📑 Researching Your Own Practice: The Discipline of Noticing

One of the key ideas in Mason’s book involves the pitfalls of teachers acting by routine only. Professionals become professionals, he acknowledges, by developing perceptions and skills, and by ‘routinising’ them. But Mason says that routines also deaden us. When things seem familiar and we react according to pattern or habit, we may not really be seeing what’s there. That means that we may not be doing as well as we might. The art of noticing is to keep open to new perceptions while standing on the base of skills, routines, and knowledge that enables us to function as well as we do. The discipline of noticing is to keep such noticing productive, and this is at the core of Mason’s agenda.