RETROSPECTIVE REFLECTION

Exploring Knowledge and Theory Building in between

Professional Practice and Science

Introduction
This paper asks what kind of theoretical activity is fruitful for art/design practitioners.
Taking its point of departure from within the practitioner's experience and needs, it
proposes a renewed interest in retrospective reflection. Retrospective reflection is part of
any professional practice, but in this context, it denotes the activity of analysis and
information seeking related to personal art/design processes. Retrospective reflection
may constitute a practice of its own that has research characteristics, but nevertheless it
most often will deviate from current scientific research demands. Instead of discussing
its status in relation to research, the paper proposes that retrospective reflection should
be considered the basic, normal, or even paradigmatic, theoretical activity within
practical fields.

In the early 1990s, the Scandinavian philosopher Søren Kjørup advocated that
art/design practitioners should build their own theory of practice from within their fields
(Kjørup 1993). Since then, PhD-programs have been introduced in art/design
educational institutions. In the beginning, research activities were thought to bridge the
gap between theory and practice. This expectation has hardly been confirmed although
some practitioners have been awarded doctoral degrees. Experience has shown that the
research claims – to raise questions and to answer them in a scientifically accepted
methodology – are foreign to the way most practitioners think and work. The reason is
well formulated by the design theorist Bryan Lawson, saying: “design is a process in
which problem and solution emerge together” (Lawson 2002: 47). Another design
theorist following Lawson, Nigel Cross, writes in his book Designerly Ways of Knowing:
“[…] scientists problem-solve by analysis, whereas designers problem-solve by
synthesis” (Cross 2006: 6). Søren Kjørup has elaborated his thinking for a decade, and
gives his share: “since sensuous or artistic [including design] knowledge is of another
type than scientific knowledge, we have to develop another way of discussing it” (Kjørup
2006: 20). The Swedish Professor of interactive design Erik Stolterman puts it this way:
“We ought to regard design as a tradition of human activity that combines thinking and
doing” (Stolterman 2007: 13).1 This characteristic of design/art must be consequential for
how thinking and theory within the field shall be developed. The Norwegian Professor in
art didactics Aslaug Nyrnes has argued that from the perspective of rhetoric, art/design
practitioners and researchers from any field relate to the same three types of elements in
their thinking: a personal language, a shared theoretical or systematic language, and the
art/design work or processes of study. According to her, the present challenge of artistic
(including design) research is to find a fruitful balance between these three elements
(Nyrnes 2006: 14 and 20). This paper argues that retrospective reflection is one way
practitioners may balance their personal stories with compiled theory and their own
art/design work.

Firstly, retrospective reflection, learning and personal theory is treated. Secondly,

reflective practice is dealt with in relation to the development of research in art/design. A
simple model shows how knowledge may be built by practitioners’ retrospective
1
My translation, Swedish original: “Vi bör därför se design som en tradition av mänsklig aktivitet som
kombinerar tanke och hand”.

Grete Refsum -1- 25.11.2007

reflections in between science and art/design practice. Thirdly, the concept artistic
research is considered.

Retrospective Reflection, Learning and Personal Theory

The US philosophers Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus have suggested a model of five steps
that explains the process of learning in any profession, from novice to expert. When we
learn something new, our actions are context-free and analytical, based on following a
role models and given rules. When progression occurs and experience is gained, the
commitment to the task is heightened, and the decision making becomes more intuitive
and situational (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 2000: 30). This means that the expert acts directly,
seemingly without thinking, like when driving. However, practitioners constantly reflect in
action, as shown by the US social scientist and consultant Donald Schön in his
observations of professionals at work. Schön introduced the terms knowing and
reflection in action to denote the thinking activities that take place during professional
performance (Schön 1983: 54).

Reflection is essential in learning. The British Professor of continuing education Peter

Jarvis says: “reflective practice is a necessary approach to learning how to become an
expert practitioner” (Jarvis 1999: 70). However, also expert professionals may wish to
learn more. If so, they have to take the reflective analytical approach, before, during or
after they act. For instance, when something goes wrong, the professional will ponder
retrospectively on the sequence of events enacted in order to explain the failure
(Petroski 1992). Analyzing the process through retrospective reflection may generate
awareness of what actually happened, and reveal new understandings that may secure
success in future actions. Thus, mistakes can become golden moments of learning.

