Aesthetic experiences integrated into science education can heighten children’s cognition and their engagement with the natural worldThis theoretical article focuses on concerns relating to science education within the frame of education for sustainable development. Current approaches to science education tend to have an alienating effect on students, as shown by the results of a study involving one hundred and twenty pre-school and primary school student-teachers. Their science education experiences left them feeling alienated from their environment and the people who inhabit it. This paper argues for a different approach to science teaching and teacher education. This different approach roots scientific concepts in students’ everyday lives and deepens their contact with the environment.
This approach involves the integration of aesthetic experience in science class and in science teacher education. The intent behind this integration is to strengthen students’ sensibility towards the environment and is based on the understanding that art can heighten both children’s cognition and their engagement with the natural world. Six aspects of this approach are discussed: students’ everyday knowledge and experience; aesthetic experience and grounding; fostering aesthetic sensibility; cross-curricular integration with art; ontological and epistemological aspects; and belongingness and (re-) connection to Earth. Aesthetic understanding is presented as a tool for learning science more effectively, as it allows students to be “swept-up” in the learning experience versus experiencing science as “something to be analysed, stood back from, and acquired.” A true aesthetic experience unifies person and environment and deepens one’s understanding of being grounded in the world with others.
The author, after referencing the philosophy of Heidegger who claims that our fundamental way of being-in-the-world is a caring way, asks “Should not students’ sense of caring and belonging become a learning goal that is added to science curriculum?” The author calls for more outdoor education, but notes how this means more than “merely teaching moved out of the classroom.” Outdoor education should be an aesthetic experience, “achieved by participation in the world, not by verbal reflection.” It’s from this reservoir of everyday experiences that scientific concepts are formed.
The author concludes by restating the need for a critical discussion about science education and how to engage learners for a sustainable future. He also highlights the need for science students and student-teachers to practice their sense of caring and belonging and to refine their sensibility towards the world.
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