Wonder-full education

“On the cutting edge of books adopting an international perspective. ... The multicultural perspective is valuable for curriculum scholars and teachers the world over. This book is revolutionary in the best sense of that word.” William E. Doll, Jr., Louisiana State University (Emeritus), USA, and University of Victoria and University of British Columbia (Adjunct), Canada

“...A novel, timely and worthwhile book – full of wonder in itself. It is a manifesto for bringing awe and wonder back to education – and illuminating the poetic and inspirational in all subjects. A valuable and original addition to the literature, it will appeal to both beginning teachers and experienced researchers.” Paul Ernest, University of Exeter, UK

For many children much of the time their experience in classrooms can be rather dull, and yet the world the school is supposed to initiate children into is full of wonder. Many forces conspire against making everyday schooling wonder-full. This book offers a rich understanding of the nature and roles of wonder in general, and provides multiple suggestions for how to revive wonder in adults (teachers and curriculum makers) and how to keep wonder alive in children. Its aim is to show that adequate education needs to take seriously the task of evoking wonder about the content of the curriculum and to show how this can routinely be done in everyday classrooms. The authors do not wax flowery; they present strong arguments based on either research or precisely described experience for the importance of wonder as a central educational concept, and show how this argument can be seen to work itself out in daily practice. The emphasis is not on ways of evoking wonder that might require virtuoso teaching, but rather on how wonder can be evoked about the everyday features of the math or science or social studies curriculum in regular classrooms. Kieran Egan is Professor and Canada Research Chair, Faculty of Education, and Director, Imaginative Education Research Group at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Annabella Cant is a PhD candidate in the Curriculum Theory and Implement- ation Program, and Associate Director, Imaginative Education Research Group at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Gillian Judson is Lecturer and Director, Imaginative Education Research Group at Simon Fraser University, Canada. This page intentionally left blank WONDer-FULL EDUCATION

The Centrality of Wonder in Teaching and Learning Across the Curriculum

Edited by Kieran Egan, Annabella Cant and Gillian Judson First published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Wonder-full education : the centrality of wonder in teaching and learning across the curriculum / edited by Kieran Egan, Annabella Cant, and Gillian Judson. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Learning, Psychology of. 2. Wonder in children. I. Egan, Kieran, editor of compilation. LB1060.W654 2013 370.15´23–dc23 2012050551

ISBN: 978-0-415-82029-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-82030-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-49850-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by HWA Text and Data Management, London Contents

Preface vii

Part I The Nature of Wonder and its Educational Uses 1

1 Our Hearts Leap Up: Awakening Wonder Within the Classroom 3 Laura Piersol

2 Wow! What if ? So What?: Education and the Imagination of Wonder: Fascination, Possibilities and Opportunities Missed 22 Dave Trotman

3 Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 40 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou

4 Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 66 Dov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis

Part II Engaging Wonder in Everyday Classrooms 87

5 Opportunity to Teach: The Joy of Teaching What You Know Deeply, Find Fascinating, and Want to Share 89 David C. Berliner vi Contents

6 Renewing the Sense of Wonder in the Minds of High School and College Students 97 Keiichi Takaya

7 From “Unknown Questions” Begins a Wonderful Education: Kyozai-Kaishaku and the Dialogic Classroom 110 Kiyotaka Miyazaki

8 The Talking Table: Sharing Wonder in Early Childhood Education 122 Fleur Griffiths

9 The Upside Down Picnic Table: The Wonder of Learning Through Improvisational Play 135 Lynn Fels

Part III Dimensions of Educational Wonder 147

10 Wonder, Awe and Teaching Techniques 149 Kieran Egan

11 Wonder for Sale 162 Annabella Cant

12 An Educational Leadership Perspective: Managing and Revealing the DNA of Wonder in Teaching and Learning 178 Di Fleming

13 The Keys to Wonder-Rich Science Learning 190 Lynne Bianchi

14 Creative Imagination in Play-Worlds: Wonder-Full Early Childhood Education in Finland and the United States 203 Pentti Hakkarainen and Beth Ferholt

15 Wonder as a Gateway Experience 219 Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen

About the contributors 239 Index 243 Preface

The idea of writing this book originated in our acknowledgment of the lack of literature on the topic of wonder in education. Our team of editors was extremely curious about what other teachers, professors, and philosophers of education thought about the pedagogical role of wonder. It was rather surprising how many authors responded so positively to our invitation to contribute to this book; many expressed interest and excitement about addressing this topic. The resulting chapters revolve around the relationship between wonder and schooling: how wonder can be integrated more frequently in the curriculum, how teachers can evoke students’ sense of wonder with different curricular content, and how schools can nurture and utilize the capacity of students to sense wonder in the world. The philosophical and practical readings the book contains are intended for a large international audience: teachers and administrators, early childhood educators, undergraduate and graduate students of education, and parents. The book is structured in three sections. Part I, The Nature of Wonder and its Educational Uses, invites the reader on a philosophical and pedagogical journey into the nature of the sense of wonder as a valuable pedagogical tool. This section includes two practical examples of wonder being employed as part of science education and mathematics. Part II, Engaging Wonder in Everyday Classrooms, starts with two philosophical chapters that discuss topics including the joy of teaching, the fascination felt while learning from a passionate and knowledgeable educator, and ways of rekindling the sense of wonder in high-school and college students. The next three chapters in this section describe some practical ways to infuse viii Preface wonder in the teaching relationship between students and teachers, and students and the curriculum. In Part III, Dimensions of Educational Wonder, the reader will find chapters that continue the conversation on wonder as a pedagogical tool; building from, and developing further dimensions of, the pedagogy of wonder. Each chapter in the book—even if different in its approach, style, and even perspective—connects to the others by a common thread: the necessity for wonder’s prominence in the educational environment. What distinguishes this book from other educational literature is the unique distinction it makes between wonder as a childish feeling of joy and surprise, and wonder as a powerful learning tool that has the potential to change the schooling experience of both students and educators. Wonder is not an educational frill but lies at the heart of learning. Part I The Nature of Wonder and its Educational Uses This page intentionally left blank 1 Our Hearts Leap Up

Awakening Wonder Within the Classroom

Laura Piersol

Exploring the forest with a group of grade 6 students, I notice a cluster of boys grouped around a spruce tree talking with fervour. “Call her over!” I hear one boy say. I walk toward them. “Come! Look what we found!!” another one shouts to me. I arrive at the foot of the tree and they push back some branches. There are small dark objects delicately placed on many of the boughs. “They look like elf ears,” one boy remarks. “Hey, there are some on this tree too!” a girl shouts from 50 feet away. “Here too!” another boy calls from down the winding path. “What are they?”, “How did they get here?”, “Can I eat it?”... I have no idea. We are filled with wonder.

In my practice, I have continually experienced the importance of “wonder” as a learning tool. Wonder can be a hard concept to articulate. For me, wonder begins as a wave of “surprise caused by something unexpected or unfamiliar”1 or by an example of amazing achievement. At first, I delight in this feeling and briefly hold it like a worn stone, tracing my fingers over it as it lays fixed before me. I am momentarily frozen by the feeling that I am holding. As Albert Schweitzer writes, “If you study life deeply, its profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness” (1969, p. 115). Yet, the moment I begin to contemplate it, I move from holding the wonder to letting it hold me; it shape-shifts from a noun to a verb through me. I now embody feelings of doubt, curiosity and amazement. The world grows larger and I feel like a stone being worn in waves of possibility. I realize that I still have much to learn. The fact that wonder is an essential part of learning is by no means a new insight. The ancient Greek philosopher Thales reportedly fell into a well while 4 Laura Piersol wondering at the stars above. Think of all that he learned after that! However, in our education system today the concept is still almost completely absent. This is extremely problematic because, as Rachel Carson points out, “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in” (1965, p. 45). How can we foster this type of learning if as teachers we have forgotten how to find excitement in a blade of grass or inspiration in a handful of soil?2 There are two great thinkers that can help us in this regard. In this paper, I will trace the insights of Plato and William Wordsworth regarding this concept of wonder. Although wonder is defined differently by both writers, it is of utmost importance to both of them. I will then argue that a sense of wonder is particularly lacking in the current educational system and explain how this greatly impedes learning. In conclusion, I will outline useful ideas from Plato and Wordsworth in terms of how and why we need to reintegrate this concept into education.

Plato: Humble Wandering as Wondering Plato stated that “wonder is the beginning of philosophy” (Theaetetus, 155d). Aristotle echoed this claim: “For men were first led to study philosophy, as indeed they are today, by wonder” (Metaphysics I, 982b 12–13). The “wonder”that both Plato and Aristotle refer to is a sense of “puzzlement” (aporia) and humility within learning (Matthews, 1997). In many of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates questions fellow-citizens in such a way as to leave them increasingly perplexed, as illustrated in this passage from the dialogue Meno:

Socrates, I used to be told, before I knew you, that you were always doubting yourself and making others doubt; and now you are casting your spells over me, and I am simply getting bewitched and enchanted ... my soul and my tongue are really torpid, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons––and very good ones they were, as I thought––at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is. (80ab)

Socrates responds by stating: “I perplex others not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself ” (80c). This admission of his state of aporia demonstrates his own humility within the process of seeking knowledge. Again, in another dialogue, Theaetetus, when reaching a point of confusion, states that he is “lost in wonder when I think of all these things” (Theaetetus, 155c). Our Hearts Leap Up 5

The “wonder” that Socrates has elicited in others as well as in himself is the sense of knowing one’s ignorance before the vast scope of potential knowledge; wonder at how very little is known compared to what can be known and the humbling realization that what was thought to be known is no longer adequate. At the end of Theaetetus, Socrates summarizes the point of this philosophical wondering/wandering:

Then supposing you should ever henceforth try to conceive afresh, Theaetetus, if you succeed, your embryo thoughts will be the better as a consequence of today’s scrutiny, and if you remain barren, you will be gentler and more agreeable to your companions, having the good sense not to fancy to know what you do not know. For that, and no more, is all that my art can effect. (210bc)

According to Plato, philosophy begins in this state of puzzlement/aporia. Yet, the etymology of “aporia” means “lacking” a “path” or a “way”. This seems disastrous, for if the pursuit of knowledge is built around this term does it not imply that all learners will end up perplexed and lost? It is important that the state of perplexity that Socrates induces through his questioning is not one that is debilitating. Too much puzzlement could lead to an overwhelmed and frustrated feeling bordering on relativism. To ensure that this humility isn’t defeating, Plato divides human nature into two parts: one side philosophical, the other “spirited” (courageous). He then compares these two principles to the strings of an instrument that need to be “relaxed or drawn tight until they are duly harmonized” (The Republic, Bk. 3, 412). The philosophical beginnings of wonder need the courage to abandon preconceptions and then to embrace strange, new ideas. On the other hand, to avoid being brutish, our courage needs to be tamed by the wisdom that comes from philosophical wondering. In harmony with courage, wonder becomes an essential step in learning, as the very state of puzzlement is what leads to a longing for the truth. As Adeimantus says to Socrates in The Republic:

When you talk in this way, a strange feeling passes over the minds of your hearers ... and at the end of the discussion they are found to have sustained a mighty overthrow and all their former notions appear to be turned upside down. (Bk. 6, 487bc)

By inducing this state in others and through his own frequent admission of being in a perplexed state himself throughout various dialogues, Socrates demonstrates that indeed to know what it is that we do not know is the humbling, courageous first step of true knowledge. Aristotle points out this process in his Metaphysics: 6 Laura Piersol

“Now, a man who is perplexed and wonders believes himself to be ignorant ... they philosophized in order to avoid ignorance” (1, 982b, pp. 18-20). It is this very feeling of wondering ignorance that impels us to learn more. Hence Socrates’ claim: “the feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy” (Theaetetus, 155d). Through the dialectic, Socrates has given his interlocutors the courage to abandon some of their familiar, old or habitual views. He then returns to the primary question with the learner now in a more open-minded state, ready to exit the cave and see the world in a new light. In doing so, he has initiated a humble and non-dogmatic curiosity of what lies beyond the familiar. Together they begin to envision new, strange, and unique ways of seeing the world: “that sounds strange, Socrates” (Theaetetus, 198e), “You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners,” says Glaucon responding to the cave allegory (The Republic, Bk.7, 515a) and “I think that there is a stranger consequence still” (Parmenides, 433). They learn the courage needed to greet the “wondrous strange” and “as a stranger give it welcome” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.5.164). Socrates continually pushes his interlocutors further beyond the axioms they had previously taken for granted. “Show me the way,” Glaucon asks in The Republic, to which Socrates responds, “Here is no path and the wood is dark and perplexing; still we must push on” (Bk. 4, 432c). In order to forge a new path they needed to lose the old one. They are wandering in thought as they forge their way through wonder. This in turn, fuels greater curiosity about these new, strange ways of knowing. Allowing the self to enter a state of humility before knowledge is an essential step which opens the heart and mind to new possibilities. In our wondrous state, when paired with courage we have the capacity to see the world in a new way and welcome the “strange” as we abandon some of our old, familiar preconceptions. This is something that our current school system could still learn a great deal from. Presuppositions within students and teachers continue to act as blinders to the world, providing obstacles to further learning. Plato’s conception of wonder is useful in guiding us to reach our blind spots.

Wordsworth: Halted Traveling For Plato, wonder arises as we begin to dismantle our familiar preconceptions and start exploring strange, new ideas. Wordsworth, however, uncovers wonder as he finds the new in the old, the strange in the familiar, the extraordinary in the ordinary. He wants us to see the world with the fresh eyes of a child. Throughout his work, Wordsworth also promoted and displayed a “sense of awe,” a kind of “exalted joy of being,” again, for him this was akin to the way we approach life as children. Our Hearts Leap Up 7

According to the poet, the imaginative reasoning that happens in childhood is the pinnacle of intellectual life as it helps us see into the true vitality of things. The sovereign importance that he gives to childhood and the child’s mind can be seen in the following lines from his autobiographical work The Prelude: “Our simple childhood sits upon a throne/ That hath more power than all the elements” (Bk. 5, v. 508). “The Child is Father of the Man” due to the lessons that man can learn from the child’s unique way of experiencing the world (My Heart Leaps Up, v. 8). The progression into adulthood presents a loss of this “visionary gleam” and the rest of life should be spent trying to rediscover some of the wonder and joy of the child mind (Immortality Ode, v. 56). This is clearly shown in this excerpt from his poem My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold:

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! (v. 1–6)

We can see that this is distinct from Plato’s view that we need to puzzle away the beliefs and illusions and confusions of childhood and progress into the pure intellectual reasoning of adulthood. For Wordsworth, the child is in fact addressed as “thou best Philosopher,” “Mighty Prophet” and “Seer blest” (Immortality Ode, v. 110–114). The poet is responding to the Age of Rationalism that dominated the 18th century and saw society move toward reductive, compartmentalized, mechanical reasoning in pursuit of an objective truth. The drudgery of the time leads him to reflect:

The world is too much with us... We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!... And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It move us not. (The World is Too Much With Us, v. 1, 4, 7–9)

Whatever is merely formal, dull, and narrows or deadens feelings is not only a loss to humanity but also an injury because according to Wordsworth it was “through the power of joy” that we “see into the life of things” (Tintern Abbey, v. 48–49). Although superficially this may seem overly sentimental, Wordsworth does not abandon the need for reason; in fact he describes imagination as “reason in her most exalted mood” (The Prelude, Bk. 14, v. 189). This presents a marked move 8 Laura Piersol not only away from the prevailing Rationalist doctrine which saw imagination as something to be distrusted but also from the Romantic hostility toward reason. Instead, Wordsworth insists that reason needs to be paired with the heart of a vital appreciation. “We live by admiration,” the poet remarks (The Excursion, Bk. 4, v. 763). This sense of awe is the romantic spirit that underlies most of his poems: the shock of surprise at an owl’s silence, the Leech Gatherer’s wondrous stone-like body, the stunning field of daffodils––to mention just a few. Thus, Wordsworth wants us to uphold, nourish and expand a feeling of awe about the world. Ashton Nichols relates this Wordsworthian “sense of awe” to Bachelard’s observation that every child is “an astonished being, the being who realizes the astonishment of being” (Nichols, 1987, p. 221). As Seamus Heaney remarks, Wordsworth “had grown up visited by the sensations of immensity, communing with a reality he apprehended beyond the world of the senses” (2005, p. ix). Such a feeling of awe indicates that there is a type of mystery floating behind existence. This fits with Geoffrey Hartman’s insistence that Wordsworth, within his work, had a narrative archetype of “the Halted Traveller:” a figure stopped in his tracks by a sudden perception, and then compelled to linger in a state of awe (1964, pp. 7, 12). This is shown in The Solitary Reaper:

I saw her singing at her work, And o’er the sickle bending; – I listen’d, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more. (v. 27–32)

Similarly in I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Wordsworth mentions that upon seeing the field of daffodils, he “gazed – and gazed” (v. 17). These moments of prolonged awe are distinct from a type of curiosity that leaps from novelty to novelty, “not tarrying” (Heidegger, 1927, p. 216). Heidegger made a clear distinction between wonder and curiosity:

...curiosity has nothing to do with observing entities and marveling at them. To be amazed to the point of not understanding is something in which it has no interest. Rather, it concerns itself with a kind of knowing but just in order to have known. (Heidegger, 1927, pp. 216–217)

When curiosity “obtains sight of anything, it already looks away to what is coming next,” it never “dwells anywhere” (Heidegger, 1927, p. 398; p. 217). Our Hearts Leap Up 9

Wonder on the other hand dwells in its objects with rapt attentiveness. This is the type of “awe” that Wordsworth is after; his goal in perceiving the world is to “to muse, to creep, to halt at will, to gaze” (Carriage upon the Banks of the Rhine, v. 11). Just as Plato paired courage with wonder, Wordsworth pairs this sense of awe with reason. Can one be astonished with the world and still reason to treat it like a machine? What was once “dissection” with the appreciation that awe brings can now be reasoned to be “murder” (The Tables Turned, v.28). Awe situates reason in an appreciation for life. Conversely, although Wordsworth is frequently amazed to a point of not understanding, he later uses reason to translate and contemplate his awe in those moments of bliss as a creative force within his poetry. Like Plato, who wandered in argument to arrive at a place of wonder, Wordsworth literally wanders in order to achieve a sense of awe and of wonder. Through regular walks in his neighborhood, specific spots would draw out anecdotes, intense experiences and emotions.

I would walk alone, In storm and tempest, or in star-light nights Beneath the quiet Heavens; and at that time, Have felt whate’er there is of power in sound To breathe an elevated mood, by form Or image unprofaned; and I would stand, Beneath some rock, listening to sounds that are The ghostly language of the ancient earth, Or make their dim abode in distant winds. Thence did I drink the visionary power. (Prelude Bk. 2, v. 321–330)

By retracing the paths and engaging in the pedestrian pastime of his childhood, he could temporarily merge his past and present and return to that “visionary power,” the wondering lens of the child mind. Walking with its resistance to haste allows and invites the lingering gaze that fosters awe and wonder. This is clear as Wordsworth writes about Walter Scott’s habit of taking notes during walks:

He should have left his pencil and note-book at home, fixed his eyes as he walked with reverent attention on all that surrounded him and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by the picture surviving in his mind would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene. (Gaillet-De Chezelles, 2010, p. 21) 10 Laura Piersol

The physical and sensuous engagement as a walker heightened Wordsworth’s emotions and provided new subjects for wonder. A friend relates a walk with Wordsworth in 1844:

When we reached the side of Loughrigg Tarn...the loveliness of the scene arrested our steps and fixed our gaze...When the poet’s eyes were satisfied with their feast on the beauty familiar to them, they sought relief in the search, for them a happy vital habit, for new beauty in the flower-enamelled turf at his feet...The poet drew the attention of the rest of the party to the minute, but beautiful phenomenon... (Gaillet-De Chezelles, 2010, pp. 21–22)

In addition to the moments of jaw-dropping awe, opportunities for small wonders are also all around us. The trick for Wordsworth is to see the familiar as extraordinary; here he describes this state:

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. (Immortality Ode, v. 1–5)

He includes convicts, peasants, peddlers, old men, simple flowers and fields as subjects within his poems and tries to present them all in a unique way. Through his poetry he attempts to show us what is common in a new light, under the “visionary gleam” that a child can see (Immortality Ode, v. 56). We learn to look at daffodils as a “sparkling wave” along the Milky Way, a cuckoo bird as a hopeful “wandering voice,” or wind as a “chariot,” a “playmate,” a “horse” or a “moving soul.”3 By presenting these items in a strange way he challenges the reader’s preconceptions of what they have already accepted as unremarkable; for example, we may ask ourselves “In what ways is the wind a ‘chariot’?” or “I wonder how much the wind can carry and how far?” His goal is to find wonder in the common things, the ordinary situations of life.

O Reader! Had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! You would find A tale in everything. (Simon Lee, v. 65–69)

Again, there is a sense of wonder in all things if we can look at the familiar with the fresh eyes of a child. Our Hearts Leap Up 11

Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy. (Immortality Ode, v. 66–70)

Our school system today is acting as the “prison-house” as students are more likely to be struck with boredom than wonder. In order to counter this, we can look to Wordsworth for inspiration and begin to find “a tale in everything” (Simon Lee, v. 69). As Kieran Egan (2010) points out, exploring seemingly commonplace entities such as dust or apples in an in-depth manner can provide countless learning opportunities if one takes the time. Wordsworth’s conception of wonder as the ordinary painted extraordinary and his encouragement that life should be an awe-filled dwelling place would both be welcome additions to classrooms in order to engage students on a more meaningful level.

Wonder in the Classroom Today From Plato we can learn to evoke wonder by examining our current, familiar conceptions about the world and push ourselves to consider the “strange” alternatives. Wordsworth shows us the importance of the wonder that arises from learning to notice the extraordinary elements that already exist within the ordinary. Both writers promote a “sense of awe” about the world:4 Socrates’ humility before the mystery of the unknown and Wordsworth’s keen appreciation of life. Let’s see how their understandings of wonder and awe could fit in the classroom today. I will discuss Plato first and conclude with Wordsworth.

Knowing What it is That We Do Not Know In my view, students in our current education system are taught to be more like dogmatic puppies than humble wonderers. Instead of guiding students to dismantle existing assumptions and gain the courage to consider “strange” new ideas, we lead them to concrete answers and present most subjects as static entities in which there is little left that is unknown. This is particularly true for math, where all the formulas are given and there is little room for fresh discovery or new ways to approach the process. The formula-driven approach has taken over other subjects as well; there are set ways for doing each subject, and the teacher, the text or the internet is believed to hold the answers. Learning is clear and straightforward as it simply means obtaining the answers from these sources. 12 Laura Piersol

By resolutely answering our students with “facts,” we “transform the experience from wonder to quizzical bemusement or indifference” (Evernden, 1985, p. 140). We have been trained to seek out quick explanations to our wonders and then, upon hearing an answer, assume that we have nothing left to learn. Not surprisingly, learning has become boring for many students because we present the world as almost fully known; we have removed the mystery and turned the puzzles into simple ones that can be solved in a few neat steps. There is a neat and tidy path of learning. It is rare that we collectively wander in thought anymore and so it becomes rare to wonder. We need to remove this clear-cut learning path from beneath the feet of our students and reinstate a sense of mystery about the world in order to kindle their capacity to wonder. This in turn will reveal paths of learning that may be “dark and perplexing” but when paired with courage, have a greater chance of being intrinsically motivating and engaging for the student (The Republic, Bk. 4, 432c). Revealing mystery in lessons will encourage learners to discover and wander/ wonder rather than simply pluck the already “known” answer from the teacher or text. To reintroduce this sense of mystery and Socrates’ sense of humility we can help our students realize that their knowledge is only a drop in the sea of the unknown. In doing so we need to continue to look to Plato’s example of combining such wonder with courage, otherwise students could end up feeling defeated by how little they can and do actually know. Instead, when situated within courage such humility regarding the vast unknown turns inspiring–– there is so much to learn and so much is possible! Let me be clear that I’m not suggesting we completely sidestep the content of the curriculum in order to instill a sense that everything is mystical, nor do I intend to imply that problem solving and logic are not important skills to be learned. Rather, I am trying to emphasize that as teachers we rarely reveal the possibility of uncertainty or mystery within our lessons. For example, many students in the Pacific Northwest learn about salmon migration in elementary school, they learn the names of the various life stages and how the salmon lay their eggs, but I suspect that not very many learn that the reasons for the recent collapse of the Fraser River sockeye are still unknown. It is a murder mystery of massive proportions with a drop from 10 million salmon to 2 million in the last two decades, complete with a long list of suspects––everything from climate change to salmon sharks. That is sure to pique the interest of students more than a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet! As teachers we also need to embody humility ourselves. This does not mean claiming not to know anything and leaving the learners to flounder on their own. Instead, we can approach subjects as topics full of mysteries that we ourselves find fascinating. This means making room for surprise within our teaching practice. This is no easy task for most adults. To get to this place, we have to learn to admit that we do not and cannot know it all. Our Hearts Leap Up 13

A simple way of starting is to share our wonders with the class. I observed one teacher who did this for a year. Some of her questions included: “Why do the crows flock together at night?” and “How does moss survive in the winter?” In turn, the students were inspired to share some of their wonders: “How do leaves make their shape?” “How come one type of moss is lighter than another?” “How were numbers created?” In some cases the students went on to pursue answers to their wonders but there was also the allowance for some things to remain a mystery. To avoid the deadening of mystery that comes with the direct question and answer routine I have also found that “It depends...” as an answer is a great way to draw out possibilities for linking the wonder at hand to its nest of contingent relationships. In this way, we realize that one wonder is contingent on many other relations; one wonder in a web of many others.

Welcoming the Strange As teachers not only do we present the world as being mostly “known” already but we give the students the impression that the world can be fully known. Things are what they are and that is that. Anyone can know the world and how it works. What happens to wonder in a world that appears to be filled with solvable problems? It vanishes; it is swept under our neat and tidy paths of learning. The feeling of puzzlement that Socrates was so skilled at evoking is a temporary state relocated to children and something that, one hopes, will be over by the time we graduate. If you don’t have the answers by that point there is something wrong with you. Instead of wondering and wandering in thought, learning is now experienced as linear and quite predictable. The accumulation of a certain and definite knowledge base starts in childhood. Socrates points out that in youth “character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken” (The Republic, Bk. 2, 377b). Due to this, Plato warns that youth form a dangerous sense of certainty that actually blocks the door to humility and capacity for wonder. Socrates states:

youngsters, as you may have observed, when they first get the taste [for philosophical argument] in their mouths, argue for amusement, and are always contradicting and refuting others in imitation of those who refute them; like puppy-dogs, they rejoice in pulling and tearing at all who come near them. (The Republic, Bk. 7, 539)

Again, this asserts the need for humility within the learning process, as a false sense of certainty can lead youth to self-righteously mistake theory for truth. As teachers we need to help our students learn to question their assumptions. We can learn from Socrates to challenge our familiar ideas and to consider “strange” 14 Laura Piersol new ways of looking at the world. Along the way, students will develop more questions and their curiosity will be heightened. I’m not suggesting a type of critical thinking that can lead to little cynics that distrust all information they receive, or to the opposite extreme in which Plato cautions that youth can “violently and speedily get into a way of not believing anything which they believed before” (The Republic, Bk. 7, 539). Neither of these options represents a humble way of knowing; one viewpoint is certain that they know everything and the other is certain that they don’t know anything. Proceeding humbly means our inquiry will be tentative rather than dogmatic; remembering that our knowledge is situated in the vast unknown, we learn to follow a moderate path rather than an extreme one, embracing some of the strange and discarding some of the familiar. The important thing is that youth are given the chance to acknowledge their preconceptions and then are guided to play with their beliefs as humble wonderers, not attacking puppies. We need to move away from the current tendency of accepting our presumptions as immutable building blocks or, even worse, our tendency to mistake these assumptions for reality. We can also practice meta-wondering with our students where we wonder at ourselves as wondering beings. This can help our students to not only think outside the box but know that their cultural lenses and worldviews place them in a box in the first place. Thus, from Plato we can learn the importance of humility as a door into wonder. This means reinstating an acknowledgment, an appreciation and an open exploration of the mystery of the unknown within our classrooms. As teachers we need to model how this spark of wonder about the unknown still motivates learning within ourselves. We also need to help our students to question their assumptions through Socrates’ example of a non-dogmatic, continuous and humble route of inquiry. In doing so, we can give our students the courage to move past some of their own preconceptions and see the world in a new, strange and wondrous light.

Wait a Minute... Given this, we must not forget that Plato, who first linked wonder and philosophy, is also responsible for a long tradition which disconnects children from both pursuits. He thought that this capacity for perplexity or wonder was only available to the guardians of the state, some select men and women around the age of thirty and up. According to him, only adults could rationally reach truth through such inquiry. In The Republic, Socrates claims, “A young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable” (Bk. 2, 378d). Children were stuck in the cave as they could only perceive the world through their senses and had not yet been trained in rational thinking. Concepts like Our Hearts Leap Up 15 justice or goodness cannot be understood through the senses or the realm of belief and are therefore beyond the grasp of children. This view continues today within the education system as it is assumed that we need to deal solely with concrete, tangible concepts when educating the young. Anyone who has spent time with children knows that they naturally ask abstract questions like “What does death mean?” or “How is that fair?” By discounting these deep questions when children are young we prevent them from exploring wonders at an early age and are already conditioning them to view knowledge as something only adults can truly possess. Gareth Matthews (1994) calls this “evolutionary bias” (p. 17) as it is not necessarily true that adults will be better at handling philosophical questions. Children have a unique attentiveness and possess the ability to look at the world with fresh eyes––key tools in establishing the wondering puzzlement that Socrates insists is so important. Plato’s concern that youth accept all that they hear and quickly form a false sense of certainty is a valid one, but if we include the need for humility and mystery with our teaching practice as addressed above, I believe children will actually be more willing to switch stances than adults for whom the abandonment of cherished beliefs and assumptions is much harder. In discounting children’s ability to perceive different possibilities we shut the door to the very wonders that will allow them to see the world in a new light and help them find their way out of the cave. In our hurry to make them rational thinkers we must not strip them of the wonder that facilitates the process in the first place. We need to embrace their unique ways of viewing and participating in the world so as to foster this tendency toward wonder. As Howard Parsons states: “Philosophy begins in wonder but wonder begins in the child” (1969, p. 101). William Wordsworth has some useful things to say about this.

Finding the Strange in the Familiar Boredom, apathy and aversion are common attitudes toward schooling today. It’s not unusual to mention school to students and see them wrinkle their faces up. Despite the efforts of many teachers, the content of curriculum is often presented in a way that bores students and teachers alike. In an effort to combat this, some educators have pushed for learning that is more hands-on and inquiry-based. However, the inquiry often takes the form of a utilitarian curiosity (condemned by Heidegger above) as the students pursue answer after answer as though making a tick on the tourist’s place list. We are still teaching our children that the only way to experience a rainbow is to “unweave” it (Keats, Lamia v. 237). Of course, curiosity should still be encouraged but we need to spark the wonder that fuels it in the first place and situates it in a larger sense of appreciation for the object that it is exploring. 16 Laura Piersol

As we plan lessons we can look for the wondrous aspects of the topics at hand as a way to enlarge the meaning of the world around us. We can learn to ask ourselves “What aspects of math (science, etc.) can I draw on in order to allow my students to make an emotional connection to it?” or we can investigate what engages us, as teachers, about the topic, as is recommended in David Berliner’s chapter of this book. Rousseau cautions, “Never reason in a dry manner with youth. Clothe reason in a body if you want to make youth able to grasp it. Make the language of the mind pass through the heart, so that it may make itself understood” (Emile, p. 323). This approach may make the teacher wince as they feel like they have to candy-coat all information and play the role of entertainer. I’m not advising this, of course. I realize that every minute of the day will not be scintillating, but the goal is to try to let wonder shape some part of the day. This does not mean that students aren’t expected to learn the content of the curriculum but rather that they will learn in an engaging way. It is not so much adding wonder to the curriculum as it is a process of uncovering the wonder that exists there already. Taking our clue from Wordsworth we needn’t look far as the familiar holds the strange. Here is an example from Rousseau as he asks his student, “Through how many hands would you estimate that all you see on this table has passed before getting here?” Rousseau then remarks, “What a crowd of ideas I awaken in his brain with these few words! ...What an object for his curiosity!”(Emile, p. 190). We can look at the everyday objects around us as rich with learning potential. For example, I know one teacher who encourages her students to investigate the life cycle of their jeans. Some of their findings include: it takes 3480 litres of water to make one pair of pants (that’s equivalent to running a garden hose for an hour and a half!); cotton has been cultivated for fabric for more than 5000 years; the name “jean” originated from a cotton-linen cloth that was popular with the sailors of Genoa and was thus nicknamed “Bleu de Genes” by the French. Through a single pair of pants she can touch on history, geography, language arts and more. Students become aware of the myriad of wonders at their fingertips. Wonder also prevents us from taking things for granted. Through our current school system we end up with students who can spout out verb tenses in French or describe what a “vector” is in geometry but are entirely stripped of wonder and actually pride themselves on this lack of inspiration, “But you didn’t even look at the sunset!” we fret as adults; “Whatever” the teen responds. By actively pursuing wonder and awe in the classroom, we bring down a “sledgehammer that pulverizes our self-righteousness and opens the world to us” (Verhoeven, p. 25). Not the best way to describe it to grade two students but we learn to expect that reality will always surprise us. Just as Wordsworth uses poetry to coat the ordinary in extraordinary light, as teachers we can use story to help evoke a feeling and sense of wonder in our students, turning their normal learning experience into a unique one. I was Our Hearts Leap Up 17 teaching a group of sixth grade students one afternoon at Belcarra Park near Vancouver. We were exploring the life of the intertidal zone on the beach and I noticed one student sitting off to one side on a rock by himself not participating, so I approached him and asked him why. “I’ve seen all of this already. I have a game on my computer that shows you starfish and stuff so I already know all of this.” He was adamant the beach could contain no more wonder for him. Shortly afterward, another student found a blue feather from a Stellar Jay. “Oooh, a feather, how exciting!” Her friends teased her as she handed it to me. I began telling a story about how I had picked up such a feather in the forest recently but that I had dropped it accidently on my driveway and one day I came back home to find it crushed. “Something amazing happened though,” I continued, “I picked up the feather and was in shock to find it was no longer blue but just like this ...” and I held up the feather so that it was between me and the sun. The feather changed from blue to grey. “It turns out that this feather doesn’t have any blue pigment in it at all!” I said. The student on the rock came running over. “That’s so awesome! Why does it do that?!” he asked. My story had clearly provoked some wonder. As Whitehead points out, “Romantic emotion is essentially the excitement consequent on the transition from the bare facts to the first realizations of the import of their unexplored relationships” (1929, p. 18).

Appreciation and Awe The most worrying part about the lack of wonder in the classroom is that we don’t just ignore its potential, we often actively discourage it. I was in a grade three classroom and some excited students interrupted the teacher to tell her that there was a “humongous” beetle on the floor. The teacher asked one of the students to take it outside and continued with her lesson. In ignoring such discoveries we are suggesting to children that the very act of “wondering” is a waste of time and that the objects that they marvel at are actually insignificant. I’m not suggesting pausing at every moment of surprise and discovery but I’m asking us as educators to consider including them more often. We have learned from Plato and Wordsworth that what may feel like a wandering away from the topic can often be fruitful wondering that brings us back to it in a richer way. Part of this abandonment of wonder in the classroom is due to our own loss of wonder as adults. I agree with Wordsworth that as we mature we become increasingly cut off from this capacity to see the world as extraordinary. How often do we see grown men and women on their hands and knees in the middle of a sidewalk looking at ants? Not often enough, I say! Although, I do disagree with the poet when he suggests that “nothing can bring back the hour/ Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower” (Immortality Ode, v. 177–178). I believe that wonder still sits within us, waiting for us to “awaken the mind’s 18 Laura Piersol attention from the lethargy of custom” (Coleridge, 1817, p. 314). It may be that the rigor of school has suppressed it within us to the point that “unless some intellectual crisis intervenes we are, after such a schooling, condemned to lifelong mediocrity” (Verhoeven, p. 18). But if we have any hope of escaping the mediocrity and boredom of our school system, we need to revisit this wonder we knew in our childhood, as Wordsworth argues. As Einstein suggests, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious... Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead” (1932, p. 11). Let us try to be wonder-full teachers instead of the living dead. As teachers we also need to embody a sense of awe about the world if we want to encourage it in our students. We need to take time with our students to dwell in the miracle that is life. “Look!” I have heard one teacher exclaim on an outdoor field trip with some sixth grade students. He had found an old log with bark beetle carvings all over it. “Isn’t that incredible that they make those patterns? Look at how beautiful it is.” His students paused to look with him. Nothing more was said as they admired the wood. I noticed that throughout the rest of the hike his students would bring him little treasures they had found, small pieces of lichen or giant fir cones and again they would spend a short time in awe of each one. Such moments of awe are little images that may appear before someone’s “inward eye” later on, situated in a greater sense of appreciation about the world. Not a bad thing to be including in our teaching practice. Following Wordsworth’s example, we can explore what Sam Keen calls a “mature” sense of wonder as it is “called forth by a confrontation with the mysterious depth of meaning at the heart of the familiar” (1999, as cited in Kriesberg, p. xiv). The sense of awe in Wordsworth’s experience reminds us as teachers to make time to appreciate the brilliance that is life with our students. Clearly, Wordsworth can still teach us a thing or two about education as “shades of the prison-house begin to close” earlier and earlier and we teachers within the system are largely at fault for shutting out this “light,” this capacity to wonder, that should be fuelling our love of learning in the first place (Immortality Ode, v. 66–69).

Conclusion Plato encourages us to embrace the strange and the familiar while Wordsworth plays with the familiar to make it seem strange. Both approaches facilitate “wonder” as a way to break through our existing preconceptions. Plato, in his humility helps us to see the benefit of a sense of awe regarding the vast unknown and, similarly, Wordsworth promotes awe through deep appreciation of the mysterious existence that is life. The pairing of courage and wonder that Plato suggests as well as the combination of reason and awe that Wordsworth Our Hearts Leap Up 19 demonstrated are both useful tools to help ensure that we are not overwhelmed by wonder or becoming too sentimental. Our current school system can often be dull and dogmatic. We need to keep Whitehead’s advice in mind when he says, “Without the adventure of romance, at the best you get inert knowledge without initiative, and at the worst you get contempt of ideas––without knowledge” (1929, p. 33). To break down the commonplace aversion to school we need to engage students in more meaningful and intrinsically motivated learning. This means that as teachers we need to uncover our own sense of wonder and awe and embody this within our practice. Let us look toward wonder as fruitful wandering in thought and in body, which enables us to focus on any aspect of the world around us or within us and see it as full of tales to be told. I can’t imagine a more important lesson for us to teach. The other alternative is bleak but more and more eerily possible: “The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder” (Chesterton, 1909, p. 5).

