virtue can ensure this -and cleverness becomes practical wisdom; let the wrong end he aimed at, and it becomes mere clever roguery.’

It follows that practical wisdom has an endbeyond itself. Of phronesis, Ross reminds us that

Practical wisdom is the power of good deliberation ... about how a whole state of being which will satisfy us is to be bought into existence.. . .Thus, the practically wise man should know, to start with, what are the things “good for man.’”

Phronesis does, however, move beyond the merely prudential: it contributes to ethical virtue. In this sense, the utility of phronesis lies beyond itself; even the framing of the goal of virtue does not determine the nature of the means to get there - the techne. Phronesis, like techne, is a means to other purposes, yet its development, also like that of techne, brings its own satisfactions. Neither are to be regarded mechanistically, but as expressions of the practical judgments which ordinary (that is, logically contingent) life consists in. We notice immediately that the workplace practices of teachers, engineers, doctors, clergy, and lawyers, for example, are replete with contextually specific, socially significant “hot action.” For professionals, this is ordinary life.

5. Aristotle, Basic Works, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 19411, 952

6. Ibid.

7. David Ross, Aristotle (London: Methuen 1964; first pub. 1923) 220.

8. Ross, Aristotle, 217

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Two current attempts to unpack practical wisdom, at least insofar as educators are concerned, rely respectively upon critical thinking and upon reflective practice. Critical thinking engages the reasoning and justification people use implicitly in acting thus and so, and reflective practice engages the experiences people inevitably have in acting thus and so. Both these attempt to make explicit the processes people undergo in acting as they do, in the expectation that improvements can be made henceforth.

Neither is be regarded technocratically. Indeed, Harvey Siegel argues against this in an article evocatively entitled “Not By Skill Alone: The Centrality of Character to Critical Thinking.”9 He regards this “Character View” of critical thinking as “justifiably dominant, in that it is a more adequate conception of critical thinking than [the] recommended alternative.”’” This “character” conception involves ”not only thinking skills, but character traits, dispositions, attitudes, and habits of mind as well - which complex I have elsewhere called the ’critical

Similarly, reflective practice is clearly located beyond “technical rationality” (as much literature calls technocratic conceptions of practice). Donald Schon begins his book, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, with the famous metaphor of the contrast between the “high ground of research-based theory and technique,” and the swampy lowland - “the problems of greatest human concern.”12 Practitioners work in the swamp; their problems are not well-formed:

If [practitioners] are to get a well-formed problem matched to their familiar theories and techniques, they must construct it from the materials of a situation that is, to use John Dewey’s [ 1938) term, “problematic.” And the problem of problem-setting is not well-formed ... .When a practitioner sets a prohlem, he chooses and names the things hc will notice. In his road-building situation, the civil engineer may see drainage, soil stability, and ease of maintenance; he may not see the differential effects of the road on the economies of the towns that lie along its route. Through complementary acts of naming and framing, the practitioner selects things for attention and organizes them, guided by an appreciation of the situation that gives it coherence and sets a direction for action. so problem-setting is an ontological process - in Nelson Goodman’s ( 1978) memorable word, a form of w~rld-rnalring.’~

Our point of entry to the development of professionals’ judgment - the judgment that “this is the ‘right’ thing to do” - will assume the Character View of critical thinking, together with what we may call a constructivist approach to problem-setting. The constructivism will draw on philosophical psychology, cen- tered on “trying” and the development of an epistemology for “hot action” more philosophically rigorous than the current emphasis on reflection would indicate.

One qualification is required. It must be stated, against Michael Eraut, who seems to regard teachers as unlikely practitioners of Schonian “reflection-in-

9. Harvey Siegel , “Not By Skill Alone: The Centrality of Character to Critical Thinking,” Informal Logic 15, no. 3 (1993): 163-77.

10. Ibid., 163.

1 1. Ibid.

12. Donald Schon, Educating the Reflective Practitioner [San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987).

13. Schiin, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, 4. His reference to Dewey refers to Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1993) and Goodman refers to Ways of World Making (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978).

