Author Description

"At a time when education is becoming ever more standardized and technocratic, there is renewed interest in the interpersonal, even intimate phenomenon of pedagogical tact. Some speak of a renaissance. Like tact in general, pedagogical tact is a ready and delicate sense of what is fitting and proper in dealing with others. In pedagogy, these "others" are typically children, youth, or students, and tact is exercised as a kind of disposition that is oriented to the learners' maturation and eventual autonomy. It takes the form of a subtle but active discernment that arises when theories and prescriptions simply do not help. This edited collection, the first to appear on pedagogical tact in English, includes contributions from several authors who are a part of the renaissance of this area. It also features a substantial introduction to the tradition of pedagogy from which tact emerges, and that also traces the subsequent international development of understandings of pedagogical tact"--