The Future of Reflective Practice

Reflective practice as a named discipline was developed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Donald Schon’s books from 1963 to 1994 set most of its foundations. The world that produced those books no longer exists. The article looks at what has changed since 1994 and what those changes mean for the practice.

A short history

Reflective practice is something that was invented in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It has been used worldwide for the past several decades. Many things have changed after 1994.

One name recurs through the development of the field: Donald Schon. His books mark the milestones.

• Donald Schon, Displacement of Concepts, 1963
• Chris Argyris and Donald Schon, Theory in Practice, 1974
• Donald Schon, The Reflective Practitioner, 1983
• Donald Schon, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, 1987
• Donald Schon and Martin Rein, Frame Reflection, 1994

By 1994, Schon and his collaborators had developed most of the conceptual foundations for what reflective practice is. The decades since have produced refinements, applications, and critiques, but the basic shape of the field was set.

What changed after 1994

Several things have happened to quicken the pace at which reflective practice is done. These will continue to influence the way reflective practitioners reflect on practice.

The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web was invented and spread worldwide. A new communication platform was implanted. New collaborative software was developed. New business and educational processes emerged.

For reflective practice, this changes the conditions of the work. A teacher in 1990 reflecting on a problem had access to a small library of books, the colleagues in their school, and whatever conferences they could attend. A teacher in 2026 reflecting on the same problem has access to thousands of articles, blog posts, and discussion threads, plus the ability to find practitioners with similar concerns anywhere in the world.

This widens the empirics pattern of knowing in Carper’s framework. The literature a teacher can draw on is much larger. The challenge is selecting what is good among the abundance, rather than finding any material at all.

Cell phones and internet communication

Cell phones have spread worldwide. Internet communication tools (Skype and similar) are spreading even faster.

For reflective practice, this changes the social conditions. A teacher who wants to reflect with a peer no longer needs the peer to be in the same school or even the same country. Critical friend conversations can happen by video call. Mentor relationships can be maintained across geography.

Pakistani teachers can now access mentors and peer groups from around the world. This was not possible at the scale of an ordinary teacher even ten years ago.

Global economic shifts

China and India have entered the global market with highly dynamic economies. The world economy has shifted in ways that affect what schools are preparing students for.

This changes the content of reflective practice without changing its form. A reflective teacher in 2026 is reflecting on how to prepare students for a different world from the one their training prepared them to teach. The reflection itself is the same kind of work; the topics are different.

New ways for collaborating in professional work

Several new forms of collaborative work have emerged that did not exist when Schon was writing.

Wiki

A wiki is the gradual construction of a knowledge base by many people. Wikipedia is the obvious example, but specialised wikis exist in many fields, including teaching.

For reflective practice, wikis represent a new way of holding and developing professional knowledge. A teacher can contribute to and draw from a knowledge base that no individual could build alone. The collective product is more current and more comprehensive than the books any one author could write.

Search engines

Search engines reach out to the whole pool of knowledge worldwide. A teacher reflecting on a problem in 1990 had to find the right book on the right shelf. A teacher in 2026 can run a search and survey what is known across the field in minutes.

This changes the empirics layer of reflection significantly. The constraint is no longer access. The constraint is the discrimination between high-quality and low-quality sources. A reflective practitioner now needs the skill of evaluating sources, which earlier generations of teachers did not need at the same intensity.

Collective intelligence

Collective intelligence is the combination of the intelligence of many people around shared interests. Online forums, hashtag conversations, and crowd-sourced research projects are examples.

For reflective practice, this means a teacher’s reflection can connect to a wider pool of intelligence than the local staff room can offer. The reflection can be tested against, and informed by, the thinking of many other practitioners working on similar questions.

Communities of practice

Communities of practice are more stable than collective intelligence. They are stable spaces for exploring and learning together over time. A community of practice has identifiable membership, sustained relationships, and accumulated shared knowledge.