BECKETT Critical Judgment and Professional Practice

action,“ that no occupational distinctions will be made concerning the “hot action“ of professionals’ ~ 0 r k . I ~ All of us make judgments whilst feeling the heat!

Notwithstanding that, Eraut, like Siege1 and Schon, is correct to draw attention to the diversity and complexity of the professional workplace - the here and now will range widely depending on the individuation of the unit, or episode, of practice [the lesson, the briefing, the consultation) and the extent of the commitment to the recipient of that practice (a series over months, a single unit, a spasmodic or random involvement). In short, contexts of practice will vary enormously. We will assume a common unit of action, called an episode, which will launch a discussion of some aspects of philosophical psychology.

REFLECTION

Let us reiterate that our focus is on moments of critical judgment present in any professional workplace when the action is ”hottest,” and that this contributes to “know-how.” These are, surely, typically unspecifiable in regulative terms. They are frequently what Michael Polanyi has identified as “tacit” (assumed, unvoiced) knowledge, which has what he calls a “‘latent character’ ... of which we are aware subsidiarily in our sense of intellectual power based on this knowledge.”15 The “subsidiary” awareness he refers to marks the deflected self-consciousness that occurs when we are attending closely to matters in hand, whether these be percep- tual, physical, or some combination. If we are concentrating on them, our energies go into those experiences, rather than into the assimilative experience itself. As Polanyi says,

Thus we do this [by] modifying, subsidiarily, our interpretation of sensory clues by striving for clear and coherent perceptions, or enlargingour skill without focallyknowinghowbypracticing them in ever new situations.lG

Polanyi’s tacit (assimilative, emergent) knowledge is akin to Gilbert Ryle’s dispositional routinization: ways of going about things that just seem “right” for the time and place at which they are manifest.“ What Aristotelian phronesis does is draw attention to ethical purposes beyond efficacy or prudence. It therefore enriches our concept of “know-how,” and equips us to examine a more recent development - the phenomenological presence of such know-how in ”reflection.”

Schon locates his notion of knowledge-in-action within the tradition of philosophical inquiry advanced by Ryle and Polanyi.18 But it is reflection-in-action that is the central concept in Schon‘s analysis. He uses know-how to contribute to a continual personal construction, or perhaps “reading,” of the practice in which one is engaged.

14. Eraut “Knowledge Creation and Knowledge Use,” 128

15. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), chap. 5, see esp. p. 103.

16. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 112 [emphasis added).

17. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind /London: Hutchinson, 1949), 46-56

18. Schon, Educating The Reflective Practitioner, 22-26.

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The definition of reflection-in-action is never concisely rendered by Schon, but one way to unpack the term is through what he distinguishes as a “constructivist” and extemporaneous epistemology from that which he calls the “technical rational’’ model of professional practice. That traditional view he characterizes as largely an inherited, objectivist [facts-based) set of rules for practice which are applied in individual practices.

By contrast, Schon’s reflective practitioner lives in a phenomenologically framed world, with his or her thinking and acting intertwined:

Through countless acts of attention and inattention, naming, sense-making, boundary-setting, and control, they [that is, communities of practitioners] make and maintain the worlds matched to theirprofessional knowledgeandknow-how.. . .Whenpractitionersrespondto theindeterminate zones of practice by holding a reflective conversation with the materials of their situations, they remake a part of their practice world and thereby reveal thc usually tacit processes or world- malting that underlie all of their practice.’’

Reflection-in-action can also be followed by reflection-on-action, Schon argues, which follows the slice of time he calls an “action-present” - an episodic individuation of time based on the efficacy of the action to the situation before the practitioner. So reflection-on-action occurs with hindsight; reflection-in-action is the hot and immediate slice of practice within which the professional can make a difference then and there.

