Pedagogical Tact : Knowing What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do

Internationally known educator Max van Manen provides phenomenological guidance on how teachers, parents, and other child care workers can act pedagogically with sensitivity, tact, respect, and attentiveness, to create a positive influence that is felt throughout the young person’s life and adulthood.

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.