Reflection and Perception in Professional Practice

For the last decade, reflection has been a major theme in discussions about professional skillfulness and the development of the competence of practitioners such as nurses and teachers. The intellectual pattern that has structured ambitions in relation to reflection is found mainly in Schon’s (1983) The Reflective Practitioner and the epistemological turn suggested there. In this text, however, I focus on a dimension that is often forgotten when professional practitioners are conceived of as being reflective, namely, perception. From the framework of Merleau-Ponty, I argue that Schon’s theoretical account is highly problematic and that perception is the key to shaping practitioners’ skillfulness.