Reflection-in-action thus includes a rich array of psychological predicates, as the quotation above includes. Dewey has had a good deal of interest to say on this, much of it neglected so far.20 One commentator, Deborah Court, draws attention to Dewey’s remarks on “deliberation” as an inclusive term for such diversity of reflection, because both deliberation and reflection involve “thoughtful thinking” and some element of “time out” to do this thinkingz1 This point takes issue with Schon’s identification of immediacy with reflective interactivity. It is indeed hard, and may be impossible, to conceptualize both the thinking and the doing separately, so that they then coalesce in an extemporaneous judgment that thus and so is the ”right” action. This essay grapples with this issue.

Furthermore, even granted that “reflection-in-action’’ exists, no amount of such elaborately outlined reflection need improve anyone‘s circumstances, least of all the practitioner’s own circumstances, if there is no context of judgment within which creative responses are made. Another commentator, Geraldine Gilliss makes this point:

there is a danger in the reflection-in-action approach of creating wholly idiosyncratic practitioners whose primary way of operating is to invent unique solutions to problems that [to them at least) are unique. Uniqueness, carried to extremes, is a barrier to the development and sharing of know1edge.l’

19. Ibid., 36.

20. For example: John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct [New York The Modern Library, 1950), 189- 198.

21. Deborah Court, “‘Reflection-in-Action’: Some Definitional Problems,” in Grimmett and Erickson, Reflection in Teacher Education, 143.

22. Geraldine Gilliss, “Schon’s Reflective Practitioner: A Model for Teachers!” in Grimmett and Erickson, Reflection in Teacher Education, 47, 50.

BECKETT Critical Judgment and Professional Practice 14 1

It must be stated however, that Schon has, however, dealt with this objection to a large extent. He leads into the “artistry” of such extemporaneous judgments by emphasizing, following Michael Oakeshott, that professional practice is part of a communitarian tradition of expertise. He mentions the “extraordinary knowledge” of the professional, and how this is bound up with a ”bargain with society”: a mandate to practice autonomously, but in the common good. He mentions Dewey’s phrase, “the traditions of a calling” -media, languages, tools, institutional settings, units of practice (cases, visits, lessons), and the like.2” This prepares the practitioner for the boundary-setting and other elements of world-view construction that make individuated reflection-in-action specifiable as artistry.

Let us summarize the two main criticisms discussed above. First, the breadth of the central concept: Schon’s “reflection-in-action” is intended to capture the seemingly sui generis nature of professional practice. In thinking and doing what is right, the professional makes (that is, creates as if an artist) a response that turns out to be providential. But we are not sure if there is such a phenomenon. Second, the context of that “making”: This is shaped by the particular professional expertise, ethics, and presumably personal reading of social values that the individual practitioner possesses. In short, he or she inevitably participates in a traditional professional culture.

We have already noted that Schon does demonstrate an understanding of the contextuality of judgment, and his analysis has much to offer to enrich the understanding of critical thinking. The Schonian “action present” - what we may call the intense attention to the application of skill embedded both ethically and epistemologically in the pursuit of doing “right” or ”good” - in effect assumes a Character View of critical thinking. As that View appears in the critical thinking literature, it is individualistic, but this is not necessarily so. At least in the case of the critical thinking evident in judgments endemic to professional practice, the crucial “character”-istics are explicitly and implicitly sociocultural. What is efficacious, that is, what will achieve what is practically “wise,“ is informed byphronesis, as we noted earlier.

Nevertheless, the first criticism of “reflection-in-action” - that this, the core concept required for Schon’s analysis, may not exist - remains. Two inquiries are essential. First, the minor one, locatingphronesis in moments of hot action requires better clarification of the episode of practice, such that an appropriate contextuality is preserved. Second, and in consequence, we need to inquire whether there is such a phenomenon as Schon’s reflection-in-action.

To advance these two inquiries, we neednext to invoke an important distinction in philosophical psychology: that between ‘‘acting with an intention” and “acting intentionally.” Then we will discuss the phenomenology of practice as an example of an action-event called “trying,” with the contextuality of those events exempli- fied in “desiring” and “desiring to try.” Finally, we will return to our two inquiries, in the light of these discussions, suggest a better way to regard “hot action,” and conclude briefly.

23. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics [London: Methuen, 1Y62), 32

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INTENTIONS

Here we draw on the work of Lawrence Davis, who makes a distinction widely recognized in philosophical psychology: If the action is the outcome of prior deliberation, it may be regarded as action with an intention - what the agent intends, literally, to do.24 However, if an action appears immediately and spontane- ously, it may be regardedas acting intentionally -what the agent finds herself doing. She is fully aware that what she is doing is being done deliberately, albeit without deliberation.

Now, if the episode of practice is more than a few moments in duration, opportunities for intentional action abound. Certainly, Schon’s architectural draftsperson [his benchmark reflective practitioner) has hours, days, and perhaps weeks to get the problem formed. So do most professionals. Schon calls this process of engagement “artistry,” and this seems plausible, largely because the judgments involved on this scale of intentional action are embedded in what Vincent Tomas, writing in aesthetics, has called “conscious critical Professionals stay with the problem: they worry it, it worries them. There is often the time to engage problems in the normal course of practice. One of the aspirations of professional life is a large measure of freedom over the conditions of practice, including the time available to practice.

But often there is not that time. There are prolonged episodes of practice during which the requirements for successful judgments are moment-by-moment: in a classroom, an operating theater, a courtroom, and so on. These episodes admit of further discrete “sub-episodic” analysis, since it is frequently through incremental and aggregational assimilation of a series of judgments that, overall, problems of practice are solved. Attending to minutiae, moment by moment, as it were, reveals an overall intention to get a problem solved. That much is clear. However, the actual resolution of the problem is approached without a solution in mind, only with “acting intentionally” in uniquely episodic, and then sub-episodic, practice as the characterization of an intentional engagement with the problem. It is the logic of the fine judgment required in such “acting intentionally” that is our focus. More epigrammatically: How, within the discrete, do we practice our discretion?

The immediacy of the conscious critical control in sub-episodic practice is analogous to the creativity of the painter. Indeed fine judgment is partly constitutive of fine art. R.G. Collingwood, also writing in aesthetics, reminds us that

What our painter is saying, then, comes to this. The paintedpicture is not produced by a further activity upon which he embarks, when his aesthetic activity has already arrived at completion, in order to achieve hy its means a non-aesthetic end. Nor is it produced by an activity anterior to the aesthetic, as means towards the achievement of aesthetic experience. It is produced by an activity which is somehow or other bound up with the development of that experience itself.16

24. Lawrence Davis, Theory of Action [New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1979), chap. 4.

25. Vincent Tomas, “Creativity in Art,” in Contemporary Studies in Aesthetics. ed. Francis Coleman (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1968), 345. 26. R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1938), 304.

BECKETT Critical Judgment and Professional Practice

And, targeting what it is to be //bound up” with that experience: The activity of thinking or intellectual activity always presupposes the activity of attention, not in the scnse that it can only happen after it, hut in the sense that it rests upon it as a foundation. Attention is going on concurrently with intellcction.2’

Attention to the situation is then as much a feature of human doing (or action) as it is a feature of human reflecting: people do not just learn by doing, but by doing and thinking in some reciprocal relationship - what Dewey seems to have meant by deliberation. The reciprocity is emphasized if attention, or the stance of attending, is grafted to intentionality. And the appropriate intentionality in this situation is, as we earlier identified, that of acting intentionally.