Continuing on my hike with the students, I pick up one of the objects that we found on the trees and realize it is a mushroom that has been dried and shriveled up by the sun. “It’s a mushroom,” I tell the kids. “Why are they all over the trees?” they ask. “Look here!” a girl yells. We find a squirrel midden and at the entrance to one of the tunnels is a stash of dried mushrooms, “The squirrels have been using the boughs of the trees as drying racks!” someone exclaims. “How long does it take to dry a mushroom?,” “How did they learn to do that?,” “Why do they put them on spruce trees?”... the questions continue. (“Wonder into wonder existence opens”, Lao Tzu)

Notes 1 Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English (3rd ed.). (2005). UK: Oxford University Press. 2 Incidentally, there are 10,800 known species of grass worldwide, and a handful of soil has more living organisms in it than there are people on the earth! 3 Examples derived in order from I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, To the Cuckoo and A Narrow Girdle of Rough Stone and Crags. 4 In this chapter, I am differentiating between “awe” and “wonder.” Awe will refer to a sense of mystery that is unexplainable, while wonder refers to the extraordinary that is still within the grasp of our comprehension.

References Aristotle. Metaphysics. In J. Barnes (Ed.), The Complete Works (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Carson, R. (1965). The Sense of Wonder. NY: Harper & Row Publishers. 20 Laura Piersol

Chesterton, G. K. (1909). Tremendous Trifles. MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004. Coleridge, S.T. (1817). Biographia Literaria. In H. J. Jackson (Ed.), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (p. 314). Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press Canada, 1985. Egan, K. (2010). Learning in Depth: A Simple Innovation that Can Transform Schooling. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Einstein, A. (1932). The world as I see it. In C. Seelig (Ed.), Ideas and Opinions Based on Mein Weltbild (pp. 8–11). NY: Bonanza Books, 1954. Evernden, N. (1985). The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Gaillet-De Chezelles, F. (2010). Wordsworth, a wandering poet: walking and poetic creation. Etudes Anglaises, 63(1): 18–33. Hartman, G. (1964). Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1787–1814. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Heaney, S. (2005). Introduction. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (pp. vii–xii). NY: Ecco Press. Heidegger, M. (1927). Being and Time. (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). NY: Harper Perennial, 2008. Keats, J. Lamia. In J. Barnard (Ed.), John Keats: Selected Poems (p. 217). Toronto, ON: Penguin Group, 2007. Kriesberg, D. A. (1999). A Sense of Place: Teaching Children About the Environment with Picture Books. Englewood, Colo: Teacher Ideas Press. Lao Tzu. The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu (W. Bynner, Trans.). New York: Perigee Books, 1944. Matthews, G. B. (1994). The Philosophy of Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Matthews, G. B. (1997). Perplexity in Plato, Aristotle, and Tarski. Philosophical Studies, 85: 213–228. Nichols, A. (1987). The Poetics of Epiphany: Nineteenth-Century Origins of Modern Literary Moment. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Parsons, H. (1969). A philosophy of wonder. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 30(1): 84–101. Plato. Meno (B. Jowett, Trans.). NY: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1949. Plato. Parmenides (M. L. Gill & P. Ryan, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1996. Plato. Theaetetus (M. J. Levett, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1992. Plato. The Republic (B. Jowett, Trans.). Mineola, NY: Dover, 2000. Rousseau, J. J. Emile (A. Bloom, Trans.) NY: Basic Books, 1979. Schweitzer, A. (1969). Reverence for Life. NY: Harper & Row. Shakespeare, W. Hamlet. In S. Barnet (Ed.), The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark. Toronto, ON: Penguin Group, 2006. Verhoeven, C. (1967). The Philosophy of Wonder (M. Foran, Trans.). NY: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1972. Whitehead, A. N. (1929). The Aims of Education and Other Essays. NY: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1967. Wordsworth, W. A Narrow Girdle of Rough Stones and Crags. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (p. 51). NY: Ecco Press, 2005. Wordsworth, W. Carriage Upon the Banks of the Rhine. In The Complete Poetical Works. London, UK: Macmillan and Co., 1888; Bartleby.com, 1999. Retrieved from http:// www.bartleby.com/145/ [November 11, 2010]. Our Hearts Leap Up 21

Wordsworth, W. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (p. 126). NY: Ecco Press, 2005. Wordsworth, W. Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (pp. 34–38). NY: Ecco Press, 2005. Wordsworth, W. My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (p. 98). NY: Ecco Press, 2005. Wordsworth, W. Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (pp. 99–105). NY: Ecco Press, 2005. Wordsworth, W. Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman. In The Complete Poetical Works. London, UK: Macmillan and Co., 1888; Bartleby.com, 1999. Retrieved from http://www. bartleby.com/145/ [November 11, 2010]. Wordsworth, W. The Excursion. In The Complete Poetical Works. London, UK: Macmillan and Co., 1888; Bartleby.com, 1999. Retrieved from http://www.bartleby.com/145/ [November 15, 2010]. Wordsworth, W. The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind, 2nd edition. E. De Selincourt & H. Darbishire (Eds.). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1959. Wordsworth, W. The Solitary Reaper. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (p. 133). NY: Ecco Press, 2005. Wordsworth, W. The Tables Turned. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (pp. 32–34). NY: Ecco Press, 2005. Wordsworth, W. The World is Too Much With Us; Late and Soon. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (p. 114). NY: Ecco Press, 2005. Wordsworth, W. To the Cuckoo. In S. Heaney (Ed.), William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (p. 96). NY: Ecco Press, 2005. 2 Wow! What if? So What?

Education and the Imagination of Wonder: Fascination, Possibilities and Opportunities Missed

Dave Trotman

Anyone who is a parent, carer, or teacher of young people will know something about the topic of this book. Indeed, as well as grandparents and relatives, I should include anyone who works with young people in a more general sense – for they are likely to have witnessed at some point that moment when a young person enters the realm of delighted fascination, amazement and curiosity. It is to this experience that, in Western societies, we have ascribed the term “wonder”. While this is one aspect of the human condition that appears not to be constrained by the frailties of age or lifecourse, my attention in this chapter is given specifically to the educational possibilities and barriers to wonder in the lives of young people. Although my contribution to this text is written from the perspective of a teacher-educator working in the UK, the themes outlined here are likely to resonate with readers beyond British shores. Their hopes, like mine, for the education of young people, may also be tempered by a frustration with current educational policy and its consequences for the educational wellbeing and life-chances of generations of children and young people. In preparing this chapter, my thoughts on this topic have been shaped by a number of personal reflections. These have involved memories, some more distant than others, from a teaching career that has spanned thirty years and where particular biographical moments have been rekindled and imbued with new emphasis. Other reflections are less introspective and concern why such moments of wonder are actually educationally important – not as innocent or romantic embellishments to the “real work” of education, but as crucially important to the educational encounters of young people in their own right. My less enervating reflections are more a matter of exasperation – mainly with the narrowing scope of curriculum opportunities for young people brought Wow! What if? So What? 23 about by increasingly instrumental policy-making in education. I begin, then, by offering the reader a few biographical “vignettes” as a means of exploring the landscape and possibilities of educational wonder in the lives of young people.

Jaspal’s Discovery This first vignette concerns a residential trip to an outdoor education Centre in the heart of the English countryside. This particular visit involved about thirty 7–10 year olds from the primary school where I had just begun working. Our task for the day was a woodland walk. The children were duly equipped for what was to be their first woodland walk, and for some their first ever foray into the great English outdoors. The walk was a typically English one – wet, grey and muddy. The route was to be led by one of the Centre’s most recent recruits, a young tutor called Jake. Throughout the walk, Jake took care to point out the main features of the woodland (species of trees, animal habitats, etc.) including a kill-site where a fox had recently reduced its prey to a trail of feathers – the latter drawing gasps of surprise, cries of “Gross man!” and occasional looks of derision from some of the less interested children in the group. It was Jaspal’s discovery, however, that was to become the highlight of the walk. At this point in the activities the children had begun to collect leaf-fall for identification in the next in-door session, but it was Jaspal’s ear-piercing squeal of excitement that brought the activity to an abrupt close. An intrigued crowd of children and adults were then drawn to Jake’s call of “Look everybody! Look what Jaspal’s found!” Holding out a trembling hand, Jaspal presented a clod of earth out of which appeared a very large, wriggling worm. Jaspal, now with eyes the size of saucers, was transfixed. My colleagues and I, on the other hand, were now watchful of heading-off the inevitable responses of “Big deal” and moans of general disappointment from the other kids. The exchange that followed between Jake, Jaspal, the children, the watchful teachers and a wriggly worm was, however, pure educational theatre. It was an event in which Jake shared, with incredible skilfulness, the excitement of the discovery and at the same time had drawn all the observers into Jaspal’s moment of wonder. I still remember it as a significant point in time when an eight-year-old girl makes, what was for her, the most astonishing discovery; a discovery in which the tactile, the environmental, the aesthetic, and emotional all collide in one magical moment. The educational possibilities emerging from Jaspal’s discovery would have no doubt been lost had the encounter not been so effectively handled by Jake, who, having watched many pupils find all sorts of worms on the scheduled woodland walks, might have either missed his moment, or succumbed to worm fatigue. It was his perceptiveness and teaching 24 Dave Trotman ability that captured and preserved this moment of wonder for a young Jaspal, while also drawing all other on-lookers into her circle of discovery. In his pedagogy of woodland walking, Jake’s environmental “antenna” were set to high sensitivity – observing, listening, smelling, touching and sensing habitats, events, patterns and possibilities. His antenna were tuned to the possibilities of chance discovery, opportunity and surprise; the wow! of being “in the scene”. Jake’s powerful connection to these woodland signals were counterpoised by another set of equally powerful receivers – those concerned with the behaviours, reactions and temperaments of the young people that he was guiding through this woodland experience. A second aspect of Jake’s pedagogy was then one in which his sensing of woodland events was aligned with the mood of the moment amongst young people; one in which the woodland served as laboratory, theatre and playground, and in which science, aesthetics, attitudes and feelings had equal presence. Jaspal’s wriggly worm was then the subject of a biological and aesthetic analysis. Worm anatomy was explained for those most interested as the movement and rhythm of wormlife was revealed. Habitats were discussed in relation to their appearance during the downpour, the contribution of worms to the eco-system, lifecycle and food chain, whilst young people marvelled and recoiled in equal measure to physical contact with Jaspal’s discovery. This configuration of pedagogic elements was pivotal to ensuring that the magic of exploration and discovery for young people was not suffocated by adult preoccupations with “accurate” demonstrable knowledge or predetermined outcomes. Rather, this was a pedagogy of discovery for enquiring minds: beyond the initial “wow!” to the “how?” and “what if?” of wonder. Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly in Jake’s mediation of Jaspal’s discovery, was an underpinning quality of empathy. Empathy is a significant aspect of imagination in education and whilst it has been subject to attention in other spheres of professional practice, such as health care and counselling, it remains largely under-developed in educational pedagogy. In the context of any discussion of wonder, empathy is worthy of attention in that it offers a form of emotional knowledge in which we position ourselves in the perspective and affective life of others. Rogers (1980) sees empathy as a means of temporarily living in the other’s life without making judgements (p. 142). Egan (1992) sees empathy as a cornerstone of how the lives of others are made meaningful to us through “our ability to share imaginatively in their emotions, their fears, hopes, intentions, and so on; to think of them as though they were ours; and to expand our own by thinking of them as possibly like others” (Egan, 1992, p. 87). Certainly in the case of Jaspal’s discovery, Jake had empathetically mediated the innocence of novel experience with the insights that older and more experienced children were bringing to the encounter. Some moments of wonder like Jaspal’s encounter with the wriggly worm involve the serendipity of Wow! What if? So What? 25 discovery combined with a naivety of encounter. In educational contexts these encounters can be carefully, and in this case promptly, mediated by a teacher skilled in the arts of human affairs and at home with the environment of chance, possibility and opportunity. Other encounters may be framed by tradition, ritual and a particular aesthetic, as the following example bears testimony, and one which will be familiar to many readers.

Katie’s Christmas Party In this vignette, magic and imagination crystallise during home-time prior to a primary school Christmas party. It was three days from the close of the Autumn Term when my colleague Sarah and I were on duty at the entrance of Greymoor Junior School. That afternoon we were responsible for ensuring that all the school children were safely collected and were off-site before their return later that evening for the annual school Christmas party. We were both making our usual exchanges with the kids and parents in the foyer, which had now been transformed by the staff into the obligatory Christmas grotto, when Katie appeared. Katie was in Mr Goodson’s class; she had recently turned seven years old. She was rather shy and unassuming, and as a consequence she was a child I knew little about. She appeared with the rest of her classmates from 3G just as her mother arrived at the foyer entrance. Entering the foyer, Katie was transformed. Her animated commentary was directed first to Sarah and then to me without any discernable prompting from either of us. The intended recipient of her chatter was unclear to both of us, and, as it turned out, this was not entirely crucial to Katie either, as for all intents and purposes hers was an excitement embodied in verbal form and addressed to the nearest available adult at the time. Without her drawing breath, we learned about the dress she was going to wear to the party, where her mom had bought it, what time she was going to arrive at the party, all about her friend Sophie who she was going to the party with, and what Mrs Striding, the Head teacher, had said in assembly about the preparation for the night’s big event. Her excitement was total and her eyes were indeed full of tinsel and fire. Katie was interrupted by her mother, who, taking her by the hand, laughed with Sarah and me that this had been her daughter’s exclusive topic of conversation for the past three weeks. After an energy-sapping day at the chalk-face, Sarah and I stood there revitalised in happy amazement. For young Katie this was a moment of real magic and real imagination. Like many adults I had become jaundiced with Christmas, with all its predictable and often meaningless regalia, and regardless of any personal faith or spiritual sensibilities. Katie, however, reminded me that for some young people, events such as Christmas, with its powerful, and in some ways innocent infusion of aesthetic, kitsch, and ritual is a first time experience – a time when magic and 26 Dave Trotman make-believe conspire in an instance of wonder. This was Katie’s moment of wonder. Katie’s moment of wonder speaks to us as a magical encounter with make- believe. In this vignette, fantasy, affective experience and imagery conspire to generate what Warnock calls “imaginative emotion” (Warnock, 1976, p. 206). Warnock contends that imaginative emotion involves vivid conceptions of ideas that excite within us not illusions but facts as real as any other qualities of objects. This, she argues, is neither erroneous nor delusive but consistent with “accurate knowledge”. In creating an idea vividly, then in so doing we experience the “imaginative emotion”. In our encounter with Katie’s world, imaginative emotion is a pleasurable one where fantasy and make-believe in their form par excellence generate a landscape of wonder that nourishes the imagination and soul. It is also one in which empathetic adults willingly conspire. Whilst some encounters with wonder are, like Jaspal’s, immediate and serendipitous, others, like Katie’s, are generated through a tacit conspiracy of adults to sustain a world of make-believe, imagination and magic. Some encounters, on the other hand, involve the “slow-burn” of stimulus, incubation, illumination and realisation. This was the case when Charlie began work on his musical composition “When the City Sleeps”.

When the City Sleeps I first met Charlie when he was a student at the secondary school where I worked as Head of Creative Arts. He was sixteen, from a third-generation African-Caribbean family, he played the drums and was into contemporary urban dance. His particular moment of wonder manifested itself through a pedal-cycle trip late one night – probably without his parents’ knowledge – around his local neighbourhood. Two days later in our scheduled music lesson Charlie recounted his pedal-cycle trip – solitary but cathartic, and crucially for him, a stimulus for an original musical composition. Charlie’s cycle trip was one in which he had looked at familiar settings differently – unconsciously adopting the stance of a stranger in his own environment. “When the City Sleeps” was to become his expression of this. At music club the following evening the drum kit was set up, microphones adjusted, keyboards were connected, reverb units were added, a bass player was recruited, and chord sequences and trumpet lines contemplated. Charlie worked manically but methodically, improvising with drum riffs and echo effects, suggesting structure and sequences to his fellow music students. Ideas were considered, rejected or celebrated with the excitement of an unfolding vision that only Charlie was privileged to hold. By 6:30 PM “When the City Sleeps” began to take shape. Three “drafts” were recorded on a portable tape recorder. The final recording was refined in the ensuing days as a number of Wow! What if? So What? 27 overdubs were completed with Charlie adding his own last-minute flourishes on percussion and keyboard. The final edit was copied on to a master tape and this now captured Charlie’s moment of wonder – an evocative musical soundscape, collaboratively fashioned from a very personal journey. In this vignette, wonder involves imaginative emotion in its creative form. From an initial impulse (to get on his bike), to an openness to stimulus (as a receptive mental attitude), Charlie’s neighbourhood tour sees the familiar re-cast through new lenses. Unlike Katie’s world of make-believe and the serendipity of Jaspal’s discovery, Charlie’s world of wonder was one of reflection and deliberation. This was a world in which significant affective and aesthetic experience is represented through an evocative portrayal in musical form. In this endeavour, method and points of reference were imperative: checking, monitoring and reworking of key compositional ingredients were undertaken until a harmonisation was achieved between reflected affective experience and the realised form of “When the City Sleeps”. Was this a moment of wonder? Well, as the saying goes, you would have to have been there. Some instances of wonder are difficult to express on the written page in that our appreciation of such things relies heavily on our inter-subjectivity, our intuition, and forms of empathic sensitivity. Our ensuing conversations did, I believe, affirm “When the City Sleeps” as a powerful emblem of Charlie’s aesthetic and affective relationship with a particular place and time: something which I think can be called “wonder”.

David’s Magic Mushrooms David’s passion was mushrooms (yes, mushrooms). He was eleven years old and in the final year of primary school. He was in fact in my first primary class. Like many teachers beginning the new school year I had been busy redesigning the layout of the classroom for the forthcoming term and the nature table was the de rigueur item, proudly prepared after weeks of foraging for pieces of bark, driftwood, various flora and mushrooms. It was David who first alerted me to the folly of my health and safety blunder as he surveyed my efforts: ‘‘Mr Trotman you just need to be careful with the mushrooms at the front of the table, the translucent powder on some of them can be hallucinogenic”. Translucent! Hallucinogenic! Where had this kid acquired such technical vocabulary? And then there was the small matter of having magic mushrooms in my classroom! A hasty reorganisation of the nature table quickly followed as David’s justifiable anxieties opened an unforeseen entrée into his own lifeworld of wonder. It transpired that David’s seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of fungi was a consequence of weekend walks with his grandfather at a local beauty spot. Amongst many of David’s hobbies, fungi were his passion. Without further ado David was enlisted to do a “show and tell” for the Year 6 class. His presentation 28 Dave Trotman revealed two critical qualities – passion and an enquiring mind. Wonder in this instance takes an alternative form from that experienced by Jaspal (discovery), Katie (make-believe) and Charlie (creative representation). In this example wonder becomes a potent form of enquiry involving a desire to know something of, and make connection with, the intriguing and the elusive. Sharing some similarities with Charlie’s slow-burn of wonder, in the construction of the “City Sleeps”, David’s is a sustained project in which experience, discovery and new knowledge are combined in a powerful and incrementally acquired canon of knowledge. This knowledge, however, is revealed not just through abstract secondary sources, but through a direct engagement in the natural world – a lived and sensuous experience of fungi collection and classification. This, if you will, is the emotional and affective “wow” of wonder connecting with the meta- cognitive “what if…” of “I wonder..?” This is where the affective qualities of excitement in discovery meet the intellectual skills of enquiry and investigation.

Review This is now a good point to take stock of these illustrative vignettes and provide some theorisation – in that the reader has so far been obliged to accept my account that these are indeed authentic moments of wonder. Hence, I ought to clarify my terms of reference. In researching this chapter I was intrigued by Pearce and MacLure’s (2009) adoption of wonder as a method of educational inquiry. In their paper for the International Journal of Research & Method in Education, Pearce and MacLure helpfully sketch out the terrain of wonder as “a liminal experience – a sort of shimmering apprehension on the threshold between knowing and unknowing, in which aesthetic, cognitive, and spiritual experiences are simultaneously mobilized” (2009, p. 254). They further suggest that wonder is “the contemplation of otherness” (Mauriès, 2002, p. 249) striking a “shaky poise at the threshold of the unknown” (p. 254). Pearce and MacLure’s description of wonder chimes well with the delicate mystique and emotional presence of the experiences described above where young people are positioned in a liminal space – a metaphysical subjective state between two different existential planes in which discovery, magic and aesthetic reflection are made manifest in the lifeworld of the young person. In another helpful review of the field, this time taken from a philosophical perspective, Deckard (2008) concludes that both Aristotle and Aquinas were of the view that wonder is essentially a curiosity about the natural, astronomical or scientific world (p. 949). This is a view that was shared and further developed by Hobbes and Descartes. Aquinas, though, also considered wonder to be a manifestation of encounters with the miraculous. Deckard’s thesis is that wonder can be defined at three levels: the physical and the astronomical, “in which mountains, caves, waterfalls, rainbows, comets or stars serve as natural phenomena worthy of wonder”; the supernatural, in the Wow! What if? So What? 29 form of miracles, etc.; and wonder as a practical endeavour of political and ethical practice in which the passion of wonder can lead us to a better understanding of human action and behaviour and the development of political systems (ibid, 960). We may then see the attributes of an Aristotelian view of wonder in Jaspal’s discovery, while Katie’s Christmas party offers a glimpse of the liminality described by Pearce and MacLure. “When the City Sleeps” presents something more of this liminality and at the same time introduces contemplation of “otherness”. This creative project combines aesthetics, cognition, and affect to reflect the “other” of the sentient subjective self and the urban environment of Charlie’s twilight cycle trip. The oft-quoted and somewhat over-used first lines of Blake’s Auguries of Innocence still manages to capture in poetic form something of this mystique (so I acknowledge that I am equally guilty of the cliché):

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. (Blake, 2004, p. 506)

Descartes’ definition of wonder as “a sudden surprise of the soul” (Deckard, 2008, p. 955) perhaps distils and celebrates the essence of Blake’s sentiment even further. I have already made reference to the correspondence between Katie’s moment of magic and the “imaginative emotion” which Warnock (1976) talks about. Imagination as an educational project has been the subject of intensive development as a consequence of Egan’s prescient treatment of the field. Here the connection of imagination to wonder is significant; in which evocation, romance and awe can combine to create powerful possibilities for the expansion of meaning in the lives of young people (Egan, 1992, p. 110). Certainly, the collective insights gleaned from David’s show and tell session – a story of a personal journey interwoven with technical knowledge and moments of discovery – also chimes with Egan’s observation that wonder:

constantly serves to keep the world and experience interesting. It is the great enemy of taking things for granted. In the classroom it can be used to bring out what is wonderful by focusing students’ attention on unexpected dimensions of reality and human qualities connected with anything. (Egan, 2008, p. 68)

Katie’s world is then an imaginary world of momentary wonder. Charlie’s response, in contrast, was less transient. In his systematic realisation of a personal “augury of innocence”, his metaphor of wonder, crafted through the symbolic 30 Dave Trotman medium of music, finds immediate parallels with a model of creative process first promoted by Graham Wallas (1926). Wallas’s model involves four stages: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. In Charlie’s musical project we see the stimulus of wonder and his imaginative impulse carried through each stage of Wallas’s model – from the preparation and incubation of initial ideas, to moments of insight (illumination) as ideas are, literally, “played out”. The final artefact of “When the City Sleeps”, then, embodies something of the correspondent emotional content of Charlie’s initial sensory encounters (verification) that serve to transcend simple cognitive references to his pedal- cycle tour. In the “City Sleeps” we might also see a correspondence with the idea of “flow” first introduced by American psychologist Csikszentmihalyi (1996). Based on research conducted with adult informants, flow describes pivotal moments of creative action and harmony that are characterised by the merging of action and awareness, the elimination of distractions, a lack of fear of failure, a lack of self-consciousness, the distortion of sense of time and what Csikszentmihalyi describes as “autotelic” activity – enjoyment for its own sake. David’s interest in collecting and identifying fungi illuminates other dimensions of wonder that emerge from the pursuit of a hobby – such as fascination, curiosity and possibility thinking. This form of wonder offers opportunity for anyone, regardless of age, to develop a “lay”, but nonetheless detailed expertise of the sort championed by Egan in An Imaginative Approach to Teaching (Egan, 2005). Egan suggests that amidst the often bewildering welter of “stuff ” that young people have to learn, hobbies, and in particular those that involve collecting things, offer the possibility of “intellectual security” (p. 95). Collections and hobbies represent a personalised cognitive and affective anchor in the learning journey. As a form of self-initiated and self-directed enquiry, hobbies provide a potent means of engaging and empowering young people in the cultivation of wonder. Yet curiously, as Egan argues, the phenomenon of the hobby has received scant attention in educational literature. So what of wonder as an educational endeavour? Does wonder have a place in formal education? Should it be something that is germane to the school curriculum, and is it essential to the practice of teachers and other allied professionals? It probably won’t have escaped the reader’s attention that, in the four vignettes offered so far, encounters with wonder, although connected to school activities, reside largely outside of the day-to-day of the school curriculum. While each involves its own moments of serendipity, discovery, imaginative magic, and temporal space, we may wish to consider whether this is something that we can aspire to as an intrinsic part of the school curriculum. Are school systems, policy and practice amenable to such a venture? Can we trace examples of wonder in action and as a professional aim? Before attending to each of these, I should just say a few words about the contemporary educational condition in England. Wow! What if? So What? 31

The “So What?” Curriculum: Performativity and its Consequences Like much of the UK, England has undergone an extensive programme of educational reform. Over the past twenty-five years, schools have endured a deluge of government intervention pervading practically every aspect of school life. We have a National Curriculum. We have a programme of statutory testing of children and young people. We have an inspectorate with powers to commend, vilify or close schools. There have been school interventions worth millions of pounds to improve numeracy and literacy, and to make young people better citizens. We have had reform of national qualifications. Perhaps most controversially, we have a system of school league tables. Championed by successive governments as essential for enabling parental choice, league tables, combined with a punitive system of school inspection, have served to distort the prescribed curriculum and curtail the range of educational opportunities for young people. The origins of the former I will now discuss. But before doing so, we may wish to consider whether our state system of education is actually in any better shape as a consequence of these interventions. According to successive government ministers, state intervention is necessary in order to ensure a “world class standard” of education for our young people. This ministerial mantra has been further amplified by the UK’s somewhat mediocre showing in the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) – something that has now become the principal indicator and justification for future intervention in schools. For the uninitiated, the Programme of International Student Assessment was introduced by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) in 2000. PISA reports the aggregated test performance of young people in reading, mathematics and science. According to the PISA web site (where you too can take the sample assessment), tests in maths, first language and science are administered every three years to between 4,500 and 10,000 fifteen year olds in those countries that make up approximately 90% of the world economy. Out of the 65 countries that participated in the 2009 survey, England sits at 25th in reading, 27th in mathematics and 16th in science. As a consequence, ministers of all political colours remain doggedly focused on the advancement of England’s international standing in PISA both as a means of holding schools accountable to the public purse and as a justification for direct intervention in matters of curriculum and pedagogy. One consequence of this pursuit of international comparison is that those aspects of curriculum that are least amenable to routine testing, by default, come to occupy the least privileged positions in the curriculum. Despite some cursory gestures towards “awe and wonder” (Ofsted, 2004) and aspects of creative and affective development, ministerial interest in primary school performance 32 Dave Trotman rests squarely on test scores of pupil literacy and numeracy. In secondary schools, performance is measured against A–C grades in specified subjects of the General Certificate in Secondary Education (GCSE), which is typically sat at the age of sixteen. As I write, and in what is regarded by many teachers as an unpopular move, the Secretary of State for Education has pronounced that the A–C grades used for measuring school effectiveness will be restricted to English, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language – the so-called EBacc. One of the inevitable results of framing outcomes in this way is curriculum “stratification” – where some areas of experience (notably the creative arts) are marginalised both in terms of students’ exposure to them and the subsequent perception of their value. In the literature of policy analysis, this preoccupation with measurable outcomes and the pursuit of year-on-year “improvement” is known as “performativity” (Ball, 2008). Scholars who have observed an emerging trend towards performativity have noted with alarm that amongst the more serious problems of performative cultures is that those things that cannot be made amenable to crude measurement simply become redundant (Ball, 2008). As readers may be all too well aware, performativity and the allure of educational comparison is not entirely unique to the British Isles, as governments in an increasing number of countries push schools – and consequently their teachers and children – to do more and to do better. For some researchers the impact of state intervention combined with punitive forms of surveillance (in the guise of school inspection) has led to the tacit promotion of a “state theory of learning” (Balarin and Lauder, 2010, p. 298). Typically, state theories of learning rest on assumptions about pupil learning and the championing of “best practice” – usually without reference to research evidence or the views of teachers, young people and children. In the first large-scale independent review of primary phase education in the UK since 1967 and the Primary Memorandum of 1965 in Scotland, imagination was highlighted as an essential ingredient of the primary school curriculum (Alexander, 2010). Government policy, in contrast, resonates more closely with Eisner’s observations in the United States that imagination “is not anyone’s list of basics, at least not in any national report on the state of our schools” (Eisner, 2005, p. 108). Despite the best efforts of school communities, teachers and other allied professionals to find ways in which to meaningfully engage children in their educational experience, the official curriculum for many young people has become one from which they are increasingly disenfranchised – a curriculum of the “so what?” It is perhaps little wonder that the UK, along with parts of the US, has some of the highest rates of absence from school in the world (Reid, 2010). Whilst the reasons for school absenteeism amongst young people can be varied and complex, one factor that is frequently cited in the research is the school Wow! What if? So What? 33 and curriculum experiences of young people. Rather depressingly, Claes et al. (2009) report that truanting pupils frequently perceive school as an “unwelcome and barren environment” (p. 125). With successive governments investing in the silver bullet of “world class” international standing – and failing by their own measure – this seems to me to be a terrible waste of human potential and public money. The consequence of this becomes even more profound in light of studies that have pinpointed the pressure of educational performance as a significant contributing factor to youth suicide (Martin et al., 2005). It would seem that a curriculum that enables the conditions for wonder to flourish and which is meaningfully connected to the lifeworlds of young people is now more necessary than ever.

Possibilities and Opportunities The examples of wonder in the previous vignettes come from a time of external curriculum prescription, and, although difficult to sustain, spaces could be created and opportunities realised for imaginative wonder in classrooms and schools. In this next part of the chapter it is my intention to outline examples of practice where spaces have been made, alternatives generated, and wonder enabled through imaginative teaching – and all in spite of the increasing intensification of external mandates. At Saddleford Academy in the industrial heartland of England, Fletcher is but one example of a high school principal whose enthusiasm for finding new ways into the curriculum encounters of young people drives his pursuit of wonder and imaginative possibility. Arriving at Saddleford on a recent visit, I was beckoned by Fletcher to join the meeting of his senior management team in an adjacent office – he had a new arrival at the school and he wanted me to see it: a 3-D screen. I was then led to the theatre where the screen was housed while Fletcher animatedly talked me through the possibilities of 3-D technology. First there was a 3-D tour around the Acropolis; then a change in period and place to the war-time trenches of the Somme as the graphics jarred to the arrival of a Howitzer shell and an accompanying thud and boom. The trench line then detoured through dugouts where artefacts were labelled and explained by the audio narration before the “fly-through” graphics came to rest at a firing step. Then it was a change in topic as a huge wasp flew out from the screen. The wasp was brought to an abrupt halt, rotated 90 degrees and given a sequence of appended labels to explain its anatomy in three dimensions. With each sequence Fletcher enthused about the learning possibilities that the technology might afford for the young people of Saddleford. Meanwhile, down the road in Thorbury primary school, Mrs Eve had taken delivery of a clutch of chicken eggs and a small container of butterfly pupae. The incubated chicks and emerging butterflies would be observed, photographed and 34 Dave Trotman nurtured by the school children. In the school’s garden, Mr Selsey had rigged up a web-cam in a wooden nesting box – a pair of house sparrows had taken up residence and the progress of the nesting birds was now being monitored on a flat-screen TV at the entrance to the school. These two examples offer yet further and quite different ways in which moments of wonder can be generated and encountered. In Saddleford Academy, the introduction of a 3-D screen offers opportunities for young people to engage in exploratory forms of wonder as choreographed software invites young people to collectively experience an audio-visual world of interpretation and discovery. Buildings can be navigated, historical moments witnessed in reenactment and anatomies understood without recourse to physical dissection and all its ethical implications. The theatre provides a potential space for wonder and discovery. Whilst Fletcher’s 3-D screen harnesses the power of contemporary technology as a “teleport” to wonder, Mrs Eve’s project draws children into the magic and miracle of the wonder of new life. As chickens hatch, butterflies evolve, and sparrows fledge, children are invited to encounter the narrative of evolutionary science through an ethic of nurture and care. It begins in a world of expectation and anticipation and is sustained through direct observation, curiosity and the promotion of care and responsibility. These, I suggest, are contrasting but significant moments of wonder. Readers may question why I have chosen to include 3-D technology in this chapter (or any digital technologies for that matter). Indeed, some readers may see new technologies of this sort as “running against the grain” of a “natural” or “innocent” concept of wonder. Those with a more protectionist stance may regard contemporary media as inherently pernicious, arguing that it is only through honest, natural or authentic encounters with wonder that we can provide a necessary antidote to the corrosive effects of digital media – particularly those designed for the pursuit of leisure. I would argue that the inclusion of this vignette is neither provocative nor innovative. Here my emphasis is not on the advocacy of digital technologies per se but rather on the agency that such technology might provide in the wonder of natural phenomena (in this instance the biology of a wasp), or the aesthetic representation of historical events. Like many educational resources, elaborate or otherwise, the capacity to generate and sustain wonder will always be in the hands of the skilful educator – one who is able to nurture and enrich such moments beyond the initial “wow!” of novelty. As with any educational technology, novelty fades and discoveries become passé but it is how such introductions to wonder and possibility are mediated and sustained that matters most – the conditions of the environment and the ability of the teacher to cultivate the emotional qualities of wonder by leading young people to new depths of discovery, insight and inspiration. As I have attempted to illustrate, not all moments of wonder are contingent on elaborate or expensive resources, indeed Stender and Kuyvenhoven (2004) Wow! What if? So What? 35 offer a tacit reminder in their paper to the Imaginative Education Research Group (IERG) that it is possible to detect moments when children enter “storyworlds” through deep imaginative engagement. Not only am I reminded of witnessing similar responses to story that Stender and Kuyvenhoven describe, but I also have vivid recollections of my own introduction to storyworld through my primary school teacher’s reading of Clive King’s Stig of the Dump. Indeed, as an eight-year-old, I remember carrying a metal can-opener around in my pocket for weeks after finishing reading Stig because the central character Barny possessed one should the occasion arise when it might be needed. I never actually found any use for it other than the obvious – opening a can of beans one meal time – and my family were forever frustrated by its absence until the novelty of it all eventually faded and it was duly returned to the kitchen drawer. But I do recall that this can-opener became a powerful symbolic link between my imaginary world and the storyworld skilfully created by King for young imaginative minds – and probably much in the same way that the Harry Potter magic wand has done for a new generation of children (and possibly more useful than my can-opener). In a similar vein, I have never had the experience of scuba diving for Spanish gold in ship-wrecks in the Caribbean, but a Ladybird book on the history of diving of about the same period as Stig provided vivid illustration (literally) of imaginative possibility – these were, by the definitions already given, catalysts for moments of intrinsic wonder. Kerry, an undergraduate student at my own institution is, entirely home- educated. Reference to her story is an important one to include here – in that her educational experiences have been shaped without recourse to formal school- based education. In our conversations as part of her final-year dissertation, Kerry reprised a biography of a rich and diverse range of educational experiences that resides entirely outside the official bastions of “school” – devoid of prescribed curricular, formal testing, school inspectors and the rest of the paraphernalia of state education. Her educational biography is not, however, best represented by the title “home” as Kerry’s education would take place during a trip to the shops, in the museum, the park, the leisure centre, etc. and all provided by parents, who admittedly possessed both the material resources and the time to devote to the day-to-day education of their children. What struck me as particularly poignant about Kerry’s account and her educational disposition is that her experience of “home” education was one of plurality – in that educational possibilities were situated in all manner of places and embraced all sorts of possibilities. It was one in which she and her siblings were given space to develop sustained personal interests unimpeded by the pressure of performance and the superficiality of memorisation for national tests. While Kerry offers a glimpse of the educational possibilities of wonder outside of the school system, there are alternatives in existence that don’t necessitate a complete rejection of school-based education. Wrigley (2006), in an inspiring 36 Dave Trotman analysis of the problems confronting school systems in England, offers powerful examples of curriculum and pedagogic alternatives that serve to mobilise student engagement and which celebrate the unanticipated and serendipitous moments of educational wonder. In Wrigley’s account of the Laborschule, a 5–16 school in the city of Bielefeld in Germany, children and young people are unshackled from the requirements to sit formal assessment until their final year of study – a requirement only for admission to their next stage of education. The curriculum is designed around a series of projects including such things as circus production, the public reading of folk tales written by the pupils themselves, film-making and eco-gardening. Some projects are more substantial than others, such as a project concerning the “Middle Ages” or examples involving collaboration with international partner schools (Wrigley, 2006). Crucially, as Wrigley reports, and following the lines of Montessori, emphasis is placed on the relationship between hand, heart and mind. In a parallel case study, Wrigley observes the work of Ramiro Solans School in Spain where teachers have developed new curricula around the theme of festivals. Time is devoted to each project as a whole-school activity with teachers allocating time for this alongside the normal curriculum routines. Each festival unit culminates in an afternoon of exhibition and performance for parents involving the whole school. In another example from the Laborschule, a request was made by the girls to have a space of their own where they could discuss issues with their teachers without the presence of boys. Wrigley reports that in the ensuing project a space was created that enabled the girls not only to discuss matters relating to their sexual health and well- being but in an environment in which role-plays, dance, drama, psychodrama, art, music, self-defence and relaxation enabled the celebration of the physical, aesthetic and emotional maturation of young women. As the reader might anticipate, Wrigley also reports a reciprocal arrangement was initiated by the boys and supported by the teachers for a space for young men to engage in meaningful reflective work about their lifeworlds and attitudes. Each of these examples offers an alternative, constructive and dynamic response to the cycle of performativity and superficiality that much of school- based education now finds itself in. They also present, I would contend, examples of environments where wonder and imagination are most likely to be fostered. With similar intentions but with a keener focus on progression, continuity and immersion, the “Learning in Depth” (LiD) project pioneered by Kieran Egan and colleagues at Simon Fraser University, Canada, offers a further development of these approaches – and one that resonates with Wrigley’s observations and the experiences recounted by Kerry. The LiD project aims to carve out a small space in the curriculum regime where young people are encouraged to pursue projects of enquiry in significant depth through both phases of elementary and secondary education. With its emphasis on depth and imaginative engagement, Wow! What if? So What? 37 the LiD project offers a considered vehicle for the continuity of wonder. The boldness of the programme, however, is in its requirement that imaginative enquiry is sustained throughout the school lifecourse – a common-sense view one might think, yet it is also one that remains bizarrely at odds with most systems of state-orchestrated school provision. In the list of FAQs on its website the project leaders respond to criticism that children are likely to get bored with a pre-specified project, selected for them by their teachers, and pursued over such a length of time – I must confess that I for one was equally sceptical. Wrigley’s encounter at Laborschule may help similarly sceptical readers, so I have taken the liberty of quoting it in full:

Towards the end of the lesson a group of girls in another class returned unexpectedly early from their science lesson. I wandered over. Why had they come back early? They had finished an ambitious activity, rewriting a text about energy – enzymes, food, photosynthesis – more simply. What were they discussing now? I had expected them to say boys, pop stars, clothes. In fact they were chatting to one another about their extended individual studies: one about Jamaica, one on dolphins, one comparing acting to theatre and film. One was studying Che Guevara, another Freud and Jung’s theory of dreams. (Wrigley, 2006, p. 122)

From these examples it would seem that there are two key messages. The first is that given the appropriate conditions, children and young people have an astonishing capacity to meaningfully engage in education – and in ways that have real emotional connection for them as young people. Secondly, they begin from a position where a deficit model of young people and learning has been banished.