According to Jarvis, practitioners who reflect retrospectively on their experiences in

practice situations, acquire an overview of their practical work that represents an
abstraction, or a theoretical understanding of what they have done. In combination with
theory, information and knowledge of all kinds from any source, this overview constitutes
the practitioner’s personal theory (Jarvis 1999: 131-34) figure 1.2 To be denoted theory,
the understanding has to be articulated in some form, or it could easily be: outspoken
orally, written as text, or communicated visually.

Figure 1. The relationship between practice, retrospective reflection and personal theory
in a learning process, drawn after Jarvis (Jarvis 1999: 134).

2
Personal theory is not the same as theory of or about practice that is general and informative. Jarvis
defines: “Personal theory consists of fully integrated knowledge that combines learning from doing and
thinking about practice with learning from other information sources” (Jarvis 1999: 145).

Grete Refsum -2- 25.11.2007

In this model, retrospective reflection is the crucial link between the rhetorical elements
at play in art/design and research processes as suggested by Nyrnes: the personal
story, theory, and art/design work.

How the retrospective reflection is actually carried out will vary, depending on the
individual practitioners’ interests and focus. Since art/design processes are synthetic and
intuitive rather than analytic, the way they retrospectively are presented may reveal their
non-linear or even illogic structure. In this respect, retrospective reflections may not
follow research demands of being the result of systematic inquiry that leads to an
improved solution. However, the motivation for reflecting retrospectively is to understand
more. The practitioners therefore, will focus on the aspects that are troublesome in order
to explain the problem or simply to get an overview of the situation, clearing their minds.
In relation to what is needed, the aspect of information gathering will oscillate between
nothing and research inquires. What is important is that the individual’s retrospective
reflections continuously develop, covering an expanding field of topics and knowledge.

Optimally, then, the personal theory of a practitioner grows throughout life. Although
subjectively bound to a person, personal theories of practice are culturally embedded.
They are constituted by teaching throughout education, shared rules and attitudes within
the profession, information sources available, and social and personal relationships.
What is subjective in personal theories will be the specific conglomerate of knowledge
that is accumulated, and how this knowledge is accentuated and used by the individual.

Reflective Practice and Development of Research in Art/Design

The goal of the education given in art/design schools is to equip the individual students
with the appropriate personal theories that may help them perform as professionals after
graduation. The personal theories are systematically built up by reflective practice.
Retrospective reflections on their art/design processes are regularly demanded in oral or
written presentations throughout the education, and particularly when passing the final
exams. Paradoxically, due to the fact that experts reflect in action and seldom
retrospectively, the students mostly will have former students’ work to look at as their
role models. Lacking have been the teachers’ personal retrospective reflections that
should set a standard and elevate the reflecting practices of both staff and students in
the schools.

However, since the late 1980s, the debate on theory building and research in the
arts/design institutions has been intense. In Norway, Professor in ceramics Arne Åse
from Oslo National College of Art and Design3 was a driving force in the first initiative to
formulate what artistic research should be (NAVF 1987). The central activity that would
distinguish mere professionalism from research activities was the question of
documenting and describing the intentions, ideas, methods and experiences throughout
the personal art/design processes. Retrospective reflection became the key activity that
distinguished mere professional practice from artistic research.

For 10 years, the practice of retrospective reflection was cultivated at the National
College of Art and Design in Oslo. In this period, the standards of the graduation theses
rose to a high level. Then came a gradual shift of attitude and the theses deteriorated.

3
Since 1996 integrated, and in 2003 dissolved as unity, in the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Grete Refsum -3- 25.11.2007

The previous interest in carefully describing one’s processes seemed to go out of
fashion. The reasons may be several. The art/design fields that were craft based
changed in two directions: towards the more theoretical stance on the one hand, and to
a more practice oriented on the other. Either you wrote theoretical essays in art/design
magazines, or you exhibited art or produced design. This development ran parallel to the
international discourse concerning postgraduate teaching. In this discourse, two models
mark the polar opposites: the education based model and the PhD model.

