Ths bk examines the role of aesthetic experience in learning science&in science education from the perspective of knowlecge as action&language use,based on the writings of John Dewey&Ludwig Wittgenstein.It offers a novel contribution to the current debat

What do we do when we view a work of art? What does it mean to have an 'aesthetic' experience? Are such experiences purely in the eye of the beholder? This book addresses the nature of aesthetic experience from the perspectives of philosophy psychology and neuroscience.

A theory of the neural bases of aesthetic experience across the arts, which draws on the tools of both cognitive neuroscience and traditional humanist inquiry. In Feeling Beauty, G. Gabrielle Starr argues that understanding the neural underpinnings of aesthetic experience can reshape our conceptions of aesthetics and the arts. Drawing on the tools of both cognitive neuroscience and traditional humanist inquiry, Starr shows that neuroaesthetics offers a new model for understanding the dynamic and changing features of aesthetic life, the relationships among the arts, and how individual differences in aesthetic judgment shape the varieties of aesthetic experience. Starr, a scholar of the humanities and a researcher in the neuroscience of aesthetics, proposes that aesthetic experience relies on a distributed neural architecture—a set of brain areas involved in emotion, perception, imagery, memory, and language. More important, it emerges from networked interactions, intricately connected and coordinated brain systems that together form a flexible architecture enabling us to develop new arts and to see the world around us differently. Focusing on the "sister arts" of poetry, painting, and music, Starr builds and tests a neural model of aesthetic experience valid across all the arts. Asking why works that address different senses using different means seem to produce the same set of feelings, she examines particular works of art in a range of media, including a poem by Keats, a painting by van Gogh, a sculpture by Bernini, and Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. Starr's innovative, interdisciplinary analysis is true to the complexities of both the physical instantiation of aesthetics and the realities of artistic representation.

This book is about imaginative approaches to teaching and learning school science. Its central premise is that science learning should reflect the nature of science, and therefore be approached as an imaginative/creative activity. As such, the book can be seen as an original contribution of ideas relating to imagination and creativity in science education. The approaches discussed in the book are storytelling, the experience of wonder, the development of ‘romantic understanding’, and creative science, including science through visual art, poetry and dramatization. However, given the perennial problem of how to engage students (of all ages) in science, the notion of ‘aesthetic experience’, and hence the possibility for students to have more holistic and fulfilling learning experiences through the aforementioned imaginative approaches, is also discussed. Each chapter provides an in-depth discussion of the theoretical background of a specific imaginative approach (e.g., storytelling, ‘wonder-full’ science), reviews the existing empirical evidence regarding its role in the learning process, and points out its implications for pedagogy and instructional practices. Examples from physical science illustrating its implementation in the classroom are also discussed. In distinguishing between ‘participation in a science activity’ and ‘engagement with science ideas per se’, the book emphasizes the central role of imaginative engagement with science content knowledge, and thus the potential of the recommended imaginative approaches to attract students to the world of science.

This accessible and timely edited volume is at once provocative and original in shedding new light on the roles of science and arts creativities for 'future-making education'. An international set of expert authors grapple with innovative ways of thinking about the complex, textured and contested entanglements of knowledge and practice reconfigurings in STEAM education.

This book looks at the value of integrating the arts and sciences in the school curriculum. It argues that this will help students further their understanding of analytical concepts through the use of creativity. The authors illustrate how schools can work towards presenting common practices, concepts, and content. Coverage features case studies and lessons learned from classrooms across the United States. The notion of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) is an emerging discipline unique in its desire to provide a well-rounded approach to education. The chapters of this volume examine STEAM in a variety of settings, from kindergarten to higher education. Readers will learn about the practical considerations involved when introducing the arts and creativity into traditionally left brain processes. This includes best practices for creating and sustaining successful STEAM initiatives in any school, college, or university. For instance, one chapter discusses novel approaches to teach writing with the scientific method in order to help students better present their ideas. The authors also detail how the arts can engage more diverse learners, including students who are not traditionally interested in STEM subjects. They provide three concrete examples of classroom-tested inquiries: designing a prosthetic arm for a child, making a paleontology investigation, and taking a closer look at the arts within roller coaster engineering. This book is an invaluable resource for teachers and teacher trainers, university faculty, researchers, and school administrators. It will also be of interest to science, mathematics, engineering, computer science, information technology, arts and design and technology teachers.

Constructing Representations to Learn in Science Current research into student learning in science has shifted attention from the traditional cognitivist perspectives of conceptual change to socio-cultural and semiotic perspectives that characterize learning in terms of induction into disciplinary literacy practices. This book builds on recent interest in the role of representations in learning to argue for a pedagogical practice based on students actively generating and exploring representations. The book describes a sustained inquiry in which the authors worked with primary and secondary teachers of science, on key topics identified as problematic in the research literature. Data from classroom video, teacher interviews and student artifacts were used to develop and validate a set of pedagogical principles and explore student learning and teacher change issues. The authors argue the theoretical and practical case for a representational focus. The pedagogical approach is illustrated and explored in terms of the role of representation to support quality student learning in science. Separate chapters address the implications of this perspective and practice for structuring sequences around different concepts, reasoning and inquiry in science, models and model based reasoning, the nature of concepts and learning, teacher change, and assessment. The authors argue that this representational focus leads to significantly enhanced student learning, and has the effect of offering new and productive perspectives and approaches for a number of contemporary strands of thinking in science education including conceptual change, inquiry, scientific literacy, and a focus on the epistemic nature of science.

The aim of this book is to support and inspire teachers to contribute to much-needed processes of sustainable development and to develop teaching practices and professional identities that allow them to cope with the specificity of sustainability issues and, in particular, with the teaching challenges related to the ethical and political dimension of environmental and sustainability education. Bringing together recent scholarship on the topic, this book translates state-of-the-art academic research into teaching models, methods and tools. Starting with an outline of the challenge of sustainability, it offers insights and models for understanding the interesting yet ambiguous concept of ‘sustainable development’ and the complex process of transforming society in a more sustainable direction (Part I). It then goes on to provide a guide to preparing courses and lessons as well as tools for reflection about teaching practices and the multiplicity of approaches to addressing ethical and political challenges in sustainable development teaching (Part II). Finally, the book offers useful conceptual frameworks, models and typologies about the concrete design and implementation of sustainable development teaching (Part III). This book will be essential reading for students of education, as well as teachers in compulsory and higher education and sustainability education researchers.