1. These different accounts then reveal something of the necessary conditions for the nurture and celebration of wonder. From these I have shortlisted my six pre-requisites for the development of wonder-full learning: the creation of environments where exploration, chance and serendipity are valued as necessary features of education – both within and beyond the confines of school. 2. A curriculum that generates vivid imaginative and emotional connection within and across subjects is an essential prerequisite for a wonder-full education. 3. Empathic teaching techniques involving the use of empathy in its many and varied contexts and applications. 4. Teachers’ attunement to the reception and generation of moments of wonder in order that young people can be supported through their personal journeys into wonder beyond initial novelty. 38 Dave Trotman

5. An alternative vision of education that is neither driven by pre-specified and instrumental outcomes nor trammelled by a uniform adherence to the “chunking of time” common to most programmes of study and units of work. 6. Opportunities for young people to pursue projects of personal interest (examples such as those already cited, and in England the Level 3 Extended Project qualification, provide modest examples of approaches that offer greater possibilities for development).

Conclusion Whether we should deliberately include opportunities for young people to engage with wonder in the school curriculum is essentially a rhetorical question. As I hope the vignettes in this chapter have shown, wonder is an unavoidable human quality, and unavoidable in the educational encounter. Wonder, as I have argued, can take multiple forms – as a curiosity of the “what if?”, the breath-catching wonder of Aristotle and Aquinas’ physical and astronomical phenomena, the shimmering apprehension of the liminal, the supernatural and the mystical, or the “wow!” of Descartes’ “sudden surprise of the soul”. Wonder has a range of qualities and guises. Wonder can be present in a range of settings and environments, from the wonder of natural environments to the artefacts of human creativity. It can involve the serendipity of chance discovery, or may be an intention by design, craft and innovation. Wonder may involve the presence of a feeling, the mystical and the spiritual. Ultimately, wonder involves transcending the immediate ambit of the here and now through imagination and possibility thinking. Undoubtedly, this presents educators with a raft of challenges. As I have discussed, some of the obstacles to developing educational possibilities for the cultivation of wonder reside in a domain of educational policy-making that has a long and complex history, such as those concerning curriculum and assessment. Other challenges concern pedagogy and educational practice, where an urgent refocusing on approach and technique is essential – an area in which Egan and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University have already undertaken pioneering work. It necessarily follows that the promotion of imagination, emotion and affect are pivotal to this practice, as is professional empathic technique. In its most refined form, the phenomenon of wonder can offer a potent means of personal self-renewal. This is the wonder of deep imaginative, cognitive, and affective engagement essential to the well-being and vitality of learners of any age, but particularly the young. In more rudimentary contexts, the transformation of schools from the unwelcome and barren environments reported by Claes et al. (2009) is a more pressing concern – and it is to the phenomenon of wonder that we should perhaps turn. Wow! What if? So What? 39

References Alexander, R. J. (2010) (ed.). Children, Their World, Their Education: Final Report and Recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review. London: Routledge. Balarin, M. and Lauder, H. (2010). The governance, administration and control of primary education, in R. Alexander, with C. Doddington, J. Gray, L. Hargreaves and R. Kershner (eds) The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys. London: Routledge, Chapter 26. Ball, S. (2008). Performativity, privatisation, professionals and the state, in B. Cunningham (ed.) Exploring Professionalism. London: Institute of Education. Blake, W. (2004). The Complete Poems (ed. A. Ostriker). London: Penguin Classics. Claes, E., Hooghe, M. and Reeskens, T. (2009). Truancy as a contextual and school-related problem: a comparative multilevel analysis of country and school characteristics on civic knowledge among 14 year olds. Educational Studies, 35 (2), pp. 123–142. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Collins. Deckard, M. F. (2008). A sudden surprise of the soul: the passion of wonder in Hobbes and Descartes. The Heythrop Journal, XLIX, pp. 948–963. Egan, K. (1992). Imagination in Teaching and Learning: Ages 8–15. London: Routledge. Egan, K. (2005). An Imaginative Approach to Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Egan, K. (2008). The Future of Education: Reimagining Our Schools from the Ground Up. New Haven: Yale. Eisner, E. (2005). Reimagining Schools: The Selected Works of Elliot Eisner. London: Routledge. Martin, G., Richardson, A. S., Bergen, H. A., Leigh, R. and Allison, S. (2005). Perceived academic performance, self-esteem and locus of control as indicators of need for assessment of adolescent suicide risk: implications for teachers. Journal of Adolescence, 28 (1), pp. 75–87. Mauriès, P. (2002). Cabinets of Curiosities. London: Thames & Hudson. Ofsted (2004). Promoting and Evaluating Pupils’ Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development. London: Office for Standards in Education. Pearce, C. and MacLure, M. (2009). The Wonder of Method. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 32 (3), pp. 249–265. Reid, K. (2010). The search for solutions to truancy and other forms of school absenteeism. Pastoral Care in Education, 21 (1), pp. 3–9. Rogers, C. (1980). A Way of Being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Stender, L. and Kuyvenhoven, J. (2004). Deep imaginative engagement: children make and play in story worlds. Paper presented to the 2nd international conference of the Imaginative Education Research Group, Vancouver Canada, 14–17 July, 2004. Wallas, G. (1926). The Art of Thought. London: Jonathan Cape. Warnock, M. (1976). Imagination. London: Faber and Faber. Wrigley, T. (2006). Another School is Possible. London: Trentham Books. 3 Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education

Yannis Hadzigeorgiou

Introduction Wonder, although the engine of all intellectual inquiry, has not received enough attention by mainstream science education. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to shed some light on the notion of wonder, which is distinguished from curiosity, and second, to discuss its importance in the context of school science. More specifically, the paper discusses the role of wonder as a prerequisite for engagement with science, its role as a source of students’ questions, and also its role as a prerequisite for learning, in the sense that it can contribute to a change in students’ outlook on natural phenomena. In so doing, the paper will draw on empirical evidence from two studies undertaken with the primary aim of investigating the role of wonder in the teaching-learning process. Philosophers have always defended the value of wonder. Toulmin (1976), for example, in line with Aristotle, considers wonder the engine of all intellectual inquiry, while Opdal’s (2001) philosophical analysis points to the crucial role of wonder in the learning process, especially in connection with conceptual change. As he points out, it is wonder, not curiosity, that can lead students to inquiries, not simply within an accepted framework, but into the framework itself. Fisher (1998), in arguing against the demystification of science, considers science and wonder as two sides of the same coin, while MIT physicist Victor Weisskopf considers wonder the seed of knowledge (Weisskopf, 1979). Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, in agreement with Levi Strauss, believes that all psychological/social scientific understanding has to begin with a phenomenological approach––although it should not stop there––thus appraising indirectly the value of wonder (personal communication, 2009). This Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 41 value has been explicitly acknowledged by Kieran Egan, who considers wonder a “cognitive tool” (see Egan, 1997, 2005), and whose educational theory makes the attempt to reclaim the value of wonder in education worthwhile. Some science educators have also recommended that curriculum and teaching should foster a sense of wonder (Goodwin, 2001; Hadzigeorgiou, 2001, 2006, 2007; Howe, 1971; Millar & Osborne, 1998; Ritz, 2007; Silverman, 1989, 2003; Stolberg, 2008; Witz, 1996). Witz (1996), in fact, in going so far as to argue that wonder should be regarded “a feature and a goal of science itself ” (p. 603), implies that wonder can be a central goal of science education. More recently, the importance of experiencing a sense of wonder has been defended by those who have attempted to link science learning with aesthetics (Girod, 2007) and also with Egan’s (1997) notion of romantic understanding (Hadzigeorgiou, 2005b; Hadzigeorgiou, Klassen & Froese-Klassen, in press). Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most fervent exponent of the importance of wonder in the practice of science, considers wonder “one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable” (Dawkins, 1998, p. xii), and makes the following comment:

Yes, we must have Bunsen burners and dissecting needles for those drawn to advanced scientific practice. But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience … . Far from science not being useful, my worry is that it is so useful as to overshadow and distract from its inspirational and cultural value. Usually even its sternest critics concede the usefulness of science, while completely missing the wonder. (Dawkins, 1998, p. 10)

Yet wonder, at best, has not received enough attention, and, at worst, has been overlooked, by mainstream science education. There are a number of possible reasons for that lack of attention: first, the emphasis on the social element of learning science, and hence the emphasis on discourse and cooperative activities (Lemke, 2001). Second, the trend toward citizen science has led to a pragmatist conception of school science education (Jenkins, 1999, 2002; Roth & Lee, 2004). Third, the fact that it is not only difficult for both pupils and science teachers to completely abandon empiricist and logical positivist philosophies of science, especially when engaged in laboratory work (Monk & Dillon, 2000), but also because one can adopt a constructivist approach to the teaching and learning of science without even bothering about the issue of wonder (Hadzigeorgiou, 2005a, 2005b). Fourth, wonder is often considered to be inherently passive, and, as such, an obstacle to curiosity (Hadzigeorgiou, 2007). And fifth, the notion of wonder itself is quite problematic since it can be associated with science 42 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou fiction (Barron, 1987; Kelley, 1972) and also with magic, miracles, even with incomprehensibility (Silverman, 1989). All the aforementioned reasons stem from lack of awareness of the connection between science and wonder, and especially from a misunderstanding of the nature of the latter. Perhaps this misunderstanding could explain why the notion of wonder is not central in some dominant approaches to science education that have helped shape school science curriculum and pedagogy, such as “science for conceptual change” and “science as inquiry,” despite the fact that wonder is at the very heart of both approaches. It could also explain why, even in standards-based science education, there is a place for “wonder-full” experiences.

Science and Wonder Science, although a social activity ––“constitutively social,” as Woolgar (1993, p. 13) put it––is characterized by a strong personal element. Central to this personal element is not only the constructive nature of thinking and understanding but also the experience of wonder. This personal element of science has also been described as “aesthetic” (Tauber, 1996; Kosso, 2002; Root-Bernstein, 2002). Central to this aesthetic element is the idea of beauty, which in turn, can be linked directly to the experience of wonder (Girod, 2007; Hadzigeorgiou, 2005a, 2005b; Hadzigeorgiou & Fotinos, 2007). It deserves to be pointed out that the notion of beauty in science (e.g., a beautiful experiment, a beautiful image provided by a microscope) raises a crucial question in regard to the nature of beauty itself, which is subjective. For example, one might raise the following question: what is a beautiful experiment, a beautiful image, a beautiful formula? For a third grader, beauty may lie in the colors of a physical phenomenon or experiment, while for a scientist beauty may be found in simplicity, in symmetry, or even in complexity. For Michael Faraday (1978), for example, beauty was something else. In his The Chemical History of a Candle he says that the beauty of the candle is not the prettiness of its colors or its shape but the fact that it taps all the known laws of the universe: not the best-looking, but the best-acting thing. Richard Feynman (1968) made a similar point: beauty lies in the various interconnections of natural phenomena and science ideas. The history of science, however, provides many examples of scientists whose thinking was rooted in an aesthetic appreciation of visual symmetry (see McAllister, 1996). Perhaps the most striking example is that of Paul Dirac (1963), who made the well-known statement, “It is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit the experiment” (Dirac, 1963, p. 47). It should be noted here that the Pythagorean-Platonic linkage between mathematical abstraction and beauty, and generally between epistemology and aesthetics, was revived and became important in the twentieth century with the advent of quantum mechanics. Both Bohr and Heisenberg, by using the idea of art and science as Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 43 parallel symbolic systems, aligned the study of aesthetics with abstraction in science (see Chevalley, 1996). However, the crucial question is this: is beauty to be linked solely to mathematical concepts? In reducing the aesthetic element of science to a visual consumption of objects and/or to mathematical abstraction, an important fact is overlooked: scientific inquiry is a creative endeavor, in which emotions, aesthetics, imagination and cognition form an integrated whole. For this reason, the aesthetic element should also be sought in that personal experience of doing science, and hence linked to such notions as mystery, awe, wonder, imagination, inspiration (Hadzigeorgiou, 2005a). For a number of scientists, the experience of wonder can be one of the greatest rewards of science: “The procrustean oversimplification of fundamentalist reductionism … cannot embrace the practice of science itself … whose chief reward is the experience of wonder” (Polkinghorne, 1998, p. 2). In The Star Thrower, Loren Eiseley (1979), in speaking of two kinds of practitioners in science, makes the following points: one is the “extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle,” and the other is s/he “who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery whether it hides in a snail’s eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ (p. 151). And Richard Dawkins also points out that:

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that makes life worth living. (Dawkins, 1998, p. xii)

It is true, of course, that the experience of a sense of wonder does not become evident like other elements central to scientific inquiry (e.g., intellectual, ethical). Yet it does emerge when scientists speak autobiographically about their work and the work of other scientists (see Root-Bernstein, 1996). What should be pointed out is that there is a confusion between what scientists do and what they actually report. “At the heart of the unsolved problem concerning scientific thinking is the confusion of the form and content of the final translations with the hidden means by which scientific insights are actually achieved” (Root-Bernstein, 2002, p. 61). Unfortunately, the exclusion of the element of wonder from scientific reports “discourages and delegitimates its expression or even admission by students and amateurs to having experiencing it” (Hein, 1996, p. 285). Max Planck regarded the wonder of the world and the wonder of the imagination complementary aspects of equal importance (cited in Witz, 1996, p. 606). Although curiosity is an important scientific attitude and a motive for research and inquiry, scientists, when speaking about their work and the work of 44 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou other scientists, associate wonder not with curiosity but with such elements as mystery and awe (Root-Bernstein, 1996, 2002; see also Midgley, 2000; Wilson, 1986). The association of wonder with mystery and awe provides evidence that those who experience a sense of wonder respond emotionally to their object of study, and that this emotional response may be considered a prerequisite for engaging with that object of study. This association of mystery, awe, and wonder can be found in the literature and should be noted: “Mystery generates wonder and wonder generates awe” (Goodenough, 1997, p. 13), and “Our sense of wonder grows exponentially: the greater the knowledge, the deeper the mystery” (Wilson, 1986, p. 10). Perhaps Einstein’s famous phrase epitomizes the role of mystery as a source of awe and wonder:

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. (Einstein, 1949, p. 5)

It has been pointed out that a pragmatist/utilitarian conception of science does not contribute to our appreciation of both the cultural value and the beauty of science (Dawkins, 1998). Moreover, “the practical mission to advance science alone seems grim, focusing as it does on the political and economic importance of science and its role in a technological world” (Hein, 1996, p. 285). Despite this connection between science and wonder, or even despite what some scientists believe about it and their arguments for its value, the question why wonder has not received enough attention by science educators remains pressing and legitimate. I believe that a misunderstanding or rather a partial understanding of the nature of wonder along with a lack of empirical evidence to support such value in the context of science education are the two main reasons behind this lack of attention.

The Nature of Wonder The nature of wonder is both complex and elusive. It does not take one long to realize that wonder, as a state of mind, can be associated with mystery, awe, perplexity, astonishment, surprise, amazement, admiration and bewilderment. Yet the experience of a sense of wonder cannot be reduced to the experience of any one of the aforementioned elements. Mere surprise or even mere astonishment is not wonder any more than is mere admiration or bewilderment. Also the difficulty one has to conceptualize wonder may be found in the fact that it is sometimes used interchangeably with the notion of curiosity (see for example Silverman, 1989, 2003), due to the imprecise sense of both notions. Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 45

A review of the literature reveals various notions or aspects of wonder. Silverman (1989) differentiated between “wonder in the sense of curiosity” and “wonder in the sense of the magical, miraculous and incomprehensible” (p. 44). Wonder in the latter sense “is like a narcotic and destroys curiosity and anesthetizes the intellect” (p. 44). Goodwin (2001), also, in distinguishing between two aspects of wonder, that is, “wondering about” and “wondering at,” identified the former with curiosity (which “reflects the activity of scientists”) and the latter with our capability of wondering. It is this capability, according to Goodwin (2001), which “reflects the human response to discoveries and understandings” (p. 69). A “wondering if ” aspect has also been identified by Goodwin (2001), although this appears to be similar to the “wondering about” aspect. Related to Goodwin’s (2001) “wondering at” the world are Stolberg’s (2008) three categories of wonder, namely, “physical wonder” (which is induced by interaction with natural objects and/or phenomena), “personal wonder” (which is induced by interaction with human beings and/or their achievement), and “metaphysical wonder” (which is induced by any kind of interaction, but the experience of wonder leads to a shift in perspective). It is evident that any one kind of wonder (i.e., physical, personal, metaphysical) may or may not induce a “wondering about” attitude toward the world, depending on a number of factors (i.e., worldview, opportunities and help to reflect on the original stimulus). It is also evident that all the aforementioned distinctions point to a passive aspect and an active aspect of wonder. The former can be identified with an emotional response to something (i.e., a phenomenon, an idea) or even with something magical, miraculous and even incomprehensible, that may or may not lead to a shift in perspective, while the latter with curiosity. Yet wonder is not the same as curiosity. What deserves to be stressed here is a delicate distinction between curiosity and wonder: curiosity is actually the drive to investigate or study something while wonder is a state of mind or feeling. Moreover, wonder has an aesthetic dimension, which can be totally absent from curiosity. This aesthetic dimension implies that astonishment and admiration can both be present in the experience of wonder. For example, there is empirical evidence that students who watched a film, whose plot included Tesla demonstrations and experiments on the wireless transmission of electrical energy, experienced not only bewildered curiosity about such experiments or demonstrations, but also a feeling of astonishment, while, at the same time, they expressed their admiration for what Tesla did and Tesla himself (Hadzigeorgiou & Garganourakis, 2010). Taylor (1998), in associating admiration with wonder, talks of the “poetic” nature of the latter. For Taylor (1998) the emotional response to what is being perceived stems primarily from the wholeness of the object of perception. While curiosity, according to him, is a scientific impulse that strives to dominate nature, 46 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou

Wonder is poetic and is content to view things in their wholeness and full context … When a flower is taken apart and examined as pistil, stamen, stem and petals, each part is seen exactly and a certain curiosity is satisfied; however, curiosity is not wonder, the former being the itch to take apart, the latter to gaze on things as they are. (Taylor, 1998, p. 169)

The association between admiration and wonder is present, according to Dawkins (1998), in the “poetic” nature of science itself. Although science and poetry represent two different ways to experience the world (i.e., a sunset can be described by both a physicist and a poet, and here we have two different descriptions), one can nevertheless speak of the poetry of science, as Dawkins does, in the sense that one can feel admiration and astonishment at phenomena and ideas. One can admire and be astonished at the beauty of natural phenomena and at the unexpected connections among such phenomena. Moreover, one can feel admiration and astonishment at the fact that scientific understanding opens up new ways of looking at things, and leads to new discoveries and understandings. For Dawkins, even scientific reductionism did not take away anything from the “poetry of science;” it did not diminish the beauty of the natural phenomena. The rainbow, for example, did not lose its beauty when Newton reduced it to prismatic colors. Light, in general, does not lose its beauty when it is refracted, reflected and digitized. The poetry and the wonder are still there. One, of course, could identify astonishment and admiration, that is, the poetic nature of wonder, with a “wonder at” attitude, which, certainly, is not curiosity. What should be stressed though is that even a “wonder about” attitude should not be identified solely with curiosity. A person, for example, can wonder about how to proceed in approaching or solving a problem, without his/her curiosity to have been aroused. In such a case there is first an awareness of a problematic situation, and second, feelings of perplexity, doubt, and uncertainty. This simple situation shows that wonder and curiosity are two different notions, and it is misleading to use them interchangeably. The Oxford dictionary (11th edition) gives the following definition of wonder: a feeling of surprise and admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected or unfamiliar. It is clear that this feeling is not the same as curiosity. Hove (1996), in explicating the notion of wonder, identifies wonder with “the emotion caused by the perception of something novel and unexpected or inexplicable” and with “the state of mind in which this emotion exists” (p. 442). However, he also identifies it with an “astonishment mingled with perplexity or bewildered curiosity” (p. 442). For him being simply curious about something without being astonished by that something cannot by itself evoke a sense of wonder. Curiosity, according to Burke’s (1990) philosophical analysis, is the simplest human emotion and it should be differentiated from the Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 47 state of astonishment during which “the mind is so entirely filled with its object that it cannot entertain any other” (p. 53). Santayana (1955) also associates astonishment with the notion of the sublime, which in turn relates not to curiosity but to such notions as awe and wonder. That wonder is not the same as curiosity can be seen also from the fact that while curiosity is about things to which “answers can be given by reference to procedures that are commonly acknowledged, wonder points to something beyond the accepted rules” (Opdal, 2001, p. 331). Going beyond the accepted, the usual, and the ordinary, however, does not mean that wonder, in order to be evoked, requires unusual and extraordinary objects, phenomena or situations, as is usually the case with curiosity (Berlyne, 1960; Bruner, 1966, p. 114; Loewenstein, 1994). In fact, wonder, unlike curiosity, can be evoked even through simple and usual situations. For example, a science teacher can help foster a sense of wonder at and about the force of gravity by helping students become aware (through a simple and very usual situation involving a magnet holding a paper clip) that gravity is indeed the weakest of all forces, since a tiny magnet can hold a paper clip despite the fact the whole earth is pulling down on it. According to empirical evidence from a study undertaken by a secondary school teacher in Greece (whose main objective was the investigation of the role of wonder in the learning process), initially the demonstration meant nothing to the students, who saw only two ordinary objects, that is, a paper clip and a magnet. It was only after they became aware (through questioning) that the magnet attracted and held the paper clip, in spite of the fact that the whole planet was pulling down on it, that they felt surprised and astonished and started to wonder at and about the force of gravity. As one student commented: “Although I knew that gravity was the weakest of all forces and I could see that in the numbers on that table about the relative strength of all forces in Nature, it was after that simple, and very easy-to-do experiment that I understood it better … It is really remarkable and very strange now that I know that the force of gravity is very very weak” (Hadzigeorgiou, in press). This example does provide evidence that wonder can be evoked through simple, ordinary situations, and can make one see something usual and ordinary as unusual and extraordinary. Martin Heidegger, in fact, in distinguishing between curiosity and wonder, had pointed that out: “Unlike curiosity which presupposes that there is a distinction between the usual and the unusual, ordinary and extraordinary, wonder is an attunement in which one finds the usual to be extraordinary” (Stone, 2006, p. 208). This distinction between curiosity and wonder echoes Fisher’s (1998) conception of wonder as a “boundary line between the obvious, the ordinary, and the everyday on the one hand, and the unknowable, the inexpressible, the unformulated, on the other” (p. 12). What is also missing from curiosity is the dimension of awareness that is always present in wonder. For example, in the case of a child asking questions about the 48 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou sky there is a difference between the question “Why is the sky blue?” and the question “If stars fall all the time then why is the sky always full of stars?,” in the sense that, in the former case, the child can be simply curious, while in the latter s/he becomes aware that his/her knowledge is either incomplete or mistaken. Of course, this is a very simple example, but whether we are talking about a demonstration (i.e., of the weakness of the force of gravity, of the invisibility of light), or a verbal expression (i.e., matter is 99% empty space, there can be motion at extremely high speeds in a straight line in the absence of a net force), a kind of awareness must always be present. In actual fact, it is this awareness that makes something usual and ordinary to be seen as unusual and extraordinary. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner believes that wonder makes sense only when awareness of some kind is present and that is why he considers wonder inappropriate for very young children (personal communication, 2009). Dewey’s (1998) distinction between three stages or levels of curiosity, that he calls organic, social, and intellectual, can be quite useful here since it is level three or intellectual curiosity that can be identified with wonder. As Dewey argues, at the organic stage very young children are simply curious about everything––their curiosity being an expression of abundant organic energy–– and at the social stage their curiosity is developed under social stimuli, but their motive is not an explanation but an “eagerness for a larger acquaintance with the mysterious world” (p. 38) in which they are placed. At this social stage, in other words, young children’s curiosity is about facts about the world, “not evidence of any genuine consciousness of rational thought” (p. 38). Still, this kind of engagement is certainly different from the stage at which children become aware of something, and their curiosity is transformed into an interest in finding out answers for themselves. Apparently, it is this kind of curiosity that can be identified with wonder. It is interesting to note that the association between wonder and awareness is present in Whitehead’s notion of “stage of romance.” The stage of romance, as the stage of “first apprehension” of the subject matter of any school subject, precedes the stages of precision and generalization, and has as a central element the experience of a sense of wonder through the awareness of unexplored or unexpected connections among facts, events and ideas. As Whitehead (1985) had pointed out, at the stage of romance there is a feeling of “excitement consequent on the transition from the bare facts to the first realization of the import of their unexplored relationship,” and also a realization of “unexplored connections with possibilities half-disclosed by glimpses and half-concealed by the wealth of material” (pp. 17–18). What needs particular attention though is the word “import” since it leads one to associate wonder with the awareness of the significance of certain phenomena and ideas. Verhoven (1972) has in fact argued that wonder reveals the infinite significance of things and also urges us to respect that which it reveals. Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 49

Whitehead’s notion of the stage of romance can be illustrated by Carl Sagan himself. Sagan, as a young child living in New York, experienced a sense of wonder which was associated first with the awareness that stars were that aspect of his environment that was different from all the rest––something that also made him wonder about their nature––and second with the awareness that they (stars) were suns, just like ours, and very far away. His comments on that kind of awareness are quite instructive and worth quoting:

It was in there. It was stunning. The answer was that the Sun was a star, except very far away. The stars were suns; if you were close to them, they would look just like our sun. I tried to imagine how far away from the Sun you’d have to be for it to be as dim as a star. Of course I didn’t know the inverse square law of light propagation; I hadn’t a ghost of a chance of figuring it out. But it was clear to me that you’d have to be very far away. Farther away, probably, than New Jersey. The dazzling idea of a universe vast beyond imagining swept over me. It has stayed with me ever since … I sensed awe. And later on (it took me several years to find this), I realized that we were on a planet––a little, non-self-luminous world going around our star. And so all those other stars might have planets going around them. If planets, then life, intelligence, other Brooklyns—who knew? The diversity of those possible worlds struck me. They didn’t have to be exactly like ours, I was sure of it. (Sagan, 1995, p. 25)

However, students themselves may very well express their awareness of what they are learning. According to a study undertaken with the primary aim of investigating the role of wonder in the learning process, several grade 9 students’ journal entries provided evidence of “conscious learning” (Hadzigeorgiou, in press, see also Table 3.2):

That all the subatomic particles contained in the bodies of all people on earth, if we could remove all empty space from their bodies, could pack easily into a ping-pong ball is astonishing. In reality we are all empty space!!

Although I knew that gravity was the weakest of all forces and I could see that in the numbers on that table about the relative strength of all forces in Nature, it was after that simple and very easy-to-do experiment that I understood it better.

I knew that molecules are very, very small. But it was after calculating the number of molecules contained in a glass of water that I really understood how tiny they really are … Now I can say that I understand all about Avogadro’s number. 50 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou

The foregoing discussion leads one to view wonder as an intellectual attitude or state of mind that can have several and diverse sources: situations, phenomena, and ideas that give one the opportunity to admire, to feel a sense of mystery, to be surprised, astonished, bewildered and perplexed. However, awareness of some kind should also be present. This means that wonder has two components: an emotional and a cognitive component. Therefore wonder, in order to be considered a “pedagogical tool,” should also result in the following kinds of awareness:

• awareness that one’s knowledge is incomplete or mistaken; • awareness that there is more to be learned; • awareness that some phenomena exist at all; • awareness of unexpected connections between phenomena and ideas; • awareness of the beauty of natural phenomena.

This component of awareness necessitates a distinction between the “wonder of science” and “science as fun” (see Appelbaum & Clark, 2001). Although the experience of wonder can be really fun, not all fun experiences with science are “wonder-full.” A student may very well say that he or she had a wonderful experience in the classroom, a wonderful lesson, meaning though an interesting experience or lesson. Perhaps there should be a distinction between a “wonderful” and a “wonder-full” experience or science lesson, in the context of science education, given that the word “wonderful,” more often than not, is used interchangeably with other words, which may not have the characteristics of wonder. Moreover, the “wow-factor” in school science, although of crucial importance, should be accompanied by some kind of awareness. What needs to be stressed here is that surprise—a “wow” exclamation (i.e., the emotional component)—without awareness should not––and cannot––be considered an appropriate source of wonder that has the potential to contribute to understanding. Apparently, flashy, fun demonstrations, which leave children dumbfounded, without awareness of what really happens, or of what those demonstrations mean, cannot be considered appropriate science activities. The idea, of course, of surprise from something unexpected has been central to the process of “cognitive conflict”––and has been incorporated into the conceptual change teaching–learning model (Limon, 2001)––but it (surprise) has been considered the result of the awareness that one’s beliefs are erroneous (and therefore in need of reconsideration). Having already pointed out that a “wonder about” attitude cannot necessarily be identified with curiosity, a tight distinction between a passive and an active aspect of wonder (see Goodwin, 2001; Silverman, 1989, 2003) cannot be maintained. But even if one were to maintain such a distinction, and therefore Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 51 a “wonder about” attitude was identified with bewildered curiosity, then science teachers and science educators would be in favor of fostering such attitude, on the grounds that it promotes scientific inquiry, while they should not bother about the “wonder at” attitude. For there may be an argument on the teachers’ part that the passive aspect of wonder (i.e., wonder which has its source in the admiration of, and/or surprise by, an object or phenomenon, like a whale, a volcanic eruption, a rainbow, a sunset, a flash of lightning), cannot arouse bewildered curiosity and therefore it should not be considered a component of scientific wonder and should not be encouraged in the context of science education. In considering, in fact, the two aspects of wonder, that is, the passive aspect and the active aspect, one may very well associate the passive aspect of wonder to religion rather than to science. And in contrasting religion and science as two distinct forms of knowledge, according to Hirst’s (1972) analysis, one could very well associate or even identify the former with feelings of admiration, bewilderment, surprise and astonishment, even incomprehensibility, but not with bewildered curiosity, that is, the “wonder about” attitude or state of mind, which is central to the latter. For it is true that admiration leads one to accept what is being admired as something miraculous and therefore incomprehensible, rather than to become curious about that object of admiration. Yet even in this case of “passive” or religious wonder one can also speak of a particular kind of awareness that is developed, namely, the awareness of the beauty and immensity of the natural world. This kind of awareness, regardless of whether or not one is religious, is important, since it could encourage deeper involvement with, and also respect for, Nature, which can be considered students’ larger object of study (Witz, 1996). This respect for Nature acquires a special significance in the context of contemporary science education reform (AAAS, 1990; Bybee, 1997; Hodson, 2003). Perhaps it was in this spirit that Howe (1971) had made the following comment:

The world needs people who can think and feel; people who know the earth and also love it; who know much about the forms of life and respect all life; who know what the stars are made of and can still look up at them and wonder. (Howe, 1971, cited in DeBoer, 1991, p. 179)

And yet the value of wonder in science education, especially an attempt to reclaim it, remains pressing and legitimate. For there is a question about the specific role(s) that wonder can play in the teaching-learning process. What follows is an attempt to defend the value of wonder in three interrelated, yet distinctive, parts of that process. In so doing, I will draw on empirical evidence with grade 9 and grade 11 students who experienced a sense of wonder. 52 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou

Wonder as a Prerequisite for Engagement with School Science Engagement with any school subject has traditionally been identified with such notions as personal needs, interest, enthusiasm, relevant content and meaning making (Hadzigeorgiou, 2005a). In the context of school science education, curiosity is also a notion that is associated with active engagement, since curiosity is considered an intellectual attitude and especially a motive for doing and learning science (AAAS, 1990). Wonder, though, is much less mentioned or even recognized as such an attitude or motive that can encourage engagement with school science, especially with its content knowledge (Hadzigeorgiou, 2006, 2007, 2008b; Silverman, 2003; Stolberg, 2008). The problem of motivation, of course, in connection with learning is well known (Brophy, 1987, 1999; Bruner, 1966; Franken, 2001; Raffini, 1993). What has not been recognized or adequately addressed in the past is students’ motivation in regard to content of learning (Pugh, 2004). More specifically, in the context of school science education, what is at issue is not just the problem of students’ motivation in general or the problem of considering the affective component of learning science, but their motivation in connection with the object of study itself (Hadzigeorgiou, 2005a). For there is a distinction to be made between participation in a learning activity and involvement with the object of study itself (Hadzigeorgiou, 1997, 2008a, 2008b). Pugh (2004) also distinguishes between peripheral things (e.g., humor, interaction with peers, flashy demonstrations) and engagement with science content. It goes without saying that during participation in an activity, the object of study can be disconnected from the emotions of the student, which can arise mainly from participating in the activity. For example, a student may be interested in investigating the socio-scientific issue of genetically modified food or the topic of magnets in a cooperative setting and enjoy them, but his/her emotions may arise from the social context of those activities and not from the objects of study themselves. In contrast, when there is engagement with the object of study, emotions are not disconnected from it. Although emotions are not the same as the motivation to learn, in the sense that they (emotions) do not necessarily have a goal orientation associated with them, emotions are nevertheless crucial for initiating involvement with the object of study itself, and therefore discourage what Dewey (1934, 1966) had called the “spectator theory of knowledge.” Certainly, contemporary learning models are not based on such a theory, but on constructivist theories, since they encourage students’ active participation in learning activities. Yet “most theories of constructivism remain within the dualistic framework which Dewey opposed” (Dahlin, 2001, p. 456). The problem, therefore, for science educators and science teachers is how to move away from that dualistic framework by encouraging students’ involvement with their object of study. A sense of wonder Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 53 can help encourage involvement with the object of study. Wonder, experienced as a feeling of astonishment, can make the mind be “entirely filled with its object that it cannot entertain any other” (Burke, 1990, p. 53). There is empirical evidence that supports such claim: ninth grade students who experienced a sense of wonder spent more time making journal entries, in comparison with students who were taught the same ideas but the teacher made no attempt to evoke wonder. Not only the number of entries, but also the number of comments and questions written in the journals were much higher in the case of the students who experienced a sense of wonder. The interesting thing is that, in comparing the two classrooms, although there was no difference in academic ability among the students, differences did emerge when one considered the “outsiders,” namely females and low achievers. (Hadzigeorgiou, in press). This is a very important finding and deserves some space for discussion. It is well known that over the previous decade, the idea of science as another world (Costa, 1995), another culture (or subculture), has been stressed from the cultural perspective on science education (Aikenhead, 1996, 2002). The appropriation, of course, of concepts from cultural anthropology has helped science educators understand several problems associated with the teaching and learning of science as a culture. However, there are some questions to be asked: is science a culture that is beyond most students’ grasp? How about helping students understand science “romantically” by feeling a sense of mystery and wonder? Such feelings can help them view science as a “grand adventure”––to use Feynman’s (1964) own words. It is this feeling of “grand adventure” that has the potential to facilitate border crossings, and that is why the curriculum should include such elements as mystery and wonder, and if possible even awe, although in the context of education this would be more difficult. Further research into this possibility is imperative. But it is important to point out that, at least, according to the evidence cited here, “outsiders” (i.e., underachievers, females) can become involved with school science when the teacher attempts to evoke a sense of wonder. Following the explication of the notion of wonder, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the experience of a sense of wonder can help answer the “so-what” or “why-do-I-need-to-learn-this” questions that students so often ask. According to the empirical evidence cited throughout this paper (Hadzigeorgiou & Garganourakis, 2010; Hadzigeorgiou in press; see also Hadzigeorgiou, Klassen & Froese-Klassen, in press), wonder can reveal the significance of science ideas and phenomena.

