Aristotle and Practical Wisdom

Accessing, Documenting and Communicating Practical

Wisdom: The Phronesis of School Leadership Practice

RICHARD HALVERSON

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Successful school leaders rely on a complex blend of knowledge, skill, theory,disposition and values in their work to improve student learning. Recent research has called for methods to access, represent and communicate what successful school leaders know. 

Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, captures the scope of such knowledge but also points out the difficulties of representing practical knowledge apart from the context of exercise

This paper argues that the artifacts, such as policies, programs, and procedures that school leaders develop and use can serve as occasions to document the expression of phronesis in context. Developing phronetic narratives of how successful leaders use artifacts to establish the conditions for improving student learning provides a significant resource to guide the learning of aspiring school leaders.

This paper builds upon Aristotle’s concept of phronesis to develop a framework
for accessing, representing and sharing the practical wisdom of school leaders. I argue
that an analysis of Aristotle’s concepts of phronesis, episteme, techne, and artifacts
points the way toward developing conceptual and methodological tools to construct
principled representations of practical wisdom. My argument will show how phronesis
provides a kind of executive function, resulting from habitual action and embedded in
character, that helps leaders to determine which techniques we will (and can) use, which
theories are appropriate, and what are the significant consequences of our actions. From
the perspective of practice, the tools or artifacts that leaders develop and use, such as
policies, programs and procedures, can serve as an occasion to consider how practitioners
use phronesis. Thus even though phronesis itself may be exhausted in action, research
designed to follow the residual traces of phronesis through artifact creation and design
can provide valuable insight into the practical wisdom of school leaders.





Understanding Phronesis
Practical wisdom is difficult to study. This may be because, as a comprehensive
human capacity, practical wisdom bridges our conventional categories of cognition,
affect and behavior, indicating a way of life difficult to discern in isolated actions or
propositions (Sternberg 1990). It also may be because, as a hard-won reward for a life
well lived, it is simply not available to those who have not developed similar capacities.
In the Nichomachean Ethics, (Aristotle 1941 p. 1024-1027) suggests that there are three
Accessing, Capturing and Documenting Phronesis 5
kinds of knowledge associated with wisdom: episteme, techne and phronesis.
Theoretical wisdom is based on episteme, the kind of knowledge expressed in
propositions true across particular contexts. Episteme is both necessary and universal; it
can be represented apart from the knower, codified into systems of thought, and leads to
reproducible effects under similar circumstances. Techne refers to the knowledge of
making, ranging from the arts of construction to the creation of states of affairs (Dunne
1993). Technical knowledge, expressed through routines and procedures, shares with
epistemic knowledge the ability of the knower to move from the particular to the general.
A good technique captures a reproducible procedure that will lead to prUnderstanding Phronesis
Practical wisdom is difficult to study. This may be because, as a comprehensive
human capacity, practical wisdom bridges our conventional categories of cognition,
affect and behavior, indicating a way of life difficult to discern in isolated actions or
propositions (Sternberg 1990). It also may be because, as a hard-won reward for a life
well lived, it is simply not available to those who have not developed similar capacities.
In the Nichomachean Ethics, (Aristotle 1941 p. 1024-1027) suggests that there are three

kinds of knowledge associated with wisdom: episteme, techne and phronesis.
Theoretical wisdom is based on episteme, the kind of knowledge expressed in
propositions true across particular contexts. Episteme is both necessary and universal; it
can be represented apart from the knower, codified into systems of thought, and leads to
reproducible effects under similar circumstances. Techne refers to the knowledge of
making, ranging from the arts of construction to the creation of states of affairs (Dunne
1993). Technical knowledge, expressed through routines and procedures, shares with
epistemic knowledge the ability of the knower to move from the particular to the general.
A good technique captures a reproducible procedure that will lead to predictable results
despite variations in context.

Phronesis, or practical wisdom concerns how individuals act based on their
interpretation of contextual particulars (Aristotle p. 1026-1032). The aim of phronesis is
not to develop rules or techniques true for all circumstances, but to adjust knowledge to
the peculiarity of local circumstance. Dunne (1993) describes how “phronesis is
characterized as much by a perceptiveness with regard to concrete particulars as by a
knowledge of universal principals” (p. 272). Phronesis is as much a way of knowing as a
kind of knowledge. Embodied in character and developed through habit, it is expressed
through particular actions as how individuals “size up” a situation and develop and
execute an appropriate plan of action. Phronesis is, above all, a form of moral
knowledge that guides us in selecting the features of situations that we choose to act upon
(Gadamer 1989 p. 316-320).
Investigations of the conceptual terrain laid out by Aristotle’s concept of practical
wisdom has served as a continuing theme in recent philosophical investigations (See, for



example, Arendt 1958, Dunne 1993, Gadamer 1989, Habermas 1984, MacIntyre 1981
and Nussbaum 1986). In many of these discussions, phronesis plays a role in the great
epistemological discussions of the 20
th
century by pointing to a kind of non-theoretical
yet principled form of ethical knowing that provides a viable alternative to the scientific
reduction of “real” knowledge to objective theory and technique. In educational research,
phronesis has been called on for more practical purposes, to name a model for the
comprehensive capacity that integrates knowledge, judgment, understanding, and
intuition in order to effect appropriate and successful action (Coulter and Wiens 2002,
Kessels and Korthagen 1996, Korthagen and Kessels 1999). The cumulative effect of
these discussions point out the misfit between our conventional understanding of
theoretical and technical truth as objective with our more tacit understanding of practical
knowledge as case-based, customized to particular contexts and measured by individual
effect.
Aristotle’s description of the distinctions between episteme and techne on the one
hand, and phronesis on the other, causes problems for researchers interested in studying
practical wisdom. While episteme and techne can be represented apart from action
through propositions and procedures, phronesis can only be represented through the
actions that flow from the character of individuals. In other words, the connection
between phronesis, character and particular situations prevents the development of
phronetic theory because any representation of phronesis must include an account the
particulars that shift with every exercise of practical wisdom. Transforming phronesis
into episteme makes the representation lifeless and useless. The challenge for research
dedicated to phronesis is to uncover the rhythms of the practices of interested