The education based model is in accordance with the original Norwegian initiative. The
British visual artist and historian Sally Morgan is an exponent of this stance. She states:
“The artwork is not a prelude to theory, to knowledge or to constructions of meaning”
(Morgan 2001: 14). In her view: “the terminal qualification for an artist should be one that
makes theorized artwork the primary outcome” (ibid.: 15). The question then is what the
concept “theorized artwork” should be.

According to the first model, theorized artwork might be what popularly was called route
mapping, documenting and accounting for the practical processes. 4 In Norway however,
a route mapping along with art/design work would not suffice for a PhD degree. In 1995,
the so called artistic research5 was retitled art/design development work, defined as not
being research at all, but rather a research equivalent.6 Institutionally, the two activities
research and art/design development work were formally regarded as equals.

Parallel to this development, Oslo School of Architecture launched a PhD research

program that allowed art/design practitioners access. The expectations were high;
finally, professional practice and reflections on a doctoral level would be combined. Due
to the research regulations at the time, however, it proved impossible to include
personally made works of art/design in the deliverance for the doctorate. What was
thought to become the paradigmatic research method within practical fields combining
professional practice and theorized artwork based on retrospective reflections in text and
images, had to be abandoned (Refsum and Ringset 1997; Refsum 2000: 10-11;
Karlsson 2002: 75).

Instead, a new postgraduate education based program for art/design development work,
or artistic research (including design), was prepared in Norway. This program was
launched in 2003, and is defined as non-scientific and a research equivalent to the PhD.7
The goal of the artistic research undertaken in this program, is to provide cutting edge
art/design products of high international quality. The assessment of the deliverance is
based on the quality of the art/design works produced; no brilliant text may help the
candidate pass if the art/design works are dismissed.

Ideally, to produce art/design works of high international standard will generate a

corresponding articulated knowledge. But already in the first examination in 2006 in this
program, one candidate who has done intellectually well, has failed because the
artistic/design performance is rejected by the examinators. From the art/design
viewpoint, this may be regarded a quality criterion for the program. However, from the

4
In Norwegian context the term was introduced in 2001 by Rector Christopher Frayling in his seminal
speech in The National College of Art and Design in Oslo (Frayling 2001).
5
In Norwegian kunstfaglig forskning.
6
Universitets- og høgskoleloven av 1995.
7
The Norwegian Program for Artistic Research, see regulations, online:
http://www.kunststipendiat.no/en/reglement.

Grete Refsum -4- 25.11.2007

perspective of knowledge generation, which is the traditional research perspective, it is a
loss that the candidate’s theoretical contribution gets no esteem.

The situation in Norway now, is that there are two art/design postgraduate options:8 one
is the non-scientific artistic program that asks for excellence in the work; the other, PhD
programs that demand theoretical training and research skills and aim at scientific
knowledge generation. Each program is equally difficult to get access into, but the
demands are highly different. Lacking in Norway, is the practice-led “in-between-
program” within the research domain that could appreciate good performance in both
practice and knowledge generation.9 This would be the kind of program into which
art/design schools could send their teaching staff to heighten their competences.

Artistic research (including design) should contribute to provide better art/design

products and new knowledge that may be applied by others. However, as long as an
art/design product is included in the research outcome, value judgments will be part of
the evaluation process. The Swedish researcher Henrik Karlsson, who has evaluated
the development process of art/design development work or artistic research in Sweden,
holds that aesthetic judgment based on certain values, are contrary to general research
principles (Karlsson 2004: 132). To solve this dilemma, two positions are currently taken.
One is to fight for the acknowledgement of sensuous knowledge as included in the
cognitive rationally and thereby be accepted as research proper, not only as equivalent
(Kjørup 2006; Borgdorf 2006). This is the hard way since sensuous knowledge has been
defined outside the research domain as long as definitions of research have been
internationally regulated.10 Another way is simply to expose the rationality within
art/design practice – as suggesting in the route mapping concept – by carefully
describing what happens in the making processes through retrospective reflections.
Such a demonstration will contribute to the former efforts. The British visual designer
and theorist Michael Biggs is one who has commented on the utility of words for
explicatory purposes. In a work on museum objects at display, he writes: “It is the
particular combination of artefacts and words/texts that gives efficacy to the
communication” (Biggs 2002: 23). This is what retrospective reflections are all about: to
help understand the speechless art/design product from the producer’s perspective.
Description of an art/design work can be made from two opposite viewpoints: from the
inside perspective of the practitioner, and from the outside perspective of the theoretical
researcher, figure 2.11