Wonder as a Source of Students’ Questions It goes without saying that students should be encouraged to ask questions. Postman (1995) had pointed out that students’ questions are among the most important teaching tools. Students’ questions play the role of a link between 54 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou thinking and learning (Gardner, 1991; Good & Brophy, 1995) and also lie at the very heart of scientific inquiry (NRC, 1996), which, as evidence suggests, results in better retention of ideas (Renzulli, Gentry & Reis, 2004). But what is the source of those questions? More often than not this process of asking questions is associated with curiosity, which is considered central to scientific inquiry and science education (AAAS, 1990, p. 173). Yet, no explicit reference to wonder and to its role in promoting scientific inquiry is made. Having already made a delicate distinction between curiosity and wonder, one could certainly ask the following question: which is more important for students, to wonder about natural phenomena or to be curious about them? If “the beginning of science is wonder” (Silverman, 2003, p. 387), it would be preferable for students to experience initially a sense of wonder at and about their object of study. One, of course, could argue that what really matters in the end is not the source of students’ questions but the questions themselves and whether these questions promote scientific inquiry. Yet, what should be emphasized is that, if wonder, experienced as surprise or even astonishment, can entirely fill the mind with the object of study (Burke, 1990), the experience of wonder increases the possibilities for students to ask questions about the object of study itself, in which they show a genuine interest. Moreover, the idea of wonder as a potential source of students’ questions sounds more realistic, since it can be evoked even through usual and ordinary situations and through phenomena and ideas that are taken for granted (Hadzigeorgiou, 2007), whereas curiosity presupposes novel, unusual, strange and even extraordinary phenomena and situations if it is to be aroused (Berlyne, 1960; Bruner, 1966; Loewenstein, 1994). This is why the arousal of curiosity remains always a challenge. This is not to say that fostering or evoking wonder is not a challenge. It is indeed, but no unusual and extraordinary phenomena and situations are required. The question “How can a teacher make students really curious about ordinary, everyday-life phenomena like those of force and motion, about taken- for-granted entities like light and a glass of water?” is not easy to answer, unless reference to wonder is made. This sense of wonder can be about such ordinary and taken-for-granted entities as air, water, and generally matter, forces and motion, light, etc., but first it needs to be evoked (i.e., through a demonstration, a question, an opportunity for students to make certain connections among phenomena and ideas). Perhaps the most important reason for justifying the fostering of wonder in the context of school science is that wonder presupposes a component of awareness, which may be totally absent from curiosity. A distinction, of course, between a “wonder question” and a “curiosity question” might have only theoretical interest and therefore sound impractical. For it is true that most of the time it is not an easy task to perceive that delicate distinction between Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 55 those two kinds of questions (i.e., the question “why is the sky blue?” may be a “wonder question” or a “curiosity question”). However, there are times that one can identify a “wonder question.” When a student asks “Why is it so cold up on the top of a mountain, since we know that hot air always goes up?,” s/he is experiencing a sense of wonder, since s/he becomes aware that her/his knowledge is either incomplete or mistaken. So although both curiosity and wonder are important and a good science education should foster both of them, the role of wonder, as a potential source of students’ questions, needs to be acknowledged and valued. The reason is that there is empirical evidence that students’ questions had their source in their experience of wonder. In a study which investigated the role of the film The Prestige in promoting scientific inquiry, grade 11 students’ most frequent questions (posed by more than 80% of the students in the classroom and written in their journals) were “wonder questions” (see Table 3.1), which had their source in their surprise, astonishment, perplexity, admiration and awareness that their knowledge of electricity was incomplete and that some phenomena can exist at all (Hadzigeorgiou & Garganourakis, 2010). These “wonder questions” could be distinguished from the “curiosity questions” that some students asked, after they became involved with the Tesla’s life and work project (i.e., “How safe is it really to ‘play’ with electric current?,” “Which is safer for humans, direct or alternating current?,” “How much current will kill a person?,” “Can we make, and how, our skin resistance so large that we will never run the risk of an electric shock?”), although the value of both kinds of questions needs to be acknowledged. However, what also needs to be acknowledged is the fact that not simply did more than 80% of the classroom ask “wonder questions,” but that those “wonder questions” became the precursors for “curiosity questions.” Whether or not one accepts such distinction, the fact is that the source of all questions was students’ initial sense of wonder (see Table 3.1). There is

Table 3.1 Students’ questions documenting a sense of wonder How could unwired light bulbs become luminous at the touch of Tesla’s hand? How could light bulbs planted in the ground light? How could Tesla himself walk through sparks totally unharmed? Is the human body such a good conductor of electricity? How can these experiments be explained? Can they be replicated? Who was really Nikola Tesla? Why has Tesla been marginalized by history and science textbooks? Why are Edison’s and Marconi’s names better known than Tesla’s? Why hasn’t Tesla been given credit for his inventions and patents? 56 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou evidence that wonder questions (in contrast to information questions) stimulate discussion at a higher level of cognitive functioning and play a major role in meaningful learning (Chin, Brown & Bruce, 2002). There is further evidence through another study (Hadzigeorgiou, in press) that not only astonishing phenomena, as was the case with Tesla’s experiments, but also ideas (i.e., matter, gravity, action and reaction, law of inertia) and everyday phenomena (i.e., free fall) can be sources of students’ questions. For example, students asked “Why is gravity such a weak force?” and “How can we explain the fact that atoms are mostly empty space and yet our hands do not go through the table in front of us?” after the teacher attempted to evoke a sense of wonder about the concepts of gravity and matter respectively. It is quite interesting to note that not a single student from the classroom that was taught the law of action and reaction asked a question about that law, in sharp contrast to the 12 students (40%) from the classroom that was taught that law through the teacher’s attempt to foster a sense of wonder. These 12 students wondered about how Newton arrived at such a law, how he thought about it, how strange a law it can be, etc. These questions were not the result of learning the law itself (as was the case with the students of the “traditional classroom”), but the result of their experience of wonder through a paradox or mystery (i.e., about how is it possible for a tiny car to exert on a huge truck, during a head-on collision, a force that has the same magnitude as the force that the huge truck exerts on the tiny car?) that made them aware that their knowledge was either incomplete or erroneous. The admiration toward Newton himself, who put forward such a law, was very explicit in some students’ comments, which, in turn, shows that wonder can indeed have an aesthetic dimension. It deserves to be noted that from a pedagogical point view, fostering a sense of wonder should be given priority by teachers in general, and considered more important than simply asking questions, unless, of course, such questions help evoke a sense of wonder. The reason is that questions asked by students themselves, following an experience of wonder, are more likely to have their source in some kind of awareness than the questions asked by the teacher, and therefore more likely to result in learning. This is not to say that students should not be encouraged to ask questions, but simply to point out the importance of “wonderment questions” as a learning tool (see Chin, Brown & Bruce, 2002; Hadzigeorgiou & Garganourakis, 2010).

Wonder as a Prerequisite for Learning The value of wonder as a prerequisite for learning can be justified by the fact that it can emotionally charge information, thus resulting in better retention and easier retrieval of that information. There is evidence that “we can typically store and retrieve information with highly emotional content more easily than we Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 57 can recall relatively non-emotional information” (see Ormrod, 1999, p. 431). According to recent empirical evidence, a considerably larger number of science ideas were remembered by a larger number of ninth grade students (more than 50% of the classroom remembered at least 10 ideas) who experienced a sense of wonder at and about those ideas, in comparison with students of another ninth grade class who were taught the same ideas by the same teacher but who did not attempt to foster a sense of wonder in those students (Hadzigeorgiou, in press). The value of wonder as a prerequisite for learning, however, can also be justified by the fact that it can play a role in conceptual understanding too. This is something important to stress, given that retention is not the same as understanding. One may very well argue that retrieval of information does not guarantee understanding of this information. Yet there is a question concerning a piece of empirical evidence: why did students who experienced a sense of wonder perform statistically better on written tests (which assessed conceptual understanding of certain science ideas) in comparison with students of very similar background and academic record, who were taught by the same teacher, but did not experience a sense of wonder? A possible explanation of this fact is that wonder made students focus their attention entirely on the introduced idea and the actual phenomenon of study. Previous studies, of course, support the fact that “when information is emotionally charged we are more likely to pay attention to it, continue to think about it over a period of time, and repeatedly elaborate on it” (Ormrod, 1999, p. 420). Yet the value of wonder as a prerequisite for learning should also be sought in its role to make students conscious of what they are learning and also to help change their outlook on natural phenomena and generally on science itself. Richard Feynman (1968) had pointed out that the world looks quite different after learning science. This is what science teaching should aim at. The view, of course, that learning should be directly related to a change of outlook, to the ability to perceive the world in an un-habitual way, has been stressed by various philosophers and educators (Hirst, 1972, p. 401; Jardine, Clifford & Friesen, 2003, p. 102; Peters, 1967, p. 9; Schank, 2004, p. 37). There is no question that such a perspective on learning represents a great challenge for science education. But how can teachers help students become conscious of what they are learning and, at the same time, help them view the world in a new and different light? The philosopher Maxine Greene’s idea of “shocks of awareness” can be helpful here. According to Greene (1978),

A great part of our everyday life is not lived consciously, and since nothing makes an impression, the world seems bland, muffled, and vague. Now and then, however, there are exceptional moments, moments of response to ‘shocks of awareness.’ (p. 185) 58 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou

It is after those shocks, according to Greene, that one abruptly perceives something and sees connections that were not seen before. For many students the world of science and education in general may very well appear bland, muffled, and even vague. And there may be students who have learned science but are not really conscious of what they have learned. The idea of “shock of awareness” is central to the process of cognitive conflict since the aim of the instructional process is to challenge existing misconceptions. However, the development of awareness goes well beyond the cognitive conflict approach, and encompasses science learning in general. Awareness, for example, that the electrical resistance of our own skin determines in certain circumstances our chances to survive death, that gravity is an extremely weak force, much weaker than the attractive force a tiny magnet can exert, and that of all organisms on the planet only plants are responsible for maintaining life, is very different from knowing and applying Ohm’s law in order to solve problems, from knowing that gravity pulls down on all objects and accelerates them at the same rate, and from knowing the chemical equation of photosynthesis and the substances that are involved in it respectively. These examples do show that the notion of awareness goes beyond the cognitive conflict approach. Moreover, the idea of “shock of awareness” can be associated to metacognition, something that needs particular attention and further research. Apparently, a sense of wonder experienced as astonishment mingled with awareness of some kind can have an effect on students since they become conscious of what they are learning. The excerpts in Table 3.2, taken from students’ journals, provide evidence for such an experience of wonder at science ideas (concerning Force and Motion, Light and Matter) (Hadzigeorgiou, in press). The excerpts in Table 3.3 also provide such evidence. In these particular comments one can see students’ questions mingled with conscious learning concerning Tesla’s work on alternating current and the wireless transmission of electrical energy (Hadzigeorgiou, Klassen, Froese-Klassen, in press). It is apparent that the students who made those comments learned something important since such comments show an experience of a shock of awareness. However, such shock may also facilitate a shift or change in perspective, which, as has already been pointed out, is a prerequisite for significant learning (see Table 3.3). Some students were more explicit about such change of outlook. Their comments provide some evidence that the different light in which some pupils may see everyday objects, like a chair or a glass of water, even their own skin, is indeed a possibility. Such evidence lends support to the notion of “transformative experience” in science education (Pugh, 2004; Pugh et al., 2010). It deserves to be noted that such a shift or change of outlook, as a result of the experience of wonder, is in line with a view of knowledge inspired by complexity theory, and more specifically by the notion of “strong emergence.” Knowledge, from such a perspective, does not simply open up new possibilities Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 59

Table 3.2 Students’ comments documenting a sense of wonder at science ideas That one pen falls simultaneously with a bunch of ten pens is something that I could never imagine. Now I understand gravity. What a strange force! I had never thought that light is invisible. I know that light is a wave like sound although it does not require a medium to travel through. But I always thought that light is something we see. I was really astonished at seeing, with my own eyes, that light is indeed invisible, and we only see the source of light and what light hits. Now I begin to understand how we see the world around us. It is like a miracle! Now I can understand why space is totally black and we see only what objects are present in it, like a spaceship or an astronaut. For more than a week I have been thinking about matter being mostly empty space. This is the weirdest thing I have ever heard. But it does make sense if you think about the distances between the nucleus and the orbiting electrons. Yet it is very strange. That matter in reality is 99% empty space is incredible. In reality my desk here is empty space and yet my hand cannot go through it. I knew that molecules are very very small. But it was after calculating the number of molecules contained in a glass of water that I really understood how tiny they really are. I could never have imagined that there are more water molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the Mediterranean Sea. This I will never forget. It is perhaps the most impressive thing I have learned so far. Although I knew all about Avogadro’s number, now I can say that I understand its full meaning. That action is always equal to reaction, no matter what kind of objects we are talking about, is something out of my mind. The example regarding the head-on collision between a tiny car and a big truck makes me wonder about Newton. He must have been a genius to discover such a law! for learning and action (in sharp contrast to a modernist view of knowledge); it helps people perceive a new reality.

Knowledge does not bring us closer to what is already present. Rather it emerges into that which is unthinkable from the ground it precedes … Emergent knowledge, in other words, moves us into a new reality, which is incalculable from what came before. (Osberg & Biesta, 2007)

Such a view of knowledge has, apparently, an important implication for the learning process: the perception of a new reality requires a confrontation with the mysterious depth of meaning, which, however, lies at the very heart of the familiar (Keen, 1969). In other words, the experience of wonder helps 60 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou

Table 3.3 Students’ comments documenting a sense of wonder at and about Tesla’s work on alternating current The idea of alternating current is a very revolutionary idea. But how did Tesla get it and why did he insist that it was better than the standard current? It is amazing that despite all the problems he faced, he remained faithful to his purpose. That we can produce alternating current by using loops of wire moving or rotating inside magnets is very simple indeed. This idea of loop is a very useful idea. In the transformer- making loops of wire and changing the number of loops in the two coils can increase or decrease the electric current. It is just so clever an idea. Simple and very clever. Wow!! The transformation of alternating current is something astonishing. I have been thinking about it a lot. Very very clever. I think Tesla had understood that direct current cannot be transformed, so that’s why he insisted on alternating current. I am truly amazed by Tesla who fixed the lighting system in a city, in France, by not using a single drawing. He did everything by working it out in his imagination. How did he do this? This is really impressive. That Tesla lit 200 or 300 lamps without wires is really astonishing. He sent the electric current through the ground without using any wires. Perhaps we can use it to send electricity to islands without using cables in the sea. I am curious whether islands receive electricity without wires.

Table 3.4 Students’ comments documenting change in perspective The fact that there can be straight-line motion at extremely high constant speeds in the absence of a net force makes you see motion as mysterious a phenomenon as electricity and magnetism. It is really remarkable and very strange now that I know that the force of gravity is very weak [. . .] When I’m thinking about bodies falling freely I am thinking about gravity as a very very weak force. Ever since I have learned about matter being 99% empty space I see solids and liquids as empty space with some protons and electrons. If I think about it, every time I drink water I drink nothing, except for a few protons and electrons. Matter, what a strange concept! Everything around me looks different if I think about it, because we all touch, see, eat and drink vacuum! That all subatomic particles contained in the bodies of all people on earth, if we could remove all empty space from their bodies, could pack easily into a ping-pong ball is astonishing. In reality we all empty space!! Reclaiming the Value of Wonder in Science Education 61 teachers and students approach learning as a non-linear and dynamic process, in accordance with complexity theory (Davies, Sumara & Luce-Kopler, 2008). What is important to stress at this point is that the experience of a sense of wonder represents, in and by itself, empirical evidence (Hadzigeorgiou & Garganourakis, 2010; Hadzigeorgiou, in press) that “Learning isn’t accumulative; it is recursively elaborative. [ … ] more cyclical than linear or spiral (Davis, Sumara & Luce- Kopler, 2008, p. 201). Indeed, the experience of wonder is a recursive experience, in the sense that it allows one to return to the same object of study, and to look at it in new light, for the first time. Such a view makes real sense if one considers Feynman’s (1968) view that the world looks so different after one learns science.

Summary and Conclusion This paper has argued for the value of wonder in the context of school science. Despite the recognition of such value by some science educators, explicit references to wonder as a pedagogical tool are very few indeed (Hadzigeorgiou, 2006, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, in press; Stolberg, 2008). The reasons for this may be a misunderstanding of the nature of wonder and a partial understanding of the role wonder can play in the learning process, and more specifically its role in engaging students in science, its role as a source of students’ questions, and its possible impact on learning in general. The arguments, however, and the evidence presented in this paper provide ample support for the idea of wonder as a learning tool, a central idea in Kieran Egan’s (1997) educational theory. If the problem in education is how to help students discover “the imaginative mode of awareness” (Greene, 1978, p. 186), then wonder, experienced as astonishment and awareness of some kind, should be given serious thought, if not utmost priority, as Witz (1996) argued more than a decade ago. It is a misconception to believe that the passivity inherent in wonder is an obstacle to learning, and therefore the passive “wonder at” state of mind cannot promote a “wonder about” attitude, which is central to scientific inquiry. Moreover, wonder can counter the anesthetic of familiarity, as Dawkins (1998) puts it, since it can make science an exciting world. This may also facilitate “border crossings,” as some evidence suggests (Hadzigeorgiou, in press; Hadzigeorgiou & Garganourakis, 2010). Apparently more research into the possibility to bring in the “outsiders” is needed. Perhaps the greatest reward from the experience of wonder, according to the arguments and the evidence presented in this chapter, is that wonder can help students view phenomena and ideas in new light. This change of outlook, as has already been pointed out, is crucial in the learning process. However, what should be stressed here is that viewing phenomena and ideas in new light is an important aim of education. As the British educational philosopher R.S. Peters had argued, “To be educated is not to have arrived at a destination; it is to travel with a different view” (Peters, 1973, p. 20). Such a view is in line with 62 Yannis Hadzigeorgiou that of Feynman (1968), who pointed out how different the world looks after one learns science, and, in fact, makes the argument for making wonder a goal of science education itself sound not too unrealistic. Moreover, it makes one take seriously the idea that an education, which is about knowing differently rather than knowing more, may be humanity’s best hope (Morin, 1999). From this perspective the value of wonder in science education needs to be reclaimed.

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Prologue We start with recreating a personal encounter. A professor at a small university begins a lesson on fractals. He writes 2 a simple-looking equation Zn+1=(Zn) + C. He then describes an iterative process in which numbers (that correspond to points on the complex plane) are placed into the equation yielding new numbers that are then placed back into the equation. At the same time he quickly types an algorithm that tests the behavior of a grid of points. He finishes writing the code that accompanies his explanation, pauses for a second, says “Here we go” and presses . The image in Figure 4.1 (known to mathematicians as the Mandelbrot set) appears on the screen and the class pauses for a second in silent admiration. The professor continues to explain the complexity of the pattern—that “zooming in” reveals progressively ever-finer self-symmetric recursive detail. As he demonstrates, a hand sticks up from the second row, shaking, indicating that its owner is eager to ask a question. The professor points at the hand and says, “Yes, Michael.” The hand retracts as Michael asks, “How does such a complicated pattern emerge from such a simple equation?” The professor freezes. He hesitates between an immensely complex and deep answer, having to do with the very fabric of complex numbers—something that is still being explored by research mathematicians— and the very simple, “It just does.” He has no idea how to respond. Should he talk about the recursive process or should he just ignore the question and extinguish Michael’s interest in understanding the problem? After several seconds of awkward silence, a sarcastic comment emerges from the back of the Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 67

Figure 4.1 Mandelbrot set room, “Professor, what is the meaning of life?” The class laughs and Michael’s question is left unanswered, at least for that moment.

What is Wonder in Mathematics? The word “wonder”, when used as a noun, is connected with admiration, awe and surprise. When used as a verb, wonder is connected to interest and curiosity. This interest and curiosity leads to exploration and experimentation— what Hawkins (2000) referred to as “explorative inquiry”—and hopefully explanation and understanding. The noun and verb form are not separate; both can feed one another. On one hand, sensing wonder (noun) at a particular experience (that is, meeting it with surprise or admiration) may lead a person to wonder (verb) about its causes (that is, to question or to explore). On the other hand, wondering (verb) about a particular experience may lead to revelations that result in wonder (noun, that is, surprise or admiration). This distinction between the noun and verb form of wonder is also mirrored in the work of Fisher (1998), who explored how the wonder (noun) associated with the phenomenon of rainbows catalyzed wonder (verb) which led to the explanation of this phenomenon. This book’s center of balance lies, delightfully, within Fisher’s distinction. Though wonder and curiosity are deeply interconnected, Opdal (2001) draws an important distinction between these two epistemic notions. “Curiosity is a motive that can move a person to do all kinds of research, but within an accepted framework. […] Wonder, on the other hand, is not a motive, but an experience or state of mind signifying that something that so far has been taken for granted is incomplete or mistaken” (p. 342). 68 Dov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis

Wonder—as described for example by Egan (1997) and Egan and Gajdamaschko (2003) as a cognitive tool—initially relates to fascination with extreme, strange or surprising phenomena. Recognizing this, the teacher can highlight almost any object of study as “an object of wonder” (Egan & Gajdamaschko, 2003, p. 89), by bringing out “the strange and wonderful in what seems routine or taken for granted” (Egan, 1997, p. 219). Wonder in mathematics reaches beyond a state of mind or fascination. Anne Watson, in Sinclair and Watson (2001), relating to teachers’ appeal to students’ awe with regard to patterns of nature or unexpected relationships, such as the equation ei p + 1 = 0, describes this eloquently:

I had a growing disaffection with this pedestrian approach to awe and wonder in mathematics, as if there were common sites for expressing awe, like scenic viewpoints seen from a tourist bus, whose position can be recorded on the curriculum as one passes by, en route for something else. Spontaneous appreciation of beauty and elegance in mathematics was not, for me, engendered by occasional gasps at nice results, nor by passing appeals to natural or constructed phenomena such as the patterns in sunflowers or the mathematics of tiling. (p. 39)

So, if not “spontaneous appreciation of beauty and elegance” of patterns and nice results, then what is wonder-full in mathematics? Michael’s question in the beginning of this chapter goes to the heart of what wonder in mathematical contexts entails. The wonder in mathematics stems from the questions, “why?” and “how?”. Unlike the fine arts, where just appreciating the awe of the end result—a painting, a dance, a poem—is the intention, mathematics places emphasis on process over product. When a mathematician reads a research article, s/he is often searching for new techniques. The beauty lies in the process of the solution, not in its end result. Standing back and appreciating a mathematical pattern or phenomena could be the first step. Looking at an aesthetically pleasing mathematical object or one that acts in counterintuitive or interesting ways is not enough. But it can serve as a catalyst for cultivating wonder. This is in accord with Hadzigeorgiou’s (2001; and in this volume) view of the role of wonder in science education. Sinclair and Watson (2001) distinguished between two kinds of wonder: wonder at and wonder why, which correspond to the noun/verb distinction mentioned above. Sinclair and Watson pointed out that while wondering why and wondering how (the verb form) tends to lose its momentum once a satisfactory explanation emerges, wondering at (the noun form) can be a continual motivating force. As such, we can still find results or phenomena astounding even if we have a detailed explanation that accounts for them. Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 69

Our claim is that wonder—as related to mathematics—is the force that pushes us to move from an initial moment of aesthetic delight through the experience of creating intelligibility and understanding. As Hadzigeorgiou (2001) suggested, “wonder, in fact, gives things their meaning and reveals their significance” (p. 65). In essence, we are exploring in our discussion how one can create what Harel (in press) termed an intellectual need—the need to understand why and/or how. We specifically focus on the following two of Harel’s categories of intellectual need: the need for causality (why) and the need for certainty (how). In the preceding example, Michael was filled with wonder (noun) at the sight of a Mandelbrot set that catalyzed his wondering (verb) about the deep connections between numbers on the complex plane that created the image. Even though an explanation of the Mandelbrot set is beyond the scope of this work, it is important to mention that the reciprocal [?] relation between the two types of wonder, which Michael experienced, is the driving force behind advancement in mathematics. Of course this is not true of mathematics exclusively. As Egan (1997) claimed: “Without the initial wonder, it is hard to see how more systematic theoretical inquiry can get fruitfully under way” (p. 97). While this comment related to theoretical inquiry by scientists, specifically to Darwin’s wonder at the variety of species in the Galapagos islands, here we focus on a no less important kind of wonder—the wonder that can be created in students to drive their need to explore mathematics.

Types of Wonder in Mathematics Many problem contexts in mathematics can create wonder. In order to narrow our discussion we limit ourselves to several particularly telling examples of situations that, we feel, can elicit wonder. The main overarching theme in these examples is that of surprise: Michael’s wonder, in our opening example, was caused not only by the beauty of the fractal image, but also by the surprising fact that a simple equation can generate an infinitely complex drawing. While there are many opportunities for surprise in learning mathematics, Adhami (2007) suggested that “Pedagogically we are focusing on students being ‘taken aback’ by a situation, hopefully causing them to ‘look again’ and spurring them to further effort to resolve an anomaly” (p. 34). Movshovits- Hadar (1988) argued that “mathematics, at all levels is a boxful of surprises” (p. 34). In particular, she suggested that “all school theorems, except possibly a very small number of them, possess a built-in surprise, and that by exploiting this surprise potential their learning can become an exciting experience of intellectual enterprise to the students” (ibid). We extend her claim by noting that surprise can be elicited not only in theorems, but also by a variety of different mathematical situations. 70 Dov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis

Among potential mathematical surprises, we focus on the following themes:

• perceived “magic”; • counterintuitive results; • variation on a known result or procedure; • paradoxes.

Each of these provides an avenue for creating a student’s intellectual need to know and understand particular phenomena, to wonder why, to engage in exploratory inquiry and to seek explanations. To highlight our approach to wonder in mathematics classrooms we restrained ourselves to examples that require no more than a middle school mathematics background.

Perceived Magic A clear example that engages almost everyone, regardless of age and education, is magic. Yesterday’s Houdinis and today’s David Copperfields and Chris Angels blow everyone’s mind with their sophisticated tricks, which we often refer to as “magic.” While enjoying the performance, there is an inevitable sense of wonder, the desire to uncover—and often to speculate about—how the trick “works.” However, what appears as magical is often an issue of optical illusion and selective attention. Is there magic in mathematics? Our claim is that by engaging students in what initially appears magical to them, we develop a sense of wonder and that this sense of wonder provides opportunities for them to wonder about a wide variety of mathematical situations. The question is, where are such situations found?

A Popular Introduction to Algebra “I can guess your number” games are often used as a motivation for algebra. They start with: Think of a number, add 3 to it, subtract your number, add 1 to the result… and (magic!) I know that you got 4. While in the above oversimplified version it is clear what happens to the number “in your mind,” all the games of this kind eventually either subtract the original number after several manipulations or divide by it. Nevertheless, a teacher’s ability to discover the number in a student’s mind may invoke wonder and a desire to explore and understand the trick. A more advanced form of the same idea is found in different versions of “How many times a week you want to do something,” like eat in a restaurant, drink beer, or anything else that comes to your mind. In this kind of puzzle you enter the number of your choice, perform several arithmetic operations, Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 71 and get a number that shows your age. Consider for example the following instructions:

• How many times a week do you like to eat chocolate? (chose a number 1 to 9, even if your “real answer” is higher than 9 or zero). • Multiply by 2. • Add 5. • Multiply by 50. • Already had your birthday this year? Then add 1762. • Haven’t had your birthday yet? Then add 1761. • Subtract the year you were born.

Surprise, surprise! In the 3-digit result, the first digit is the number you entered and the last 2 digits are your age. Wouldn’t it be much simpler to subtract the year in which you were born from the current year? Nevertheless, this task is much more inviting than solving all even-numbered exercises on a given page, and an algebraic resolution is a worthwhile exercise. (Note: If you cared to go through the steps and didn’t get your age, it is likely because this version of “chocolate math” was good for 2012. For this to “work” in other years only the numbers 1761 and 1762 should be changed.)

Magical Mind Reader In the above examples it is clear that some mathematical manipulations determine the result, even when the specific nature of those can be complex. In what follows we present a less common, and therefore a more “magical” example. We introduce a web-based “Mind Reader,” which can be found at http://www. flashpsychic.com/. One of the opening screens is shown in Figure 4.2. So let us follow the instructions. Choose some number, say 31, subtract the sum of its digits 4 (3+1 = 4) and get 27. Focus on the symbol next to 27, and— magic!—the symbol appears on the screen. And there is an invitation to try again. We strongly recommend that the reader tries again, connects to this website and tries again, and again. So, did the Mind Reader read your mind? Let us try again: We chose 84 this time, subtract 12 (12 = 8+4) and focus on the symbol next to 72 (72 = 84 – 12). Miraculously, or as expected, the symbol appears on the screen. We have used this activity several times with both elementary school and university students. It is not uncommon for members of both groups to try to cover the webcams on their computers or face away from the screen, as if the Mind Reader was determining what number was in their head using some elaborate eye-tracking mechanism. Obviously, these actions do not prevent the 72 Dov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis

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Figure 4.5 The Mind Reader presents the number that has been calculated 74 Dov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis

Mind Reader from working. However, these reaction serve both to illustrate some rudimentary theory testing—“Is this website tapping into the webcam?”— and to demonstrate students’ need to understand how this “Mind Reader” works, which is catalyzed by their curiosity. In what follows we will “spoil the magic,” that is, explain how the magical effect is achieved. Readers interested in remaining in the magic are asked to skip to the next section. The “Mind Reader” is cleverly designed, so different symbols appear next to numbers each time the game is played. (Compare for example the top line of symbols in Figure 4.4 to those in Figure 4.2—they are all different.) This helps hide the fact that some symbols are strategically placed. You are encouraged to go back and pick different initial numbers in the above games. For example, if you try to start with the previously chosen number, 31, and apply it to the second game you would end up at the symbol next to 27. It is the same snowflake that is placed next to 72, the number we got when we chose 84 as our initial starting point. For a reader interested in a hint, we recommend to look at all the other numbers that are listed next to the same symbol as 72 and 27. These numbers are 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72 and 81. What do all these numbers have in common and why? The reader is asked again either to pause to wonder, or to skip to the next section. When the division of two whole numbers results in a whole number, we say that one number is divisible by another. In some cases it is possible to determine divisibility without performing division, by considering the digits of the number. Such considerations are referred to as divisibility tests or divisibility rules. For example, the best known rule for divisibility by 2 considers the number’s last digit: if a number ends in 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8, then it is divisible by 2. A less obvious rule deals with divisibility by 9: a number is divisible by 9 if the sum of its digits is divisible by 9. While this rule is often mentioned, practiced and occasionally proved in middle school, its extensions are seldom mentioned. In fact, a number and the sum of its digits have the same remainder in division by 9 (*). To exemplify:

• 85 ÷ 9 = 9Rem4, 8+5=13, and also 13 ÷ 9 = 1Rem4 • 64 ÷ 9 = 7Rem1, 6+4=10 and 10 ÷ 9 = 1Rem1.

The divisibility rule for 9 is a special case of this statement: if the sum of the digits of a number has a remainder of zero in division by 9, then the number itself has a remainder of zero. Further, the result of subtraction of two numbers that have the same remainder in division by 9, is a number divisible by 9 (**) (Of course this is true not only for number 9, but only 9 is of our interest here.) To exemplify: Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 75

• 85–13 = 72 and 72 = 9 × 8, so 72 is divisible by 9 • 64–10 = 54 and 54 = 9 × 6, so 54 is divisible by 9

By putting (*) and (**) together we see that performing the arithmetic operation in the Mind Reader with any number of our choice—that is, subtracting the sum of the digits from the chosen number—we end up with a number divisible by 9. And all those have the same symbol in any iteration of the game. The clever design feature that changes the symbols every time the game is played masks this “divisible by 9” pattern. To further mask the phenomena, the symbol that is placed next to the numbers divisible by 9 occasionally appears in other places as well. Also, 90 and 99 are marked differently. These two numbers are indeed divisible by 9, but an initial choice of a two digit number will not lead to either of these numbers. All these factors come together to contribute to hiding the “magic” behind the Mind Reader. Instead of trap doors and misdirection a fascinating mathematical relationship is used (and perhaps still some misdirection).

Counterintuitive Results The preceding discussion of a “magical” task demonstrated a type of wonder- inducing that required little pedagogical skill on the part of the instructor, at least when it comes to creating the wonder itself. This is not the case for all wonder-inducing tasks. In particular, motivating wonder through unexpected or counterintuitive results requires first skillfully setting up such expectations and/or intuitions. We believe that teachers have a substantial influence on students’ expectations, both conscious and unconscious. Setting up expectations can be used as a pedagogical tool that sharpens, or even creates, students’ ability to wonder. Without an appropriate setup there is a danger that nothing will be found surprising. Fisher (1998) argues that wonder occurs within breaks from the expected. He goes on to elaborate: “Awakening and wonder does not depend on awakening and then surprising expectation, but on the complete absence of expectation” (p. 21). If taken literally, which we do not believe was Fisher’s intention, we disagree with this statement. Our functioning as human beings is deeply tied to our predictive expectation of the world; it is difficult to separate out every- day functioning from these expectations. If, however, this statement is viewed through a more figurative/metaphorical lens, we believe it offers an important insight that we can use in our quest to wield wonder as a pedagogical tool. Namely, that the break from the expectation from which wonder emerges is often most powerful when we are not overtly conscious of what our expectations are. In such situations unconscious presuppositions must be brought to the forefront in order for them to fit a newfound experience. 76 DovDov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis

Tetrahedron Cube Octahedron

Icosahedron Dodecahedron

FfIGUREigure 4.6 Platonic Solids

In order to illuminate this discussion on setting up subconscious expectations, let us take for example a lesson on regular polyhedra, also known as Platonic solids (see Figure 4.6).1

Platonic Solids Setting expectation can begin with a discussion of regular polygons. There are equilateral triangles, squares (or regular quadrilaterals), regular pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, octagons, etc. How many different types of regular polygons are there? Students quickly, if not instantaneously, realize that they can always just add an additional side to get a new polygon. So there is a regular polygon with 12, 20 or 100 sides. There are infinitely many different ones. Once this is established, we have set up an expectation for the three-dimensional analog of regular polygons, namely, for regular polyhedra. When students discover that building progressively more complicated polyhedra is not as simple as the two-dimensional case, they are genuinely surprised and intrigued. By facilitating students’ discovery of this apparent discord we have set up wonder. The existence of only five Platonic solids at first appears counterintuitive, as it is not in accord with the two-dimensional case. Had we instead started directly with the three-dimensional case, then the surprise, the wonder, and the desire to explain this result would have been much harder to come by. The explanation for why there are only a few different Platonic solids concerns the angles of polygons that meet “at a corner.” When equilateral triangles (having all angles of 60 degrees) meet at a corner (we need at least 3 to create a corner), the sum of angles can be 180, 240 or 300 degrees, when Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 77 a corner is created by 3, 4 or 5 triangles respectively. The resulting polyhedra are tetrahedron, octahedron and icosahedron, respectively. Note that an attempt to create a corner with 6 triangles “fails” as the sum of the angles is 360 degrees and they “lie flat” on a plane. Similarly, a corner can be made with 3 squares (3 × 90=270 degrees) and 3 pentagons (3 × 108=324 degrees), resulting in a cube and dodecahedron, respectively. All the other combinations cannot create a corner as they create a surface that is either flat (for example, 4 squares with 360 degrees sum of angles meeting at the corner) or is concave (for example, 4 pentagons with the sum of corner angles of 432, that is larger than 360). Here we attempted to provide the reader with the intuition behind the result, rather than with a rigorous argument. A complete and formal proof for the existence of exactly five Platonic solids can be found, for example, at Wolfram Math World, http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PlatonicSolid.html.

Counterintuitive Probabilities Other examples of counterintuitive results come from expectations that students set up themselves. A famous example is the Monty Hall “Let’s make a deal” game. The game introduces the player to 3 doors, where there is a valuable prize (e.g., red Ferrari) behind one of the doors and something undesirable (e.g., a goat) behind two other doors. Though we can imagine a situation in which a goat is more useful than a Ferrari, it is assumed that winning the Ferrari is the desirable outcome. The player chooses one of the doors. Regardless of his choice, Monty selectively opens one of the other two doors to reveal an undesirable prize. The player is then offered an opportunity to change his initial choice to the other still-closed door. So the player is presented with a dilemma—to switch or to stick with his/her initial choice. Every time we introduce this scenario in class—unless students have previous experience with the solution—there appears to be an agreement that “this does not matter.” The treasure is behind one of the two still-closed doors and therefore there is a 50% chance for success of each decision. However, the fact that there are two possible results does not mean there is a 50% chance of winning regardless of our choice. In a lottery, there are also two possible outcomes—you either win or don’t win—and nobody thinks that there is a 50% chance of winning the lottery. In the “Let’s make a deal” scenario, the initially surprising fact is that by switching his initial choice the player doubles his chances of winning. Numerous articles were written on this issue. Several websites (e.g., http://www.grand-illusions.com/simulator/montysim.htm) not only provide a detailed explanation, but also include simulation of the game that can be carried out a large number of times. No definite conclusion is possible after running 10 experiments. But after 100 or 1,000, experiments show that the experimental probability of success when switching is close to 2/3, this 78 Dov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis counterintuitive and surprising result creates a sense of wonder and consequently the desire to understand the situation. The class discussions attempting to resolve the player’s dilemma are often loud and even emotionally charged. We turn now to a less familiar, and as such maybe more “exemplary,” example (Mason, 2006). If Mrs. Chance has 2 children, and one of them is a boy, what is the probability that the other one is also a boy? Assuming that the probability of having a boy in any childbirth is ½, and that the gender of one child has no influence on the gender of another, it is reasonable to conclude that the answer is ½. However, this is incorrect—do you wonder why? Let us consider all the possibilities of genders in a family of two children. It could be (1) boy, girl (2) boy, boy (3) girl, boy, or (4) girl, girl; where these four cases are equiprobable, that is, have the same probability of occurring under the assumptions listed above.2 However, we know that one of Mrs. Chance’s children is a boy, so option (4) does not apply in her case. Focusing on cases 1, 2 and 3 we see that the other child is a boy only in one of the three equiprobable cases. As such, the probability that Mrs. Chance’s other child is also a boy is ¹/³—a result that most find surprising as it is not in accord with the initial intuition. Even more surprising is the interpretation of results of medical testing. Suppose that you were diagnosed with a rare terminal disease X, for which there is no cure, and the testing is 99% accurate. What are the chances of you actually having the disease? The initial reaction is to assume that if the results of the testing are 99% accurate then it is almost sure (that is, 99% sure) that you have the disease. However, rather than wondering what prayer your family will choose for your funeral, let us focus on numbers. Mathematics can actually entail some good news. If the rare disease has an occurrence of 1 in 10,000, then the probability of your dying from this illness is about 1%. That is, there is a 99% chance that you will live happily ever after this unfortunate diagnosis. This is because the 1% of people without the disease who get a false positive diagnosis is much larger than the 99% of people with the disease that get a positive diagnosis. This is an example of how wondering about numbers and learning to interpret them makes a difference not only between success and failure on a mathematics test, but also between party and funeral preparations.

Variation on the Familiar Remember column multiplication? Recall that the numbers had to be written in a certain form one underneath another, and then, for some unexplained reason, some rows had to be moved to the left. That is what our Grade 2 teacher taught, Grade 5 teacher reinforced, and parents approved. Students still learn how to do this as if calculators, like remote controls, are chronically lost between couch cushions whenever they are needed. As the same algorithm is taught to different Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 79 generations of students, one gets an impression that that’s the one and only way to do multiplication by hand. However, to some students’ surprise, this is not the only way. One variation is known as “Russian Peasant’s multiplication” or sometimes as “the Egyptian algorithm.” It could be the case that the ancient Egyptians visited Russian peasants, or vice versa. However, it is more likely that in the pre-calculator era, great minds thought alike. To introduce the algorithm, consider multiplying 2 numbers, for example, 114 and 23. We start by writing down 114 on the top of the left column and 23 on the top of the right one. We double numbers in the left column, and divide by 2 numbers in the right column, writing down the quotient and ignoring the remainder, until we reach 1.

114 23 228 11 456 5 912 2 1824 1 We highlight with a (*) the rows in which the remainder in division was ignored, that is, all the odd numbers. We then add the corresponding numbers from the left column.

114 23 * 228 11 * 456 5 * 912 2 1824 1 * That is, 114 + 228 + 456 + 1824 = 2622, which is indeed 2622 = 114 × 23. Of course because of the commutativity of multiplication it does not matter what’s on the right and what’s on the left.

23 114 46 57 92 28 184 14 368 7 736 3 1472 1 80 Dov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis

Similarly to the above, we double the numbers in the right column and divide by 2 numbers in the left column, ignoring the remainder.