practitioners, represent those practices in ways that are accessible to other practitioners,
and to develop better ways to communicate good practice. In order to learn phronesis, we
must be able to see it in action.
The following sections will explore the different dimensions of phronesis relevant
to school leadership. First, I will explore the cognitive aspects of phronesis, which are
closely related the concept of problem-setting from current expertise research. Phronesis
is expressed mainly through patterns in our abilities to frame and solve problems. The
relation of phronesis to episteme, however, suggests that phronesis is a necessary
condition for the application of an expert problem-setting schema and cannot itself be
reduced to a set of rules. Second, I will consider how phronesis extends beyond
determining individual self-interest to the capacity to lead a community. Recent research
in distributed cognition and leadership suggest that the many leaders in an organization
may have a collective phronesis, and that the perceived structures of the organization
helps to shape the problems leaders are able to notice and the solutions they are able to
offer. Finally, phronesis necessarily flows from a vision of the good. Our ability to set
problems is developed, over time, by our experiences and stored in character as a form of
moral knowledge. While we may be able to articulate this knowledge as a code of
behavior, the confrontation with particulars will always force us to adapt what we know
to what we find.
Phronesis and expertise
Phronesis research finds contemporary expression in recent investigatons into
expertise. The cognitive, problem-solving aspect of phronesis is suggested by the
Aristotelian concept of the practical syllogism. The Aristotelian syllogism, in its simplest


sense, consists of three parts: a major premise which expresses a universal rule, a minor
premise which constrains a description of a particular event, fact or action, and a
conclusion which establishes the event or fact as an instance of the rule. The conclusion
of a practical syllogism, however, is an action rather than a proposition. While a rulebased theory of morality suggests that action is primarily governed by the major,
universal premise, from the perspective of phronesis the determination of the minor
premise is the critical first step (Dunne 1993, p. 296-7). Because phronesis consists of the
ability to perceive and select the minor premises that lead to effective action, practical
wisdom itself cannot be explained in terms of a rule-system. Phronesis is the capacity to
select which rules are appropriate for a given situation.
This apperceptive, or “seeing-as” aspect of phronesis is akin to the idea of problem
setting or problem-finding in expertise research. Problem-setting is a cognitive activity in
which actors select relevant situational features as worthy of notice, action, or
contemplation (Arlin 1990). Simon (1983) claimed “much problem-solving effort is
directed at structuring problems, and only a fraction of it in solving problems once they
are structured” (p. 394). In other words, most of problem-solving is problem-setting.
Experienced practitioners develop mental models that, over time, influence the kinds of
problems they are able to notice and act upon. Expertise research has focused on the
composition of mental models and regularities of such models across experts. Expert
knowledge is organized, or “conditionalized,” in terms of these models such that it can be
fluently activated in the appropriate context (Glaser 1992, Simon 1980). Mental models
enable experts to reduce the noise of perception, focus on the salient characteristics and
develop appropriate action plans. While these models include general rules and
techniques, Zeitz (1997) argues they also include “moderately abstract conceptual
representations” that customize more abstract rules to specific contexts. Experts are able
to use their models to understand the nuances of situations lost on novices and to
recognize emergent opportunities for action in complex situations (Siefert, et. al. 1997).
In their study of the problem-solving abilities of school principals, Leithwood and
Stager (1989) suggest that situation recognition is a key difference between expert and
novice leaders – experts recognize situations as problems that can be addressed with a
combination of problem-solving procedures, whereas novice leaders are not as adept at
bringing problem-framing and -solving procedures to bear on complex situations. Expert
leaders simultaneously satisfy multiple goals in the ways they frame problems, are able to
articulate clear, reasonable plans of action, and usually remain open to multiple solution
paths even within the constraints of the problem (Leithwood, Begley and Cousins 1992).
Expert school leaders understand the importance of having and sharing a clear
interpretation of the problem that can be explained and rationalized to others (Leithwood,
Begley and Cousins 1992). The ability to make problem-setting visible to followers is a
key aspect of helping others understand the rationale of leadership practice.
Although expertise research helps to understand the cognitive aspects of
phronesis, the effort to reconstruct mental models and to describe characteristics of
experts across context misses the active, particular nature of phronetic expression.
Phronesis guides problem-setting and the problem-solving, integrating apperception,
judgment, choice, planning, and action in a single continuous arc. Dreyfus and Dreyfus
(1986) describe how the action of virtuoso performers appears seamless both from the
perspective of observers and the actors themselves (p. 38). The ability to follow or to


articulate a rule-based system for action, they argue, seems to be a characteristic of
novice or competent, rather than expert, performance. The distinguishing characteristic of
phronesis is the ability to effectively size up novel situations that cannot, by definition, be
specified in advance. Virtuoso performers recognize when the rules of typical
performance apply, which rules to select, and when the rules should be discarded or
reformed in light of emergent circumstances. Schon (1983) demonstrates how expert
architecture teachers simultaneously adjust their knowledge to the characteristics of the
situation and to the needs of their students. Describing what such teachers know and the
rules for applying what they know does not fully capture their practical wisdom. The
exercise of mental models rests on a prior, active form of knowledge that understands
which aspects of the model apply and when to apply them.
Phronesis and leadership
While most of Aristotle’s discussion of phronesis is described in terms of
individuals pursuing personal goods, he also suggests that it is appropriate to consider the
phronesis of the statesman directed toward the good of the community (Aristotle p.
1029). Aristotle describes a political form of phronesis through which actors aim toward
the good of a community:
(I)t is for this reason that we think Pericles and men like him have practical
wisdom, viz. because they can see what is good for themselves and what is good
for men in general; we consider that those can do this who are good at managing
households or states (p. 1029).
Political phronesis is the ability to “deliberate well about what is good and expedient”
and to act accordingly for the good of a community or state (Aristotle p. 1026).



Aristotle’s distinction between political and practical wisdom allows us to consider the
community as a unit of analysis for leadership just as the individual is the unit of
analysis for personal action.
There is an essential difference, however, between political and personal
phronesis. Personal phronesis guides action in the interest of the self, while in political
phronesis, leaders pursue the good for those they lead. Just as the good of the
individual is the goal of personal phronesis, the good of the community is the goal of a
political phronesis. The other-directed nature of political phronesis requires leaders to
balance their personal goods with the good of the community. Yet leaders must act
for the community in terms of the goods they perceive, in other words, through their
personal phronesis. The personal values and commitments of leaders shape actions
for the sake of the community in subtle ways. For example, in hiring new teachers
school leaders must balance their instincts for what makes an effective teacher with
the needs of the school and the opinions of colleagues. The seemingly effortless
integration of political and personal phronesis in expert practice is a characteristic of
virtuoso performance (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986).



