Exploration And Meaning Making In The Learning Of Science
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Exploration and Meaning Making in the Learning of Science
Author: Bernard Zubrowski
language: en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date: 2009-08-14
Mountaineers, Rock Climbers, and Science Educators Around the 1920s, rock climbing separated from mountaineering to become a separate sport. At that time European climbers developed new equipment and techniques, enabling them to ascend mountain faces and to climb rocks, which were considered unassailable up to that time. American climbers went further by expanding and improving on the equipment. They even developed a system of quantification where points were given for the degree of difficulty of an ascent. This system focused primarily on the pitch of the mountain, and it even calculated up to de- mals to give a high degree of quantification. Rock climbing became a technical system. Csikszentmihaly (1976) observed that the sole interest of rock climbers at that time was to climb the rock. Rock climbers were known to reach the top and not even glance around at the scenery. The focus was on reaching the top of the rock. In contrast, mountaineers saw the whole mountain as a single “unit of perc- tion. ” “The ascent (to them) is a gestalt including the aesthetic, historical, personal and physical sensations” (Csikszentmihaly, 1976, p. 486). This is an example of two contrasting approaches to the same kind of landscape and of two different groups of people. Interestingly, in the US, Europe, and Japan a large segment of the early rock climbers were young mathematicians and theoretical physicists, while the mountaineers were a more varied lot.
Aesthetic Experience in Science Education
This book examines the role of aesthetic experience in learning science and in science education from the perspective of knowledge as action and language use. The theoretical underpinnings are based on the writings of John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In their spirit aesthetics is examined as it appears in the lives of people and how it relates to the activities in which they are involved. Centered around an empirical analysis of how students and their teachers use aesthetic language and acts during laboratory and field work, the book demonstrates that aesthetics is something that is constantly talked about in science class and that these aesthetic experiences are intimately involved in learning science. These empirical findings are related to current debates about the relation between aesthetics and science, and about motivation, participation, learning and socio-cultural issues in science education. This book features: *an empirical demonstration of the importance and specific roles of aesthetic experiences in learning science; *a novel contribution to the current debate on how to understand motivation, participation and learning; and *a new methodology of studying learning in action. Part I sketches out the theoretical concepts of Wickman's practical epistemology analysis of the fundamental role of aesthetics in science and science education. Part II develops these concepts through an analysis of the use of aesthetic judgments when students and teachers are talking in university science classes. Part III sums up the general implications of the theoretical underpinnings and empirical findings for teaching and learning science. Here Wickman expands the findings of his study beyond the university setting to K-8 school science, and explicates what it would mean to make science education more aesthetically meaningful. Wickman's conclusions deal to a large extent with aesthetic experience as individual transformation and with people's prospects for participation in an activity such as science education. These conclusions have significance beyond science teaching and learning that should be of concern to educators generally. This book is intended for educational researchers, graduate students, and teacher educators in science education internationally, as well as those interested in aesthetics, philosophy of education, discourse analysis, socio-cultural issues, motivation, learning and meaning-making more generally.
Teaching Science in Out-of-School Settings
This book explores pedagogical approaches used by informal science educators and botanic garden educators in particular, when teaching science to visiting students (7-12 years old). More specifically, it draws on the sociocultural perspective of learning, and highlights the importance of discourse in learning processes. It examines the interactions between four botanic garden educators (BGEs) and their students, focusing on how the students’ contributions to the talk are followed up on by the BGEs. Moreover, it includes an investigation into which kinds of teaching behaviours on the part of BGEs can best support learning.