Teaching Genius: Redefining Education with Lessons from Science and Philosophy

In his book Teaching Genius: Redefining Education with Lessons from Science and Philosophy, Chris Edwards contends that ‘[teachers] should not be viewed as individuals who adopt systems, but as professionals who are invited to shape and advance their field.’ This is a radical shift away from top-down reform efforts that place teachers in passive roles. Edwards directs teachers to deepen their content knowledge and experiment with different methodologies then publish their successes, much like university professors do. Edwards’ book places teachers back where they should be in the school-reform movement: empowered problem solvers working to do what is best to improve student learning.

Mr. Edwards’s fascinating book should be required reading for all teachers of history and social studies. His examples reveal how critical connections are to learning and how teachers can pull from a depth of understanding of their content areas to support students’ valuable work in making those connections. Teachers in other disciplines would find Part I important to their teaching, as well; defining teaching as a field and understanding how people learn are vital for any educator who hopes to make a difference with his/her teaching. An added benefit of reading Teaching Genius is the history itself, and I found myself with a renewed interest in the field due to how well he ‘connected the dots.’ Most importantly, Mr. Edwards celebrates with this book the joy of doing academic work, creating critical thinkers, and discovering connections between disciplines. It is just what teaching should be.

While much attention is given to what should be taught in schools and how material should be taught, all too often both do not take place. Edwards has produced a work that attempts to redefine teaching as well as explore the ways that such definitions may be promulgated. The first section of the book examines lessons from the history and philosophy of science and is divided into six chapters that explore defining “teaching,” professional development in content areas, neuroscience and consilience, and applications for education faculty and administrators as well as for practitioners from other disciplines. The second section explores ways that the concepts examined in the first six chapters might actually be realized in the classroom. The areas explored in these final five chapters include human migration, historical pattern recognition, historical paradigm shifts, how coffee plays a role in global trade, and applications of insights to historical narratives. The book provides a practical version of concepts first introduced by Jerome S. Bruner in Man: A Course of Study (MACOS). Summing Up: Recommended. General readers, undergraduate students, and professionals.