Leissa Kelly

The Heart of the Educator: Aesthetic Experience Shaping Knowledge, Identity, and Passion

This chapter explores Dewey’s construct of aesthetic experience and the role that the aesthetic plays in knowing: knowing as a coherence of things to be known, developing one’s sense of identity in relation to that knowing, and the passions that emerge in an “aesthetic experience” that lays the foundation for future knowing, identity, and passions. Drawing on Dewey’s ideas, Girod, Rau, and Schepige developed the construct “aesthetic understanding” to provide a theoretical lens for describing students’ experience of coming to know science content. This chapter develops the aesthetic understanding construct further into a methodological framework, called a knowledge-identity-passion (KIP) analysis, that can be applied to research exploring aesthetic experience in two “research moments”: the immediate effects of an aesthetic experience on knowledge, identity, and passion and the life trajectory that follows an aesthetic experience. A KIP analysis can be applied to research examining the effects and meanings attached to experiences through close analysis of knowledge, identity, and passion, both individually and in relation to each other. To illustrate the power of a KIP analysis, narratives of four science educators are provided. The practical applications and methodological possibilities and limitations of a KIP Analysis are then discussed.

Banjos on the Snowy

e-Activism (the use of ICT in support of environmental action) aims to develop students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes to make them proficient in using ICT to achieve environmental and political goals. This requires teachers to be able to create appropriate ICT-based learning environments. This paper discusses a particular pedagogical design and demonstrates its relationship to real-world political and environmental action.