The distinction between political and personal phronesis also suggests that the
practical wisdom of leadership may be distributed in a community. Even though Aristotle
focuses on the phronesis of the single statesman, most contemporary organizations
receive leadership from multiple positional and informal actors. In schools, despite the
research bias to locate leadership in the school principal, positional and informal leaders
often work together (or against one another) to influence the direction of the school.
Recent work in distributed leadership suggests that leadership flows through



organizations in the form of tasks engaged by any number of community participants
(Ogawa and Bossert 1995, Spillane, Halverson and Diamond 2003). The tasks of
instructional leadership include, for example, monitoring instruction, organizing and
developing curriculum, acquiring and allocating resources, and constructing an
instructional vision for the school. The combined phronesis of formal and informal
leaders in the school determines how these tasks are framed and executed. The structures
of the organization also form an important constraint for practical wisdom in
organizations. Structures composed of prior policy initiatives and programs help to
determine how tasks are constructed and enacted. For example, prior teaching evaluation
policies that emphasized limited involvement in classroom practice can heavily influence
the implementation of new, more invasive policies (Halverson, Kelley and Kimball
2004). The social and situational distribution of leadership practice suggests how we
might consider phronesis as more than the possession of a particular individual.
Phronesis, character and morality
For Aristotle, phronesis is embodied in character. Aristotelian ethics emphasizes
that virtuous action is more than merely an ability to act upon the appropriate rule –
character determines our ability to recognize the situations for selecting the right rule.
Our character represents the individual network of habits we acquire through training and
through subsequent experience that determine our ability to act virtuously. In Aristotle’s



terms, the processes of deliberation, choice and action must be explicitly learned and
practiced at first, then through experience become habits of character that are simply
manifested in action. Phronesis represents the accumulated wisdom, embodied in
character, which helps us to determine which action is worth taking in a given situation.


Phronesis comprises the moral compass of our character. As Gadamer (1989) describes,
phronesis is not “at our disposal” in the same way that techniques are at the disposal of
the craftsman (p. 316). We are our phronesis in a way that we cannot separate ourselves
from our knowledge.
The values that guide action play a critical role in problem-setting and problemsolving. While prior research on leadership expertise has treated values as part of the
context of practice (e.g. Leithwood and Stager 1989), a phronesis-based account
emphasizes how the values of leaders constitute the kinds of problems recognized as
worth solving, and how the value commitments of leaders can be studied as they are
disclosed in practice. The problems leaders are able to identify depend in large part on the
lived values that guide their professional knowledge. For example, some leaders choose
to spend time supervising lunchrooms, reviewing bulletin boards or enforcing dress code
policies, others tackle why, despite considerable efforts at curriculum and professional
development, achievement gaps continue to plague student learning. Focusing attention
on challenging or maintaining status quo conditions is itself a moral act, and the
underlying moral commitments are disclosed through these actions. This is not to say
that managing the day-to-day functions of schools is not a critical task for school leaders,
but it does suggest that the moral commitments of leaders can be discerned through the
ways they organize daily practice.
Aristotle’s concept of phronesis rests on a vision of moral clarity that allows him
to discuss quality of character as virtuous or vicious. Our prevailing moral pluralism and
our competing goals for schooling make contemporary agreement on the quality of
leadership phronesis unlikely. Still, much of our disagreement on the moral


commitments of school leadership rests on our difficulties with untangling espoused
morality from moral theories-in-use (Argyris and Schon 1978). The political conditions
of schooling may actually encourage leaders to maintain a gap between what is said and
what is done, for example, to create a “logic of confidence” that limits public inspection
of instructional practices (Elmore 2000, Rowan and Meyer 1977). Discussions of
morality and school leadership seem perpetually bogged down in the political trade-offs
and concessions of the work.
A phronesis-based perspective on school leadership focuses on the patterns of
values expressed in action. Since the perception and solutions of the problems of practice
involve trade-offs and selective perception, the values that guide action seldom result in
clear, unambiguous moral statements. Practical wisdom exists precisely in this space of
fitting principles to particulars. Careful analysis of the patterns of routine, day-to-day
actions can show how experienced school leaders display their commitment to student
respect, care and personal integrity. (For an excellent example of how practice discloses
everyday moral commitments, see Lee 1987). The cases of school leaders who are able to
successfully challenge and change unjust conditions of student learning are worth
investigating in detail to disclose the knowledge, skills and resources used by these
school leaders to navigated the constraints and obstacles that thwart other wellintentioned leaders. Thus even through we may never come to agreement on the correct
definition of justice, goodness or equity in schools, considering phronesis from the
perspective of practice over time can tell us something concrete about the characteristic
values that guide the expert practitioner. In other words, phronetic research can show






how expert leaders disclose morality through their everyday actions in ways that might
otherwise remain obscured.
Accessing Phronesis
Accessing and communicating phronesis has proven a difficult task for
researchers and practitioners alike. Even though phronesis is expressed through action, it
is difficult to infer the nature of phronesis through any given action. Taken out of
context, the motives or values of any action are open to speculation. To researchers, the
practices of school leaders can appear fragmented, disconnected and reactive to emergent
situations (Lee 1987, Peterson 1977). Simply sampling the practices of school leader in
order to reconstruct the wisdom of practice runs the risk of missing the phronesis
altogether. Constructing methods to capture the sense of practice has been a dominant
theme of ethnographic research for decades (see, for example, Geertz 1973: Lincoln and
Guba 1985). Thick descriptions of context, for example, allow readers to situate complex
practices in local contexts. Still, the ethnographic researcher must decide which practices
to note when constructing a thick description.




Aristotle’s discussion of the kinds of knowledge involved in practice points
toward an organizing structure for accessing the phronesis of school leadership.
Aristotle’s contrast of phronesis on one side and techne and episteme on the other belies a
necessary relation of the different kinds of knowledge in practice. Dunne’s (1993)
analysis suggests that there is a hierarchical dependence between phronesis, episteme and
techne such that the selection and use of techne and episteme in practice requires the
development of phronesis. “The crucial thing about phronesis, however, is its attunement
of the universal (epistemic) knowledge and the techniques (techne) to the particular


