On Sep 5, 2013, at 4:29 AM, Ken Friedman wrote:
> mastery is built on practice, practice, practice – habituated learning applied to a score with deep reflection and transformative power.
Although Ken is speaking here of musicians, rehearsal is also a general form of cognitive reinforcement that people seeking to present or realize their ideas use. It is not only to habituate by repetition, but also to put performance under the transforming "eyes" of both evaluative and reflective thought. I call this iterative cycling "The Reflective Loop", because it goes from a designed expression and plan of action synthesized and expressed through Formative thought, through Procedural execution, Evaluative assessment of the performance and its outcome, Reflective Interpretation of the change in expression and plan that occur, and back to revise the operative Formative expression and plan of action if needed or desired. (Schon's Reflection in Action) This is an empirical process constrained by the design expression and informed through Evaluative and Reflective thought that considers both new and prior experience. Transformative change in the last expression and a new plan of action result when the changes in performance are interpreted through Reflective thought . It does not matter if the plan is a score, script, instructions, or if execution is a musical performance, a play, an injection molding process, or building a prototype, one gathers skill and knowledge by evaluating and reflecting on the process and its product. Change may be in an improved performance, an improved product, or simply a heightened memory of the performance and how to repeat it. A plan of action and its product expressed through Formative thought are transformed or confirmed through repeat cycles through the loop.
The issue in this incremental transformation occurs when Evaluation is negative or Reflection does not support continuing in the loop. In the case when intentions are not satisfied anomalies may arise in the focal expression to motivate a restatement of intention. This, in turn, spurs change in Referential objects and Relational concepts to support a revised formative expression and plan. This is how new ideas come into play and a new expression and plan arise to guide further activity. Intention, Referential thinking, and Relational Thinking are abstract, and Formative thought/design expression is the bridge to Procedural, Evaluative, and Reflective thinking as well as the constraining expression of both process and outcome. Constrained in this way thought and action in the reflective loop is situated and empirical. Reflective interpretation acts in a constraining way even during recall because it uses knowledge gained through experience to interpret/adapt formative/design expressions, Whether starting from a directly stimulated expression or from within the Reflective loop an episode of designing is only over when the intention guiding it is satisfied or dismissed.
(A too short interpretation of design thinking, but enough to place procedural execution/performance in a design context.)
Or so I hope.
Chuck
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|