Supporting aesthetic experience of science in everyday life

ABSTRACT

Researchers have argued that a central goal of science education is to transform students' out-of-school experiences, so that students have aesthetic experiences of the world that would not otherwise be available to them. The goal of this paper is to articulate a set of design principles that support this goal. In doing so, I will first position this as a problem of transfer, and describe a perspective on transfer in which an idea or experience is not so much abstracted from its original context, but one in which the learning context incorporates out-of-class contexts, and vice versa. After characterising a range of context domains that may be positioned intercontextually, I will argue that such transfer of scientific activity is fostered in classrooms that are themselves intercontextual: where out-of-class contexts are invoked by students in scientifically consequential and aesthetically meaningful ways as they develop and vet ideas. I develop a taxonomy of intercontextuality and describe classroom episodes of such intercontextuality from an undergraduate course that shows evidence of high transfer of aesthetic experience. I then offer suggestions for how elements of course design may support students in such aesthetic experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Aesthetic experience
• intercontextuality
• transfer

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for the numerous students whose ideas are represented here, and for input from Michele Carney, Sara Hagenah and Julianne Wenner.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation [grant numbers 1140785, 1638524, and 1712051].