Reflection in practice: Schön and science

Posted on March 20, 2010 by alan

I have just finished reading Schön’s “The Reflective Practitioner“. It is one of those books that you feel you ought to have read years ago, resonating so much with many of my own thoughts and writing about creativity and innovation. However, I found myself at odds slightly with the adversarial dualism between science and practice, but realise this is partly because it is a book of its time. I will return to this later.

Continue reading →

making part-time work?

Posted on March 14, 2010 by alan

Woke early worrying how to make the part-time thing work.

Looking forward through the year and adding up every odd day at home, still less than 18 weeks worth of ‘my time’, not exactly half of 52! Even adding a couple of weeks of non-essential travel into ‘my’ budget doesn’t make it add up.

More worrying is that the time is all chopped up. Just three solid months (and one of those is in July/August, maybe when I’d expect some research and holiday time anyway), the rest odd weeks split up with other commitments. the model I’m aiming for is nearer the US 9 month contract idea with big periods for research, but struggling to keep blocks clear.

Also I’ve noticed myself allocating things that should be ‘university business’ to ‘my time’ as I know they won’t get done otherwise. Got too used to doing the academic thing and planning time around assumption of 200% commitment averaging 80-90 hours a week. Now trying to squash that into 50% of my time – no wonder it is difficult!

As the half pay cheques start to mount, I need to start to be ruthless.