Schön’s book came in 1983, at a time when universities were mainly teaching abstracted knowledge and very little everyday, practitioner knowledge to students. By studying how knowledge is enacted in the everyday life of professional practitioners, he came to the conclusion that learning at university needs to take a different stance to how we can reflect on what we do in our practice and extract knowledge from that. A professional who reflects on their own knowledge gained from the specific cases met in everyday professional life will improve, step by step.
This form of knowledge, the reflected knowledge gained from real-world examples, is of crucial important to those who wish to engage with design thinking or design knowledge.
That is why this work is extra important to researchers focusing on design.