occasion” (Dunne p. 368). Phronesis acts as an executive faculty that identifies which
aspects of the environment are worthy of action, employs the appropriate means, and
evaluates the results. Much instructional leadership involves the application of
techniques in collaborative program design in developing formative evaluation systems,
and school-wide planning practices to produce improvements in teaching and learning.
The phronesis of leadership guides how and when these technai are used, how theories
need to be adapted to practice, and is able to evaluate when these tools have done their
work properly.
Phronesis and artifacts
The development and use of artifacts can play a crucial role in tracking the
expression of phronesis. Artisans not only develop artifacts as a result of their work, they
also use artifacts (designed by themselves and by others) to complete their work. Some
artifacts are material things, such as shoes and can openers; others are more abstract
creations such as time schedules and plans. School leaders work with abstract artifacts
such as programs, policies and procedures the way painters work with brushes, canvasses
and palettes. Artifacts are the tools leaders use to establish structures for shaping social
interactions, work practices and learning in schools. Leaders use artifacts such as
curriculum, assessments and professional development programs to improve student
learning; spreadsheets and financial statements to balance budgets; and newsletters and
public meetings to enhance school-community relations.
For Aristotle, an artifact incarnates the intention of its designer in the form given
to raw material (Aristotle p. 236-238; 555-556). In material artifacts, intentions are built
into formal qualities exhibited by the shape or the structure of the artifact; for more


abstract artifacts, such as policies or programs, features are designed into the provisions,
structures and incentive systems of the artifact. Contemporary accounts of artifacts in
cognitive psychology expand on Aristotle’s insight of how artifacts provide externalized
representations of intention. Wartofsky (1973) notes how artifacts are “already invested
with cognitive and affective content” (p. 204). Simon (1996) describes how artifacts
provide an interface between the inner life and the outer world. For Simon, our cognitive
inner lives include plans, intentions, goals and strategies that we hope to fulfill in our
interactions with the world. Artifacts are designed to help us to reduce the perceptual
noise of the world by directing us to the aspects of our world we are to notice and name.
Research in distributed cognition emphasizes that people not only use artifacts, but also
that that it is impossible to understand complex practices without reference to artifacts
(Salomon and Perkins 1993). Cognitive artifacts, such as computers, cameras, and paper
are used to extend the range of thinking and action (Norman 1991). Hutchins (1995)
highlights how cognitive artifacts, such as airplane instrumentation, off-load and refine
information-processing tasks enabling practitioners to focus attention on discretionary
and judgment tasks. Analyzing cognitive processes without the addressing the role of
constituting artifacts is a fruitless path for investigating practical wisdom.
Designed artifacts are built to influence practice in certain ways. This connection
between design and intention provides an interesting path for investigating practical
wisdom. Archeologists have long relied on their ability to analyze the designed features
of artifacts to reveal the intentions for use and the anticipated effects built in by the
designer. Artifact features illustrate a remnant of how designers framed the problems
users were likely to face and suggested possible solutions. Artifact analysis shows how


designers selected, valued and used technical and theoretical knowledge to guide the
practice of others. Artifacts, however, have several limitations for analysis. For example,
leaders often alter or selectively implement policy features in order to shape artifacts to
the needs of local context. Adapting complex, abstract artifacts to local conditions is
itself a kind of design process through which practitioners express their intentions for
practice. Thus we can gain insight into the practical wisdom of school leaders by
investigating artifact implementation as well as design.
In schools, the origin of an artifact influences how it is regarded by local actors
(Halverson 2002, 2003). Locally designed artifacts address emergent acute and chronic
concerns in the school. Local leaders design artifacts such as fire drill policies or
appropriate use policies for Internet browsing to instantiate assumptions about proper
conduct and provide incentives to shape appropriate behavior (Cole and Engeström
1993). Locally designed curricula and the daily school bell schedule institute procedures
that routinize the practices of teaching and learning around intended goals. The
idiosyncrasies of local circumstance often make it difficult to replicate the effects of
locally designed artifacts in new contexts. Received artifacts are imported into the local
context. Examples of received artifacts include textbooks, curricula, assessment policies,
budgeting and planning tools. These artifacts are received from identifiable external
sources, such as state and district authorities, teacher unions, textbook and curriculum
publishers, or professional development providers. Even though local leaders are not
responsible for the design of received artifacts, their responsibility for artifact
implementation and maintenance often results in significant adaptation of artifact


designers selected, valued and used technical and theoretical knowledge to guide the
practice of others. Artifacts, however, have several limitations for analysis. For example,
leaders often alter or selectively implement policy features in order to shape artifacts to
the needs of local context. Adapting complex, abstract artifacts to local conditions is
itself a kind of design process through which practitioners express their intentions for
practice. Thus we can gain insight into the practical wisdom of school leaders by
investigating artifact implementation as well as design.

In schools, the origin of an artifact influences how it is regarded by local actors
(Halverson 2002, 2003). Locally designed artifacts address emergent acute and chronic
concerns in the school. Local leaders design artifacts such as fire drill policies or
appropriate use policies for Internet browsing to instantiate assumptions about proper
conduct and provide incentives to shape appropriate behavior (Cole and Engeström
1993). Locally designed curricula and the daily school bell schedule institute procedures
that routinize the practices of teaching and learning around intended goals. The
idiosyncrasies of local circumstance often make it difficult to replicate the effects of
locally designed artifacts in new contexts. Received artifacts are imported into the local
context. Examples of received artifacts include textbooks, curricula, assessment policies,
budgeting and planning tools. These artifacts are received from identifiable external
sources, such as state and district authorities, teacher unions, textbook and curriculum
publishers, or professional development providers. Even though local leaders are not
responsible for the design of received artifacts, their responsibility for artifact
implementation and maintenance often results in significant adaptation of artifact



functions. Using either kind of artifact as an occasion for phronetic analysis helps reveal
the assumptions and values leaders make about their practice.
Emphasizing the critical role of artifacts in understanding phronesis should not
lead us to overestimate the power of artifacts. Researchers have shown that the
development and distribution of complex artifacts to promote structural changes alone
does not of itself lead to instructional change (Cohen and Hill 2001, Elmore, Peterson and
McCarthey 1996). Research from hermeneutics to policy implementation demonstrates
how the meaning of an artifact depends on how it is interpreted as much as on how it is
designed (c.f. Dennett 1990, Gadamer 1989, McLaughlin 1980). Just as the
communication of an author’s intent depends upon the interpretative frame of the reader,
the adaptation and use of an artifact is guided by the phronesis of a practitioner. Artifact
interpretation is guided by which artifact features are perceived by practitioners as
affordances for action (Norman 1993, Reed and Jones 1982). Affordances reflect an
actor’s assumptions of how an artifact might be used in a local context. The actual use of
a received artifact depends on which features are perceived as affordances by actors. For
example, recent discussions of sensemaking in policy implementation illustrate how
practitioners select affordances based on prior experience and knowledge (Spillane,
Reiser & Reimer 2002, Starbuck & Milliken 1988, Weick 1996). Spillane’s (2000) work
shows how district leaders implemented mathematics policy artifacts according to their
prior understanding. District leaders attended to artifact features that cut across subject
matters, but largely ignored the discipline-specific features that might have led to real
changes in teaching and learning. Few leaders constructed understandings consistent
with the intended reform features of the artifact, instead focusing on the affordances