TRYING Leaving aside the debate about how others ascribe intentionality to one’s

behavior, and staying with the example of the practitioner’s experience, we need to remind ourselves of Wittgenstein’s famous statement connecting acting, intentionality, and trying. Wittgenstein asks, “what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?”2s The missing ingredient is some purpose, perhaps shaped as a desire, arising from attending to the matter in hand, intended to make a difference in the way things are. Professional practice is typically just this sort of situation. His next statement is apposite: “When I raise my arm I do not usually try to raise Wittgenstein’s analysis suggests that most human actions are of this kind: it is what we find ourselves doing that illuminates our purposes. This is clearly true of those practice situations where there are strong elements of extemporization and extrapolation. Solutions do occur when the hitherto unconnected are linked, and we know that often, and paradoxically, the secret to this is not to try too hard! Creativity steals upon one, it can be argued.3o

Despite this recognition and appreciation of the seemingly capricious nature of creativity, it must be affirmed that people do work themselves into a state of skill- acquisition and conscious attention such that a timely disengagement from the problem provides the psychological space for the creativity to occur. Specifically, in professional practice, we are dealing with problems, so effort is required. Again, Wittgenstein makes a helpful point: ‘“At all costs I will get to that house‘ - But if there is no difficulty about it can I try at all costs to get to the h o u ~ e ? ” ~ ’ Our issue then becomes: leaving aside the role of creativity in critical judgments, what sort of effort is likely to generate the greatest likelihood of solutions to problems arising in practice?

Let us recall here that effort is required to decide to continue thus and so. That is perhaps the most significant judgment made at the sub-episodic level, moment-by- moment, in practice - something to the effect that ”I am committed to finding a solution here.” It is true that we find ourselves acting intentionally: pushing on, as

27. Collingwood, Principles of Art, 204. 28. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations [Oxford: Blacltwell, 1963), 161. 29. Ibid. 30. But not here: see Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London: Hutchinson, 1964). 31. Wittgenstein, I’hilosophical Investigations, 161.

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it were, with a series of judgments that thus and so is the right action to take next. But that is part of a broader commitment to solving a problem. So it is curious that we cannot catch ourselves in a state of “trying.” Nor can we identify an event called “trying.” The experience of acting intentionally in intimate and reciprocal engagement with a problem resists further atomization, yet a sequence of “tryings” is exactly what may give a solution to the problem before us. Painters trying to get the artwork “right” know when to stop, and when to give up. They know when their judgments at the canvas are “right” ones. And they can pick an error - but they have to make the right and the wrong judgments, to recognize them when they appear! In these matters, phronesis grows out of poiesis.

Now workplace practice judgments, although they invite creativity, are not permitted quite as much experimental latitude as are, say, painters’ judgments, since human circumstances are typically the substance of that practice, giving power to the ascription or claim of professionalism. These “professional” tryings are informed by purposes that are public, prominent, and contractual. Let us explore this briefly, and in doing so, emerge from the sub-episodic.

One expects a professional to act intentionally within a conceptual framework that is broadly agreed to by all involved. There are, in short, societal and cultural categories, both epistemological and ethical, that locate practice in terms of expertise (or competence), disinterest, and accountability, to say the least.32 But acknowl- edging their significance allows us to re-enter the minutiae better able to advance the analysis of sub-episodic judgment.

The first point is that “trying” admits of unitary, holistic characterization, even at the sub-episodic level of analysis. This is well brought out by Irving Thalbcrg in discussing four types of trying:

(1) exertion: using energy (expending oneself to dissipate stress) (2) causal: bringing about an effect (taking lessons to gain a skill) (3) procedural: going through a process to achieve something (a pre-test, or enrolling) (4) initiatory: “Here no spatial or temporal crevasse divides attempt from accomplishment, as in causal undertakings. If a hiker succeeds in his attempt to scale a precipice, reaching the summit is a terminus, rather than an effect, of his climbing.”33

Initiatory trying is unitary, unlike the other three kinds. More than this, the wholeness of it is greater than the sum of its parts. There will be for any new situation a grappling with the minutiae, when the practitioner seeks mastery over the first and perhaps foremost components. The sense of mastery grows incrementally, until the sub-episodic judgments form a sequence, and professional confidence in thus and so being the “right” action is justified

32. See Paul Hager and David Beckett, ”Philosophical Underpinnings of the Integrated Conception of Competence,“ Educational Philosophy and Theory 27, no. 1 (1995): 1-24.

