Infed - The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education
Infed, the
"Encyclopaedia of Informal Education" describes itself as site to "explore key ideas, practices and thinkers in informal education and lifelong learning."
One of the entries in this online resource that appears relevant to our work is dedicated to Donald Schon who is described as follows:
"Donald Alan Schon (1930-1997) trained as a philosopher, but it was his concern with the development of reflective practice and learning systems within organizations and communities for which he is remembered."
The following selection from this
website captures some of Schon's key ideas:
Donald Schon on learning and the loss of the stable state:
The loss of the stable state means that our society and all of its institutions are in continuous processes of transformation. We cannot expect new stable states that will endure for our own lifetimes.
We must learn to understand, guide, influence and manage these transformations. We must make the capacity for undertaking them integral to ourselves and to our institutions.
We must, in other words, become adept at learning. We must become able not only to transform our institutions, in response to changing situations and requirements; we must invent and develop institutions which are ‘learning systems’, that is to say, systems capable of bringing about their own continuing transformation.
The task which the loss of the stable state makes imperative, for the person, for our institutions, for our society as a whole, is to learn about learning.
What is the nature of the process by which organizations, institutions and societies transform themselves?
What are the characteristics of effective learning systems?
What are the forms and limits of knowledge that can operate within processes of social learning?
What demands are made on a person who engages in this kind of learning?
Donald A. Schon (1973) Beyond the Stable State,
Harmondsworth: Penguin. Pages 28-9
Reproduced from the encyclopaedia of informal education
www.infed.org