Aesthetics, Affect, and Making Meaning in Science Education

This book offers novel approaches, theoretical insights and results on the development of students’ and teachers’ interest in science as situated learning. It argues for the importance of the affective and emotional dimensions of teaching and learning in STEM classrooms in parallel to the cognitive dimensions.

Contributions to this book examine aesthetics, aesthetic judgement, and aesthetic experience in science education from the perspectives of researchers and practitioners and make a case for integrating aesthetics and affective experiences in science education teaching and learning research and practice. They explore how an aesthetics of science can empirically be observed to take shape through classroom interactions and how such interactions influence learning and how science is valued in aesthetic terms in relation to other practices. The research studies featured in this book span from preschool to undergraduate students, and also include a theoretical contribution reviewing and synthesising the methodological contributions to this volume. They draw on recent theoretical, methodological and empirical advances on the role of aesthetic experience for learning science. These new developments are used to investigate how a disciplinary aesthetics of science can be developed and can meet that of other subjects, and how these various aesthetic practices may be generatively dovetailed for the benefit of learning science and developing an interest in science.

This book's contribution extends beyond the fields of science education research. Its insights can assist policymakers, instructional designers, and teacher educators in considering emotional aspects of learning and values more generally when implementing strategies to foster meaning-making alongside sense-making. It was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Science Education.

Per-Olof Wickman is Emeritus Professor in Science Education at Stockholm University. His interests include (1) developing conceptual models assisting teachers in planning, analysing, designing and assessing science teaching and learning, (2) exploring how communication and discourse can be organized to support interest and learning, and (3) understanding conditions for professional development.

Vaughan Prain is Professor in Education with a research focus on student multimodal learning in science and teacher professional learning to support this process.

Russell Tytler is Deakin Distinguished Professor of Science Education at Deakin University. He researches student reasoning and learning through the multimodal languages of science, socio scientific issues and reasoning, school-community partnerships, STEM curriculum policy and practice, teacher professional learning, climate change education.