consistent with what their districts were already doing. A cognitive analysis of
implementation shows how the prior knowledge and assumptions determines the range of
affordances perceived by local actors and, in turn, the features of the artifacts
implemented.
A rich example of how leaders select, ignore or subvert artifact features in policy
implementation is provided by recent efforts to reform local school practices through
high-stakes accountability programs. Some school leaders have been accused of using
existing artifacts, such as special education programs and expulsion policies, to improve
test scores by restricting the number of students who take the test (Amrein and Berliner
2002). Analyzing how these leaders used existing artifacts reveals how the tests were
interpreted in terms of compliance with state standards and shows the moral
commitments made by these leaders toward the education of their students. Other school
leaders have responded to the demand for increased accountability by constructing
intermediate local assessment systems that allow teachers to understand state test score
results in terms of the local formative and summative testing practices (Black and Wiliam
1998, Halverson 2002). Analysis of these intermediate assessment artifacts shows how
leaders can understand the academic press of standardized test scores in terms of building
local professional development, curriculum and planning artifacts that help teachers
systematically rethink practice (Halverson 2002, 2003).


evading the press to change teaching, these artifacts demonstrate the commitment of
leaders to working with what they have to improve student learning (Capper, Halverson
and Rah 2003). A phronetic perspective on artifact development and use emphasizes
how leaders create and manipulate multiple artifacts to produce intended effects. Using




school artifacts as occasions for analysis can show how school leaders intentionally
create systemic, amplifying effects on student learning, and can provide insight into how
leaders demonstrate their professional commitments in action (Halverson 2003).
Communicating Phronesis
Artifact-based narratives of phronesis open new possibilities for researchers and
practitioners in communicating practical wisdom. In Making Social Science Matter,
Flyvbjerg (2003) argues for rebuilding social science inquiry in order to access and
communicate phronesis. Concentrating on phronesis allows us to attend to the contextual
and value-laden knowledge that guides the work of experienced professionals. Flyvbjerg
describes how a “phronetic social science” grounded in local, context-narratives, allows
us to consider how practical knowledge both responds to and constructs the particulars of
the situation (p. 129). Artifact-based narratives illustrate how phronesis is found in the
details of the case itself, in the ways practitioners’ frame and solve specific problems, set
goals and make value commitments in practice. In the following section I argue that such
narratives provide the appropriate medium to capture phronesis, how these “phronetic
narratives” might be constructed, and conclude by considering an example of what a
narrative constructed to reveal phronesis might look like in practice.
Narrative and practical wisdom
Acquiring phronesis has long meant prolonged social interaction with those
recognized as possessing practice wisdom. The ancient learning arrangements of
mentoring and apprenticeship have successfully passed on technical knowledge and
practical wisdom to new generations. Recent interest in communities of practice,
cognitive apprenticeship and teacher mentoring point to how participation in social



networks with accomplished practitioners can help novices learn the nuances of expertise
(Collins, Brown and Newman 1989, Fieman-Nemser, Parker and Zeichner 1993, Lave
and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998). However, relying on these complex social networks to
communicate phronesis is expensive, exclusive and uncertain. Participating in apprentice
and mentoring relationships takes time and resources. Even peripheral participation in
exclusive networks requires conditions of access, such as admission to prestigious
schools or employment in successful enterprises, which are denied to many interested
learners. Finally, since most practitioners learn from their social networks regardless of
colleague quality, mentoring relationships with bitter or subversive colleagues can serve
to teach all the wrong things to aspiring school leaders. Elmore (2000) notes that since
most school leaders are products of the system they lead, relying on the social networks
that perpetuate the current norms of schooling may work against change to recreate prior
conditions of practice. Many schools teach aspiring leaders to learn the hard lessons of
survival at the expense of the hope, the desire and the ability to make changes in the
conditions of student learning. The conservative and potentially subversive nature of
learning in practitioner-directed social networks has provided the prime motive for
creating an objective, research-driven knowledge base for educational leadership.
Constructing phronesis-based narratives can point to how researchers might help
direct and refine learning through participation in social networks. Narrative reasoning,
which portrays the temporal and sequential nature of practice, is the form of thinking
people use to make sense of their world (Bruner 1986). Narrative research attempts to
enfold the crucial aspects of practice in the retelling of the story. A coherent narrative
preserves temporal sequence and contextual priorities, providing intelligible cues for the




recollection of practical wisdom and situating resultant actions in authentic contexts
accessible to similarly situated practitioners. Hearing well-constructed stories puts
hearers in the flow of events, making complex chains of reasoning and action accessible
through instantiation in a particular context.
In traditional social science research, case studies have long been used as the
primary medium for using narratives to show how practices are embedded in local
contexts (Ragin and Becker 1992, Stake 1995, Yin 2002). Yet case studies that focus on
tracing a specific path through complex circumstances can risk objectifying exemplary
practices. Objectified case narratives present the details of the case context after the
problem has already been framed, obscuring viable, alternative problem-settings that may
have been considered and passed over by practitioners. Concentrating on the particulars
of exemplary practice, as with case studies or in portraiture (e.g. Lawrence-Lightfoot and
Hoffman 1997), risks glorifying the practitioner without making wisdom accessible.
Revealing the reasons for and against choosing alternative paths is critical for accessing
how experts negotiate complex organizational systems.
Artifact-based phronetic cases can provide a special subset of case studies.
Flyvbjerg (2001) suggests that phronetic cases focus on how values are lived and
expressed in situations. He contrasts ethics with morality to highlight how phronetic
cases show value commitments lived in daily practice rather than formalized into general
moral rules. “Emphasizing the little things,” allow us to see how practitioners live their
values in actual contexts that force compromise, trade-offs and the re-evaluation of
priorities. Showing the practical trade-offs of situational ethics can prompt case readers to
reflect on how their own values are reflected in their actions. Flyvbjerg describes how



