Overview

Fox draws upon an impressive storehouse of professional experience, both as a teacher and a researcher (at one point, he conducted studies on the reform of higher education in Iceland). The book is eclectically structured-the author combines a personal memoir with an educational textbook, an amalgam that places his revelations within the context they occurred and adds to their clarity. Fox's essential insight is an egalitarian one-he doesn't deny the differences between experts and non-experts, but he blurs them, suggesting that more collaboration between the two is both possible and mutually beneficial. He convincingly argues that both are united by the salutary experience of intellectual uncertainty; looking at a continuum that runs from expertise to non-expertise, ignorance is not bundled at only one end. (""Rather, ignorance is located at both ends - as is expertise."") Furthermore, the author asserts, one's encounter with uncertainty, and the aplomb with which one negotiates that encounter, is an important hallmark of all thought, not just for those with academic credentials. ""What I am proposing is that all scientific and other inquiry fields recognize that most human beings, of all ages and backgrounds, have strengths in working at the edges of the known, of dealing with uncertainty. Although many may not have been prepared to apply these talents through their education, they have had to do so in a variety of other aspects of their lives, some more than others."" This is a thoroughly provocative study, as thoughtful as it is persuasive.

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9789935468314

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Reviews

""The book is eclectically structured-the author combines a personal memoir with an educational textbook, an amalgam that places his revelations within the context they occurred and adds to their clarity. Fox's essential insight is an egalitarian one-he doesn't deny the differences between experts and non-experts, but he blurs them, suggesting that more collaboration between the two is both possible and mutually beneficial. A genuinely original reconsideration of the nature of education."" Kirkus review

Author Information

G Thomas Fox was a professor emeritus from National Louis University, Chicago, Illinois. In his 55 years as an educator, he researched educational policy and practice at national and local levels, including at primary school through university doctoral settings; and for nearly three decades he has guided teachers and adult educators in researching their own professional settings

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