Pedagogical Tact

 I found this reading quite difficult to understand at many points due to some of the language of phenomenology that was unfamiliar to me, but the underlying ideas as I grasp them are of great interest to me. The first quote that I want to consider in some depth is:

"As teachers, we sometimes catch ourselves about to say something but then hold back before we have completely committed ourselves to what was already “on our lips.” Other times the situation we are in seems to “tell” us as it were how we should act."

This is Van Manen giving an example of pedagogical tact, a case of "thinking-in-action" that is familiar to all of us. Tact in a social sense is something that we all develop, and in fact many attribute this to the social culture of schools. In either the social or pedagogical sense, however, it is extremely difficult to directly instruct someone on tact. This is the issue that Van Manen spends the bulk of the article elaborating upon. This sense of being 'told' how to act is familiar to me, though, and might be a phenomenon that a person can connect with outside of the discipline of teaching. The only thing that I can imagine causing some difficulty (beyond the fear that such an experience will not occur) is the sense that a decision based on pedagogical tact is more challenging to justify to administration, students, or parents. 

My second quote:

"The application or reach of theories is both too limited and too universal, too partial and too general to be of immediate practical use in teachers' dealing with children."

I think it is important to examine the flaws that Van Manen sees in a purely theory-based classroom model of teacher behaviour. In my own experience talking to teachers, few espouse the same theory as they left their own education with and even those that do do so with less vigour than they once held. Something that I noticed as a student is that the new teachers that I had all suffered from similar desires to make all of their decisions grounded entirely in theory. The challenge is that, if this desire for the backing of theory is transparent to students, I think it decreases the credibility of the teacher in an ironic way. A reliance on strict adherence to theory undermines the teacher's tact and the students perception of their own self-assuredness in education. 

My third quote:

"If we were to ask the teacher to give an account of every one of her actions then she would most likely be stymied. Yet, it is the totality of all those micro-situations (and not just the overall intent and pattern of the lesson) that defines the teaching-learning reality of the classroom."

I find this quote particularly illuminating because it identifies the fact that even teachers who have a great deal of experience working with pedagogical tact will struggle to articulate the skills and strategies they employ. This makes tact extremely challenging to teach or even describe, which is I believe both a pro and a con in some senses. The negative of this is perhaps quite obvious, in that it would be preferable to develop tact in new teachers before they enter the classroom. The positive side, I think, is that the state of pedagogical tact is invigorating to teachers beyond what they would get from a purely theory or practice-based pedagogy. This is also extremely hard to describe, but its closest analogue in my own brain is the state of flow that one can achieve when working at something of appropriate challenge and interest.