phronetic cases “look at practice before discourse,” (p. 134) that is, to focus first on what
people do, then on what they say they do. Capturing practice before discourse allows
practitioners to reflect on possible differences between their espoused theories and their
“theories-in-action,” and to include this reflective practice in the construction of a case
(Argyris and Schon 1978, Schon 1983). Capturing the relation of espoused theories and
theories in action shows how phronetic cases can provide powerful learning opportunities
for practitioners whose practice is represented as well as for outside audiences.
Flyvbjerg also notes the historical importance of cases. Case-based accounts of
phronesis rely on the historical reconstruction of action to show how practices unfolded
over time. Historical narratives are essential to understand how complex systems appear
to practitioners. Juarrero (1999) argues that it is impossible to understand the dynamism
of a complex system from studying either the initial conditions or the system outputs.
Because “each run of a complex system is unique,” (Juarrero 1999, p. 220) the best way
to understand system organization is to trace multiple, individual paths through by
showing how the same practitioners set and solve different problems and how different
practitioners set and solve similar problems. Tracing multiple paths through local
situations cannot hope to specify all possible aspects of system component interaction,
but can help to highlight how practitioners size up and act upon the presenting
characteristics of the system. Phronetic narratives can show how practitioners adjust what
they know and want to the perceived constraints of the situation, and how their actions
flow from their perception of the problem





Artifacts as the basis for phronetic narratives
Building narratives to reconstruct phronesis presents certain difficulties. The
artifact-based approach described here seems to suggest that we can “read” the intentions
of actors through the artifacts. In literary criticism, Wimsatt and Beardsley (1998)
warned against this “intentional fallacy” of seeking for the original intent of the author in
the text. Discerning the intent of an action through the structure and use of an artifact
presents similar difficulties. Just as with portraits or sculpture, the reconstruction of
practitioner intent reflects the abilities and assumptions of the designer as much as the
practitioner represented (Dennett 1990). Critics claim that such reconstructed
representations can never hope to “capture” phronesis with integrity, and at best will
form makeshift collages of researcher impressions of practitioner wisdom. Bourdieu
(1990) goes so far to say that the logic that guides practice, because it is exhausted in
action, is necessarily inarticulate, and cannot be brought to the light of day without
significant transformation. Since our efforts to represent the logic of practice inevitably
devolve into theory, the only way to learn about practical wisdom is turn to mentoring or
apprenticeship and to participate in the life-world of the phronimos.
Drawing from the prior argument, I propose that researchers interested in
documenting phronesis consider how artifacts can help to provide an accessible “ground”
for the reconstruction of past practices. The implementation and design of artifacts
provides a clear and identifiable occasion to identify the expression of phronesis. In
practice, a leader’s problem-setting and problem-solving process usually results in either
a decisions or an artifact. Uncovering the problem-setting processes involved in decisionmaking has proven notoriously difficult due to the challenges of reconstructing prior



rationales for completed actions (Garfinkel 1967, Starbuck and Milliken 1988). The
remoteness of decision paths forces researchers to rely on practitioners’ memories for
reconstructing decision paths. Once decisions are made, the consequences can make the
prior decision paths appear inevitable to practitioners, and the alternative paths once
considered as live possibilities can fade in the face of decision results (Starbuck and
Milliken 1988). While developing narratives around designed artifacts does not
completely remove the problems of reconstructive memory, designed artifacts often
provide a trail of documentary evidence that can serve as timely prompts for practitioners
to check selective reconstruction of decision-paths. Artifact-based research practices that
incorporate the actual memos, letters and records of practice provide prompts for
practitioners to recollect more detailed accounts of prior events (Mogensen and Trigg
1992). Incorporating this documentary trail into the iterative narrative construction
process provides a check to improve the fidelity of the resulting representation.
Determining the quality of phronetic narratives
Addressing these objections involves a closer look at the nature and construction
of phronetic narratives. It is true that the situated nature of phronesis may make it
impossible to represent or verify practice in the same ways as with theories or techniques.
Narratives, however, carry a different kind of truth than theories. Bruner (1986) argues
that narratives are essentially dialogic and aim to inspire a sense of fidelity and
verisimilitude with an audience. The fidelity criterion is aimed to measure how well the


narrative reproduces a sense of what happened in the situation described. The techniques
deployed and values expressed in the representation must aim to reflect the actual
assumptions and actions of practitioners. Verisimilitude is directed toward how the


account “rings true” for a similarly situated practitioner. Verisimilitude is measured by
the “evocativity” of the narrative, that is, the degree to which the narrative makes sense in
the context of the audience’s experience. Verisimilitude measures the plausibility of a
narrative. In the case of phronetic narratives of leadership practice, practitioners may
dismiss narratives that underestimate or underspecify the local obstacles for change,
while narratives that specify the problem-setting practices of leaders in schools rich in
social capital may become accessible even to leaders who lack similar resources.
Together fidelity and verisimilitude provide criteria for narrative adequacy that guide
researchers in developing phronetic narratives.
The process of ensuring the fidelity of a phronetic narrative is grounded in the
iterative design of artifact-based narratives. An iterative design process describes how the
constructed representation of phronesis is regularly checked against the experience of the
represented practitioner. Phronetic narratives must be shared with the phronimos to
measure the accuracy and adequacy of the representation. Altheide and Johnson’s (2000)
reflexive ethnography, for example, provides a methodological reality check on the
development of narratives of practice. Altheide and Johnson claim that the goal of
ethnographic narrative: "is not to capture the informant’s voice, but to elucidate the
experience that is implicated by the subjects in the context of their activities as they
perform them” (p. 491). Jordan and Henderson’s (1995) interaction analysis describes a
process of using video-tapes to record and share practices with research subjects. These
episodes form the basis for a reflective discussion in which practitioners can elaborate on
the assumptions of their practices. Checking the narrative with different practitioners
from the represented context can triangulate the original narrative, bringing to light


different issues involved in constructing and using an artifact, and disclosing the nuances
of why certain tools were used and how values informed and guided practice (Suchman
and Trigg 1991).
The criterion of verisimilitude assumes that narratives are essentially dialogic,
that is, that the “truth” carried by the narrative is not complete until it is understood by an
audience. The verisimilitude of a phronetic narrative is measured by the degree to which
it provides fruitful opportunities for practitioners to engage in reflection on practice.
Schön (1983) emphasizes the power of reflection in helping practitioners learn from their
work. An occasion for reflection reminds the practitioner how a key aspect of practice
unfolds or fits together, sparking reflection to remember forgotten aspects of how an
event occurred or how practice might change in the future. Narratives that capture the
critical aspects of context can aim to immerse us vicariously in the habitus of the expert
practitioner it order to give access to the practitioner’s problem-setting and problemsolving practice.
Though we cannot hope to objectively display a theoretical, objective
reconstruction of phronesis equally accessible to all practitioners, the dialogic nature of
verisimilitude emphasizes the pedagogical and communicative, rather than theoretical,
value of phronetic representations. The quality of the representation will vary according
to the reception of the audience. Verisimilitude between narratives and personal
experience relies on how practitioners are able to recognize deep, structural similarities in
representations (Gentner 1983, Gentner and Markham 1997). Representations that
recreate the structural connections and connect them to the everyday problems of practice
can provide avenues both for reflection by experienced practitioners and for novices to