For reflective practice, communities of practice are perhaps the most important development. They give the reflective practitioner a sustained partnership with other practitioners working on similar concerns. The earlier mention in this guide of guided reflection, supervisor relationships, and peer learning groups all gain new forms in communities of practice.

A teacher in 2026 can belong to several communities of practice: a local school-based one, a national subject-specific one, an international one focused on a specific approach. Each adds depth.

Innovation is being distributed

Another major change is that innovation is being distributed rather than centralised.

Democratising innovation

Teachers, researchers, and educationists develop new ideas about teaching, learning, and education. The new ideas no longer have to come from elite institutions to spread. A primary school teacher in any country can develop a new approach, write about it online, and have it picked up by other teachers within weeks.

This democratisation is a change in who counts as a producer of professional knowledge. A reflective practitioner in this environment can both consume and contribute to the field, where earlier generations of teachers could mostly only consume.

Social innovation

Many teachers working in diverse contexts can come together because of common interests and innovative initiatives. A group of teachers across countries who share a concern about, say, assessment, can form an innovation network around that concern.

This is harder than it sounds. Communities like this take work to maintain. But they are now possible at scales that were not.

Research networks

Research networks articulate capacities worldwide around a common question or inquiry. A network might bring together teachers, university researchers, and policy people to investigate a specific question over years. The network’s output is research that benefits from many perspectives.

For reflective practitioners, research networks are sources of substantial empirics: thoroughly investigated answers to questions teachers care about, produced by people who include teachers in the work.

The art of conceptual innovation as the driver

The literature argues that the art of conceptual innovation is now the driver of change in the professions.

Innovation is achieved in new concepts of the way professionals work. A new concept (the flipped classroom, the project-based unit, the learner-centred assessment) reshapes practice across many contexts at once.

The capacity to integrate technologies is key for creating new solutions and tapping into the pool of knowledge of humanity. A teacher who cannot integrate new tools into their practice is increasingly disadvantaged.

When millions of people are innovating, the only way of keeping pace with change is through the creation of new concepts. The volume of micro-innovation is too high to track at the technique level. The conceptual level is where teachers can absorb the changes coherently.

Artistry will be more important than before in the exercise of professions. This is a striking claim. The argument is that as routine work gets automated, the human contribution increasingly comes from the artistic, judgment-based, contextual layer of practice. Reflective practitioners are the ones who develop this artistry through deliberate practice.

Flashcard

What are the four new ways of collaborating in professional work that have emerged for reflective practitioners?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Wikis, search engines, collective intelligence, communities of practice

Wikis allow many practitioners to build a shared knowledge base. Search engines give access to the world’s knowledge. Collective intelligence combines the thinking of many around shared interests. Communities of practice provide stable spaces for sustained shared learning. Together, these widen the empirics pattern and the social conditions of reflective practice.

Are these new authors citing Schon?

The literature poses an interesting question: are the authors writing today about teaching innovation citing Schon?

Often they are not, at least not by name. But if you analyse how they present their ideas, you can see similarities. Schon’s basic move was to focus on how to improve the ways we think in action. The current literature on reflective teaching, design thinking, action research, and adaptive expertise is doing variations of the same work.

The Schon framework has spread far enough that it operates without always being credited. This is partly a sign of its success. The ideas have become part of the air the field breathes.

A reflective practitioner who reads current writers carefully can see the older roots underneath the newer vocabulary. The terms change. The deeper questions about how to learn from practice in real time stay the same.

What this means for the practitioner

A teacher reading this in 2026 has access to a much richer environment for reflective practice than Schon could have imagined.

The challenge is also new. The old constraint was access to information and to peers. The new constraint is the discipline to use the abundance well. A teacher who jumps from one online resource to another without depth gets less out of the abundance than a teacher who picks a few high-quality sources, builds relationships in a few communities of practice, and works at depth.

The future of reflective practice for any individual teacher includes learning to navigate this new abundance with judgment.