Reflective practice variants and the creative practitioner

Abstract

This chapter is about the kinds of reflection found in the practice of creative practitioners and what we can learn from this. It begins by revisiting Donald Schön's original definition of reflective practice, which was derived from studies of professional practitioners. It then describes several variants of reflective practice that extend the original definitions of reflection in and on action in the context of creative practice in music composition, visual and sculptural art, design and public art installations This reveals a more nuanced picture of how practitioners reflect as they explore ideas and experiment with materials in the creation of artworks. The understandings that have emerged from this research have implications for applying reflective practice as a method in practice-based research, the principles of which are described in the introductory chapter of this handbook. The chapter concludes with a brief account of how we can learn to be more reflective following the example of the creative practitioners. Overall, it summarises key findings and observations that are described in detail in the book The Creative Reflective Practitioner. 1