33. Irving Thalberg, Enigmas OIAgency: Studies in the Philosophy of Humnn Action [London: Allen and Unwin, 19721, 90 (examples added).


The central point is that what is displayed on the way through, as it were, may not be expressed as an intention (that is, pre-specified). The practitioner is in a position of critical judgment, where what is required to continue is perhaps impro- visatory or extemporaneous. The justifications come, literally, after the trying, with hindsight, and in the light of sociocultural criteria shaping what it is to be this sort of professional in this sort of situation. In the heat of the moment-by-moment action, justifications have no impact on judgments of how to go on - with one crucial exception - but that does not diminish the significance of intentionality, in the sense of the primacy of “acting intentionally.” The one exception is the justification of actually going on because to go on in such and such a way is efficacious - it gets the practitioner where he or she wants to go

DESIRING AND DESIRING TO TRY

Clearly, then, some belief about what is required for practical efficacy is essential. One cannot try A (an action) unless one desires, or wants, to try A . The desiring of A, or to put it more specifically, the desirability of A in terms of one’s professional context, arises, in the case of immediate judgments, simultaneously with the action.

In current work on intentionality, this has become known as the “component” view, because although the causal relationship between an intention, or acting intentionally, and the action-event itself is recognized, it is not that of two phenom- ena, external to each other, in linear succession. Frederick Adams, in a recent issue of the Canadian Tournal of Philosophy acknowledges that

Intentions and attempts can form at the speed of thought. They necd not involve delibcration. This theory [the component theory] does not require unrealistic bouts of mental energy to be spent prior to each intentional act or attempt. The formation of many intentions is routine, habitual, instantaneous and without effort (as the intention and attempt to duck a punch or answer a ringing p h ~ n e ) . ’ ~

Further, the theory holds that tryings are complex, not simple. They involve intendings causing things - intentions at work, as it were:

The theory also says that intending is not brute or isolated, hut requires other mental states to form; specifically beliefs and desires of the appropriate contents.. . .The contents of the beliefs and desires must match the naturc of the attempt. The elegance of this theory lies in the match between the contents of the contentful states (beliefs, desire, intentions) and the contents of the descriptions under which the action or attempt is intentional:’5

Now it must be recognized that the component view is controversial because it accommodates both causality and conativeness (desiring, wanting) under the single (‘elegant”) theory. Adams and his sparring partner, Alfred Mele, disagree on the adequacy of the component view in this respect, although they agree, in earlier joint writing, that there is no conative entity called ”volition” that drives action. Mele states,

34. Frederick Adams, ”Trying, Desiring and Desiring to Try,” Conndinn rournal of Philosophy 24, no. 4 j 1994): 613-26.

35. Ihid., 617.

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If the view attributed to me is that tryings have desires (or intentions) as components, Adams has misspoken. The view we advanced is that ”tryings are effects of the normal functioning of appropriate intentions”. . . . The idea that tryings essentially have events of intention-acquisition as causes should not be confused with the distinct idea that tryings essentially have such events - or the intentions themselves - as

But Mele’s disagreement with the component view of intentional action, based on counterexamples to the effect that one can be indifferent to A-ing and still try A (in which case A is caused, but without an intention to bring it about) are rather remote from our “hot action,” where the nature of professional practice prevails upon the practitioner to seek efficacious outcomes. Adams’ more holistic component view meshes with Thalberg’s “initiatory trying” in these ways:

(1) The ontological reflexivity of initiatory trying fits what goes on in episodes of professional practice. The component view does indeed provide that there need be, in Thalberg’s words, “no spatial or temporal crevasse“ that “divides attempt from accomplishment, as in causal undertakings.” Now Mele can certainly explain the coalescence of attempt and accomplishment, but at the risk of understating their jointly exhaustive role in acting intentionally. Adams‘ more inclusive theory gives trying and desiring to try equal and co-extensive prominence, because the accomplishment of A arises from both.