23 114 46 57 * 92 28 184 14 368 7 * 736 3 * 1472 1 *

We highlight with a (*) the odd numbers in the right column and add the corresponding numbers from the left column: 46+368+736+1472 = 2622. We often introduce this multiplication algorithm to prospective elementary school teachers. Our students not only learn to perform multiplication as Russian peasants or ancient Egyptians did, but also they are eager to understand how this works. That is, they wonder why it works the way it does. Surprisingly or not, they have never wondered about the mystery of the “conventional” algorithm. To satisfy the curiosity of a reader not previously familiar with Russian Peasants’ multiplication, we provide a brief explanation. We note the addends in the first case: 114, 228, 456 and 1824. However, these numbers, other than the beginning 114, are the results of doubling: 114 = 114 × 1 228 = 114 × 2 246 = 114 × 4 1854 = 114 × 16 Therefore, their sum produces the desired product. 114 + 228 + 246 + 1854 = 114 × 1 + 114 × 2 + 114 × 4 + 114 × 16 = = 114 × (1 + 2 + 4 + 16) = 114 × 23. Similarly, considering the second case, 46 = 23 × 2 368 = 23 × 16 736 = 23 × 32 1472 = 23 × 64 Therefore, 46 + 368 + 736 + 1472 = 23 × 2 + 23 × 16 + 23 × 32 + 23 × 64 = = 23 × ( 2 + 16 + 32 + 64) = 23 × 114 Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 81

Working with prospective teachers we invite them to notice “something special” about the numbers used here, that is, 1, 2, 4 and 16 in the first case and 2, 16, 32 and 64 in the second case. Our lesson may proceed towards binary representation of numbers, but this is beyond the scope of our discussion here. What is important though is that the wonder about the unconventional algorithm can be satisfied and then turned, with a gentle pedagogical move, to wonder about the ordinary, that is, about the conventional algorithm. In our experience this results in better understanding of the conventional, and a new appreciation of the distributive property and of the reason behind rules that were previously perceived as “strange.”

Simpson’s Paradox A different source of wonder is found in scenarios that appear upon initial inspection to be paradoxical. These cause intense deliberations in mathematics classrooms, based upon some profound disagreement. Consider for example the following scenario: in our University the admission to the Teacher Certification Program is rather competitive. Only a small number of applicants are admitted to the program; the (fictitious) admission numbers from a recent competition are presented below.

Applied Admitted Admitted % Men 2400 720 30% Women 7300 1640 22.5% As shown, the percentage of women admitted to the program (22.5%) is much lower than the percentage of men (30%). What could be the reason for this? Are women less prepared and less qualified? Or is there a systematic bias against women that could be the basis for a discrimination lawsuit against the University? These questions may generate an interesting classroom discussion, especially in a class of students admitted to the program. However, let us examine the numbers more carefully. Below, the total numbers of applicants are separated into 3 groups: applicants for certification at elementary school level, applicants for secondary school humanities, and applicants for secondary school sciences and mathematics.

Secondary Math/ Secondary Elementary Total Science Humanities 1000 1000 400 2400 Men 50% 16% 15% 30% 500 160 60 720 300 3000 4000 7300 Women 60% 22% 20% 22.5% 180 660 800 1640 82 Dov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis

The numbers are chosen to be close to a realistic situation: the admission for elementary education and secondary-humanities is much more competitive than the admission to secondary-sciences. By examining each category separately, we see that the percentages of female applicants that are admitted is indeed higher than the corresponding percentages of male applicants. However, focusing on the total, we see that overall a higher percentage of men are admitted. How come? Students’ first reaction is usually to recalculate the numbers. Once the correct calculation is confirmed, there is a sense of confusion, but also a sense of wonder. How come? What’s the trick? In fact, the presented numbers are a simplified analogy to the famous gender bias case related to the admission to graduate school at the University of Berkeley in 1973. (See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox.) This is an illustrative example of what is known in statistics as “Simpson’s Paradox.” That is, the relationship present in different groups is reversed when the groups are combined. The reality is that in our scenario of admissions to the teacher certification program, similarly to the University of Berkeley case, women seem to apply to more competitive program routes, such as elementary education and secondary- humanities. The number of male applicants to the program routes with relatively high admission rates, secondary-sciences, is much higher than the number of female applicants. Well-known cases of Simpson’s paradox relate to batting averages (when Player A performs better than Player B in all terms, but when the totals are combined Player B outperforms player A) and health care disparities. We exemplify the latter. Suppose that a pharmaceutical company developed 2 different drugs to treat X. (To add humor to the situation, X can be laziness or sleepiness in a classroom.) To check the effectiveness of the drug, it was administered to different groups of volunteers. The results are presented below.

First try Second try 100 patients 100 patients Drug A 90% 82% 90 successes 82 successes 30 patients 300 patients Drug B 93.33% 83.33% 28 successes 250 successes

Obviously, after administering the treatment for the first time, Drug B showed better results. However, since Drug B was administered to a much smaller group, the size of this group was increased for the second administration. The results yet again favored Drug B. Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 83

First try Second try Combined 100 patients 100 patients 200 patients Drug A 90 90% 82 successes 82% 172 86% successes successes 30 patients 300 patients 330 patients Drug B 28 93.33% 250 83.33% 278 84.24% successes successes successes

However, the combined results favor Drug A. The choice is not simple. The classroom discussion will remain inconclusive. The obvious solution is to deal with similar size groups in such experiments. However, this is a solution for the future drug administration, which applies neither for the current case, nor for cases—such as a pool of applicants to a certain department—where a group size is not controlled. The importance of these examples is that they can be presented in a way that creates a dissonance and, in that, encourages conversation, which ultimately leads to a deeper understanding of mathematics.

Conclusion While the noun “wonder” (wonder at) is associated with admiration and awe, we have highlighted “wonder” as a verb (wonder why and wonder how), which is associated with interest, curiosity, surprise and exploratory inquiry. Wonder in mathematics is often expressed as a the desire to understand and/or prove an observed relationship; b the desire to test extensions, variations and possible generalizations.

We argued that genuine surprise—when a result is both unexpected and unexplained—is the main catalyst for wonder in mathematics. We focused on how “wonder at” (unexpected/surprising results and relationships) can be cultivated into “wonder why.” This takes care of (a). With respect to (b), we trust that extended experiences with “wonder why” will eventually result in further “wonder why.” That is, understanding a relationship will result in a desire to explore it further, to test the scope of applicability. For example, having explored divisibility by 9 in wondering about the magic of the Mind Reader, one may inquire and investigate other divisibility tests. Having seen several examples of the Simpson’s Paradox, one may vary several numbers and investigate under which conditions there is still a “paradoxical” relationship. Having explored the Russian peasant’s multiplication algorithm, one may become interested in investigating additional non-standard algorithms. 84 Dov Zazkis and Rina Zazkis

Sinclair (2006) referred to this desire to test variations and extensions as “looking for more” (p. 53). She described her experience in solving a problem in geometry. Having examined a particular case, she described her pursuit as follows:

… the possibility of a framing structure was emerging […] I was anticipating that certain relationships would emerge in a whole family of shapes. As with reading a novel, I wanted to find out what would happen next, what theme would emerge from the sequence of ideas. (p. 51)

The “chase” that Sinclair described is familiar to those of us who enjoy mathematics. Adhami (2007) described this as “you stay puzzled for a while even after you resolved the issue and new questions arise spontaneously in your mind” (p. 34). We believe that with an appropriate pedagogical approach, such puzzlement can become contagious for students. According to Movshovits- Hadar (1998), “It is the mathematics teacher’s responsibility to recover the surprise embedded in each theorem and to convey it to the students” (p. 39). This applies, as we mentioned previously, not only to theorems but to a wide range of mathematical structures and relationships. However, presenting a surprise, and subsequently inducing wonder, depends not only on a teacher’s skill, but also on carefully chosen tasks. While magic (such as in Mind Reader) and novelty (such as in Russian Peasant multiplication) are more obvious choices for sources of surprise, Adhami noted that a potential disagreement is one of the task components that helps capitalize on students’ surprise in a classroom. Our examples of Simpson’s Paradox and Mrs. Chance’s children are sources of dissonance and significant disagreement among students that lead to fruitful discussions. “Capacity to wonder is also an attitude towards experience” (Sinclair, 2006, p. 130). We believe that presenting students with experiences that cause them to wonder fosters not only their desire to resolve and extend (or, in Piagetian terms, assimilate) these situations, but also develops their ability to understand situations (algorithms, formulas, relationships) that have been perceived as mundane.

References Adhami, M. (2007). Cognitive and social perspectives on surprise. Mathematics Teaching, 200, 34–36. Egan, K. (1997). The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape our Understanding. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Egan, K. & Gajdamaschko, N. (2003). Some cognitive tools of literacy. In A. Kozulin (Ed.) Vygotsky’s Educational Theory in Cultural Context (pp. 83–98). Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Wondering About Wonder in Mathematics 85

Hadzigeorgiou, Y. (2001). The role of wonder and ‘romance’ in early childhood science education. International Journal of Early Years Education, 9(1), 63–69. Harel, G. (in press). Intellectual need. In K. Leatham (Ed.) Vital Directions for Mathematics Education Research. New York: Springer. Hawkins, D. (2000). The Roots of Literacy. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Fisher, P. (1998). Wonder, the Rainbow and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mason, J. (2006). What makes an example exemplary: pedagogical and didactical issues in appreciating multiplicative structures. In R. Zazkis and S. R. Campbell (Eds.) Number Theory in Mathematics Education: Perspectives and Prospects (pp. 41–68). Mahwah, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Movshovits-Hadar, N. (1988). School mathematics theorems – an endless source of surprise. For the Learning of Mathematics, 8(3), 34–40. Opdal, R. M. (2001). Curiosity, wonder and education seen as perspective development. Studies in Philosophy of Education, 20, 331–334. Sinclair, N. (2006). Mathematics and Beauty: Aesthetic Approaches to Teaching Children. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Sinclair, N. & Watson, A. (2001). Wonder, the rainbow and the aesthetics of rare experiences. For the Learning of Mathematics, 21(3), 39–42. This page intentionally left blank Part II Engaging Wonder in Everyday Classrooms This page intentionally left blank 5 Opportunity to Teach

The Joy of Teaching What You Know Deeply, Find Fascinating, and Want to Share

David C. Berliner

We are probably all familiar with the concept of “opportunity to learn.” Without opportunities to learn what society deems important, individuals and entire populations are unable to achieve well in school. We will always need to ensure that our youth have the opportunities to learn the desired, approved and official curriculum, even if some of them are impoverished or physically disabled. We need to be sure our students are instructed by competent teachers, and that our schools are budgeted adequately to do the many jobs we ask of them. Test scores in this era of high-stakes accountability will never be high enough to satisfy our political leaders if our youth do not have the opportunity to learn what is to be tested. Thus, the opportunity to learn is of great importance in thinking about schooling. But there are reasons for thinking that opportunity to learn the desired, approved, and official school curriculum is not enough to ensure that our youth get a good education. Students may also gain important benefits from acquiring expertise in areas beyond the approved curriculum, a topic to be addressed below. We also need to ensure that teachers have the opportunity to teach. They must communicate to their students and support them in learning the curriculum that we want our students to master. To do this, teachers need training, of course, and sufficient time to teach that which is deemed important. To teach well, teachers need textbooks and equipment. They need everything from erasers and copy machines to computer terminals. But teachers also need encouragement to teach that which they know deeply, find fascinating, and want to share, even if it is not a part of the “official” curriculum. The thesis of this essay is that for parts of each semester or school year, it is equally important to provide teachers the opportunity to teach that which they most want to teach. For a few hours, over a 90 David C. Berliner week or more, teachers should be given the right, and be encouraged to choose and control, some part of the curriculum. That is, some part of the curriculum should be theirs, as long as what they propose to teach is broadly educational, even if it happens to be incompatible with the officially approved curriculum, and even if it interferes with preparation for high-stakes tests. In my experience, perhaps yours too, there are few learning activities as exciting as listening to an expert communicate about their area of expertise. Besides the vast knowledge they have about some topic, curriculum area, or skill, they often have an enthusiasm that is communicated along with their descriptions of objects, processes and events of interest. Paralinguistic cues (head nodding, voice modulation, gestures) frequently accompany the experts’ discussion, often providing an added source of pleasure for the listeners of an acknowledged master of a particular domain. Furthermore, what gets communicated by the experts, along with the “facts” of a situation, are the habits of mind—the ways of approaching problems, of thinking about issues, of accomplishing this or that—that constitute the source of an expert’s knowledge and skill. This is true whether we are listening to an expert on piano playing, plumbing or parasitology. Two personal experiences come to mind. The first occurred a number of years ago, when a friend and I wandered into a western clothing store in Reno, Nevada. My friend was going to buy a hat. After we looked at a large display for a few minutes, a wizened old man came over to us and asked if he could help. We left an hour and a half later. He gave us a lecture about and demonstration of hat wearing styles that amazed us. Did you know that certain styles of the crown signal you are going into town on Saturday night? And that you can re-form a hat from a rainy weather hat to a sunshine hat? We learned that hats made of different materials, and the shapes they are formed into, are used for different kinds of activities in which cowboys engage. Posthole digging, riding, branding, racing, roping are all associated with unique, preferred hat styles. It was wonderful! A memorable lecture, with lots of learning, and all that learning came without the threat of a test! A second event took place recently as I visited the Colorado home of an old friend. He had retired and moved to a new community, and when I asked him how he filled his days he told me that he took up “target shooting.” I had no idea what that meant and so we went to his workshop where he showed me how he packs powder into his own bullets. He explained why he has a new sight and why he changed from an older one. He explained also why he changed the stock on his gun and why he had to order a new barrel. He showed me his targets from every session he had spent at a shooting range over the last few months. Every shot he took over those months was meticulously recorded in logs where the bullet size, weight, powder combinations, distance fired, and results were archived. His journals were as precise as any I ever saw in a science laboratory. My friend was an expert and he not only taught me about target shooting as an Opportunity to Teach 91

Olympic sport, he made me appreciate the intricacy, complexity, and challenges associated with what he did. I never would have believed ahead of time that I would be fascinated with such a presentation, but I was thrilled to be taught for a lengthy period of time by someone with deep knowledge and passion about their subject. From my own experience as an academic I have learned that when doctoral programs are successful, it is in part because of what is communicated by professors in research seminars and laboratories, rather than from what is learned from the many text books that doctoral students master in their program. History also informs us that many Nobel laureates were trained by other Nobel laureates, and that many great artists studied under other great artists. It is not just good networking that helps the younger individual to obtain awards and recognition later in their career. It is also the fact that they studied with experts and learned to think about, argue, and solve problems within the domains in which they would later become famous. Habits of mind, ways of thinking, forms of argument, selectivity in deciding what is important from what is not, are all the bits and pieces of understanding gained in relationships with experts. That is why their acquaintance is usually so rewarding. On public radio I often listen to an artist, writer, inventor or scientist talk about the work that brought them to the public’s attention. I find them remarkably different from the news reporters who question them, even when the reporters have done a fine job of studying the works of the person they are interviewing and are adept at asking questions and following up their answers. Experts, however, almost always have a richer and deeper understanding of that which brought them notoriety. In fact, research has shown that even young children who possess high levels of skills in music or chess, or youngsters who become experts on dinosaurs, the American civil war, or insects, possess knowledge and have problem solving capabilities that older and seemingly more competent adults have not acquired. These older, and certainly more cognitively able individuals may never be able to match the youngsters’ knowledge of some domain without working very hard to master that particular field. Deep knowledge of a domain changes a person’s ways of thinking about that domain. The holder of expertise has richer and deeper networks of neural connections, with better analytic and problem solving skills; cognitive advantages that are unavailable to a novice in a particular domain. One of Kieran Egan’s most generative recent ideas is to develop schools in which every child has the chance to become expert at some field, and also to communicate their expertise to others in their school community. Egan (2010) wants every child to have the opportunity to learn something deeply in at least one domain. That noble goal is one with which I agree. What we now know about the acquisition of expertise suggests that after staying with a sport, an instrument, or a topic because of external pressures, possibly from a parent, a 92 David C. Berliner coach, or a teacher, the novice eventually enters a stage characterized by much more self-regulation (Glaser, 1996). At that time they practice an instrument or skill, read about some topic, go on field trips collecting, on their own, without the external pressure that may have motivated them at first. The external motivation to practice or study eventually comes under intrinsic control. What some psychologists (e.g. Corno, 1993) have described as the Rubicon has been crossed. Motivation to learn then comes under much greater volitional control. Crossing the Rubicon leads a learner into greater self-regulation of behavior. Volitional as opposed to motivational processes become prominent. Volitional control is the necessary precursor to becoming an expert musician, athlete, scientist, mathematician, cake decorator, fashion designer, geographer, astronomer, farmer, magician, pilot, etc. Egan has a plan to help students acquire expertise and, hopefully, experience the joy of becoming expert at something. Knowing something better and deeper than anyone else has to be a unique and wonderful learning experience for most students, and an ego builder for them, as well. Furthermore, in this era of increasing curriculum homogeneity, with all schools trying to do well on national tests, and all nations trying to do well on international tests, having students know “stuff ” that’s not in the official curriculum guide may turn out to be a real advantage. Heterogeneity in advanced knowledge among the citizenry of a nation is surely more likely to allow the survival of a nation in an age of rapidly changing cultural and business practices. As in evolution, nations that cannot adapt to change will fall behind, their way of life in danger of perishing while those that adapt to change will have a greater chance of survival. In an information age, heterogeneity of information, not a common curriculum, should give a nation an advantage because more of its citizens will possess wider knowledge at advanced levels. Thus there is more than a child’s joy in learning and ego building to think about when we seriously examine Egan’s proposal. I thought seriously about Egan’s proposal and incorporated it as one of the rights I would make sure children had were I ever given the position of education czar. I rephrased his ideas this way: It is the right of every student to have a subject assigned to them in which, under the guidance of teachers and others in a community, they would become expert. The subjects to be mastered could be airplanes, mollusks, their nation’s civil war, baboons, lizards, bugs, digital photography, or whatever was broadly educational, just as long as students became experts and were allotted sufficient time to present their growing knowledge of the domain they study to their classmates and the broader school community, at least once per year. As I thought about the students’ opportunity to learn deeply, to become expert in some domain, I thought also about the opportunity to teach that which is well understood, loved, and found wonderful by teachers. In the presence of experts, such as the hat man from Reno, the target shooting enthusiast from Colorado, some professors in my doctoral program, and those interviews with scientists and Opportunity to Teach 93 artists I have enjoyed, I discovered that knowledge and much more than knowledge is communicated in extraordinary, perhaps ineffable ways, by experts. This led me to express another right, were my czarist fantasy ever realized: It is the right of every teacher, in spring and fall, to teach for up to one week anything they wanted, as long as it was a broadly educational subject that they loved and in which they had expertise. Students have a right to see passionate teaching and expertise at work. Modern American educational policy often does not allow teachers the opportunity to teach what they know and love. Mr. Adams, a biology teacher in North Carolina, says:

Each one of us are specialists, each one of us has particular fields of study that we like, and that we really like to impart more information to the kids. I love plants. I love teaching plants. I love teaching ecology. But currently I just skim over both of them because there are no plant questions on the end-of-course test... You take what you like and you just PSHHT right by it simply because you have to cover the goals and objectives of the state. And I don’t like that... (in Westerlund, Upson & Barufaldi, 2002, p. 17).

Isn’t something wrong here? Is the state’s curriculum that much better preparation for life than the subject matter that Mr. Adams would teach? I don’t think so! If he did not have the high-stakes state test and the test preparation curriculum to contend with, he says: “I would just cover things that I enjoy more and feel like it would make me better in the classroom because the more you enjoy a particular aspect about a job you do, the better you are” (p. 17). In the Westerlund et al. study (2002), Ms. Henderson knew a lot about Venus fly traps, and the topic fascinated her. But she says that she cannot teach that anymore because it is not on the exams. In that same study Ms. Langworthy, who had acquired expertise in fetal pig dissection, a subject that fascinated her students, cannot teach that as part of her biology course because it is not on the test. It is the loss of student exposure to expert knowledge that I mourn. I find it shameful. A waste of talent. Moreover, I don’t think any of us is smart enough to know what it is in the official school curriculum that will make a difference in life after school, in the real world. When I went to elementary school I learned all 48 US states, perfectly. I learned their mottos. I learned much about the industries that made them successful. And of course I knew their state capitals, population, relative area, and other crucial facts. I spent an inordinate amount of time learning that, but I have now forgotten almost all of it, and should I need such information, I can now say “Idaho” “wiki” into my computer or smart phone and retrieve all of that information, and more, in seconds. And if they still do this, now there are two more states students will have to learn about! 94 David C. Berliner

Would I have been better off having been exposed to a teacher whose passion was collecting thimbles, medieval armaments, teacups, butterflies, or one who helped us at night in gazing through telescopes looking for comets? I really don’t much care if the teacher is an expert on mushrooms, airplanes, the Chicago Cubs, World War II, Turkish rugs, quilts, or aspects of physics, chemistry, biology, Photoshop, or number systems. What I care about is to recognize that teachers have fields they care about, understand deeply, find an object of wonder, and that they are given the opportunity to teach what they know deeply and love to teach, whether part of the “official” curriculum or not. I almost want to add, if a teacher doesn’t love anything that is broadly educational in or out of the official curriculum, they should go into the field of training, and leave the field of education to those who care about knowledge in one or more areas. But should a teacher possess expert knowledge of some kind, and a sense of wonder about that knowledge, I want them to have the chance to communicate that knowledge and that wonder to our students so the students will see what depth of understanding, wonder, and passion do for the person holding such knowledge and skill, as they also learn how it affects those with whom an expert shares their knowledge. Let’s face it: students learn all sorts of useless pieces of the curriculum in schools, now usually defended as part of the curriculum needed to function successfully in the 21st century. But after our students have acquired sufficient competency in basic subjects, most of the predictions about success are useless. The National Educational Longitudinal Study in the USA, referred to as the NELS 88 data set, is particularly instructive (Deke & Haimson, 2006). About 10,000 students were followed from 1988 to the present. Researchers looked at the competencies that were most valuable in predicting an array of post-secondary indicators of school success. For each student in their sample they identified the competency that, when raised 10 percentile points, generated the largest jump in earnings and the likelihood of completing a post-secondary program. These researchers found that increasing math test scores had the largest effect on earnings for a plurality of the students. But they found that for most students, the greatest benefits were more from improving one of their nonacademic competencies. These nonacademic competencies included improved work habits, increased sports skills, increased leadership skills, better pro-social behavior, and taking more responsibility for success, a locus of control or personality variable. For example, with respect to earnings eight years after high school, increasing math test scores would have been most effective for 33 percent of students, but 67 percent of the students would have benefited more from improving a competency that was not a part of the official curriculum. Studying and mastering the official curriculum was not as predictive of success as was student participation in the unapproved and unofficial curriculum that schools provided or fostered. Opportunity to Teach 95

The researchers also asked what the benefits would be on earnings and post-secondary college attendance had they raised everyone’s mathematics score 20 percentile points. This is the kind of one-size-fits-all policy that most states and nations try to impose on schools, especially when a state or nation is unhappy with its test scores. This one-size-fits-all policy was contrasted with an individualized strategy, one based instead on raising the scores of each student in the nonacademic area in which a student showed the highest correlation with a future outcome. That is, the researchers asked what would happen if the schools had tailored their work with students to use the talents that the students had already demonstrated were important for that student. The results of this contrast were quite clear. Greater gains in earnings to the person and to the economic viability of the community were predicted to have come from individualizing and tailoring the educational programs of the students, rather than by having adopted a one-size-fits-all policy to the student population. National policies to improve the official curriculum areas such as literacy, mathematics, and scientific knowledge, after some minimum level of competency is achieved, appear not to be as good as local school policies to develop student skills in whatever areas such skills exist. By assessing the academic competencies of literacy, mathematics, and scientific knowledge, we certainly measure the constructs we value in the official state or national curriculum. But we too often forget that test scores in these areas do not do a great job in predicting the future performance of nations or of individuals. Allowing students the chance to develop expertise in whatever areas they are interested in, and having teachers teach some of the time in areas in which they possess expertise, are probably as good as any push to have the official school curriculum running full time. Fundamentally I am suggesting that students ought to be exposed each year to a teacher who has the opportunity to teach what they love and what they find wonderful. A literature teacher who loves Moby-Dick and understands the context for 19th century American novels, but learns that this book is not on the recommended list, should not just be allowed to continue to teach Moby-Dick but should be applauded for doing so by an appreciative community. Whether it is Moby-Dick, which is probably close to the official literature curriculum, or instruction in the life cycle of humming birds (the area of expertise and passion of one of my neighbors), or instruction about the black jazz musicians who played baseball in France after WWI (my son’s area of expertise), does not matter. Whatever the field, teachers could learn, over time, to “polish the stone.” That is, teachers can make their lessons of four or five hours, or a few days each semester, nearly perfect overviews of the topics they love and know well. I am convinced that were this done, students would prosper, teachers would have greater professional pride in their talents, schools would be places that are less impersonal, and broader conceptions of knowledge and skill would enhance any nation’s ability to face an uncertain future. Teachers deserve the gift of an 96 David C. Berliner opportunity to teach what they know deeply and love to teach. They can do this inside or alongside the official school curriculum. Students of these teachers then have the opportunity to learn from experts, a unique and precious form of learning. Communicating the sense of wonder that comes from passionate involvement may in the end achieve more educationally and practically than many of the official requirements of our current curricula.

References Corno, L. (1993). The best-laid plans: modern conceptions of volition and educational research. Educational Researcher, 22(2), 14–22. Deke, J. & Haimson, J. (2006. Expanding beyond academics: who benefits and how? Princeton NJ: Issue briefs #2, Mathematical Policy Research, Inc. Retrieved May 20, 2009 from: http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_ storage_01/0000019b/80/28/09/9f.pdfMatematicapolicy research Inc. Egan, K. (2010). Learning in Depth: A Simple Innovation That Can Transform Schooling. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Glaser, R. (1996). Changing the agency for learning: acquiring expert performance. In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.), The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 303–311. Westerlund, J. F., Upson, L. K. & Barufaldi, J. P. (2002). No time for Venus flytraps: effects of end-of-course testing on biology curriculum in two states. Electronic Journal of Science Education, 7(2). Retrieved September 25, 2011 from: http://wolfweb.unr.edu/ homepage/crowther/ejse/ejsev7n2.html. 6 Renewing the Sense of Wonder in the Minds of High School and College Students

Keiichi Takaya

Introduction I am going to do three things in this chapter. First, I want to point out that the sense of wonder is both a valuable end of education and a powerful means of successful education. Second, while the sense of wonder is so natural to young children, it is such a pervasive phenomenon that many students lose touch with it as they go along schooling; considering this, I like to suggest that it is more urgent to think of ways to rekindle the sense of wonder in the minds of the students of rather higher grades or levels of schooling. Third, I will discuss what subject might be suitable to do this. Education, particularly formal schooling, is almost inevitably concerned with acquisition of knowledge and the development of rational, focused ways of thinking, but this process also hardens students’ minds. Since virtually everyone agrees that nobody will ever get absolute Truth, an important end of education is to make students life-long learners, people who can see the limits of their knowledge, perspectives and values and go beyond what they have here and now. So it is very important to keep our students’ passion for learning, and this is likely to be possible when their sense of wonder is kept alive; but in this, schools are not very successful. When the sense of wonder is discussed, people usually think of very young children, but I think there is a need to shift our attention to a little older student population, say, high school and college students. Many people say that young children by nature have strong tendencies to feel wonder, but if this is the case, not much attention to stimulate their senses of wonder in early childhood seems urgent; rather, we need to start thinking a bit more about how to help older students regain what they have lost. 98 Keiichi Takaya

Wonder’s Dual Significance My first concern is with our conception of the purpose of education. It seems safe to say that the acquisition of knowledge is a big part of education no matter how you define education. On the other hand, virtually no one says today that acquisition of knowledge is everything that matters in education. Knowing things is important but what counts is what you do with the knowledge you have. If the attempt to make students learn lots of facts ends up producing mere pedants or quiz whizzes, or possession of lots of factual knowledge leads to know-it-all attitudes in our students, it would be considered a failure of education. Knowledge is important for sure, but we want our students to acquire a sort of humility or Socratic wisdom on the one hand and to retain their curiosity and passion for learning on the other. Many writers point out that an educated person has a flexibility of mind, or the ability to think of the possible without being tightly constrained by the actual (e.g., White, 1990; Egan, 1992). Emphasizing the importance of flexibility implies a particular attitude as well as ability; it implies a favorable attitude toward further learning as well as the ability to think outside the box. Thus, I agree with Mary Warnock when she writes the following at the end of her book Imagination (1976):

In my opinion, it is the main purpose of education to give people the opportunity of not ever being... bored; of not ever succumbing to a feeling of futility, or to the belief that they have come to an end of what is worth having. (p. 203)

Anyone who has taught very young children would acknowledge that they are not “bored” at all. What concerns educators is rather what happens to students as they proceed in schooling. As they go along schooling, the world gradually ceases to be a wonderful place; children become increasingly bored. Edith Cobb thinks that the sense of wonder is “a prerogative of childhood” (1977, p. 27), and describes the sense of wonder as follows:

Wonder is, first of all, a response to the novelty of experience (although not to the totally unexpected, which tends to arouse anxiety). Wonder is itself a kind of expectancy of fulfillment. The child’s sense of wonder, displayed as surprise and joy, is aroused as a response to the mystery of some external stimulus that promises “more to come” or better still, “more to do” – the power of perceptual participation in the known and unknown. (p. 28)

She also suggests that the experience of the sense of wonder will lead to the notion that “exploration is itself a satisfying process” (p. 28). So, it seems Renewing the Sense of Wonder in the Minds of Students 99 important to give young children abundant opportunities to feel wonder and to explore, and these experiences will bring about a lasting taste for learning. Ideally, it is. It seems to be the case that many students somehow lose their senses of wonder and interest in learning. Here I think that we need to be realistic and that, while keeping up with our effort to give opportunities for wonder in the early grades, we need to think of some ways to revive the sense of wonder in the minds of older students. My second concern is about the means of education. Even though knowledge is important, simply presenting pieces of information will not always result in students’ learning them. They need to feel some sort of emotional engagement with the pieces of knowledge. In other words, if you want to bring about significant learning experience that sticks to children’s minds and expands their horizons, you have to present the material in a way that they would find something wonderful about it—you must locate in the material something that inspires the feeling of wonder. It may be, for example, the passion, perseverance, or ingenuity of the people who were involved in the formation of a particular piece of knowledge, or the usefulness of it (cf. Egan, 2005, p. 97). Simply sorting and organizing facts in a logically coherent manner cannot make them stick to their memory. Simply telling your students that becoming informed in various subjects will prove useful some day will not inspire them for prolonged learning. Thus, the sense of wonder has a dual significance. On the one hand, it is a powerful tool to inspire students’ imaginations and their passion for learning; and on the other hand, keeping the ability to feel wonder itself ought to be an important part of the purpose of education.

A Shift of Emphasis Away from Early Childhood Those who argue for the importance of such things as wonder, emotion, and imagination (as part of their critique of what seems to be an overemphasis on the memorization of factual knowledge) put this idea in a Rousseauean or progressivist fashion by arguing for less bookish learning, less emphasis on academic disciplines, more hands-on activities, and more freedom and choice on the part of the student. The following words of the noted ecologist Rachel Carson are representative of such a view:

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us a clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and 100 Keiichi Takaya

disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength. (Carson, 1998, p. 54)

I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. (ibid., p. 56)

Many educators and parents would agree with her, and I think that many of them, when they want to put that kind of idea into practice, would try to provide environments or programs that focus on young children so that they would enjoy and retain the sense of wonder. I do not mean to suggest that all students lose their ability to feel wonder as they grow up; nor do I mean that some students’ being uninterested in studying is due entirely to their lack of the sense of wonder. Nonetheless, I observe that it is the case with a fairly large number of high school and university students that they are in Warnock’s sense “bored.” I observe that those students who find nothing or very little wonderful about what they are studying make up more than an ignorable minority. I think that Cobb is to a large extent right when she says that the sense of wonder is “a prerogative of childhood” (p. 27), that Egan is right when he says that there are trade-offs in education and growth (1997, pp. 57–58). Cobb writes:

The sense of wonder is spontaneous, a prerogative of childhood. When it is maintained as an attitude, or a point of view, in later life, wonder permits a response of the nervous system to the universe that incites the mind to organize novelty of pattern and form out of incoming information. The ability of the adult to look upon the world with wonder is thus a technique and an essential instrument in the work of the poet, the artist, or the creative thinker. (p. 27)

Here and many other places in her book, Cobb is arguing that the sense of wonder is “a prerogative of childhood” and that highly creative artists and scientists tend to “regress” to the way they experienced the world in childhood (e.g., p. 94). In the quote above in particular she suggests that the sense of wonder is not a natural possession of adults, except for some highly creative adults such as artists and scientists. An important point is that Cobb does not highlight the Renewing the Sense of Wonder in the Minds of Students 101 sense of wonder simply because it produces creative thinkers who contribute to the material progress of our society, but because retaining or regaining the sense of wonder is the key to a better life and a better relationship between people and the natural world, which she calls “compassionate intelligence” as opposed to “the language of conquest” (pp. 24–25). If we recognize that child-like tendency to feel wonder is a powerful motivational force for a better education and a better life, and if some, or even many, of them lose it as they grow up, we have to devise some means to revive the sense of wonder in older students’ minds. If feeling wonder is so natural in childhood and not so natural in later years, it is much more urgent to focus on the later years. The problem is that the end—the sense of wonder—may be the same in early childhood and in adolescence, but the route to reach that end may not be identical between the two phases of life. I will discuss this issue next.

The Rhythm of Education Alfred North Whitehead (1929/67) wrote that there is a rhythm of education, and learning should proceed in the order of Romance, Precision, and Generalization (Ch.2 The Rhythm of Education). In order to make education effective and meaningful, students’ sense of romance needs to be engaged first; then, when they are sufficiently interested in studying the material, they move on to the stage of precision, that is, studying detailed facts about it in a systematic way; and at last, they reach the level of generalization, that is, to return to the romantic quest with the tools of inquiry acquired in the precision stage to go on with studying. What his view is suggesting is not necessarily something so rigid as Piaget’s stage developmental theory, in which children in a certain age group are considered to be able or unable to deal with certain things and teachers should refrain from teaching them until children become “ready.” Instead, Whitehead shows, first, that any meaningful learning experience starts with the engagement of the learner’s emotions and imaginations, and second, that the initial engagement must be supplemented by intellectual tools for precision in order to take learning further. Whitehead’s idea of rhythm seems plausible as a way to describe how learning generally takes place, but, in order to incorporate it into my argument here, it has a problem. That is, he seems to assume that students upon entering university are ready to start with the stage of generalization (p. 25). That might have been true with the student population he was dealing with 90 years ago, but it does not seem to apply to the majority of our students today. I would rather think that university students today are not that intellectually prepared as Whitehead assumes, and that all of his three stages need to be incorporated in the studies at 102 Keiichi Takaya university; and in order to incorporate his idea of rhythm, we need a little more detailed curricular principles or frameworks. Here, Egan’s (1997, 2005) idea of “kinds of understanding” seems helpful, particularly when we acknowledge the fact that he also highlights the need for students’ emotional and imaginative engagement. Egan’s major point is that a key to engaging students’ emotions and imaginations is to understand which mode of language and thought—he calls it an “understanding”—is dominant in the student’s mind. A seven year old, for example, is likely to live in the linguistic world of oral language and this mode of language encourages a particular mode of thinking and learning—very young children whose primary linguistic mode is oral tend to think and learn by drawing heavily on emotional associations, metaphors, “binary opposites” (e.g., good/bad, courage/cowardice; though they may not speak of these concepts), and rhythm and pattern. On the other hand, in a typical fifteen year old, written language (though not highly sophisticated), and related ways of thinking and learning, are dominant—their thoughts are more attuned to realistic, scientific, or logical explanations, and they also look for factual information (Egan, 2005, Chs. 1 and 2). So, for example, in learning a foreign language, a seven year old can learn it just by doing (by singing songs, dancing, imitating the teacher, etc.) without much explanation by the teacher. On the other hand, a typical fifteen year old would expect more explanation on the sentence structure, vocabulary, etc. In other words, young children can just get on with learning by doing, while older students need a fairly large amount of information and conceptual mapping to establish where they stand now before trying things out. Or, in understanding a story, very young children would not ask for detailed, scientific explanation of how a good fairy turns a pumpkin into a coach, but within five years, they will be asking for more scientific, or at least seemingly scientific, explanations of how the man transforms into the Incredible Hulk (cf. Egan, 2005, Ch. 2). The cash value of these differences is that what engages a seven year old may be less vivid or less convincing for a fifteen year old. Combined with Whitehead’s point, we may well say that while a high school teacher still has to find something that engages her students’ sense of romance or wonder in order to make the lesson meaningful for them, that something may be very different from what inspires elementary students. For example, in teaching a language, songs and dance may work well for very young children, but they may not work for many high school students who have become used to studying through books and note taking. Of course, a different scenario is conceivable; students who are so used to studying through books and lecturing learn to see the subject from a very different perspective and enrich their understanding of it by experiencing a very different mode of studying such as singing or dancing. My observation is, however, that because such concepts as wonder, imagination, and creativity Renewing the Sense of Wonder in the Minds of Students 103 are too often associated with childhood, typical educational arguments for the importance of them tend either to focus on early childhood education in the hope that the effect will last into later years (e.g., imaginative engagement as an antidote to the hardening of the mind in the student) or to recommend the use of the same tricks across different age groups (typically, songs and dance and artistic activities for older students as well, to the effect of dumbing down the students). Consider, for example, the following article by Laura Janecka (Psychology Today, July 2010):

While sticking out your tongue at strangers may not be productive, thinking like a kid can boost creativity. Researchers Darya Zabelina and Michael Robinson of North Dakota State University wanted to see if tapping into a childlike mind-set would enhance an adult’s creative output. College students wrote about what they would do if they had a day off from school now, or as their 7-year-old selves. The first group produced “boring” results, such as catching up on work or sleep, while the second group stated that they would go buy the biggest lollipops they could find or spend the day playing with friends. Afterward, the second group performed better than the first on a test of creativity. Thinking like a kid helped introverts the most, because they’re typically more inhibited. (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201008/how-think-kid)

Zabelina advocates applying a childlike mind-set to our daily lives. “It’s about giving yourself permission to explore and free time to play. It would not just increase your creativity—it would also motivate you to create” (in Janecka, 2010). I can understand that adopting a child-like mindset or retaining a child-like attitude toward thinking and learning is a key to creativity (though what they mean by creativity is not clear to me at all as far as I read the article), and many adults lose these attributes. This, however, does not lead me to the view that activities young children tend to like are equally conducive to inspiring older students’ senses of wonder. Jonathan Wai writes in another article in Psychology Today (April 2011):

Certainly there are facets of creativity that are different from intelligence and I am not saying creativity and intelligence are synonymous. Yet I think... that there is probably more overlap between intelligence and creativity than we realize. Using two different terms doesn’t necessarily mean you’re talking about two entirely different things. (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next- einstein/201104/if-you-are-creative-are-you-also-intelligent) 104 Keiichi Takaya

In the article, Wai quotes Bill Gates, “I have never met the guy who doesn’t know how to multiply who created software...Who has the most creative video games in the world? Japan! I never met these ‘rote people’... Some of my best software developers are Japanese.” The point is that Japan (as well as other East Asian countries) is notorious for the fact-cramming approach to education, and it is criticized for stifling students’ imagination and creativity; but taking the seemingly opposite approach (fewer facts, more spontaneous activities) is no guarantee for the development of imagination or creativity. Certainly, you need to have some content knowledge or skills in order to exhibit creativity and imagination in terms of doing something innovative. While it is true that great innovators and original thinkers in any field reportedly retain child-like attitudes in terms of, for example, lively curiosity or a sense of wonder, or have an access to the way they experienced the world in their childhood, having students engage in more child-like activities and incorporating a non- traditional approach to teaching subjects (more songs and dance, hands-on activities, games, and audio-visual materials) are no guarantee to induce creative thinking in science, engineering, history, or even in the arts. Cobb writes that the gifted person does tend to “regress,” perhaps more often than others less gifted, to the kind of awareness or ways of experience that is characteristic to childhood, including the sense of wonder, but “the moments of regression” are not what empower actual creativity (p. 94). This brings me to the point that Jerome Bruner made half a century ago, when he critically reviewed John Dewey’s point concerning the continuity between schoolwork and children’s everyday experience outside school as a way to engage children’s minds:

School should provide more than a continuity with the broader community or with everyday experience. It is primarily the special community where one experiences discovery by the use of intelligence, where one leaps into new and unimagined realms of experience, experience that is discontinuous with what went before. A child recognizes this when he first understands what a poem is, what beauty and simplicity inhere in the idea of the conservation theorems, or that measure is universally applicable. (Bruner, 1964, p. 118)

Bruner acknowledges the relevance of Dewey’s point on the importance of continuity between schoolwork and children’s life outside school, but insists that continuity does not simply mean a matter of translating all intellectual material into hands-on activities or children’s play. Thus, he continues after the quote above, “If there is one continuity to be singled out, it is the slow converting of the child’s artistic sense of the omnipotence of thought into the realistic confidence in the use of thought that characterizes the effective man.” (p. 118) Renewing the Sense of Wonder in the Minds of Students 105

He then reiterates his famous conviction, “Any subject can be taught to anybody at any age in some form that is honest,” and continues, “It is not honest to present a fifth-grade social-studies class with an image of town government as if it were a den of club scouts presided over by a parent figure interpreting the character – even if the image set forth does happen to mesh with the child’s immediate social experience” (p. 124). Here, intellectual honesty is the key; he says, “A dishonest image can only discourage the self-generating intellectual inquiry out of which real understanding grows” (p. 124). I agree with him on this point, and wonder whether dishonesty is committed in the name of students’ interest, student-centered learning, etc. when students’ excitement or having fun is emphasized without due respect to the lesson’s intellectual content. As Carson points out, children are full of wonder and excitement, but what naturally intrigues and excites young children is not by itself, or necessarily, the source of wonder and excitement for older students. Education in school must provide students with opportunities that enable a leap into the hitherto unknown realm, while it should avoid conceiving of such opportunities as a matter of knowledge-based lessons that very often end up severing the students from the source of wonder and excitement.