8
Additionally, there are art/design residency programs and scholarships for professionals.
9
See research defined in UK by RAE, online: <http://www.rae.ac.uk/pubs/2006/01/docs/eall.pdf>, page 54.
UK Council for Graduate Education: Practice Based Doctorates in the Creative and Performing Arts and
Design from 1997, says in § 3.3, What consensus exists on current PhD regulations for practice-based
subjects?: “the work will constitute an independent and original contribution to knowledge” (page 15).
10 Borgdorf, Henk. 2007. Artistic Research within the Fields of Science. Keynote speech at
Sensuous Knowledge 4, conference on artistic research at Solstrand, Bergen, 7-9 November 2007. To be
published by Bergen National Academy of the Arts.
11
The model is inspired by Henrik Karlsson (Karlsson 2002: 120).

Grete Refsum -5- 25.11.2007

Figure 2. Descriptive activities in art/design and science

The model suggests that through the describing activity the art and science duality may
by overcome in the overlapping area.

If we regard art/design practice as an activity and talent of its own, (Stolterman 2007;
Lawson 2002; Cross 2006) one might think that to do research concerning art/design
would demand at least a minimum of performative skills in the subject of study. When
art/design practitioners who want to do research in their own fields, they have to pass a
theoretical research program. Following this line of thought, candidates from theoretical,
scientific fields, would have to pass a practical training course before being allowed to do
research on art/design. If so, the situation would become equal to practice based and
theoretical research candidates. Within anthropology such an attitude has been taken
seriously. The US professor of anthropology Charles Keller went into apprenticeship for
several months to learn and understand blacksmithing before setting the practice into a
broader theoretical context (Keller and Keller 1996).

Today, research and development work is expected from the staff in art/design schools.
The current definition in Norway on art/design development work or artistic research
concerning the arts, design and architecture, says:
artistic development work covers artistic processes that lead to artworks, which
are made public. In this activity there may also be a component of explicit
reflection around the development and presentation of the artwork.12
The value of this statement is its consideration for professional practice. The weakness
of the definition is the consequences it may have for the development of knowledge

12
In Norwegian: ”Kunstnerisk utviklingsarbeid dekker kunstneriske prosesser som fører fram til et offentlig
tilgjengelig kunstprodukt. I denne virksomheten kan det også inngå en eksplisitt refleksjon rundt utviklingen
og presentasjonen av kunstproduktet” (available online: http://www.uhr.no/documents/vekt_paa_kunst.pdf,
page 13).

Grete Refsum -6- 25.11.2007

within the art/design schools. According to this definition, research and development
work does not demand anything, but professional art/design practice.

The international situation concerning artistic research is more faceted. In art/design

schools that demand research to acquire funding, practitioners strive to legitimize that
their propositions for practical projects fall in the category of research. The situation in
Norway is opposite, incentives that could motivate for theorizing artworks are currently
lacking.

In the profession based higher educations in Europe there is today a worry about the
balance between the theoretically trained academic staff and the professionals.13 In my
opinion, this concern is based on wrong premises. It is not a question of research or
professionalism for the average teaching staff. Research according to general standards
interests and suits only a few (Booth et al. 1995; Refsum 2005), while to do no more
than professional work cannot develop the knowledge base in the school. With these two
options we are back to start in the 1980s: theorists are imported from the academic
fields or are practitioners who have left practice and become theorists, while
professionals are stuck in their trades.

Towards a Model of Artistic Research

My suggestion is that practitioners instead of either striving to adjust to given research
patterns on behalf of their professional practice, or doing nothing to develop an explicit
knowledge base within their fields, should establish a sound discourse based on
descriptive retrospective reflection of their practical work.

