One of my responsibilities as director of a speech-language pathology clinical department in a large medical center is to create an environment in which professional growth is promoted and valued. Therefore, it is important to help staff learn from experience promoting the use of reflection to facilitate learning. Through experiential learning and reflective practice, clinicians shape their clinical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge is a powerful and necessary tool to deal with clinical situations. Clinical knowledge, however, develops over time.

In his book, The Reflective Practitioner, published in 1983 by Basic Books, Donald Schon presents the idea of reflection-in-action. He refers to reflection-in-action as the responses that skillful practitioners bring to their practice, taking the form of problem solving, theory building, or re-appreciating a situation. Divided into three parts, this book exposes the dichotomy between the “hard” knowledge of science and the “soft” knowledge of art and intuition. He closely examines five professional fields—architecture, psychotherapy, engineering, town planning, management— and guides us through an explanation of how professional knowing is like and unlike the kinds of knowledge presented in academic books or scientific papers. In parts I and II, he advocates for an epistemology (the science of the methods and validity of knowledge) of practice based on the idea of reflection-inaction.