Practical Applications—Reconceptualizing Foreign Language Courses What subjects or what kinds of approach, then, may be suitable for, say, first year college students? What kind of subject, topic, or activity may be able to renew the student’s engagement with the world and to have them realize “there is always more to experience, and more in what we experience than we can predict” (Warnock, p. 202). Besides being disengaged, older students show particular tendencies toward studying. That is, first, many students of this age seem to lose interest in studying, unless motivated by some pragmatic purposes; many of them no longer seem interested in studying for the sake of understanding the world. Or, second, in the case of some eager students, they are rather opinionated and do not seem to understand that there is more to see in the world; they would rather look for facts and arguments that seem to corroborate their points of view (imagine the type of students who come to the course instructor’s or TA’s office to “discuss” grading criteria, etc.). In order to discuss this topic, I like to turn to two of aforementioned Egan’s idea of “understandings”—Romantic and Philosophic Understandings (Egan, 1997, 2005). I believe that they are relevant to understanding the way students in this age group typically think and learn. Egan’s overall proposal is to see education not as a process of storing knowledge but as enriching students’ understanding of the world by engaging 106 Keiichi Takaya their emotions (wonder being one of the emotions; see, Egan, 2005, Ch. 2) and imaginations. He further points out the existence of different kinds of understanding (which corresponds to different modes of linguistic capacity and roughly coincides with different ages) and the importance of allowing students to have abundant experience in these kinds of understanding. He discusses Somatic, Mythic, Romantic, Philosophic, and Ironic Understandings (Egan, 1997), but I will discuss just two of them. First is Romantic Understanding. It is the mode of thinking and learning employed typically by 8- to 15-year-old students. They have acquired or are acquiring written language and usually exhibit the intellectual characteristics strongly connected with this type of linguistic ability. What emotionally and imaginatively engages them is somewhat like a little younger students who are using oral language and associated modes of thinking and learning; but compared to younger children, they are a little more attuned to the realistic understanding of the world, and accordingly, they are interested in knowing what the world is really like. They are thus—unlike the traditional conception of children’s learning as gradual expansion from the near to the far—keen on exploring the limits of human experience and the world by, for example, engaging in exhaustible collections (such as collecting baseball cards or trying to obtain as much information on some topic, say, dinosaurs, as possible)— this is the kind of thing that inspires the imagination and emotion of these students. At this stage, as I wrote above, they are concerned with acquiring lots of information on what interests them, but are not quite sophisticated in theorizing about them (what Whitehead called precision or generalization) (cf. Egan, 1997, Ch. 3; 2005, Ch. 2). Next comes Philosophic Understanding.1 As the designation suggests, students at this stage are sufficiently fluent in written language and its accomplice, theoretical thinking. They can now handle information in a systematic way and abstract ideas without constantly drawing on concrete facts (cf. Egan, 1997, Ch. 4; 2005, Ch. 3). The challenge for them and for their teachers is to sophisticate their tendency toward precision, systematization and generalization, without losing touch with the source of their inspiration. These are ideal types and not everyone achieves these understandings at the same pace as others. That is why university instructors need to entertain their students by various tricks, inserting jokes here and there, constantly using audio-visual materials, avoiding the use of what seems to be dry and abstract philosophical treatises, etc. Thus, the challenge for the instructors at post- secondary level (and at upper grades of high school as well) is to find ways that somewhat appeal to the students’ Romantic modes of thinking and learning while trying at the same time to connect it to Philosophic Understanding. What subjects or topics may do this well? I suggest that one of such subjects is foreign language. Foreign language is typically considered as the most practical Renewing the Sense of Wonder in the Minds of Students 107 subject that has direct applications after graduation (a very useful skill in the job market). So, compared to other subjects, foreign languages have a potential to attract students’ interest. More importantly, however, I think, it is also a very good subject that has room for incorporating elements that engage the students’ sense of romance and wonder, or their curiosity and imagination, because, first, people who are bilingual or even multi-lingual often incite the students’ sense of romance or wonder because they seem to possess keys to the doors that open to a totally different world from the one that the students inhabit now—their linguistic and cultural knowledge being the keys. Second, in foreign language classes students often have opportunities to experience many exotic features of the world and people (strange sounds, different ways of thinking, exotic objects, beautiful scenery, etc.). Third, studying a foreign language requires, at least to some extent, that the students recapitulate the way they must have experienced in childhood when they acquired their first language. This is an excellent opportunity to experience different kinds of understanding; one of the failures of secondary or post-secondary education is that it often has only one mode of teaching that suits one type of person—people who have what Gardner calls the law-professor mind, that is, those who are very linguistic and logical (2006, p. 5). It is true that a language is acquired more efficiently when one begins to study it in early childhood. But nothing is too late and it is a fact that many students start to learn foreign languages in middle school or in college. While foreign languages are very practical, one should keep in mind that the process of learning any one of them is very slow, which means that the promise of a sellable skill in the job market alone will not keep students motivated. You may see, however, quite clearly what you do and do not know and what you should aim at—the goal of studying is seldom so clear in other subjects and disciplines. It is true that you do not suddenly become fluent in any language by studying merely for a few months or even for a few years, and the learning process is very often frustrating. (You cannot put into words what you can say so easily and effortlessly in your mother tongue!) Nonetheless, the process of studying a foreign language involves a lot of pleasurable experience—you can feel your progress every day however small it may be; you really enjoy the experience of trying whether you make sense by using the words or phrases you have just learned (a small experiment), and when you find that you actually made sense, it is exhilarating. Besides, if our thought is so inextricably connected with language, studying a language consciously—unlike the almost unconscious process of acquiring one’s mother tongue—would give us some insight into how our thought and language work. Egan’s curricular framework includes various modes of language from gossip and story to more complicated narrative and irony (cf. Egan, 1997, 2005), and being exposed to these different modes of language and thought can 108 Keiichi Takaya be done more explicitly in the process of studying a foreign language. Therefore, foreign language acquisition has a huge potential to engage students’ sense of wonder, romance and imagination in a variety of ways, and connect these to more theoretical, abstract, and systematic thinking and learning.

Conclusion My chapter is but a small critique of what is or isn’t happening in our schools as to engaging students’ senses of wonder in a way that connects to further learning. Thanks to the pioneering works by such people as Warnock (1976), Cobb (1977), and Egan (1992, 1997, 2005) among others, a huge step has been taken toward recognizing the importance of wonder as part of the educational significance of emotion and imagination. In order to bring about changes in our schools so that students’ senses of wonder will be recognized as a centerpiece in making our students educated persons, I think that there is a need to shift our attention to a little older student population than is usually mentioned in typical arguments about the importance of such attributes as imagination and wonder. I hope that an effort will be made in working out the means to rekindle the great source of inspiration and motivation for learning, i.e. the sense of wonder, and that students will retain the ability to feel wonder throughout their experience in school and beyond. Further, some of the traditional subjects in high schools and universities should be reconceptualized and their curriculum reframed in light of the students’ imaginative lives.

Note 1 It is important to note that Egan does not mean that the kinds of understanding represent stages of development in the sense that there is a hierarchical relationship of lower and higher sorts of understandings (Egan, 1997, pp. 189–193). Unlike the Piagetian stage development theory, the acquisition of a new kind of understanding is not the function of physical maturation. There are, however, aspects that resemble stage development theories—for example, there is an irreversible order; Philosophic Understanding comes, if it comes at all, after Romantic and not the other way around. So, if some university students are fixated, so to speak, at a characteristic mode of thinking and learning to Romantic Understanding, and if a purpose of university education is to allow students to experience a characteristic mode of inquiry typically associated with Philosophic Understanding, or what Whitehead calls “precision” or “generalization,” while the students are less than enthusiastic about it, I think it justifiable to speak as if the students are not making progress. Thus, my characterizing some college students’ mode of thinking and learning as Romantic and childish is to some extent a misrepresentation of Egan’s theory, but, I believe, not unreasonable in this particular context. Renewing the Sense of Wonder in the Minds of Students 109

References Bruner, Jerome. (1964). “After John Dewey, what?” in On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 113–126. Carson, Rachel. (1998). The Sense of Wonder. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Cobb, Edith. (1977). The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, Inc. Egan, Kieran. (1992). Imagination in Teaching and Learning: The Middle School Years. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Egan, Kieran. (1997). The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Egan, Kieran. (2005). An Imaginative Approach to Teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Gardner, Howard. (2006). Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons. New York: Basic Books. Janecka, Laura (2010). How to: think like a kid – child’s play can inspire you. Psychology Today, http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201008/how-think-kid. Retrieved February 3, 2012. Wai, Jonathan. (2011). Finding the next Einstein: why smart is relative. Psychology Today, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einstein/201104/if-you-are- creative-are-you-also-intelligent. Retrieved February 3, 2012. Warnock, Mary. (1976). Imagination. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. White, Alan. (1990). The Language of Imagination. Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell Ltd. Whitehead, Alfred North. (1929/67). The Aims of Education and Other Essays. NY: The Free Press. 7 From “Unknown Questions” Begins a Wonderful Education

Kyozai-Kaishaku and the Dialogic Classroom

Kiyotaka Miyazaki

Wonder-full education begins from “unknown questions.” Unknown questions are those whose answers are not known by the teacher, even though the teacher may have posed the questions. They may also be questions raised by others, whose significance the teacher does not understand. Since the teacher doesn’t know the answer, she/he cannot provide the “correct answer” to the children; the answers need to be explored. When the teacher commits to a collaborative exploration of the answer with the children, the explorative activities involve the children in tackling the question. In this sense, the unknown question stimulates children to think deeply about the teaching material. That is the main tenet of a Japanese dialogical pedagogy called Saitou pedagogy after its founder Kihaku Saitou. This chapter introduces the pedagogy. I coined the term “unknown question” in contrast to the “known- information-question” which is most commonly used in western pedagogical studies to characterize the nature of the questions in the classroom activities (Hicks, 1996). Researchers argue that in a non-school situation, questioners ask questions because they do not know the answers. In a school, a questioner, the teacher, asks questions to which she/he typically already knows the answer. She/ he asks the question not to inquire about the information but to determine whether the children know the answer, and if not, to convey the information to them. In this view, the teacher is not an authentic questioner. Behind this view lies the sense of education as a process of knowledge acquisition, in which the adult who possesses the knowledge gives it to children who do not. This practice seems to be inevitable since the school is an institution set up to support younger generations in acquiring the knowledge developed by older generations. From “Unknown Questions” Begins a Wonderful Education 111

Saitou pedagogy disagrees with this process. Saitou pedagogy proposes that the process of knowledge acquisition by children is a creative one. A key factor in making knowledge acquisition creative is the “unknown question.” The teacher can pose unknown questions about the teaching material, and then investigate the unknown question collaboratively with the children. The collaborative inquiry of the question generates new unknown questions, and the new one takes the inquiry further. Saitou pedagogy believes that a dialogic classroom occurs as a continuation of this collaborative inquiry of unknown questions.

Saitou Pedagogy Before explaining the definition of an unknown question and how it can be generated by the teacher, let me introduce Saitou pedagogy and Kihaku Saitou, its founder. Kihaku Saitou (1911–1981) worked as a teacher in several public elementary schools in a rural area in Japan from 1930 to 1969. In the last 18 years of his career, he was the principal of several of these elementary schools and led the educational practices of the schools. These schools became very famous in the field of education in Japan and many practitioners and researchers visited them to observe lessons. In 1973, he organized his research group, “Research Group of Pedagogical Studies.” Many practitioners and researchers were a part of this group, learned from Saitou, and developed his idea. After his death in 1981, the research group as a movement lost its impetus, and the national meeting of the research group stopped gathering. However, some local groups are still working and many practitioners are still accumulating the educational practices, not just following but also developing his view on pedagogy. Though Saitou did not use the term “dialogue” explicitly in his writings, his pedagogy can be characterized as a dialogic pedagogy in the sense of Mikhail Bakhtin, whose name Saitou probably did not know. Saitou’s most important keywords for creating a classroom lesson were “the opposition between children, teacher, and the learning contents.” He says that: “Between children, teacher and teaching material should be generated contradictions, oppositions, confrontations, and conflicts. Children and teacher should, going beyond the oppositions, discover and create new views, and go over to the new horizons.” (Saitou, 1969. Translated into English by Miyazaki). He compared the creation of the classroom lesson to “making a fire with charcoal” (Kawashima, 1984). When someone makes a fire with charcoal, she/ he has to arrange the pieces of charcoal carefully and sometimes she/he has to blow on them to create fire. To develop a classroom lesson into a dialogic type, she/he discovers various relationships among the children’s views, uniting similar views and clarifying the oppositions between different views. And she/ he sometimes has to “blow” on it, providing seeds for their thoughts, and in particular, challenging them by presenting his/her own view. 112 Kiyotaka Miyazaki

Since Saitou and his followers are generally practitioners, Saitou pedagogy is a system of practical knowledge based on the experiences of Japanese educational practitioners. One tradition in Japanese elementary education is that teachers are eager to study their own educational practices. Japanese teachers in elementary education are a typical example of “the reflective practitioner” in the sense of Schoen (1993). The Saitou pedagogy is generated from such reflective practices and continues to develop as it is used. Though Saitou pedagogy is a dialogic pedagogy in the sense of Bakhtin, it has not been derived from Bakhtin’s theory or from any theory on dialogue. It is not a theory for theory’s sake, but practical knowledge for teachers to use in making the classroom more fruitful. It is generated from the standpoint of teachers. Second, Saitou pedagogy is not a set of instructional methods or a proposed curriculum for any particular subject. It focuses on the teacher’s preparation for the dialogic classroom and on her/his organization of the children’s dialogue in the classroom, regardless of the subject being studied. Some unique teaching materials have been developed by the practitioners of Saitou pedagogy in art- related subjects. In addition, the teachers of Saitou pedagogy prefer literature education and frequently use literature education to demonstrate their views on teaching to colleagues. Saitou himself was a poet of Waka, a traditional Japanese poem type. Still, Saitou pedagogy is the practitioners’ attempt to disclose the organizational principles of the dialogic classroom from the standpoint of teachers. Finally, many excellent practitioners in Japanese educational circles do not think themselves to be followers of Saitou pedagogy. However, their views have many similarities to the dialogic pedagogy of Saitou. After all, the views of both Saitou pedagogy practitioners and non-Saitou teachers are based on the educational practices of Japanese teachers, mostly in the public school systems, and are generated through their reflections on their practices. The teachers are expected to develop similar forms of practice as a result of having experienced those same forms of practice in the past. The advantage of Saitou pedagogy lies not in the knowledge of its procedures by itself but in the fact that Saitou could reflect in his writing a clear image of regular Japanese teaching styles. In this sense, Saitou’s view on the dialogic classroom is not confined to the narrow circle of Saitou’s followers, but is typical of the knowledge of practice of excellent Japanese teachers.

Unknown Question Let me turn to discussing the meaning of the unknown question. As noted, an unknown question is one to which the teacher does not know the answer, or one which the teacher does not know the existence and/or significance of before the lesson starts. The first characterization is much too simple and needs more From “Unknown Questions” Begins a Wonderful Education 113 elaboration. In reality, teachers do not know the answers to every question, even in the elementary school curriculum. Curriculum contents are always changing so teachers will continually encounter new material. Are these questions the unknown questions defined here? Not necessarily. The problem here is that many teachers think that questions covered in elementary schools are easy to understand and not worth tackling for adults. It is relatively easy for teachers to know the answers to these questions since prepared resources are available to assist with their teaching, such as Japanese “Sidou-sho,” or a guidebook for the curriculum. An unknown question may be one for which the teacher cannot find an answer in prepared material and must explore the answer by her/himself. However, in most cases, the unknown question is discovered in a question whose answer the teacher thinks she/he knows, but finds that she/he doesn’t really understand the prepared correct answer. In contemplating this, she/he notices many unnoticed puzzles in the question that are worth exploring, even for the teacher as an adult. I will present one example and analyze it to show the nature of the unknown question. Though I have already introduced this example elsewhere (Miyazaki, 2010), it is a typical example of the unknown question, the type of unknown question that is discovered by the teacher before the actual classroom activities begin. It is worth introducing this example again. The question we will analyze here is “What is a store?” This question is apparently quite simple and easy to answer. Everyone, not only the adults but also the children seem to know what a store is. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, a store is “a place where things are kept for future use or sales.” The definition seems to be very clear, so that this question seems to be typical of “the known information question” if asked in the classroom. But is it really so? What about the vending machine? Is it a store or not? The self-service laundry? Is a peddler also a store? In the definition cited above, the store is defined as “a place.” If this definition is correct, the vending machine is not a store since it is not a place. The peddler is not a place but a human being, so it is not a store. Some commonalities can be found, however, between the examples of a grocery store and a vending machine or between these two and a peddler. How can we characterize these commonalties? First of all, is the definition in the dictionary correct? We can find many “stores” on the internet. Does visiting one of the stores on the internet mean going to a “place?” Now, things start to get confusing and become difficult to understand, even for adults. Katsuhiko Sakuma of Chiba Keizai University, one of the followers of Saitou and a researcher of social studies education, designed and performed an experimental lesson in which the main theme is the question “What is a store?” In the preparation phase of the lesson, he asked a scholar of commercial law 114 Kiyotaka Miyazaki and found that there is no definition of “store” in Japanese commercial law. Regulations have been developed for large-scale stores such as departmental stores, but none on stores in general. He also visited the city hall and the chamber of commerce and industry in the city he lived in and received no answer. He even visited the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, the office regulating Japanese commerce, and learned that the office did not know if a vending machine is a store. He also asked a variety of people who were working in the area of commerce. When he asked a sales person of vending machines, he learned that one needs to contact the regional health center before one can set up a new soft-drink vending machine and obtain the same permit needed to open a new restaurant. However, the sales person could not answer the question as to whether the vending machine is a store or not. So no definite answer was found to the question “What is a store?” in contrast to its apparent simplicity. This is a typical case in which an unknown question is derived from seemingly easy common sense knowledge when explored anew. The aim of Sakuma’s lesson is not to transmit to children information about stores but to make children undertake explorative activities to discover new questions. In the lesson, Sakuma showed the children the following five photos: a grocery store, a barber, a self-service laundry, a vending machine and a peddler. For each photo, he asked if it was a store, and had the children vote on their answers. Next, he asked them why they chose their particular answer and had them discuss the question and answers. The photo of the grocery store was intended to serve as a comparison for others, and he expected the children to agree that it was a store. In this case all but one judged it a store. Regarding the barber, half of the children voted that it was a store on the first vote, and a majority voted no for the other three photos. With regard to the self-service laundry, children who voted no said that it was not a store because it had no employee. A minority who voted yes said that it was a store because people paid for the service. When discussing the vending machine, the minority also said that it was a store because people paid money for the goods it contained. The children who voted no explained that the goods could easily be sold out or that the machine could fail. A minority countered by saying that mechanical failures could also take place in ordinary stores with employees and that goods could be sold out even in the grocery store. Through these discussions, many children changed their opinions. On the final vote, half the children voted yes for the self-service laundry and vending machine. Even for the peddler, for which no one voted yes on the first vote, half of the children later voted yes. Sakuma did not conclude the discussion. After listing the children’s thoughts and describing a brief history of a store, he ended the lesson by telling children to ask adults for their thoughts on this question. What type of experience did the children have in this lesson? An indicative comment was written by a child who experienced Sakuma’s same lesson on From “Unknown Questions” Begins a Wonderful Education 115 another occasion. The child wrote that, after the lesson, she was “lost.” “Before the lesson, I thought that it is not a store if there is no employee. Now, I am not sure. I had thought that a self-service laundry is not a store, although it is inside a building and I pay money there. Now, I am lost.” (Sakuma, 1992. Translated to English by Miyazaki). Though she said she was lost, this does not mean that her understanding degenerated. Quite the contrary; her understanding developed and a new question was generated. She now understood that she had not really understood what a store was. The unknown question thus encourages children to explore deeply during the lesson. Since the unknown question is apparently easy to answer using common sense knowledge, even by children, the discovery that the question is not easily answerable and contains many puzzles stimulates excitement and exploration. This reminds us of the phrase of Bertrand Russell that Egan introduced in his book (Egan, 1986). Russell says, “The educational achievement is not to make the strange seem familiar, but to make the familiar seem strange.” The lesson in which the unknown question is discovered, shared and explored collaboratively in a classroom is an “achievement that makes the familiar seem strange.” That is why the unknown question is the key to a wonder-full education. The classroom lesson in which the unknown question is discovered and explored is dialogic in the sense of Mikhail Bakhtin, the philosopher of dialogue. The existence of the discussion or debate is neither a necessary condition nor a sufficient condition for the lesson to be dialogic in the sense of Bakhtin. The key to classifying a lesson as dialogic is whether new and unexpected questions and views are generated in the children and the teacher. The opposite of the dialogic lesson is the monologic lesson in which children’s views converge into the one correct answer which the teacher prepares beforehand. Views other than the correct one are classified as errors. How can a teacher be dialogic? The teacher’s discovering and presenting the unknown question to the children can be compared to the “posing of profound and acute problems.” The unknown question provokes the children to undertake exploratory activities about that question. It encourages them to collide with other children on the ideas they develop around the question. Though Bakhtin did not state it explicitly, it should be thought that the “profound and acute problem,” or the unknown question, is a question not only for the children, but also for the teacher. It tests both the children and the teacher.

Developing the Unknown Question: the Kyouzai-Kaishaku Procedure In Saitou pedagogy, the teacher’s work to develop the unknown question is called the Kyouzai-Kaishaku, or literally translated “interpreting the teaching 116 Kiyotaka Miyazaki material.” In this work, the teacher learns about the teaching material before the children. This step is the most important for the teachers of Saitou pedagogy. In Saitou, this learning is not just the accumulation of knowledge about the teaching material. It is not done to seek “the correct answer(s)” to the problem, nor is it undertaken to search for the most effective teaching method to make the material understandable for children. According to Saitou, the Kyouzai- Kaishaku is the work in which the teachers as adults confront the learning content in all its aspects and discover something important for them as adults. Saitou described Kyouzai-Kaishaku as follows:

First of all, a teacher should encounter and confront wholeheartedly the teaching material in all its respects as one person. A teacher should wholeheartedly interact with the teaching material, analyze it, have questions about it, ask himself/herself, discover something, and create something, as one person. Through these endeavors, he should accumulate new thinking, new logic, and new development. Only after the teacher has done such interpretative works on the teaching material and encountered with it, a lesson can have a definite direction, intention and an explicit construction. It is because the teacher’s knowledge about the teaching material stops being a collection of random pieces, but becomes a lively one, acquired by his own, sweaty efforts, only after such encounters. It is because the teacher can confront children with knowledge made lively and fresh due to the teacher’s own surprised discovery of it … (Saitou, 1964. Translated into English by Miyazaki)

With Kyouzai-Kaishaku, the teacher confronts the apparently easy teaching material with an adult’s complete intellectual force. Such a confrontation will reveal that the apparently easy material for the children actually has many new meanings and new issues, even for adults. Kyouzai-Kaishaku is the learning by which the teacher converts the seemingly known information question into the unknown question. So Kyouzai-Kaishaku is the prerequisite for children’s exploratory learning of the teaching material. The teacher explores the teaching material first to open new doors to the wonderful world of the subject matter. The particular methods of Kyouzai-Kaishaku depend on the particular subject. Formulating a manual for Kyouzai-Kaishaku, even for a particular subject, makes no sense. However, we can describe one “guideline” for the process of Kyouzai-Kaishaku. Consider, for example, what Sakuma did in the preparation of the lesson “what is a store?” He asked many people and inquired in related disciplines on the topic “what is a store?” and received many views on this question. Through these explorations, he learned that no definite answers were available for this seemingly easy problem. From “Unknown Questions” Begins a Wonderful Education 117

Listening to Children’s Possible Voices and Unknown Questions As Bakhtin wrote (1984, p. 90), listening in a dialogue is not just about receiving the information the speaker sends but is more active. The act of “listening” requires the listener to discover and find the still weak voices, the not-yet fully emerged ideas, the voices latent as potentialities. This active listening is very important for the dialogic teacher. The teacher becomes dialogic when her/his listening to the children is not just to let children speak freely, but to discover and pick up something new of which the children themselves are not necessarily aware—something there as latent possibilities. In particular, the dialogic teacher may hear some truth in the children’s answers that would be classified as an “error” in the monologic classroom. Children’s erroneous answers are not necessarily insignificant ideas that should be thrown away or corrected by the teacher. The dialogic teacher can discover the unexpected but important questions in the children’s apparently erroneous answers. Children’s erroneous answers can be another source of the unknown questions from which the lesson develops further. The dialogic teacher’s “listening to children” is not just listening to their superficial voices and literal meaning, but listening to their possible voices hidden within their utterances to make them explicit and to share them with the other children. To listen to the possible voices in their utterances, the teacher must conduct Kyouzai-Kaishaku not only before the lesson but also during the lesson. The children’s answers, the erroneous and unexpected ones in particular, will not only trigger the teacher’s process of Kyouzai-Kaishaku, but also provide the teacher with hints on thinking about the teaching material. The dialogic teacher’s listening to the children is thus one mode of Kyouzai-Kaishaku. As I already noted, the teacher’s discovery of new voices in the children’s “erroneous answers” is also her/his discovery of new, unexpected questions, or unknown questions in the children’s utterances. Behind an erroneous answer to a question, there can be a new question whose “direction” is different from the first question. The philosopher Gadamar’s view on the “dialectics of questions and answers” (Gadamer, 1975) suggests this as well. Gadamer argues as follows: “The essence of the question is to have sense. Now sense involves a sense of direction. Hence the sense of the question is the only direction from which the answer can be given if it is to make sense (Gadamer, 1975, p. 356). He also says:

To ask a question means to bring [it] into the open … . The openness of a question is not boundless. It is limited by the horizon of the question. A question that lacks this horizon is, so to speak, floating. It becomes a question only when its fluid indeterminacy in concretized in a specific ‘this or that’ … 118 Kiyotaka Miyazaki

It implies the explicit establishing of presuppositions, in terms of which can be seen what still remains open. (1975, p. 357)

Apparently the same question can have, behind it, different horizons or directions, and the correct answer to the question will be different when the horizon behind it differs. The correct answer for the one who answers the question is correct for the one who asks the question only when both the asker and the respondent share the same horizon or sense of direction behind the question. It is possible that the wrong answer for the one who asks the question is considered correct for the other who answers, even when the same horizon is not shared. How could a teacher determine the possible meaning behind children’s erroneous answers? Gadamer’s next point is helpful in addressing this problem: “To understand meaning is to understand it as the answer to a question” (1975, p. 368). The teacher must examine the horizon behind the question as the children understood it. He may have to perform his Kyouzai- Kaishaku on the subject matter again. In so doing, he would re-examine his horizon of the question and clarify the children’s direction using the child’s answer as a hint. In general, the “erroneous” answers of children help the teacher make possible new horizons of a question, but only when she/he stops seeing erroneous answers as merely errors.

From Erroneous Answers Starts the Development of New Inquiry The unknown questions that can be discovered in children’s erroneous answers, however, can be the starting point of a new development in the inquiry in the lesson. In the following, we will examine a lesson in chemistry. Generally, scientific subjects seem to have only one “scientifically correct” answer, and no other correct ones to any question. The example introduced here took place in a 5th grader classroom where the students were learning about the recrystallization of ammonium chloride. The teacher is Ken’ichiro Seki, teaching in Nagano elementary school attached to Shinshu University. He is not, strictly speaking, a follower of Saitou pedagogy. However, as I noted above, many practitioners in Japanese elementary schools have a basic view of the class lesson which is similar to Saitou pedagogy, and Seki is one of them. As already noted, Saitou pedagogy is a long-term collection of Japanese teacher practices, so it is no wonder that a similar view of the classroom lesson can be generated by any Japanese practitioner who seriously tackles the classroom lesson. This chemistry lesson is part of a unit on the dissolution of matter. The children were shown a movie in which a bottle of aqueous ammonium chloride From “Unknown Questions” Begins a Wonderful Education 119 was put into cool water and white crystals emerged one after another in the transparent solution. The children became excited by this phenomenon and tried to reproduce it. They thought that the emerged crystal was ammonium chloride dissolved in water and the crystal would emerge as the solution was cooled in the water. They formed groups and tried their idea by making solutions with different quantities of ammonium chloride and water, but their attempts were not successful. After some trials, they presented their results and discussed them. One group reported that they poured hot water into a bottle, put in ammonium chloride, put the bottle in water, heated it, and nothing happened. However, they also reported that the quantity of the non-dissolved crystal of ammonium chloride seemed to increase when they put the bottle into cold water. Then, Hide—a student––argued against the report as follows:

Hide: It means that the non-dissolved crystal had just become bigger, doesn’t it? Teacher: You mean that the non-dissolved crystal expanded? Hide: Yes. Teacher: You mean that dissolved, transparent liquid had nothing to do with? Hide: A little amount of ammonium chloride would have dissolved, but liquid is mostly water.

Hide’s belief that the non-dissolved crystal had just become larger is certainly the wrong answer to the question as to why the quantity of crystal increased when the solution was cooled down. However, the teacher hesitated to label his view simply as an error that should be corrected. He thought that Hide’s answer was erroneous, but at the same time it was not wrong as Hide saw it using his past experience. Hide’s thought that transparent liquid was mostly water is reasonable. Hesitating to judge Hide’s thought as correct or not, the teacher felt there could be a possibility that a new view might be created on the dissolution of the material. The teacher asked the rest of children in the class: “What do you think?” The other children in the class disagreed with Hide’s view. “There must be ammonium chloride in transparent liquid.” “Cube sugar must become bigger when left in water if non-dissolved crystal becomes bigger. But cube sugar does not become bigger, so the transparent liquid must consist of not only water but also of dissolved ammonium chloride.” Hide disagreed with them: “In the case of a saline solution, the upper layer of liquid [in the bottle] was not so salty, was it?” Some children started wondering: “Though it was not salty before the liquid was stirred, every part seemed to be the same after it was stirred. Well, I am getting confused.” 120 Kiyotaka Miyazaki

The teacher showed the children a diagram describing materials in water. Then, a student presented a new question as follows: “I got it. We can evaporate the liquid in the upper layer of the bottle.” Another said: “Then, I think, we can find out that the ammonium chloride is in the transparent liquid. This can be the evidence.” An experiment was conducted to determine if the crystal would emerge when the upper clear layer of the bottle was boiled. This was confirmed. In this episode, the original question was how to recrystallize ammonium chloride in a solution. In asking this question, the class missed another related question—whether ammonium chloride exists in the upper transparent layer of the solution, and if it does exist, how? In other words, the original question presupposes that there is dissolved material in the transparent layer at the top of the solution, even if there is still non-dissolved crystal at the bottom of the bottle. The class, including the teacher, did not notice this presupposition until Hide’s “erroneous” view revealed this presupposition or “horizon,” in Gadamer’s term. More precisely, this horizon was noticed, first by the teacher, when he became aware of the “correctness” in Hide’s erroneous thought. Consequently, new question-asking in relation to whether there is ammonium chloride in the transparent layer of the bottle was generated. This is the unknown question that was new and unexpected even by the teacher. This new unknown question propelled the children to further explore and opened up greater opportunities for their sense of wonder to be caught up in the experiment’s results.

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I discussed Japanese practitioners’ knowledge of practice on the dialogic lesson named Saitou pedagogy. The central idea is that a wonderful lesson starts from the discovery of wonderful questions, and that a question emerges as a wonderful question when its answer, even its existence, is unknown even to the teacher before the lesson. With the unknown question begins authentic exploration by the children and the teacher. The task of finding the unknown question in teaching material for elementary schools is not easy even for the expert teacher. It is not routine work for which a manual can be produced. To discover the unknown question, it is necessary for the teacher to commit to authentic learning in which she/he encounters the teaching material anew. The teacher must give up being the adult who knows better. Sometimes, she/he finds the unknown question while listening to the children’s voices. Still, the responsibility rests with the teacher to discover the unknown question, to share it with the children and to make the lesson wonderful. When the teacher makes her/himself a wonderful learner, children will also become wonderful learners. From “Unknown Questions” Begins a Wonderful Education 121

Dedication The view on the dialogic lesson presented in this chapter owes much to a discussion with the teachers of Chiba-Ibaragi research group of pedagogical studies and its organizer Yukio Tsukamoto in particular. I thank these teachers, my close collaborators in the pursuit of the dialogic classroom.

References Bakhtin, M. (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (C. Emerson, Trans.). Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1929.) Egan, K. (1986) Teaching as Story Telling. Illinois: Chicago University Press. Gadamer, G. H. (1975) Truth and Method (J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall, Trans.). NY: Continuum. (Original work published 1960.) Hicks, D. (1996) Discourse, learning, and teaching. Review of Research in Education, 21, pp. 49–95. Kawashima, T. (1984) Sumibi no hi no tsumiage wo motomete: Shougakkou sannnen no sansu ‘Kakezan’ [Seeking after making a fire with charcoal: Arithmetic of the third grade children multiplication]. Dai ni ki Kyoujugaku kenkyu [Pedagogical Research 2nd term], 4, 124–140. Miyazaki, K. (2010) Teacher as the imaginative learner: Egan, Saitou, and Bakhtin. In K. Egan, & K. Madej (Eds.) Engaging Imagination and Developing Creativity in Education. MD: University Press of America. Saitou, K. (1964) Jugyo no tenkai [Development of the Classroom Lesson]. Tokyo: Kokudo-sha. Saitou, K. (1969) Kyouikugaku no susume [Encouragement of Pedagogy]. Chikuma Shobou. Sakuma, K. (1992) Shakai-ka nazotoki yuzaburi itsutsu no jugyo [Five Stimulating Lessons in Social Studies]. Tokyo: Gakuji shuppan. Schoen, D. (1993) The Reflective Pracititoner: How Profesionals Think in Action. NY: Basic Books. 8 The Talking Table

Sharing Wonder in Early Childhood Education

Fleur Griffiths

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky (William Wordsworth, 1807)

To the natural philosopher, there is no natural object unimportant or trifling…a soap bubble…an apple…a pebble. He walks amidst wonders. (John Hershel, 1830)

I quote a poet and a scientist extolling the wonders of the world as the spur to their own creation. Too often in our century, the two cultures of the arts and sciences have been divorced to the detriment of each (Snow, 1959). The one has been the province of subjective experience and the other of objective truth. This has led to a ban on figurative language in scientific discourse and a ban of emotive words, like awe and wonder, in educational psychology. As a psychologist myself, but one whose first degree was in Literature, I have felt the constraints of logical/positivistic positions which would have precluded a word like ‘wonder’ in its discourse. I have had to assert with Keats ‘the truth of the imagination’. Keats warned against that ‘irritable reaching after fact and reason’ (in Strachan, 2003, p. 51) instead of remaining in uncertainties, doubts and mysteries. We are too quick to shrink the multifaceted, wide-eyed view of children into adult disciplines or forge childhood to fit economic agendas. I therefore welcome this chance to speak openly about Wonder-full education. I draw on a particular project called ‘The Talking Table’, my most recent chance to be alongside children in nurseries and to play creatively with them. For those of us who work with very young children, our sense of wonder is kept alive The Talking Table 123 through them and it is our privilege to share wonderful moments with them. In the field of art education (but the application is not restricted to this field), Kolbe (2007) asserts:

The sense of wonder that we are all born with – a sensitivity to the look and feel and sound of things – matters a great deal. If we try to look at things with children, if we value the moments when they stop and stare and wonder at the world, we probably do more for their creative, aesthetic and artistic development than a host of specific art exercises might ever do. (p. 11)

Throughout my career in education, I have seen the role of the nursery teacher as a play-partner, who sensitively enters the child’s world of curiosity, surprise, joy and discovery. I was lucky to be training as a teacher in Britain in the 1960s when it was the accepted pedagogy to put the child at the centre and choose relevant and emotionally engaging routes and materials. It was understood that children were naturally curious and keen to investigate and to make sense of their experience. Discovery learning was the accepted mode. We had poems and pictures at the ready should a bee happen to buzz into the classroom or a thunderstorm break overhead. We knew the importance of first- hand sensory experience and brought it inside or went out to find it. We were keen to share with children the wonder of their discoveries, particularly of the natural world. We followed the themes that arose from these interests which were inevitably cross-curricular and open-ended. We were aware of the creative energy of children and made available diverse materials for them to use for their explorations. This is a world away from applying a set curriculum, however imaginatively done. Differences in ideology are revealed in the metaphors used to enshrine them. To place wonder at the heart of learning, we need to discard metaphors of delivering the curriculum, processing information, providing learning packages or funnelling information and think instead in terms of metaphors of participation and shared adventure. Learning journeys have become the metaphor for those imbued with the pedagogy from Reggio Emilia. Malaguzzi, its founder, spoke of a tangle of spaghetti to represent his provisional, doubtful yet consensual and wonder-full view of knowledge (Malaguzzi in conversation in Edwards et al., 1998). Educators from New Zealand have adopted the metaphor of weaving to embody their curriculum (Carr et al., 1998). Vygotsky is associated with the notion of scaffolding learning in an adult/child partnership. I have always been in tune with Vygotsky’s legacy: his belief in the transformative power of play, in the adult as a co-constructor of meaning and in the dynamic of social interaction. In a moment, children can transform a stick into a horse to ride or a cardboard tube into a telescope to spy pirates or the 124 Fleur Griffiths wonders of the deep. From a few bits and pieces, they can fashion an exciting narrative, especially when they can bounce ideas off each other. Such creative thinking is known to spring up best in relaxed and playful conditions. There is no rigid answer so anything is possible. Such play is serious in that it demands concentration and it is marked by absorption and pleasure.

