p.69-70 According to Sch�n, the apparent validity and infallibility of technical rationality constitute a "competency trap" in which unquestioned belief creates less effective professionals who become the "self-serving elite who use science-based technique" as their "masquerade of extraordinary knowledge." Technical rationality is a perspective that assumes complete knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships... Sch�n makes a strong case that technical rationality can dominate professions to the point that members lose track of the interdependent complex interactions that make each case unique. Professionals become -

locked into a view of themselves as technical experts, [and they] find nothing in the world of practice to occasion reflection. They have become too skillful at techniques of selective inattention, junk categories, and situational control techniques, which they use to preserve constancy of their knowledge-in-practice. For them, uncertainty is a threat; its admission a sign of weakness. Others, more inclined toward and adept at reflection-in-action, nevertheless feel profoundly uneasy because they cannot say what they know how to do, cannot justify its quality or rigor.

p.70 stewards of the profession want the profession’s field practitioners and de facto researchers to be able to challenge role assumptions, normative beliefs, and established values in order to determine their relevancy for the reality they are facing. This challenge demands a soft heuristic (rule of thumb) process rather than a hard scientific one since the quality or aptness of a body of knowledge cannot be scientifically deduced in the same way Descartes applied Newton’s empirical methods to philosophy. Professional judgment requires the challenging of assumptions, even those behind the paradigmatic Westernized scientific view. It necessitates a philosophical perspective that embraces the possibility of divergence rather than an ideological perspective that seems to enshrine assimilative knowledge as objective certainty.

p.71 Successful collaboration in a professional network across the stages of knowledge requires participants to appreciate existing opinions and arguments while striving to understand and appreciate new ones. This can be a challenge when those proposing the new approach have not yet developed sufficient language to fully describe what they are intuiting... Professionals should freely admit that they are unable to judge what they have not yet learned. Socratic wisdom rests on the admission that one does not know when and how the opportunity for learning will arise.