Pedagogical Tact Research

        In this project the meaning of pedagogy is explored at the hand of the practical notion of "tact" that teachers learn to embody and cognitively edify. The notion of pedagogical tact has had currency in the history of the German educational literature by proponents of the Geisteswissenschaftliche (human science) school.

    Analysis of observational and written data shows how situations of teaching constitute a ongoing series of pedagogical moments. And the pedagogical moment requires of the teacher the ability for immediately knowing of what to say or do in concrete situations. At the hand of experiential examples pedagogical understanding is studied as a perceptive observing and active listening to young people. A main part of the project is devoted to investigate the relation between pedagogical reflection and action in teaching. The term of this relation is the notion of "pedagogical tact."

The phenomenon of pedagogical tact shows how the processes of teaching require an interpretive intelligence, a practical moral intuitiveness, a sensitivity and openness toward the child's subjectivity, and an improvisational resoluteness in dealing with young people. This study explores, among other interests, how tactful teaching operates in the positive speech climate that is created in classrooms, in the teacher's subtle use of silence; and the purpose of this inquiry is to explore how tact is mediated through the eyes, through gesture, and through the example of the teacher's personal presence. This project is part of a larger interest in the epistemology of professional practice. This research was published as The Tact of Teaching.