Intervene Without Breaking the Spell Some teachers so revere the imaginative force of children at play that they fear to tread nearby: they do not want to interrupt children, so they leave them alone without any challenge to enlarge their interests. Knowing how to intervene without breaking the spell is a key issue. The watchful adult is alert to key moments of discovery. Often a child’s excitement transmits to others and the teacher is invited in to the play. Gradually this initial spark of wonder can ignite a full-scale project involving the whole class over a long period of time. The famous project from Reggio which lasted for years stemmed from a child’s wish to make a playground for the birds. On the way, the children learned about the workings of waterwheels and pulleys, became knowledgeable about seeds and herbs and watched from their hideouts the birds that they had attracted – and much, much more. A more recent example of what can happen when children are left alone to learn through wonder is described by Tracy Kirkbride (2010) in her jam-jar project. As a teacher of five year olds, she observes the children making discoveries of rhythm and beat by tapping paint jars with sticks and spoons. She joins with their excited experiments and adds further dimensions, like adding water to the jars, to challenge and propel the quest. In time, the children are ready to respond to professional drummers arriving unannounced, not for a performance but as a stimulus for further music-making from the children. As if by magic the whole class and teachers are drawn into the dance. She explained:

I was invited into a magical learning opportunity and did what the children were doing. If we try to change things by questioning ‘why?’ and being intrusive, then that ‘why’ moment of learning stops. And I think it would be very dangerous to push it. There is a magical moment hiding in every environment and it is about the adult being skillful enough to bring those magical moments out. Sometimes we get it wrong but when we get it right, and we feel the magic moment, it will stay with us for the rest of our lives. (Kirkbride, 2010, pp. 28–29)

Tracy recognizes that it takes skill to be alert in this way to learning opportunities, and to have the courage to trust the evident power of such ‘magic moments’, without knowing where they will lead. Children have to trust their The Talking Table 125 adults as play-partners who can help them realize their purposes and reveal the potential within such moments. They have to trust the adults to respect work in progress and not clear it up tidily for a new, clean start each day. They have to feel sure their models, arrangements or dens are protected until there is agreement that the project is finished. Because there is always a camera at the ready, there is evidence which the children, parents and staff can reflect on and decide what might come next. Such documentation plays a central role in guiding the learning forward so that magic moments do not burst like soap- bubbles. The way the celebrated teacher, Vivien Paley, intervenes is through group story-making. She claims her best role as a teacher is ‘to draw invisible lines between the children’s images’ (Paley, 1991, p. xi). She goes on to assert that:

Story-playing and storytelling have become the curriculum of any classroom in which I am the teacher. Somewhere in each fantasy is a lesson that promises to lead me to questions and commentary, allowing me to glimpse the universal themes that bind together the individual urgencies. (Paley, 1991, p. 4)

Like her, I have found that certain themes keep occurring: friendship lost and found, danger and rescue, adventure and quest, celebration and safety. Like her, I have found that the outsiders, like Jason (one of the little boys in the book) who spent all day alone in his private sphere, twirling like a helicopter (Paley, 1991), are in greater need of being included in these universal themes that bind their own urgencies together. The outsiders are the ones referred for help to educational psychologists like myself. In particular, I have been concerned with children described as having communication difficulties. I have always maintained that they are the ones who must not miss out on play- partners (Griffiths, 2000, 2002). They can do without being siphoned off for special treatment in a medical model of cure. They don’t want to be shut out of the entrancing world of the Pied Piper because they can’t keep up. They need the chance to belong. I was fortunate enough to participate in an ICAN project (www.ican.org.uk), committed to inclusion and averse to remedial language drills. As the group of eight children came into the ICAN nursery, they gathered round a central table, set out with a train track, an animal terrain, farm vehicles – some things to capture their curiosity. The adults modelled possibilities for play and sharing. They were alert to the various languages of children: their gestures and glances, their drawings and dramas as well as their words. Paper and pens to hand allowed extensions: e.g. food was drawn for animals or tickets for the train … So, we built up a multi-sensory world shared by the group. This Round Table experience led to the project which has filled my retirement years and has come to be known as The Talking Table. 126 Fleur Griffiths

The Talking Table Little did I think there would be such an enthusiastic take-up from teachers and parents when I sat down with senior colleagues in inner-city Hartlepool in the Northeast of England on retirement, eight years ago, to discuss how best we might address the problem of three-year-old children arriving at nursery with fewer than 50 words at their disposal. Such children often floundered when set free in an exciting, stimulating environment with vibrant playmates. Teachers were frustrated that their time was taken up with sorting out disputes over toys or tidying the play areas; they had little chance to enjoy playing alongside children and exploring with them the imaginative opportunities on offer. We agreed that we did not want language packs and training programmes to deliver to teachers, nor did we want needy children to be separated off for special treatment. Instead, we decided that I would visit a series of nurseries, one day a week for eight weeks, to model ways of interacting with children. After a preliminary nursery visit to acclimatize myself to the setting and become aware of its particular routines and rhythms, I arrived dressed in my blue tunic with colourful pockets, from which peeped some enticing objects. I sat at a special table with four chairs ready for children to visit me. Some children would be on the lookout for me because a letter had gone to all parents explaining my visit and appearance. Their children could bring a treasure to show me at my table, provided it could hide in a pocket. The invitation also gave the parents the option to join with me, half an hour earlier than pick-up time, to see what their children had been doing. A circle of parents could then start a discussion based on my live stories of the session, often documented by video and photographs. As the project evolved, beyond a simple ‘show and tell’ formula to a more dynamic and open-ended creation of dramas and narratives, there was so much more to learn and share. The drawing paper which covered the whole table bore the coloured marks which told the tale of each child’s contribution. The children themselves could also tell the story to their parents if the rolled-up paper, the scroll, was left available in the foyer. I based everything on the expectation that children would be curious enough to approach the table of their own accord and that parents would be curious to see what their children were doing at nursery. I wanted to convey to them the richness of their children’s imagination once they were engaged with others in a group venture, a human story that made sense. I wanted to dispel those parental anxieties that so often attend those first days in school. I wanted to draw them into experiencing the wonder of children’s curiosity, discovery and eureka moments.

How Did the ‘I Wonder’ Idea Help Parents? It is a common experience of parents to have their questions about what happens in school greeted with a shrug or a monosyllable from their children. I know how The Talking Table 127 closed questions shut down conversation but I see no point in giving advice on how to use open ones. Instead I simply suggest trying to say ‘I wonder whether you played in the sand’… ‘I wonder if there were sausages for dinner’… instead of direct questions. I ask the parents to report back next week with the success or otherwise of this approach. Parents are almost always delighted with what a difference it makes to communication if they use the ‘I wonder’ opening. For example, one parent ran across the playground to intercept me to report that she had half-heartedly tried wondering and was amazed at the flood of talk that greeted her. She could not wait to tell her group of parents the news. They too had similar reports as can be seen in the following comments:

I normally get no answer about school but when I said, ‘I wonder whether...’ he looked at me with a big smile and we got talking. I think he was surprised that I was playing rather than being anxious about it.

When I did the ‘I wonder’ idea, it turned into a guessing game. He kept saying, ‘Guess again’.

Before I finished saying ‘I wonder’, she told me in great detail about what was going on in her picture. When her Dad said, ‘What is it?’ she shrugged and cast the paper aside. It’s amazing what a difference it makes – how you ask a question.

The context and the emotional climate of the conversation have changed. Simply by wondering, parents have opened up many possibilities – real or imaginary – and entered into the world of the child, instead of standing apart. They are demonstrating their own curiosity rather than their anxiety. No longer does it feel like an inquisition or an intrusion; no longer is there pressure to think up an answer; instead, there’s a story to be shared with a wondering adult. Once home and school cohere in this way, the channels of communication open up around a shared fund of topics and narratives. The starting point for significant change in these relationships can start in the wonder a child senses in the natural treasures s/he finds.

How Can Sharing ‘Treasures’ Convey Wonder? Some of the wonder children sense in the treasures they find in their travels – a shell, a stick, a leaf – transmits to parents who might feel the need to buy educational or exciting electronic toys. I have had groups of teachers think they have to court children’s favour by having sweets or TV characters in their pockets. They forget that the idea is to share the wonder of something that intrigues you or is precious to you. Nor do you have to introduce things to 128 Fleur Griffiths make a deliberate educational point or to inculcate a desirable concept. I have objects which are wondrous to me, some of them from my Indian childhood: a minute ivory elephant in a natural seed-pod, seen best through a magnifying glass, and a wire and bead puzzle that can twist into myriad shapes – a sphere, a basket, a crown, a hat, a bracelet. I have a shiny box studded with sparkling stones into which I can put a tiny key or a ring or a feather. I have a Romanian acrobat that somersaults down a ladder and one that swings up and over a bar. I have shining chiming balls from China, snug in their red-silk ‘homes’. These special things have the novelty value of curiosities, but simple things are equally fascinating. I have passed round a white stone from the shore and stroked my cheek with it, saying ‘Cold’ and children are just as mesmerized to have a go. Each child can have a turn round the circular table to hold, to feel, to activate the treasure and then carefully to pass it on. This makes a shared ritual and the round, once established, saves children from clamouring or grabbing. Each child can rest assured of a proper chance to satisfy his or her curiosity. There is no need to describe it – just demonstrate what a wonderful thing it is – and share it. Sometimes a turn around the table can pass in conspiratorial and wondering silence. There is no child excluded from the magic circle; each one can take part. As I take the treasure from my pocket, I communicate the precious wonder of it in the way I handle it before I entrust it to a child. I think it important that I convey the preciousness of my possessions that I willingly share. The treasure goes around and returns to the safety of my pocket. Similarly, the child’s chosen treasure goes round and returns to safe-keeping in their pocket. Sometimes, we respectfully place each treasure in a ‘mystery bag’, and each child in turn can guess by feel before pulling out a surprise. I can amplify the surprise that comes from finding hidden objects in bags, boxes, parcels, orchestrating the anticipation, the wait-time, for maximum effect.

How Might that Initial Gasp of Wonder Develop? One way that wonder can develop beyond that first gasp is to bring in a further expressive modality like drawing. I cover the table with paper and bring from my pocket a pack of bright coloured pens, offering each child the chance to choose one. The first suggestion – modelled rather than mentioned – might be to place our treasure on the paper and draw round it and I might talk to myself while I draw: ‘I am going to make it safe’, or ‘make a world for it’. This brings the possibility of a dramatic story emerging once a jewel has a special box; an animal has an enclosure or a key a secret door… Also, the device of a visitor coming to each world in turn creates a story of a journey and all the objects find themselves in the same story. All the participants enjoy contributing to the unfolding plot. This is where puppets and play characters come in. I have a beanie bear who curls up in my top pocket. Children see him peeping over and want to see him The Talking Table 129 and I grant them the privilege. The bear, whom one child christened ‘Sweetie’, asks politely if he can come and visit and knocks on an imaginary door to each child’s space on the communal paper. I have not known a child who is not welcoming. Some show the bear round and explain every mark made; others simply enact the bear jumping, smelling, eating, holding hands, going to sleep… He is a very expressive bear and can look excited, fearful, shy, tired … to fit the emerging story. I listen carefully to all that is shown by action and words and I can then do the age-old but ever wonderful ‘Once upon a time…’ opening, following Sweetie’s adventures with each child round the circle. Bear has an eventful and exciting day before coming home to his pocket and curling up and going to sleep, bringing the narrative to a natural close with the ‘round’. The glee with which young children greet such a running commentary on

Figure 8.1 Stories may change when something new is introduced to accompany teddy bear. 130 Fleur Griffiths their actions suggests that they welcome this level of support, until they gain in confidence (Athey, 1990, p. 73). The children soon expect this pattern, and join in the telling of the tale. I can leave gaps for them to fill. I can set in train different stories simply by arriving with the bear wearing a party hat, holding a sunshade, dangling a bandaged paw or cuddling a smaller bear… Rolling up the communal paper and putting it elsewhere in the classroom, together with the bear or puppet as a prompt, allows the authors of the story to re-enact it to an audience of curious friends. It also creates an ending, a goodbye to each child before another group of children assembles and is welcomed by being entered ceremoniously into my visitors’ book. It is wonderful to feel welcome and to belong to a circle of friends. This is social construction of meaning in practice.

How Might the Wonder of the Imagination be Extended? It is a small step before labels and written signs can appear and the way towards literacy is opened in the context of a shared story that makes human sense. In some cases, by my eighth visit, the children can tell the story and I can write ‘Once upon a time’ in the centre and do pretend writing to keep pace with the children’s recounting. One boy filled his space with pretend writing in two colours, a row of red and then a row of blue; the blue told one story and the red another and he was able to tell me what the writing said. The children are enjoying the miracle of the written symbol, an extension of the initial sharing of wondrous objects. Round the table, using our imagination, we can transform those disparate objects into a dramatic event. Using string, ribbon, sticks, drawn lines, we can make enclosures, ladders, pathways to join our concerns together. From pen marks of blue or green emerge rivers, lakes, parks, and so-called ‘scribbles’ become danger, jelly, mud, or anything else we fancy. More often than not, young children’s first marks express a mood and an emotion. Very easily, a black mark can symbolize danger; lines and angry stabs with the pen give away the mood. The colour children choose usually determines the type of marks made. Colour for them is not a concept; it is an emotional schema. I watch a child dreamily making blue wavy lines and I venture a guess: ‘that seems a lazy blue – like water’. My guesses can be rejected or adopted but the playful wondering brings a response. Sometimes nothing is said but a ‘boat’ appears on the waves and thus a languid line becomes the germ of a story. Children’s marks on paper recreate such movement ideas; they use the language of lines. Any of these lines can then express an entire experience; they form a kind of symbolic shorthand. This is especially true of scribbles that in rage make holes in the paper; they can be redeemed if the rage is recognized (by saying, ‘Oh, what an angry black!’) and a narrative of a dungeon or a dangerous pit is offered. A child who is on the The Talking Table 131 brink of being rejected by more able or conforming peers, is suddenly a hero in a rescue scenario which entrances everyone. Scribbling over a drawing may seem destructive when it is in fact constructive: it may mean the light has gone out or that the person is hiding in a dark cupboard or escaping from view in a cave. ‘Once we recast our experience in story form, we gain some distance from it,’ as Engels asserts (Engels, 1995, p. 33). It is important not to curtail the imagination by failing to appreciate the meaning of expressive lines and colours. Children do not set out to depict an object in a representational manner, but more often a random explorative ‘scribble’ suggests to them a similarity: it looks like a ball bouncing or an airplane landing. These are imaginative symbols and come straight from active experience. To make such associations seems to be deeply satisfying. With practice, the child can deliberately direct his lines to recreate desired meanings, creating a lexicon of motifs. The motifs carry meanings which are too elaborate and deep for words; they do not readily translate into factual, descriptive accounts. No wonder that there is a tired or baffled response to the adult asking the deadening question, ‘What is it?’ By contrast, the tentative, playful I wonder keeps the imagination alive. Because drawing is enacting an experience, it is never far from the doing itself. At the table we use dramatic gesture to flesh out the meaning of the marks. We can use our hands to knock on imaginary doors, dive into pools, race cars, climb beanstalks or wrap up presents – all without leaving our seats. We can pick up miniature people or animals as the character who converses with the drawings and materials, and we as a group of friends can weave our own Once upon a times in dramatic action, with words or by dynamic drawing.

How Do You Know This is Not a ‘One Day Wonder’? In the previous questions I deliberately used the word ‘might’. I feel it is important to keep the doubtful nature of what we are doing. This does not mean we proceed without any idea where things ‘might’ lead but we do set off without knowing the outcome or destination. Leave room for the surprising turn, the unexpected opening and the illuminating mistake. Like Malaguzzi, we too know that to be with children is to work ‘with one third certainty and two- thirds uncertainty and the new’ (in Griffiths, 2010, p. 7). We may be afraid to let go control of events, but within a trusting relationship, we can have confidence that children are ready to help us by ‘offering us ideas, suggestions, problems, questions, clues and paths to follow’ (Malaguzzi, 1998, cited by: http://www. sightlines-initiative.com). This learning journey is bound to be more exciting and wonderful because of that uncertainty, that surprise. When I started out with The Talking Table, I did not know where it would lead. I was, however, confident that the context I was creating and the persona I 132 Fleur Griffiths was adopting would attract children and involve them in playing with me. I take great pains to emphasize the specialness of the personal conversation, which uses much more than words. I dissuade teachers from seeking a pack or a script to follow. I point them to conversational principles and research findings about the adult role that best promotes communication (cited in Griffiths, 2002, pp. 17–20). In doing this, I do not wish to lecture but to ensure that The Talking Table does not become a gimmick or a party pastime, but is experienced in its most engaging and meaningful manner. Based on a firm foundation of evidence, it is open to personal variation. This is bound to be more dynamic than a slavish adherence to a set procedure. Respect, Reciprocity, Relaxation, Relevance and Resourcefulness make for more than the 3 Rs! Unexpected spin-offs from The Talking Table have been its impact on anti- social and withdrawn behaviour. In evaluations, teachers report that outsiders begin to be drawn into interactions and to be included in play. Children not heard to speak find a voice. Children, tearful about leaving home, rush to school with their treasures ready on ‘Table’ days, when they are assured of a welcome and a role to play. Teachers also report that children are more ‘polite’, meaning they have imbibed welcomes and farewells modelled for them by the visitor, and having learned each others’ names, they are able to call others into play. Parents like the fact that no child is left out; all take part at some level and have a role to play in the evolving story, shared by the whole group. Parents too report that their children behave better because they have the verbal means to negotiate rather than simply to storm or tantrum to be heard. I suspect that there is also a more wondering, less anxious, attitude of those parents which is helping the relationship. Children quickly adopt the safety of the ‘round’ and carry out Talking Tables of their own with a child leader. One nursery saw this happening in play and extended the possibility of such story-making by introducing ‘story aprons’: a child could don one, collect things of interest around the classroom, gather a group and begin the story. I have always felt that anything that becomes part of play has been truly assimilated by children. The value of play, I have never doubted. Only recently have I realized the power of mark-making. I have come to respect the marks children make and to fear the constricting mould of representational art that we try to squeeze their meanings into. I have come to understand better what an artist like Terry Frost means when he says in his notebooks that Imagination works separately from reality; the image comes before the thought, before narrative and even before the emotion; it belongs to us before reality; it’s primordial. As with children, his response to the world has an intensity that is active and re-creative, rather than mental and objective (Lewis, 2000). The sign or motif precedes the verbal meaning; it presents rather than represents reality. This is the point Jung makes in his account of Man and His Symbols (1964): the evolution of a conscious, reflective mind has subdued the psychic energy of the intuitive symbol-making of the dreaming mind. Children The Talking Table 133 are still in touch with this energy, before education prioritizes formal and logical operations. Sharing these symbols in the group story helps to articulate meanings and to bind the children together socially. The laughter that surrounds the table springs from the delight that shared story-making brings. Stories forged here are remembered and retold and become part of the collective knowledge of the classroom. No one knows this better than Vivien Paley who asserts that the classroom that ‘does not create its own legends has not travelled beneath the surface to where the living takes place’ (Paley, 1991, p. 5). She goes on to say:

The fantasies of any group form the basis of its culture; this is where we search for common ground. That which we have forgotten how to do the children do best of all: they make up stories. Theirs may be the original model for the active, unrestricted examination of an idea. (p. 5)

So, if children create such legends and use a language of lines and a lexicon of motifs, they have the building blocks for renewed imaginative exploration. Since they learn within a supportive friendship group, they have these shared narratives and symbols to link them together. For this to happen, they need a wondering adult joining their concerns and modelling courtesy and respect. When all this possibility comes together, the experience is more than a one-day wonder.

References Athey, C. (1990) Extending Thought in Young Children: A Parent/Teacher Partnership. (2nd edition, 2007) London: Paul Chapman. Carr, M., May, H. and Podmore, V. (1998) Learning and Teaching Stories: New Approaches to Assessment and Evaluation in Relation to ‘Te Whariki’. Paper presented at symposium at the 8th European Conference on Quality in Early Childhood Settings, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Engels, S. (1995) The Stories Children Tell: Making Sense of the Narratives of Children. Gordonsville, VA: W.H. Freeman. Griffiths, F. (2000) Play partners: parental involvement in a preschool project for children with communication difficulties, in S. Wolfendale (Ed.) Special Needs in the Early Years: Snapshots of Practice. London: Routledge. Griffiths, F. (2002). Communication Counts: Speech and Language Difficulties in the Early Years. London: David Fulton. Griffiths, F. (2010) Supporting Children’s Creativity Through Music, Dance, Drama and Art: Creative Conversations in the Early Years. N.Y: Routledge. Jung, C. (1964) Man and His Symbols. London: Aldus Books Ltd. Kirkbride, T. (2010) in F. Griffiths (Ed.) Supporting Children’s Creativity in Music, Dance, Drama and Art: Creative Conversations in the Early Years. London: David Fulton. 134 Fleur Griffiths

Kolbe, U. (2007) It’s Not a Bird Yet: The Drama of Drawing. Byron Bay, Australia: Pepinot Press. Lewis, D. (2000) Terry Frost. London: Lund Humphries. Malaguzzi, L. in Edwards, C.P., Gandini, L. and Forman, G. (1998) The Hundred Languages of Children, the Reggio Emilia Approach – Advanced Reflections. London: JAI Press Ltd. Paley, V. (1991) The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Snow, C.P. (1959) The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. London: Cambridge University Press. Strachan, J.S. (2003) The Poems of John Keats: A Sourcebook. New York: Routledge. Vygotsky, L.S. (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 9 The Upside Down Picnic Table

The Wonder of Learning Through Improvisational Play

Lynn Fels

“Why is that picnic table upside down?” I wonder irritably, as I turn the corner of the building. We are following the next group of students to the performance space that they have chosen for their scene. My students, who come from a variety of faculties across campus, are exploring site-specific theatre: each group has chosen a location and created a scene inspired by the space. The parking lot was transformed into a stage for one scene; another group used a cross walk, another chose a tree on the hill outside our classroom. “They’re not supposed to rearrange the environment.” I glare at the upside down picnic table, mentally deducting marks in my head.

This chapter attends to the wonder of play, and the learning that happens when undergraduate students are invited to reimagine their world of engagement through improvisational play.1 We often forget that teaching wonder is a responsibility that spans all grade levels, and that students of all ages are hungry for opportunities to learn through play. I offer an invitation to educators— drawing metaphorically from a quote by theatre director Eugenio Barba as he advised his actors—that they learn to abandon curricular “walls of cement,” and attend to the “melodies of your temperature” (1995, p. 62), to engage in learning with their students. When we give our students permission to play, and encourage our students (and ourselves) to explore curriculum in imaginative ways, wonder illuminates our learning. As a drama educator and researcher, moments call me to attention; like a child’s tug on my sleeve, they whisper, stop, this moment matters. Philosopher David Appelbaum (1995) proposes that the stop is a moment of risk, a moment of opportunity. 136 Lynn Fels

A stop is a moment when we realize that there are multiple possibilities, that the script that we have committed to memory can be improvised, that other choices of action are available to us. A stop reveals our habits of engagement; a stop reminds us that we don’t yet have all the answers. A stop invites us to reconsider our engagement with others. A stop is an invitation to reimagine who we are, and who we might be, in relationship with our environment, with those we love, and those we teach. A stop is a reminder to let go of what we know, or expect of others, and embrace the uncertainty, surprise, and joy of learning. I attend to moments that stop me. These moments may occur when I engage in improvisational play with my undergraduate students, or when I am teaching my graduate students, or when I am involved in communal activities in everyday living. A stop moment may occur as I witness or listen to myself in conversation or in interaction with others. I am thrown momentarily off-balance, caught unawares. Why are you tugging at my sleeve? Such moments are uncomfortable. They are most often moments that arise in response to pedagogical resistance, either from my students, those with whom I am engaging, or when I myself am in conflict with the task at hand. Such moments, I now realize, are those moments that interrupt me when I am most self-engaged, concentrating on the hard work of teaching, when I have momentarily lost the joy of teaching, of living, intent on “getting the job done.” It is in these times, a stop will occur, reminding me that I have forgotten to wonder, “what would happen if…?” I’d like to share three stories of stop moments that called me to attention, tugging on my sleeve with a child’s impatience that invited me to engage anew in learning with my students. I share these three stories because they illustrate how we may collectively come to experience learning through improvisational play, interrupting the script of what we know or what we expect, and allowing ourselves to create opportunities for imagination and inquiry. One story explores a pedagogical moment that tapped me on the shoulder in the middle of a lecture I was giving to a class of pre-service teachers. Another involves the upside down picnic table. But first, through the following story, I will speak to my work on performative inquiry as an action site of learning (Fels & Stothers, 1996; Fels, 1998, 1999, 2010), showing how engaging in improvisational play offers us, students and teachers alike, the opportunity to invite wonder into our classrooms. My understanding of performative inquiry as a medium for reconsidering who I am, as an educator, begins with a confrontation between myself and a grade two student, who balked at engaging in the role he was expected to play.

Performative Inquiry and the Cow in the Field Peformative inquiry invites educators and students into collaborative exploration through the arts. Its vehicles of inquiry are our bodies, our imaginations, The Upside Down Picnic Table 137 our experiences, our feelings, our memories, our biases, our judgments and prejudgments, our hopes and our desires—who we are, in anticipation of who we have yet to become. The catalyst for inquiry may be a question, an event, an issue, a story, a phenomenon, which we wish to explore, to investigate, to recreate through the media and tools of our chosen artistic expression (theatre, music, dance, visual arts, film, mixed media, writing) to come to new understanding and learning. Performative inquiry was born of a moment: in which I came face-to-face with a grade two student who refused to be the cow in our play, Jack and Jill and the Beanstalk. Using the fairytale as our beginning point (I gave Jack a sister Jill for purposes of gender equality), the grade two class and I created each scene of the play through improvisation.2 While improvising the first scene with Jack and Jill and their mother, I noticed the cow was sulking in the field.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “I don’t want to be a cow!” “Listen,” I reply, “you can be any kind of cow you want. Guernsey, Black Angus, Holstein.” I’m hoping he’ll choose the latter as we’ve a black and white cow costume in the costume trunk. “Any type of cow?” He eyes me skeptically. “Your choice.” I can see the gears working in his brain. Suddenly his eyes brighten, and he grins. “All right. I’ll be a cow that plays goalie for the NHL and I’ll bring my goalie pads, and my net, and my stick, and I’ll practice saving goals in the field….”

In spite of his enthusiasm, my first impulse is to say no. A cow doesn’t play hockey! As I teeter precariously in indecision, I experience what I now recognize as Appelbaum’s “stop.” “Between closing and beginning lives a gap, a caesura, a discontinuity. The betweenness is a hinge that belongs to neither one nor the other. It is neither poised nor unpoised, yet moves both ways … It is the stop. (Applebaum, 1995, pp. 15–16). A stop asks that we pause and reconsider what action is possible… To say no would be to maintain the status quo in the power dynamics between teacher and student; to say no would be to play the curricular script as it is envisioned by the teacher; to say no would be to say no to a child’s offer, his love of hockey; to say no would be to fail to consider the possibility of a co-created emergent curriculum; to say no would be a failure to reimagine a familiar story through a child’s imagination. This stop moment between the child who wanted to be a cow who played goalie for the NHL and the director/ teacher with her own expectations of the role in question presented what I now recognize as a curricular and pedagogical crisis. 138 Lynn Fels

This moment of tension speaks to the importance of what Maxine Greene (1978) asks of educators: to attend to their work with “wide-awakeness.” So many of us, she proposes, sleepwalk through our lives, routinely attending to the tasks at hand. To be awake to what matters calls for an ethical and pedagogical alertness to the choice of actions that we make moment by moment in our daily encounters. Our actions in our relationships with children, with our students, with those we love, have consequences, and while we cannot anticipate all consequences, nor avoid all implications of our actions, we must be responsible for our actions in the moment, cognizant that each action may create one of many possible worlds that we imagine into being. We must not be careless in our choices. To be wide-awake, then, is to be mindful of the stops that occur in our everyday pedagogical experiences. Our responsibility as educators then is to be present and awake to pedagogical moments that offer us opportunities to go beyond the prescribed curricular scripts that are dictated to us by others (or by the limitations we impose upon ourselves) and trust in a child’s desire. Madeleine Grumet (1988) questions whether educators are merely handmaidens of the state, faithfully reproducing a curricular world of what is already known or expected to be known. What trespasses must be taken, what borders crossed, that new horizons might be explored? What kind of pedagogical country will I co-create with this child, I ask myself, if I say no to his imagining of a cow who plays hockey for the NHL? Ah, but if I say yes, new pedagogical relationships and curricular possibilities may emerge. To say yes, would be to “lay down a path in walking” (Machado, as cited in Varela, 1987), alongside with my students, rather than asking them to follow a road well travelled. “What we do,” Varela says, “is what we know, and ours is but one of many possible worlds. It is not a mirroring of the world, but the laying down of a world…” (1987, p. 62). A new play will evolve, not as I had imagined it or as the audience may be expecting, but as the children have created it to be.3 Arendt (1961) asks of educators that we love children enough to invite them into the world’s renewal, not as we would have it, but as they will come to embody it through their own imagination and action. As a pedagogical experience, the wonder that is Jack and Jill and the Beanstalk is not located in the play itself, but in the learning that I came to understand through listening anew to children’s ideas. The wonder is our shared experience co-creating the play, not as I had expected but as the children imagined it might be. Through this moment, and upon reflection, I come to understand that my responsibility as an educator and fellow traveller in their midst is to create the space and opportunity for children so that such wonder may occur. All forms of expression are created through action, and action is embodied within the forms that emerge.4 A tableau about a family having dinner together reveals students’ understanding of perceived relationships between parents and children, siblings, and the roles undertaken by individual members of a family. The Upside Down Picnic Table 139

The family rituals, practices, experiences, and ways of engagement are exposed through the students’ creative endeavors. The performances we create in improvisational play and in our lives express what we value, our relationships, our ideology, our expectations, our biases, our ambitions, our yearning and desires. In improvisational play, such as role drama, playbuilding, or tableaux, we respond through creative and critical action within a given context and environment, in relationship with others. Improvisational play allows us to replicate what is, comment upon how the world works, and explore new possibilities. My tale about the child who wanted to be a cow who played goalie for the NHL, what I perceived as a confrontational moment, was really about my own understanding and tensions of what it means to release curricular control; to respect and invite the ideas of my students, to be willing to incorporate their lived experiences into curricular explorations, and to truly understand how to be in a meaningful pedagogical relationship with a child. Reflecting on this stop through the years has had an impact on my teaching and relationships with my students. This stop was a catalyst that eventually led to my doctoral work, which in turn, resulted in the conceptualization and articulation of performative inquiry (Fels, 1998, 1999). Performative inquiry offers a theoretical understanding of how the arts create an action space for learning (Fels & Stothers, 1996). I realized that as an educational researcher I could turn to the medium of the arts as a way of doing research, and recognized the value of attending to the stop moments that occur within our pedagogical action sites of inquiry. The practice of performative inquiry through the arts is to come to understand who we are, and what matters, and how we might encounter the world anew with wonder.

Spilling Sand on a Linoleum Floor Fast forward three years, and this same drama educator, now a doctoral student, is teaching pre-service teachers the principles of teaching: classroom management, lesson planning, evaluation. She stops, and notes boredom on her students’ faces, and realizes that she too, standing behind the lectern, is similarly bored. A visiting cohort of student teachers from Australia has dropped by, and they too look less than captivated with her lecture. She feels a pang of panic and disillusionment. She sends them all off for a coffee break, and retreats to her office where she wonders how to rescue her lecture, and how to re-engage both herself and her students in the teaching that is her responsibility. And then a thought, What would happen if…? Searching through her props, she sighs with relief, and prepares for the second half of the lecture. Carefully, she pours cornmeal into a black bag. On the students’ return, they become silent, curious, as she motions them to gather around her. Glancing over her shoulder, she inquires if any one of them may have been followed. 140 Lynn Fels

“I was, but I detoured through an alley and lost him,” tentatively replies one student. “I had to strangle a guard,” confesses another. “He followed me to the door.” “Fool! We can have no violence. They will imprison us all.” She looks around the group, staring into the eyes of each person present. “Is there any one here who would betray us?” “No!” is the collective reply, and, satisfied, she pulls the black bag from her pocket. She spills golden grains of sand on the floor. She draws her finger through the sand, outlining a right-angle triangle, and announces a new mathematical formula. “Tell no one what you have learned here. Our lives are at risk if we are discovered,” she whispers. “Swear life long secrecy.” They nod and raise their wrists in consent, each bearing the sign of infinity inked on their skin, and begin arguing how to secure safe passage back to their homes. Boredom becomes engagement as the teacher in role as Pythagoras addresses her students as fellow conspirators; curriculum is experienced and embodied through improvisational play; a mathematical concept is learned within the historical context in which it was conceived. The wonder of the unexpected in the classroom that is improvisational play invites new ways of listening and being in attendance. This instructor’s moment of recognizing boredom on the faces of her students, and realizing that she too was bored, called forth two responses from the instructor: the first, one of pedagogical dismay; and the second, a desire to change the dynamics of learning in the room. How, I wondered, could I be bored, when I am the one giving the lecture? This moment truly was a stop! By shifting gears and inviting my students into the improvisational world of mathematics and intrigue,5 I offered my students a context and embodied experience that simultaneously enriched their interest in mathematics and illustrated the key principles of teaching that I was trying to share through my lecture. I learned, by attending to the stop that tugged on my sleeve, how important it is to be a teacher who listens to and responsively interacts with the learning experience of her students. A role play about Pythagoras’ secret society becomes an entry point into learning how to create engaging lesson plans, manage classroom dynamics, and create curricular relevance through story and improvisational play. During our debriefing, I confessed to my boredom during the first half of the lecture (yes, they all nodded, we were bored too). Speaking about curriculum, student engagement, and classroom management within the context of our experience together, I shared my own challenges and failures as an educator and talked about how strategies such as role drama and storytelling can enliven curriculum and engage students in learning. By participating in my impromptu role play, my students learned how engagement through improvisational play The Upside Down Picnic Table 141 opens up meaningful spaces for curiosity, collaborative inquiry and learning. They also learned that sometimes educators need to have courage to abandon their lesson plans, as I did with my lecture, and attend to the curriculum of the moment, in order that learning might occur.

Turning the Picnic Table and Educational Expectations Upside Down I stand, arms folded, watching, as the group begins their scene. The upside down picnic table is suddenly a pirate ship, with three rambunctious pirates shouting. “Look! To starboard! Swimming in the water!” The pirates brandish imaginary swords as two of the young female students swim in an imaginary sea. “Women!” “After them, mateys! We’ll capture them and make thousands of dollars in ransom!” “Not thousands, a million!” protests the oldest pirate, standing proud in the bow. The young women, squealing in protest, are captured, and dragged into the boat. “Oh, no!” shouts a pirate. “They’re university students.” “And from the University of —” moans another, naming a rival university. “Absolutely worthless!” snarls the aging pirate. “Toss them back into the water!” I frown, rolling my eyes as those around me laugh. But there is something familiar about this scene, something that calls to the child within me. The upside down picnic table tugs at a memory…

One sunny afternoon, a drama educator and her students, reluctant to spend the last remaining September light indoors, step outside the classroom to engage in site-specific performances. The instructor waves her arms expansively. “Go choose a place, and create a scene specific to that location.” One group turns a picnic table upside down, and with us all gathered around them, they perform a scene with a boatload of pirates. The pirates are wonderfully exaggerated in character and action, and soon I too begin to laugh. I recognize myself as I had once been as a child, the upside down picnic table reminiscent of the empty cardboard boxes and overturned chairs covered by blankets, in which my brother and I, as children, had sailed the seas. I forgive my students the upside down picnic table as I cherish the present moment and that long ago time, as a child, enraptured in a moment of play. But then, the scene dissolves into something unexpected. 142 Lynn Fels

A man emerges from the shadows. He shouts, “Grandpa! What are you doing? Why is the picnic table upside down? Are you off your meds again?”

And with that abrupt accusation, our imaginary scene of pirates morphs into one of a solitary old man, adrift with his hallucinations; his pirate playmates disappear from view, as the irate grandson leads the old man away, his heroic stance now stooped with shame and defeat. The picnic table becomes again, just what it is, a picnic table, turned upside down, like an old man’s life. And here is the wonder of the moment. That we are, as audience, swept into the imaginary world of pirates, perhaps remembering ourselves long ago as children at play, only to tumble into a world of illusions real and imagined of who we are and who we might become, to anticipate, through the old man’s stumble away from us, our own impending losses, frailties and needs—a momentary glimpse of unseen worlds, worlds desired, and worlds yet to be experienced. And I recognize in that initial moment of seeing the upside down picnic table that is my stop, a pedagogical and curricular failure to imagine new possible worlds of renewal yet to unfold. How could I have been thinking of deducting marks? How could I have failed to trust my students in their offering? What opportunities for learning might emerge from this moment in which I saw at first only an upside down picnic table and students ignoring the boundaries of my instructions? I am reminded yet again—a moment of recognition that comes now through reflection—how rich the offerings of my students are in response to my invitations to engage in improvisational play. This stop reminds me how limited and limiting my own expectations are; that when students are offered the opportunity to play, to create, to engage in a project of inquiry, imagination, and renewal, a rich curriculum of issues, close to the heart, may be illuminated and explored. The learning that emerges from collaborative creative action is one that cannot be imagined in the solitary room that is our own imperfect understanding. The wonder of improvisational play through the researcher’s and educator’s lens of performative inquiry, is that we are called to stop, to attend, to reflect, and to see again that which is the gift of learning.