learn how to make such connections. However, due to the dependence of verisimilitude
on the experience of the viewer, what may evoke valuable opportunities for reflection in
some practitioners may leave others unmoved. The knowledge and expertise of the
audience become essential aspects of measuring verisimilitude (Jennings 1997).
Constructing representations that evoke reflection for all practitioners requires building
multiple structures, linked to the concerns of different audiences, for each kind of
problem represented. The verisimilitude for phronetic narratives is mainly in how they
prompt similarly-situated audiences to reflect on whether or how the represented
practices may provide viable alternatives to their own paths.
Designing learning experiences for verisimilitude requires understanding how to
make prompts for reflection on practice by building opportunities for practitioners to step
back from on-going work and to consider experience from multiple perspectives
(Hawkins, Mawby & Ghitman 1987). Materials in the learning environment can be used
to evoke targeted reflection (Radinsky 2000, Radinsky, et. al. 1999). Narratives based on
phronesis must be structured to allow for readers to wonder about how and why the
practice unfolded. To reconstruct the active, problem-finding aspects of phronesis, cases
must be built with some of the original uncertainty of the situation intact. However,
different kinds of audiences are uncertain about different aspects of a situation. Novices,
for example, may require a sequenced action plan to reduce their uncertainties about
where to begin. More expert leaders, on the other hand, may be interested in how
represented leaders addressed the systemic consequences of the intervention. To
successfully communicate practical wisdom, phronetic narratives must include structures
to anticipate how each type of audience might perceive the case.




To preserve the sense in which problem-setting is not a given for leaders, the case
itself must be problematized to turn the moves made by practitioners into questions for
which there may be multiple solutions. Researchers in mathematics education have used
problematizing as a notion for transforming traditional mathematics content from a set of
solutions to open questions (Hiebert et. al. 1996). Problematizing phronetic narratives
means organizing cases as a series of answers to questions practitioners might ask about
the case. For example, in analyzing a multimedia version of a phronetic narrative,
Halverson, Linnekin Spillane and Gomez (2004) found that audience members wanted to
know more about the background and community of the school, and wanted to know how
the practices represented in the case might fit into other school contexts. Aiming at
verisimilitude for diverse audiences requires different kinds of problematization.
Problematization for novices requires organizing case content in a coherent
representation that results in recommendations for suggested practice; problematization
for experts might require opening up the esoteric, detailed aspects of practice for
comparison with alternate approaches. Merseth (1997) describes how different kinds of
cases can show exemplary practices, provide opportunities to analyze how situations go
wrong, and facilitate reflection on practice. Problematized phronetic cases aim to achieve
all three goals by showing how exemplary practical wisdom involves a series of difficult
choices in complex situations, and invite readers to reflect on how they might act at each
juncture of the narrative.
Building phronetic narratives
Building phronetic narratives involves a multi-step, iterative process of data
collection, analysis, and reconstruction. Constructing phronetic narratives begins by





conducting an in-depth, ethnographic investigation to identify the key artifacts of the
local system of practice. Artifact identification occurs through an iterative research
process of observing leadership practice and talking with school leaders, teachers and
community members about the artifacts that have made the most impact on their work.
Once a range of artifacts are identified, researchers gather examples of how (and
whether) practice is organized around these artifacts; stories of how the artifacts were
constructed, used or changed; and observations of how these artifacts are situated in a
local organization.
The analysis of data for building phronetic narratives draws on Polkinghorne’s
(1995) description of two approaches to narrative research: the analysis of narratives,
that is "studies whose data consists of narratives or stories, but whose analysis produces
paradigmatic typologies or categories," and narrative analysis, or "studies whose data
consists of actions, events and happenings, but whose analysis produces stories" (pp. 5-
6). Creating phronetic narratives requires that these two approaches be linked in an
iterative cycle. In the first stage, the analysis of narratives, stories culled from
practitioners emphasizes relevant local details and lessons learned, but omit many "takenfor-granted" assumptions that make the practice itself possible. Accessing these
assumptions is critical for reconstructing the situation of practitioner problem-setting and
problem-solving. These data can be analyzed in terms of anticipated and emergent
themes in order to draw out the central themes and events of the data.
However, if the analysis stops here, the researcher is left with pieces of stories and
abstractions that tell what went on without telling how it happened. Polkinghorne’s
narrative analysis, which, for the purpose of contrast with the prior step, I will call


narrative reconstruction, points to how story reconstruction proceeds through the
sequencing and selection of relevant situational detail so that the stories remind
practitioners of where they have been and teach learners how they can get there. The
analysis of narratives must be followed by a process of collecting targeted observations,
interviews and artifacts to flesh out the gaps and details of the analyzed narratives.
Narrative reconstruction uses these new data to rebuild the analyzed narratives into a
coherent story that shows how practitioners set and solved problems in the context of
practice.
Once developed, the reconstructed cases of practice need to be shared with
practitioners to test the fidelity and verisimilitude of the representation. Hypertext,
multimedia narratives provide unique affordances for sharing phronetic narratives (for a
more detailed discussion of developing on-line phronetic cases, see Capper, Halverson
and Rah 2003 and Halverson, Linnekin, Spillane and Gomez, 2004). Hypertext refers to a
text-based document incorporating links that cause other documents, paths or media to be
displayed. Hypertext narratives allow readers to navigate the narrative by selecting their
questions of interest, constructing their own unique paths through the case (Kolodner et.
al. 1998, Shrader 2000, Steinkuhler et. al. 2002). In a phronetic narrative, the questions
used to problematize the narrative are also used to organize hypertext content, allowing
readers to directly investigate questions of interest. Multimedia technologies allow
narrative developers to embed video, audio, documents and graphics to make narrative



more evocative of the local system of practice (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 1996,
Fitzgerald, Deasy, and Semrau 1997). The multimedia format of a phronetic narrative
provides direct access to relevant documents of the case and to video interviews with the