(2) The phenomenological significance of initiatory trying is preserved. The accomplishment of scaling the precipice is recognized incrementally, from one grappling-iron grasp to the next, and thus the arrival at the summit is indeed the summit, but also the summation, of the climb, for the climber. It is difficult to see what is “causally” significant about such a description of an achievement, in terms other than those intimately connected to that achievement. The component view acknowledges the meaningfulness of the continuum of effort.

( 3 ) The integrative utility of initiatory trying unites the occurrence of “hot action,” when professionals find themselves acting intentionally, with more dispositional and deliberative acting-with-an-intention. Mele’s separation of causality from the component view lends itself to deliberative action where the deliberation precedes the action. This is less congenial to the analysis of professional practice at the sub-episodic level, where, as we noted earlier, a judgment to go on will be framed by what is justified as efficacious. This must be invoked (albeit momentarily, and minimally) by the professional disposition to persist with the practical problem.

For these reasons, the current component view of intentionality is to be regarded as a useful development of Thalberg’s identification of initiatory trying, over twenty years ago. It fleshes out Thalberg’s claim that such trying is “unitary” - indeed it shows how professional practice at the episodic and sub-episodic levels can be interrelated. Armed with this, let us return to the two inquiries, stated previously, concerning reflection-in-action.

36. Alfred Mele, ”Desiring to Try: Reply to Adams,“ Canadian lournal of Philosophy 24, no. 4 (1994): 629. See Frederick Adams and Alfred Mele, “The Intention/Volition Debate,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1993): 323-38, for the original discussion.


REFLECTING ON REFLECTION Our two inquiries were identified as follows: First, the minor one, locating

phronesis in moments of hot action requires better clarification of the episode of practice, such that an appropriate contextuality is preserved. Second, and in consequence, we need to inquire whether there i s such a phenomenon as Schon’s reflection-in-action.

We are now able to complete these inquiries. The first, ostensibly minor, one carries the burden for both, as it turns out. Professionals’ judgments about how to go on (or “knowing how” to go on) are best conceptualized if there is a built-in recognition of the spontaneous oscillation between episodic and sub-episodic intentionality. Sub-episodically, that is, moment-by-moment, by incremental attention to the matters at hand, professionals’ actions are guided by the single judgment that it is right to go on - that is, the action they find themselves doing is appropriate for the purposes generated by the context.

But this is only half of the story. At the same time, the episodic location of those actions [a longer time frame, such as during a lesson, a consultation, a cross- examination, or an operation) gives a context to the sub-episodic. Across such episodes, initiatory trying takes place, with the virtues of ontological reflexivity, phenomenological significance, and integrative utility, as detailed above. At the heart of initiatory trying is the component view of intentionality, where trying, desiring, and desiring to try are causally and conceptually related in a single theory.

This theory has a rich role in contextualizing the sub-episodic because it links, or integrates, the practitioner’s attempts [ tryings) to accomplishments [desiderata). But it does this in three ways:

[ 1) It does not merely link what could be regarded as inert beliefs, desires, and purposes to actions intended to bring these about - although it does at least do this. (2) Nor does it restrict its intentionality to deliberative [but not necessarily inert) situations - although it does also do this. ( 3 ) But, further, it connects the reflexive dynamism of the attempting [both episodically and sub-episodically) to the accomplishing. In this way, it most closely maps what we find ourselves doing in the “hot action“ -having a general idea of where we are going, not having a clear idea of how to get there, but undertaking a series of actions intending to attempt an accomplishment. Now, turning to our second inquiry: is there such a thing as Schon‘s reflection-

in-action? The short answer must be that there is not. At the sub-episodic level, we are not reflecting at all, rather, we are making a judgment to go on. This is analogous to the painter finding that thus and so is efficacious, once the marks are on the canvas. And we have established that the episodic level of professional judgment relates reflexively to the sub-episodic, but not reflectively. On the contrary, the dynamism is shaped by attempts (tryings) towards accomplishment. This is what makes the action “hot.” Extemporization, for example, is a manifestation of initiatory trying: It is literally showing [or making, or taking) an initiative. But what the evidence is for such an initiative is revealed by the doing, not by ”reflection-in-action.”

