Pedagogical Tact ─ Knowing What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do

Pedagogical Tact describes how teacher-student relations possess an improvisational and ethical character. The daily realities of educators, parents, and childcare specialists are pedagogically conditioned by sensitive insights, active thoughtfulness, and the creative ability to act caringly and appropriately in the immediacy of the moment. Internationally known educator Max van Manen shows through recognizable examples and evocative stories how good teaching is driven by the phenomenology of pedagogy. His book
-refocuses educators and others away from an emphasis on instrumental skills and technocratic programs toward the need for pedagogical tact;
-describes how pedagogical actions have latent effects that will influence children throughout their lives;
-shows how our actions with young people have pedagogically ethical and moral significance;
-gives educators back their original vocational motivation and inspiration.

Max van Manen is emeritus Professor in Research Methods, Pedagogy and Curriculum Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta and Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria. He is the leading proponent of the practice and meaning of phenomenological inquiry in pedagogy, psychology, health science, and the human sciences. He is author of numerous books on phenomenology and on pedagogy, includingPhenomenology of Practice (2014), The Tact of Teaching (1991), and The Tone of Teaching (2002). and has had his books translated into nine languages. He has also authored over 100 articles and chapters on pedagogy, health science, qualitative research methods, and phenomenology. He founded the journalPhenomenology and Pedagogy and developed the website PhenomenologyOnline. He is recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Curriculum Division of the American Educational Research Association among numerous other awards and distinctions.