key practitioners. Multimedia cases that include authentic documents can help to enhance
narrative fidelity; while hypertext case construction can test verisimilitude by providing
multiple paths through narrative content based on the relative level of reader expertise.
Phronetic narrative, an example
What does a phronetic narrative look like? I have developed several phronetic
narratives to show how elementary school leadership teams established conditions to
improve student learning (Capper, Halverson and Rah 2003, Halverson 2002, Halverson
2003, Halverson, Linnekin, Spillane & Gomez 2004, Halverson and Rah under review).
These cases were organized as multimedia narratives to take advantage of the userdirected affordances of a hypertext system. One narrative showed how an team of urban
elementary school leaders used several artifacts to reshape the community in order to
meet the demands of a high-stakes accountability program, while another narrative
focused on how a K-2 school principal worked with her staff to reshape the traditional
pull-out service-delivery program for special needs students. Here I will offer a brief
overview of the second case involving Deb Mercier and the development of Integrated
Service Delivery at Franklin School.
In our interviews and observations of her school, we found that the practical
wisdom of the principal was grounded in her perception that changing service delivery
for special needs students would require a comprehensive school reform effort involving
rescheduling, professional development, resource acquisition and allocation, assessment
and community relations. The resultant initiative, Integrated Service Delivery (ISD),
provides the central artifact through which we explored the practical wisdom of Principal
Mercier. The analysis of ISD shows how the principal struggled to obtain a federal


Comprehensive School reform grant, contended with district leaders to reshape her
special education and English and a Second Language programs, faced public community
resistance to ISD, and ended up creating a multi-faceted learning environment to bring
struggling students from the periphery to the center of the school learning environment.

.....



Conclusion
School leaders need a knowledge base to guide the complex work of instructional
leadership. While leaders require research-proven theories and time-tested techniques,
they also need specific examples of how these techniques and theories are used in the
schools which already have rich traditions of instructional practice. I have argued that
Aristotle’s concept of phronesis helps us recognize the missing kind of knowledge, and
that constructing and sharing phronetic narratives can help to fill this critical gap in our
knowledge base for instructional leaders. Phronetic narratives rely on the development
and use of artifacts as occasions to show how leaders marshal technical and theoretical
resources in the context of practice. Phronetic narratives build on case study research to
provide accounts of how practitioners negotiate complex situations in achieving their
ends. Unlike traditional case studies, however, phronetic narratives seek to problematize
the conditions of problem-setting and solving by using practitioner questions to organize
narratives and by showing how differently situated practitioners might set and solve
similar problems. Finally, phronetic narratives attend to the values expressed through
action as a way to open reflective conversations on practice about how situations force
leaders to make hard ethical choices, and about how leaders can make these choices in
ways that preserve core values in complex situations.
What would a knowledge base built on phronetic cases look like? The research
presented here has just scratched the surface of how phronetic narratives can capture and
communicate practical wisdom. The following steps constitute possible design principles
for building a knowledge base of phronetic narratives in education:



• Determining which artifacts are critical for representing phronetic practice is the
first step to building a viable knowledge base. The analysis of artifacts such as
school improvement planning, inclusion programs, and programs to integrate
achievement data into guiding instructional practices can show how skilled
practitioners work to achieve these widely-sought policy goals. Problematizing
leadership practice in terms of the concerns likely to arise for practitioners engaged
in similar practices would allow leaders to investigate how their expert peers had set
and solved some of the chronic issues of contemporary practice.
• Second, the construction of hypertext multimedia phronetic narratives (as opposed
to traditional case studies) would allow for a greater degree of interaction and
would allow users to follow divergent paths based on interest. Hypertext systems
allow users to pursue the questions they find most challenging or most interesting in
the context of practice. Multimedia allows for the integration of actual supporting
artifacts, such as memos, grant proposals, letters and program descriptions into the
case, and also allows the users to “meet” the principal actors in the case (Halverson,
Linnekin, Spillane and Gomez, 2004).
• Third, phronetic cases should involve multiple artifacts within schools to explore
how artifact use is influenced by the local context. Rich systems of artifact-based
cases from the same schools would allow practitioners to understand how leaders
intentionally create linkages between artifact in systemic efforts to reform schools.
Indexing artifacts according to the interconnections between artifacts would allow
practitioners to investigate the issues involved in re-designing local situations of
practice


• Fourth, multiple narrative pathways should be constructed through each case, and
multiple cases should be constructed around each kind of practice. Problematizing
cases for novices and for experts requires exploring research approaches to
understand how people learn new practices and how they compare exemplary
practices with their current work. Developing multiple cases for each kind of
practice might help people to better access the representation in terms of their local
contexts. Our initial efforts to test phronetic narratives emphasize how often
practitioners question whether the represented practices would fit in their schools
(Capper, Halverson and Rah 2003). These pathways should be chosen to illustrate
how similar artifacts can be constructed and implemented in widely divergent
situations.
• Finally, the evaluation of phronetic narratives should expand the analytic concepts
of fidelity and verisimilitude. Measuring the fidelity of artifacts would allow for
the creation of phronetic narratives that better represent the context of practice and
allow for the creation of better indexing questions. Verisimilitude measures both
the evocativity of the case but can also lead to measuring what practitioners learn
from the cases. While it is difficult to measure what users learn from cases, Derry’s
work on case-based instruction (for example Derry and DuRussel 1999, Derry et. al.
2000) shows how user navigation of case structures can reveal learning paths
through complex cases. Integrating phronetic narratives in learning contexts can
provide more structured contexts for measuring what learners’ gain from cases.
Recent discussions in educational research have focused on establishing a
knowledge base of “what works” as a way to make educational research useful to







practitioners (see, for example, Shavelson, Phillips, Towne and Feuer 2003, Slavin
2004). This call is most often framed in terms of scientifically determining the
effects of educational interventions on student learning. The suggested randomized
trials of educational programs may well result in a set of research-proven practices
that result in predictable student learning gains. Such research will provide educators
with clearer access to powerful tools for improving student learning. However,
Aristotle’s concept of phronesis suggests that even with increased access to researchtested tools and theories, leaders and teachers will still need to be able to select from
among these theories to determine how they should be best used. School leaders will
continue to need access to faithful and evocative representations of how school
leaders set and solve problems in the context of local practice. In other words, the
construction of a knowledge-base for school leadership will not be complete unless it
includes access to the practical wisdom of successful school leaders.








http://flyvbjerg.plan.aau.dk/Halverson04PhronesisAJE.pdf