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ANTICIPATION

Accordingly, a better theorization of professionals’ “hot action” will decenter reflection, and instead concentrate upon anticipation. Anticipative action is really what hot action is about. Adams come close to it when he states,

Beliefs play a role, with desires, in mapping out and coordinating goals to pursue and means of satisfying desired goals. Beliefs represent the world, its current states, and the lawful ways in which actions and behavior affect the current state of the world and bring about future states.?’

The last phrase - the bringing about of future states - opens up a conceptual can of worms. Here is an example. In education and writing, and through UNESCO, for example, increasing attention is being given to what is becoming known as “futures

It is difficult to see how this gets much purchase in the thinking of educational professionals - especially school teachers -if it is not phenomenologically prominent. That is, does it figure readily and practically in a teacher’s planning and “hot action,” as, say, an historical perspective does? However much “futures studies“ are acknowledged as desiderata, getting such perspectives out of curriculum documents and into the heads of practitioners is difficult if something so open-ended does not connect with the “action-present.”

If one remains wedded to a “feedback” view of phronesis, where the equation is about where the practitioner wants to be, informing how he or she will get there, there has not been much movement beyond the limitations of Schonian reflection- in-action. Adams’ ”bringing about of future states” concerns the emergence of accomplishment, but seems to imply that the intentionality required to provoke that emergence is captured by feedback mechanisms, albeit elegant ones.

On the contrary, the analysis in this essay suggests that the dynamism and unitary nature of initiatory trying, and the availability of reflexivity between attempting and accomplishing invites serious reconsideration of the hold that feedback, or “means-end,“ judgments have on human reasoning. The project ahead is too big to advance here, but the issue is this: Can a concept of “feedforwardness” change the nature of accomplishing, as much as ”feedback” is expected to change the nature of attempting? In a truly reflexive relationship, this should be possible. Not only that, but the analogy with creative art seems to indicate this is already part of our human experience. Painters change their “vision” once they get started; they do not merely change the attempts to accomplish a vision (however blurred it may be). Similarly, in professional life, all manner of practical beliefs edge into our intentions. Ethical responsibility (to the environment, to various sociocultural groups, and so on) and epistemological authority (mediated by scholarship, bench-marking, and so on) are prominent and vigorously dynamic dimensions of this continual redefinition of “accomplishment.” Now in the face of this, it seems anticipative action is impossible - how could any practitioner anticipate the way things might be panning out for his or her particular area? The response must be that all practitioners are

37 Adains, “Trying, Desiring and Desiring to Try,” 619.

38 Hedley Beare and Richard Slaughter, Education for the Twenty first Century (London: Routledge, 1993)


players in the game, and that reactive ethics and epistemologies are, like reflection- in-action, inadequate conceptualizations of bases of judgments that thus and so is the right action.

A CONSTRUCTIVE CONCLUSION

In closing, we are mindful of the constructivist assumptions made by Schon. We are, he says, “remaking” our practice worlds. Even if the ontological bent of these remarks is worrisome, the epistemological import is significant: The “conversation” Schon wants is reflective. We have seen that this is only partly adequate. An anticipative conversation with our practices is closer to what goes on in “hot action.” This paper has argued that there is a rigorous argument, advanced through philosophical psychology, showing that the phenomenology of professional practice can shape phronesis in creative ways.

THIS ESSAY HAS BENEFITED FROM anonymous reviewers’ suggestions, from communication with Jim Mackenzie at the University of Sydney, from joint and ongoing work with Paul Hager at the University of Technology, Sydney, and from its presentation at the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation and Education Conference, Brock University, St. Catherine’s, Canada (May 1995).

Critical judgment and professional practice

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