CONCEPT
The Conversation with the Situation
Schon's description of the three-move cycle — propose, listen to the back-talk, evaluate and adjust — that constitutes the structure of expert practice in every domain.
Schon spent the 1981 academic year watching master architect Quist work with a stuck student named Petra, and the exchange became the paradigmatic analysis in The Reflective Practitioner. Quist did not lecture. He picked up a pencil and drew over Petra's sketch, talking as he drew. The drawing changed as he talked. The talking changed as he drew. And the site's slope, which had been Petra's obstacle, became through Quist's reframing the organizing principle of the design. Schon identified the structure of this exchange as the fundamental pattern of expert practice across every domain he studied: propose a move (informed by repertoire but provisional), listen to the situation's back-talk (the response the move elicits), evaluate and adjust (judging which aspects of the back-talk are promising, which are problematic, which require reframing the problem itself). Move, back-talk, evaluation, adjust, move again. The language interface has replicated this cycle, at unprecedented speed, in every domain it touches.