Retrospective reflection is a practice of its own. Since it builds directly onto educational
training and personal experience, it is possible for a practitioner to do without extensive
additional training. Methods of retrospective reflective activities can be developed and
elaborated. Donald Schön introduced the concept reflective research to enhance the
practitioner’s reflection-in-action (Schön 1983: 309). This reflective research can
according to him, be of four types: frame analysis, repertoire building, research on
fundamental methods of inquiry and overreaching theories that may help restructure the
problems dealt with, and research on the process of reflection-in-action. Ethnographers
have used the narrative as research method and develops it further (Ellis 2000).
Following such a research approach, an extended retrospective reflection may be
regarded one kind of qualitative research, done as an autobiographical narrative (Mäkela
2006).

But before challenging the research borders and domain, I simply advocate that
practitioners in teaching positions are encouraged to, not least by given time to, reflect
retrospectively on their personal practice. Practitioners who describe their working
activities and reflections will contribute to the empirical material that can be theoretically
scrutinized and analyzed at will by researchers from inside or outside professional
practice. Whether research proper or not according to standards, the current challenge
as I see it, is to fill the overlapping area in the model, figure 2. What I ask for is a huge
range of personal narratives of the thinking within art/design practice, done by
professionals (Refsum 2006b). The outcome may be basic or elevated; it may range

13
Seminar on R&D in the non-university higher education sector in Europe, Research Council of Norway 23
November 2007, organized by Universitets- og høgskolerådet, NIFU STEP, Norway.

Grete Refsum -7- 25.11.2007

from philosophy to technicalities, being good or bad. To say that such writings are
subjective and uninteresting – who bothers about the retrospective reflections of the
average artists/designers? – is a devaluation of the enormous potential empirical
material about how things are made. Why should anthropologists’ reports about making
be interesting, while practitioners’ are not? If the goal is one of creating knowledge about
professional practice and building knowledge, small pieces of understanding are indeed
valuable. Research is a collaborative practice and the description of personal work
through retrospective reflection will help the knowledge generating process (Refsum
2006).

A rational description of professional practice through extensive retrospective reflection

will create an overlapping of knowledge generation between professional practice and
theoretical fields (Karlsson 2004: 137), figure 3.

Figure 2. Artistic research

In this model, the repeated varieties of research on or into, through and for art/design will
blur (Frayling 1993-94: 5). Theorists and professionals may go between the categories
of professional work and theory, both ways. Still, the specific category labeled artistic
research is and should be connected to personal professional practice. Professionals
may well go to the right in this model and on purely theoretical grounds study the work of
other artists/designers. Then they do (historical) research, but not artistic research.
Likewise the theorists that go beyond the mere interest of practice become practitioners
in their own right, and thereby, can do artistic research. In this way, new combinations
will occur and the knowledge generation may leap forward in unexpected ways!

Conclusions
What kind of theoretical activity is fruitful for art/design practitioners? Firstly, the building
of a personal theory is crucial for practitioners. Personal theory is built through reflective
practice and information gathering. Within the art/design fields the inventive force of
practitioners is hampered because of a general ignorance of research outcomes in

Grete Refsum -8- 25.11.2007

related areas.14 A reflective practice that motivates information gathering in a broad
sense would be of unforeseen benefit to the trades.

Secondly, as a practitioner I regard retrospective reflections on my personal art/design

work as the most beneficial theoretical activity I can do. Reflecting retrospectively helps
me developing my practice (Refsum 2005b; 2008).15 I become aware of what I have
done, can reframe and sharpen the problems I have confronted. It inspires me to go on
learning more and to set my work in a wider context. Through articulation, I create
transparency in my working processes and can take part in broader discourses; and it
invites response and criticism of my thinking and the choices taken.

Thirdly, the aim of research is to contribute to create new original knowledge that is
shared within a community (Friedman 2003: 509). If research is connected to the task of
reflection and systematization in order to create new knowledge and understanding of
anything, this anything may well be personal art/design work. Art/design production is
personal, so is an art/design development work, but artists/designers are embedded in
traditions they extend. Whatever the artists/designers say about their work has
relevance for other artists/designers dealing within the same field. What the individual
artist/designer understands thus becomes part of the articulated knowledge of the field
(Refsum 2007). My proposal is that the art/design fields, students, teachers and
professionals, should cultivate retrospective reflections on the art/design practical
professional premises and develop it as a skill. From such a foundation the discussion
about research may start.

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16
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