oa Onderzoek naar praktijkkennis met behulp van psychodrama

Studying tacit knowledge with psychodrama. Design of a qualitative research method

Play and playful methods are used frequently in coaching and in consultancy. This paper answers the question how to study the tacit knowledge of professionals when they use play as a method with their clients or client systems.According to Schön (1983) the practitioner creates in a learning process a virtual world to explore different actions and interventions. In this article it is described how psychodrama can be seen as a virtual world, in which an ‘as if’-world can be created that professionals can use to express, verbalize and explore their ‘embodied cognition’ (Damasio, 2010) about feelings in communication with their clients. It is argued that psychodrama can be conceived of as a research method, that enables to obtain insights into the pre-reflective experiences or tacit knowledge of the interactions between the professional, the client and the play method. It is assumed that this research method could also be used in the study of gaining insight into experiential knowledge in the production of arts and in group dynamics.