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Education on the Edge of Possibility.
By Renate Nummela Caine and Geoffrey Caine.
Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1997.* It is a bit risky to write a book about educational possibility, because the cosmos of possibility about learning is so vast. Nonetheless, in a highly readable and conversational style, the willing educated traveler is invited into a personal and professional change journey that, although not devoid of risks, is well worth the adventure.
The Caines are authors with a unique and important perspective about the need for teaching to be transformed, if we are serious about creating learning conditions that purposefully and actively engage students in their own learning and that allow for the emergence of what the authors call "the possible human" (p. 1).
Education on the Edge of Possibility is about what the Caines did to effect significant and substantive change within two school communities, and a description of what they have learned in the process. It is about how the authors created conditions within two learning communities that enabled them to take their "theory of learning, based upon a holistic interpretation of brain research, and attempt to implement it" (p. v).
In working with the two school communities on the changes required to affect sustainable transformation within their settings,...