A Moment, a Child of Duration

And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world. (Arendt, 1961, p. 196) The Upside Down Picnic Table 143

As mentioned earlier, Hannah Arendt asks us if we love children enough so as to invite them to engage in the world’s renewal. If so, we must then ask ourselves: with what strategies might we engage our students so that they may experience the wonder of learning? As teachers, we need to attend to the melodies of our temperature of the moment, and ask ourselves how else we might be in action in the presence of those who journey with and beyond us. All three stories that I shared with you—the boy who wanted to be a cow that played goalie with the NHL, the lecturer bored with her own lecture, the overturning of a picnic table by students—call upon the educator to be wide- awake, present, and attentive to the stops that are action sites of learning. We become the teachers we are by being present to and in the presence of those we teach who in turn, if we are willing, become our teachers. Each stop, seen through the lens of performative inquiry, becomes itself an action site of learning. The challenge is whether or not we are willing to learn to identify and attend to the stops that tug on our sleeve in the chaotic dance that is our lives, to pause to reflect upon why this stop, this moment of unease, arrests us. In such a way, by attending mindfully to each stop, through reflection and questioning, we may come to moments of recognition, new learning that will shape our pedagogical journey. Such mindful attention to our pedagogical engagement with our students through a co-created curriculum requires compassion and a willingness to learn from those moments that call us to attention. Jana Milloy (2007) writes, “a moment, a child of duration” (p. 157) and I imagine each stop moment as a pedagogical child, one whose responsibility is ours to attend to with care and compassion. The stops that arrest us as we engage with our students are moments that will have life-long consequences for us all, like a butterfly’s wing that sets the air stirring. Thus we must attend to such moments with care; they are children of consequence whose presence will endure long after we have departed. Stops matter. They are our invitation to step beyond what we already know. And, in response, our students recognize our offering to them when we venture together beyond known horizons. One day I arrived at my classroom to discover a hand-printed sign taped on the door by one of my students: “Beware, the walls of this classroom have been known to disappear.” The wonder of learning is that we do not learn alone, but in the presence with and in the grace of our students who journey with us. Each stop moment is a gift that reminds us that something else is possible. Our challenge, as educators, is to reimagine our curriculum as a curriculum of the moment, an emergent unfolding of creative and critical pedagogical opportunities for possible action, moment to moment, as we listen to the melodies of our temperature in harmony, dissonance, vulnerability, and interplay with each other. The upside down picnic table is an invitation to attend with heart and imagination to our pedagogy, our curriculum as it emerges in our presence, our way of being in the world, and to understand that how we engage with our students is our threshold to wonder. 144 Lynn Fels

Notes 1 Improvisational play may be role drama, play building, improvisation, creating scenes, tableau, embodied storytelling or any other drama activity that we collectively engage in as creative and critical inquiry, exploration, and expression. 2 When I create plays with children I invite them to improvise each scene in the play (“What does the cow say when Jack and Jill come to take her away to the market? Let’s try it and see what happens”) instead of asking children to memorize scripts. I use this play creation technique of improvisation to scene so that the children feel ownership of the play; understand what they are saying and why because the words they are saying and the actions created are theirs; and, that they understand, as long as the meaning of what they are saying is retained, that the words may be changed or improvised during performance, thus avoiding those awkward moments that everyone experiences when a child forgets his or her lines. 3 The audience was surprised not only by the cow that played hockey for the NHL, but also by the ending (which also surprised me in its creation) in which a police officer arrives to arrest Jack and Jill and the Giant for killing the Giant! (see Fels, 2009). 4 My thanks to Rebecca Christofferson whose Master’s thesis, Dancing in the Belly: Performative Inquiry in Pregnancy, first introduced me to Elliott Eisner’s concept of action as being embodied within form (see also Fels, 2010). 5 My sincere appreciation to Skye Richards who created the role drama on Pythagorus for a summer drama education course that she participated in, from which I drew my inspiration. See Fels & Belliveau, 2008. I would also like to truly thank Patrick Verriour, my thesis supervisor, who first introduced me to pedagogical possibilities and practices of role drama (see Tarlington & Verriour, 1991).

Resources Appelbaum, D. (1995). The Stop. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Arendt, H. (1961). Between Past and Future: Six Exercises of Political Thought. New York: Viking. Barba, E. (1995). The Paper Canoe: A Guide to Theatre Anthropology. R. Fowler (Trans.). London, UK: Routledge. Christofferson, R. (2009). Dancing in the Belly: Performative Inquiry in Pregnancy. Unpublished Master’s thesis. Vancouver, B.C.: Simon Fraser University. Fels, L. (1998). In the wind, clothes dance on a line. Journal of Curriculum Theory, 14(1), 27–36. Fels, L. (1999). In the Wind Clothes Dance on a Line—Performative Inquiry as a Research Methodology. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation. Vancouver, B.C.: University of British Columbia. Fels, L. (2009). Performative inquiry: arresting the villains in Jack and the Beanstalk. Journal for Learning through the Arts. Irvine, CA.: University of California. http:// repositories.cdlib.org/clta/lta/vol4/iss1/art2 Fels, L. (2010). A dead man’s sweater: performative inquiry embodied and recognized. In Schonmann, S. (Ed.), Key Concepts in Theatre Drama Education. Netherlands: Sense, 339–343. Fels, L. & Belliveau, G. (2008). Exploring Curriculum: Performative Inquiry, Role Drama and Learning. Vancouver, B.C.: Pacific Educational Press. The Upside Down Picnic Table 145

Fels, L. & Stothers, L. (1996). Academic performance: between theory and praxis. In O’Toole, J. (Ed.), Drama, Culture and Education (pp. 255–261). Brisbane, Australia: IDEAS. Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of Learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Grumet, M. (1988). Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press. Machado, A. (1930). Proverbios y cantqres. F. Varelo (Trans., 1987) (p. 63). In W.I. Thompson (Ed.), GAIA, a Way of Knowing: Political Implications of the New Biology, (pp. 48–64). Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne. Milloy, J. (2007). Persuasions of the Wild: Writing the Moment, a Phenomenology. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Burnaby, B.C.: Simon Fraser University. Tarlington, C. & Verriour, P. (1991). Role Drama. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Varela, F. (1987). Laying down a path in walking. In W.I. Thompson (Ed.), GAIA, a Way of Knowing: Political Implications of the New Biology (pp. 48–64). Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne. This page intentionally left blank Part III Dimensions of Educational Wonder This page intentionally left blank 10 Wonder, Awe and Teaching Techniques

Kieran Egan

Introduction As many chapters of this book have made clear, there are good reasons to believe that developing students’ sense of wonder during their schooling is important to their engagement with the content of the curriculum and their effectiveness as learners. Techniques can help teachers to make routine the engagement with wonder that otherwise relies on rare inspiration and intuition. “Wonder” and “technique” seem to many to be almost antithetical, and yet I want to write about the techniques we can develop for making wonder, and awe, more common and educationally effective components of all teachers’ toolkit. For ancient Greeks, who divided up for us much of our conceptual world, techne was used to refer to a skill, a craft, or an art, with a suggestion always of practical uses rather than of the theoretical world of episteme or theory in general. At least that is the way we tend to interpret techne as a result of the re-shaping of our conceptual world over the millennia since Plato and Aristotle launched their project to revolutionize the way people think. For Plato, the running of his ideal Republic required its leaders to be able to interpret the forms of Justice, and other large concepts. He argued that the intellectual skill required for this, we might think, highly abstract and theoretical activity requires the appropriate techne. Aristotle, who is more commonly referred to as a source of a definition of techne, gives his most extended account of it as one of the valued components, or virtues, of thinking (along with episteme, phronesis, sophia, and nous: Nicomachean Ethics, 1139b15). Aristotle’s use of the term is usually translated as “craft” or “art,” suggesting again a more modern sense of a distinction between the purely theoretical and purely practical. But Aristotle’s sense of techne also carries some 150 Kieran Egan of the complexity that we may see in Plato’s varied uses of the term. It does involve certainly a general practical reasoning, but when Aristotle discusses, say, what is required for sound medical knowledge and practice, we find him using the terms techne and episteme almost synonymously, and he contrasts them with empeiria, which is the kind of limited knowledge and skill available to someone who has experience (but lacks techne and episteme). That is, the empirically equipped medical practitioners can prescribe certain treatments based on their past experience of what seems to work in specific cases that look alike, but they lack the more complex understanding and skill that come with the other forms of thinking and understanding of medicine. So techne is more close to episteme— the most refined theoretical understanding––than it is to the kind of empirical knowledge and craft with which it is usually equated. Well, this odd slog through some old Greeks and their refined distinctions needs some justification. My point is to suggest that the casual way in which we tend to see techniques in education as subservient second-cousins to our sense of aims and our ideals for helping generate a sense of wonder in our students about the contents of the curriculum is misguided. A number of chapters in this book, of course, do describe techniques and practices that may be considered crucial in evoking wonder, but what I want to do here is focus simply on how we can see wonder as a techne proper to everyday teaching, and to recognize that the techniques of evoking wonder are not simply practical matters but that the appropriate techniques are caught up, of necessity, in understanding how wonder works and what it means. Clarifying something about how wonder works and what it means is, I think, made easier by considering its related educational virtue, a sense of awe.

The Senses of Awe and Wonder The other great historical influence on our sense of wonder is Romanticism. We see within Romanticism a kind of ambivalence between the imaginative attraction toward myth and fantasy on the one hand, and a focus on the particularity of the real world on the other. This ambivalence seems to be a central characteristic of romance, and a commonly observed feature of students’ mental lives, particularly in the middle-school years. In Romanticism, and in many middle through secondary school-aged students, one prominent exemplar of this tension is captured in the figure of the hero. A hero is, it has no doubt been said before, a partially domesticated god. Gods absolutely transcend the constraints of humanly perceived reality; heroes are caught within the natural order but they transcend the constraints of fear, ignorance, powerlessness, or whatever, that hem in our everyday lives. By associating with their courage, wisdom, or power, we pulley ourselves along a little in their direction, or we vicariously enjoy transcending the limits that shape Wonder, Awe and Teaching Techniques 151 our humdrum lives. (“Speak for yourself,” I sense you saying.) The pulleying activity works only if we also are aware of the techniques whereby we can do this, especially if “this” is developing a sense of wonder. Another aspect of this attempted romantic transcendence of mundane reality and experience is the capacity to perceive the world with awe and wonder. Developing this capacity is also a technique we can work to develop in ourselves and in our students. Awe is an “overflow of powerful feelings” that results from confronting everyday features of the world and experience as simply external forms of some internal mystery. The external features of the world and experience contain many problems and puzzles that we may rationally seek to explain, such things as the structure of the physical world, the origins of life and the universe, why the bread always falls butter side down, and so on. But beyond these, there is the mystery of why there is existence rather than non- existence, or, as Leibnitz put it, why there is something rather than nothing. When we face the underlying mystery rather than the superficial puzzles, we have no applicable methodologies of inquiry and our only available response, as the reality of the mystery becomes meaningful, is awe. Most commonly people have directed their sense of awe to religion, and one may say indeed that awe is the prime religious emotion. And while God in various forms has commonly been the object of this sense, awe also finds many other kinds of expression. Whether it is the pantheism that some claim to observe in Romanticism, or Wordsworth’s overflowing emotion on seeing daffodils or mountain streams, or the farmer on a summer evening filled with unnamable emotion as he watches the sun set on his ripening wheat, or the mother watching her sleeping baby, or any of us feeling some sense of ecstatic awe at times of fullest meaning, we recognize a quality of human experience that enriches our lives. It is a quality connected with love, and it is when our experience is infused with this emotion that we most understand what it means to have a love of life. It is what stimulates us sometimes to dance rather than to walk, to sing rather than to talk. And it is something we feel must be a central component of what we communicate to children in any educational program worthy of the name. One November morning, I sat in an unheated convocation room with my fellow Franciscan novices waiting for our first lesson on the Psalms. Father Adrian, old and very thin, came in and sat at the small table in front of us. He waited for silence and began in his clear, quick, clipped voice: “If you look at any religion in operation, you will find a morality; when you look at it reflecting on life and itself, you will find a theology; but, my dear brothers in St. Francis, when you get to the heart of a religion, you will find a song.” At the heart of Judaism and Christianity, he said, were the Psalms. Whatever one makes of this, it suggests the relationship between the sense of awe that is at the heart of a religion and the enriching of experience. The sense of awe, however, reflects a mental capacity to be developed by the atheist no less than by the religious. It 152 Kieran Egan seems to appear very particularly early in adolescence, commonly in a passionate delight in the more spectacular natural phenomena—the mountain views, the gold and scarlet sunsets, and so on. To be without this sense of awe at the mystery of things is to lack an important constituent of an educated understanding. To be without it is necessarily to lack an understanding of what has generated huge parts of western and eastern cultures. To be without it means that while one may be able to learn about outward features of those cultures’ achievements and products, one will be unable to understand and appreciate them except in the most superficial way; they will not, that is to say, engage one’s sense of awe. To be without a sense of awe is to lack a capacity that can transfigure mundane experience into something rich and strange. But to be without awe is not a result of our simply lacking some genetic element that some have and some do not; it can be developed in anyone by application of the appropriate teaching techniques. Now I do recognize that this discussion of awe is somewhat removed from the common experience of classrooms today. Planning lessons and units, getting resources, arranging for audio-visual media, designing evaluation instruments, and so on, tends not to leave much time for considering how to stimulate students’ sense of awe. My point is that it is an important constituent of human understanding whose stimulation and development is of educational importance. So any adequate planning framework and curriculum content will need to take account of it. There is probably little point trying to push for a neat and precise distinction between wonder and awe, as they are so commonly used as synonyms. I would like to note a difference, however, between the sense of awe at the mystery underlying the most commonplace features of our existence on the one hand, and wonder at the most amazing and exotic features of reality on the other. Awe is the preservation of the sense of magic that is consistent with rationality; wonder is a related response to what is comprehensible but amazing or unique in some way. Wonder is concerned with the rationally graspable, awe with the mysteries of existence that are the ultimate and inaccessible backdrop against which the rationally graspable is played out. This is not a distinction that will probably count for much in practical terms, but it is probably useful to keep somewhat distinct from our wondering engagement with knowledge a deeper sense of awe that we need also to stimulate. Wonder is a kind of surprise mingled with admiration or curiosity or bewilderment (suggests the Oxford English Dictionary). A significant feature of wonder is the combination of exclusive attention to the object of wonder and the desire to know more about it, either because there is something rare and puzzling about it or because it is intrinsically fascinating. Wonder seems to need much less elaboration than awe, especially as there are a number of excellent accounts given in other chapters of the book. This is not to suggest that it is Wonder, Awe and Teaching Techniques 153 any less important nor any less a constituent of our educated minds, but only to acknowledge that much more has been said and written about it. And while it is not exactly a common topic in educational textbooks, it is something that most teachers readily recognize and acknowledge as educationally significant. I have spent some time discussing “awe” because I think it overlaps considerably with the theme of this book. While not everyone makes the distinction between awe and wonder, or makes it the way I am doing, most of these chapters also deal with some aspects of awe, and our sense of the meaning of “Wonder-full” in the title of the book also involves a sense of awe. This constituent of education and understanding also has nothing much to do with equality of opportunity for social and economic advancement. Even so, it is an important human capacity that any educational institution should be committed to develop in students. Also, I think it important to emphasize that the senses of wonder and awe are not things to be touched on perhaps in literature or art classes only. Rather, as a constituent of any adequately educated mind, it will need to be stimulated and developed across the whole curriculum. Science and mathematics no less than poetry can stimulate our sense of awe, and can be better understood if they do so.

The Exotic Teachers are commonly told to begin with what students find most familiar. If we want to engage their imaginations, however, beginning with what is most exotic and unfamiliar seems at least as good a principle, and—I have argued (Egan, 2008)—generally a principle much better in keeping with the mental lives of middle-school-aged students. As all sorts of things can be heroic, so everything is potentially strange and exotic if one can only see it in the right light. Even the most commonplace features of our environment can be seen as the products of amazing ingenuity, struggles, natural forces, and persisting energy. This is not to suggest that our lessons should induce incessant neuron- popping excitement, but that teachers might be attentive to some exotic features in the materials in which they hope to engage students’ imaginations. But it is to suggest that we encourage teachers to develop the technique involved in finding in the content they intend to teach what is exotic, strange, mysterious about it, and everything has such features. The technique is required to discover these features, to bring them to the surface, and to use them to engage students’ imaginations. Relatedly, students’ imaginations are stimulated and engaged by the wonderful. And, again, everything we look upon is wonderful, in one light or another. Learning to see anything in this way is a technique that can be learned. The artistry of teaching is expressed in being able to make evident to students some sense of what is wonderful about whatever material is being dealt with. 154 Kieran Egan

Here, too, the teacher will sensibly not seek to stimulate incessant wonder in students, creating wonder-addicts who can then not bear to deal with more routine learning. Rather, pointing up some features of a topic that can stimulate students’ sense of wonder is occasionally useful in keeping their imaginations engaged while learning. Similarly, teachers might be attentive to stimulating a sense of awe about some aspect of the subject matter to be learned. The sense of awe can be evoked at any point when one can show a glimpse of some mystery underlying what might normally be taken for granted. Attached to awe is a hint of fear: basically, I think, a fear that our routine ways of making sense of the world and experience are ultimately inadequate, and that our claims to secure knowledge are either groundless or wildly mistaken. The stimulation of a sense of awe seems to me of considerable educational importance; it can provide a source of proper humility about the intellectual grasp we gain on reality and about our claims to knowledge. This sense of awe is one of the roots of irony—the dissolver of certainties. And again, one would not want lessons that constantly induce awe-struck numbness, but occasional hints of it will stimulate imaginative engagements with subject matter. I have prudently omitted from this sub-heading another colleague of the exotic, wonder, and awe, and I might be more prudent simply to ignore it here. But, as you can see, I am being imprudent enough to discuss a related stimulant of students’ imaginations in the relatively peaceful, routine, socially-quite-well- disciplined democracies of the West. That is, horror. Horror, like awe, is an emotion induced by the threatened breakdown of the sustaining intellectual frameworks of our lives. Those frameworks seem so secure to typical early adolescents that threats to their breakdown create an attraction to horror. My concern about imprudence here is that some careless reader may think that my mentioning this commonplace of students’ mental lives means that I am recommending lessons and units that induce crawling horror and screaming terror for the average classroom. Careful readers will, I trust, note that I do not do this. Rather I want to draw attention to the fact of the immense attraction horror has to typical students, especially, again, around the middle-school years. It is (I clearly believe) no coincidence that Mary Shelley, wife of the Romantic poet, wrote Frankenstein, or that horror is a significant element of Romantic literature. The only conclusion I would draw from this observation is that the protective sanitizing of everything permitted to enter the classroom is far more likely to be psychologically damaging than recognizing, particularly in placid and peaceful times and places, the therapeutic role of horror. Perhaps this might mean no more than being more tolerant of literature that includes horrific elements, and recognizing that horror, too, is a stimulant of the imagination. And, of course, one must be cautious about the potential effects of any of the above on students who may be unstable in one way or another. That caution is Wonder, Awe and Teaching Techniques 155 misguided, however, it seems to me, if it goes to the extreme of ignoring the potential of the exotic, wonder, awe, and horror in stimulating the imagination.

Wonderful Stories To see the Morning Glory or Goliath or Grendel—or the guy next door, your mother, or your teacher—as embodiments of some transcendent qualities, and thus in some degree wonderful, requires an act of imagination, in some cases more than others! To see them so is indeed an exercise of imagination and an exercise of a learnable technique. What we do by projecting such transcendent qualities onto them and then romantically associating with those qualities is to see the objects no longer as something we may simply learn about or observe but as something we also feel about. And we feel about them because, however fleetingly, we fit them into narratives with aims, intentions, causes, conflicts, ends, and human emotions. We put them, that is to say, into stories. The Morning Glory is no longer a particular weed to be uprooted, but a protagonist in a drama. The garden becomes an arena, the world a stage. This technique of “storyfication” of the world shows both the power and the weakness of wonder. Its power is to vivify whatever it touches; its weakness is that it leaves largely meaningless what it does not or cannot touch. But as this book is about its power, let us go on, but let us also bear in mind that wonder can have a downside if we appreciate it exclusively of other modes of understanding our world; we can become sentimental about wonder and its attractions, and that is a loss to education no less than an education that omits wonder. While appreciating something as wonderful does not create elaborated stories about whatever it is with beginnings, middles, and ends, the sense of wonder does hint at some more elaborate meaning of the object involved. Wonder at the inexorability of the unstoppable Morning Glory does not involve an articulated story, but it suggests a story; in this case, the common one in which there is a conflict between two forces bent on conquering or repelling attack. Whether we associate with the gardener or the Morning Glory, or with both in succession, our appreciation is enhanced by its being fitted, if only momentarily, into an available story form or plot. The simplest form of stories that invite a sense of wonder to develop has a hero or heroine who struggles against unattractive opponents and prevails. The events unfold in such a way that we can associate with the hero’s or heroine’s transcendent qualities—of ingenuity, goodness, energy, toughness, or whatever—and share the glory of their success. Given the way TV series have routinized the stimulation of admiration for the central character(s), of distress as they are threatened, and of that curious pleasure when they prevail, we may find our responses may have become casual to the point of being subconscious. Such stories encourage an easy association with a character who embodies 156 Kieran Egan transcendent qualities. The appeal to males in particular of cowboy stories or science fiction stories commonly involves the romantic association with self- reliant loners, isolated from the securities of life, facing a generally hostile environment that neither knows nor cares about them. The Sergio Leone films, with Clint Eastwood as the largely silent hero revengefully overcoming his foes, take this stock romantic character to what must be some kind of limit, or make a stereotype of it. They clearly attract the sense of wonder involved in perhaps an immature self-reliance and toughness, while at the same time allowing a kind of “high camp” pleasure to more mature audiences. This kind of figure has been common in romantic literature from the beginning. The archetypal romantic hero is the knight on a noble quest, meeting mysterious dangers, performing wonderfully valorous deeds, and prevailing in the end. In later Gothic romantic fiction “the crucial figure is that of the anachronistic hero, representative of an older and nobler world who survives into a world that has lost integrity and honour and who serves as a reminder of other possibilities and other values” (Morse, 1982, p. 4). Anne Radcliffe wrote hugely popular Gothic romances of this kind, which prominently included also that other romantic role of the noble but beleaguered heroine. We do, of course, have romantic stories in which the hero loses in his struggle and we may deliciously associate with the defeat, while knowing that in some better world the transcendent quality will prevail. Such stories are quite different from tragedies; the supports of our sanity are not at stake, but are, rather, reinforced. Perhaps a judicious re-editing might bring us a better Star Wars sequence as the Faustian romantic saga of Darth Vader. Another aspect of this association with transcendent self-reliance is evident in the common early adolescent interest in spying and keeping secret diaries, and preserving secrets and communicating them in codes. This aspect seems more common in girls in Western culture so far (see, e.g., Bowen, 1964). For whatever reasons, boys’ engagements with this realm tend to focus on code- making/breaking and communicating in code, and also quite commonly in magic, such as conjuring and card-tricks. A related area where boys’ and girls’ interests seem often to come together is that of piracy. At least this seems common in middle-class students who have access to the Arthur Ransome books, with their sea-going boys and girls and exotic female pirate chiefs like Missee Lee. Domesticated piracy, spying, diary-keeping, codes, and secrets all bolster the sense of self as secure, powerful, and knowledgeable against an everyday world which so frequently seems to embody those characteristics against the insecure, powerless, and generally unknowledgeable early adolescent self. The girl’s secret diary with elaborate locks and hidden key, or the iPad documents with elaborate passwords, transforms the daily events of her family and school into scarlet dramas, with the knowing writer at the center of the web. Wonder, Awe and Teaching Techniques 157

By turning others’ actions into one’s own words, in which one can ascribe motive, one gets a measure of control over the otherwise alien and mysterious interiority of others. Girls particularly, for whatever reasons, often weave worlds in their imaginative play. The roots of the tree around which they sit are woven into magic countries and elaborate romantic adventures. When the imagination has had less literary material to draw on, it may be boys or pop-stars who are woven into imaginative and romantic narratives. In more literary backgrounds, it can generate worlds of an intense vividness such that reality becomes the shadow world. This is especially the case when female lives are confined and their imaginations are allowed no adequate range of action in the world. Anne and Emily Brontë, for example, invented the imaginary world of Gondal, which became the setting for many of their dramatic poems. Branwell collaborated with Charlotte, creating the imaginary world of Angria about whose history and characters Charlotte wrote many stories that foreshadowed many of the themes of her mature novels. I should mention the Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, and related video games here, as an example of the engaging power of some of the characteristics of romantic stories. Boys particularly can become totally involved in these adventures, with masses of realistic (plausibly impossible) detail, associating with transcendent qualities, chance encounters with dangers of various kinds, and so on. All these forms of storying can be brought to bear on the curriculum. The features I have focused on above––the transcendent qualities, horror and the exotic, awe, wonder itself, and so on––can be located in every aspect of the science, math, social studies, and other curriculum areas. The fact that this discussion likely seems exotic itself is one marker of how completely we have tended to ignore what is, after all, a central component of valued human experience.

A Wonder-full Curriculum Given some of the discussion above, it would seem that a curriculum chosen to bring out the sense of wonder will likely incline us to select content that exemplifies the extremes of human achievement and natural phenomena. But it can also direct us to bring out the wonder of the everyday world around students. Much of the world is so taken for granted that it is hardly noticed. This principle might lead us to a curriculum area called something like “The technology of familiar things.” In brief periods of time, perhaps twice each week, students would focus on the wonders of, say, nails and screws. The aim would be to make the familiar strange, by sharing the human purposes that stimulated human energy and ingenuity to refashion the world, or even tiny parts of it. (In a trivial fashion some children’s magazines do this by asking us to recognize familiar 158 Kieran Egan things when photographed from unusual angles, or when greatly magnified, etc. What I am suggesting is a kind of intellectual analog of this, in which our understanding of the familiar is enhanced by recognizing familiar elements of our environment in new, wonderful contexts.) A further extension of this idea is captured in the “Learning in Depth” program, in which students focus on a particular topic for many years (www.ierg.net/LiD); over time and increasingly intensive knowledge of a topic, what was once seemingly straightforward and known, becomes increasingly strange and mysterious, and wonderful. Developing the sense of wonder could also incline us to provide for students a somewhat similar brief daily or weekly curriculum area dealing with a series of unrelated questions that students could raise and/or answer: are the stars round? How can birds fly? Who built the Mexican pyramids? Why are roads built higher in the middle? What good are mosquitoes? Who made the first computer? Must all things end? Why are some people color-blind?, and so endlessly on. The purpose here is not to teach physics, or astronomy, or history, but simply to raise, without pedagogical fuss, question after question about the world. And to answer them, without the kind of pedagogical fuss one sees in “discovery” strategies. Such strategies have their pedagogical uses, of course, but in this segment of the curriculum we are interested in raising questions and giving answers, directly, frequently, and in random order. The criterion for choosing questions and determining what kind of answer will suffice is to be derived directly from the principle of stimulating wonder and awe. One aspect of that stimulation comes from the exotic and dramatic; another, I am suggesting, should come from seeing the familiar as appropriately wonderful; and another aspect again by simply encouraging students persistently to wonder about the world, and to satisfy their wonder with a further wonder. Our questions, therefore, will make the student wonder about what may have been taken for granted; for example, how can birds fly? The answer, which need touch on only dramatic parts of the answer like hollow bones and the design and movement of feathers on wings, provides further things to wonder at. (This does not displace more detailed and systematic study of such questions in history, biology, mathematics, and so on.) More commonly, however, this principle will direct us to stop and reflect on each topic, bringing to the fore what is wonderful about it. “Wonderful” is a word whose overuse has made it rather tired and empty. We are trying in this book to use it in a way that holds its proper meaning: of that before which we properly stand in wonder. Students need to meet this intensity with a curriculum that can adequately stimulate it and show it a world worthy of it. If the curriculum we offer students lacks wonder and awe, then we undercut important potential educational developments. If we do not stimulate their sense of wonder, we leave them victims of an intensity of boredom in schools, and the victims of any kind of sensation out of it. If this aspect of wonder is not properly developed, students fall easily into various forms of cynicism. And the ability to stimulate Wonder, Awe and Teaching Techniques 159 and develop wonder in the curriculum is a matter of learnable technique, which we would be wise to cultivate.

Conclusion “Real life was only a squalid interruption to an imaginary paradise” was how Bernard Shaw (1988, p. 191) described childhood and adolescence. It is a fair characterization of life for those who are fortunate enough to have, as Shaw did, access to the kinds of cultural materials that feed the imagination with a sense of wonder. But one sees that it is also students who are full of life and energy when caught up with their romantic associations, and who become like a dull rag, overwhelmed with boredom, when having to engage in the routine matters of everyday schooling. The sense of wonder grasps well the kinds of features that I have tried to characterize in this chapter, but it is poor at grasping the everyday routines; they remain relatively meaningless. The girl dragged from her wonder-full world-construction with a friend to rake leaves, or the boy dragged from being a Dungeon-master to lay the table, typically show that these conceptual capacities are tied powerfully in with emotional engagements. What is brought into focus by the sense of wonder is bright, larger and bolder, and more noble and better than daily life, but what it does not bring into focus is diminished, suppressed, darkened. The main conceptual problem for our developing a sense of wonder is proportion. What I have tried to describe in this chapter, then, are some capacities, not commonly discussed in educational textbooks, which are nevertheless appropriate constituents of an educated mind. Central among them is the capacity to form associations with people, things, institutions, or rather with the transcendent human qualities that can be embodied in, or projected into, such people, things, institutions, or whatever. We can use this capacity to see things as wonderful, to highlight and vivify aspects of the world and of experience, by associating with the qualities we find in them that most transcend the routines of the everyday world or that most resist its constraints and limits. In the vision of the wonderful, certain selected things stand out bright and clear and somewhat larger than life against a dull and diminished backdrop. The students’ view of themselves, their group or gang, and their “associates”—whether people, events, ideas, games, institutions, weeds—takes on, if only momentarily, a special importance and significance, and the rest of the world, including adult mores and concerns, are proportionately considered less significant. This ability to focus on the wonderful is a technique that we can train and develop in others. One of the central educational concerns raised by most of the great educational thinkers from Plato on was how to overcome the apparent inevitability that after the energy of their earliest years, most people’s minds become dull mirrors of 160 Kieran Egan the ideas, opinions, and confusions that pass for adult thinking, according to the conventions of society at large. How can one keep the mind awake, and not have it sink into an ossified slumber—mashing metaphors—reflecting back whatever are the conventions of the time? Whitehead described all western philosophy as merely footnotes to Plato. What is lost, it seems reasonable to claim, is the sense of wonder, the sense that allows us to continue to see the world as wonder- full. One of the greatest educational thinkers, who is largely ignored because he foolishly wrote his educational ideas in incomparable verse, is William Wordsworth. He expressed the problem vividly. He began by recalling that in his earlier remembering:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell’d in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream.

But he also recognizes now in his adult experience:

But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth. ….. Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Well, he suggests that what is a common feature of our experience in early youth, in retrospect, is that:

Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, Until: At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

This is a poetic way of putting the problem we seem to recognize too little and have few apparent remedies for. The authors of this book suggest that the remedy is keeping alive the sense of wonder, because it is one of the great stimulants of the imagination. This sense of wonder and imagination are not opposed to the development of rational forms of thinking—rather they give rationality energy and enlarge its power. As Wordsworth noted in his main educational treatise, that imagination is “amplitude of mind,/ And Reason in her most exalted mood” (The Prelude, VI, ll. 107/8). Wonder, Awe and Teaching Techniques 161

The socializing that custom and conventional ideas performs on us is of course crucial to making us social beings, able to get by among our fellows. But, if we are not careful, that weight of convention and custom seeps through our whole lives, heavy as frost, and that distinctive Western enterprise we call education is frozen at the start and cannot get adequately underway. Wordsworth’s answer, which I am drawing on, is for a particular energetic kind of understanding which begins to build rational thought through the activity of our imagination and our sense of wonder. It is a matter of developing appropriate techniques, and I think we should make such techniques prominent in the training of teachers. Examples of how this may be done can be found on the website of the Imaginative Education Research Group (www.ierg.net). The technique, and general principle underlying the work of the IERG, is that it is not so much a matter of adding wonder to the curriculum as it is a process of uncovering the wonder and awe that exist there already.

References Bowen, Elizabeth (1964). The Little Girls. New York: Knopf. Egan, Kieran (2008). Start with what the student knows or with what the student can imagine? Imagine: BCATA Journal for Art Teachers, 49(2), 4–7. (Reprinted from Phi Delta Kappan, 84, 443–445.) Morse, David (1982). Romanticism. London: Macmillan. Shaw, Bernard (1988). Collected Letters, Vol. 4 (Dan H. Lawrence, ed.). London: Max Reinhardt. 11 Wonder for Sale

Annabella Cant

Market or Pawn-shop? Imagine a market place… full of lights, life, and laughter. Place this market in any age you wish. I imagine it in medieval toward modern times because, even though life was extremely harsh and short, children seemed to have a visible resilience in the face of their austere environment. Keep on imagining people milling around a market and gathering around a very unusual display table. They are all looking at my merchandise… searching for my wares… but to everyone’s surprise, there is nothing on my table; it is completely empty to the naked eye. Welcome to my dream. I am the merchant in this image, so bear with me. No one leaves my table because what I sell is known to have been lost forever. Interestingly, there are no children interested in my products. I hear a little boy saying, “Why would anyone pay for something we all have for free?” and he runs off to play with his friends. You might wish to imagine the scenario further and place it in the midst of Brueghel’s Children’s Game painting (1560). What I am selling is special. My marketing posters (drawn by chalk) and trumpet announcers proclaim that my merchandise can surround us like mist and still help us to clarify our thoughts. It can help us see beyond what watching can convey. It can help us understand as well as know; it also has magical powers of transforming the usual into the unusual, the straight into the uneven and the cloudy into the clear. My product has helped millions cope with the vicissitudes of their lives and others win hopeless battles. What I am selling has contributed to the creation and conception of the most astonishing art and science! It was the closest friend of the following Wonder for Sale 163 ambassadors of human genius (from past and future). I will let them continue to tell you about it through their own words:

1 Leonardo da Vinci: “I wandered for some time among the shady rocks and finally came to the entrance of a great cavern […] Standing there, I was suddenly struck by two things, fear and longing: fear of the dark ominous cavern; longing to see if inside there was something wonderful.” 2 Michelangelo: “A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.” 3 Mozart: remember his nickname? 4 Einstein: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” (in Patrick and Chapman, 1935, p. 44)

I will stop here with the chain of indubitable evidence of these geniuses’ friendship with wonder, but the voices could continue for a lot longer. The power of these artists to see beyond the obvious, beyond the safe, palpable surface of things is shared by all of us in a certain period of our lives: especially in the beginning. Remember the butterflies in your stomach when something was hidden and you wanted to discover the mystery at all costs? Remember the courage you needed to put your hand under a blanket to find what was hidden? Remember the long minutes or hours of actively watching the stars, or the clouds, or just people walking by? Remember how everything found a logical sense, or even a new image in your mind and heart? Remember? As all good business people should do, I will try to share with my prospective buyers some facts about my product in order for them to understand the importance of this once-in-a-lifetime investment. I will take you on a journey of discovery first, visiting the history and semiology of my product and its name, then I will present a cynical reality of today’s schools and in the end, I will indicate what my merchandise costs. I decided to write this chapter with the intention of raising more awareness for the role of wonder in life and specifically in education. I would like to investigate why it seems that children have the capacity of perceiving life, information and emotions through the lens of wonder, and why I feel that this capacity dissipates with time. I will also refer to some studies that talk about the reality of schools today and also about the need of keeping children’s curiosity and wonder alive in order to help them reach overall success both in school and in life. 164 Annabella Cant

The Meaning of Wonder Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself. (Mark Twain)

Using Twain’s metaphor, I propose to “look” closer, with all our senses, into the meanings of the word “wonder” in order to feel the burning of its flames, its role and effects on us. A look into the origins of the word “wonder” communicates three different perspectives:

1. Material perspective (the physical features created by divinity); 2. Creative perspective (when the actual wonders were first ideals, then ideas); 3. Emotional perspective (emotions felt while experiencing the wonders in a multisensory way).

Its beginning sources show it as related to miraculous and humanly incomprehensible powers. It is not defined, but somehow understood by the imagination of the poets. A very important question has been burning in my mind since I started thinking of the need for an investigation into the roots of wonder: how can I investigate the meanings and forms of this word if, first, it does not exist in many other languages and, second, if it does have a translation, the meanings of the word are only small, scattered parts of the semiological complexity of the English word? Because I grew up in a bilingual environment, Romanian and Hungarian, I will take as example the Romanian language as one of the languages that do not have a word for “wonder.” Since 2008, I have been offering workshops to Romanian preschool and kindergarten teachers—as an educational trainer—in an effort to help the Romanian educational system to be more in touch with what is happening pedagogically in the world. My workshops have always tried to discuss new topics in international education. One of these topics happened to be the employment of the sense of wonder in the curriculum and in everyday teaching and learning. Creating and designing this workshop proved to be an extremely difficult process because of the lack of the word wonder in Romanian. The only translations of the word were the simplistic: miracle and the pragmatic: curiosity. These two terms were definitely not enough to paint a pedagogical role for wonder in early childhood education. To deal with this obstacle I decided to create a new word. Not an easy task! I ended up creating an acronym of some of the most important words that were signifying concepts that could be considered as part of the complexity of the English word. My new word was: FASNIUM. I present below the list of words/concepts that I have used to build it: F from Fascinatie—fascination; A from admiratie—admiration; S from Wonder for Sale 165 surpriza—surprise; N from neobisnuit—unusual; I from incantare—delight; U from uimire—astonishment; M from mirare—gape. Using this collection of words made it possible to translate, mostly through practical demonstrations of each, what wonder actually could signify in education and how every teacher should be aware of its educational power. What ties together all these concepts is visibly the emotional facet, an extremely important component of quality education. Adding emotion to the curriculum is a main first step toward reaching the students, engaging them in the content, and making sure that what is taught will be memorable. Let us inquire further into the mysteries of wonder… To be able to start grasping the concept that’s hidden within the word wonder we have to forget the very action of investigating. It is like reading a great book or watching a touching movie. Merleau-Ponty claims that:

The wonderful thing about language is that it promotes its own oblivion: my eyes follow the lines on the paper and from the moment I am caught up in their meaning, I lose sight of them. The paper, the letters on it, my eyes, my body are there only as a minimum setting of some invisible operation. (Merleau-Ponty, 2004, p. 200)

By forgetting the process, we seem to be better able to grasp the meanings; what we need is to let ourselves be taken up by the natural flow of reading, feeling, and understanding. A multitude of scholars has tried to pinpoint the exact ways wonder was used from its beginnings to today. We learn from Platt (1999) that the conversation about the uses of wonder in the Renaissance, for example, is not an easy task. He identifies two general and different avenues of this word’s meaning: one that had its source in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Poetics: wonder being generated by a difficult problem and then dissipated by a proper solution to it. This approach of the “Renaissance wonder” (p. 15) is summarized by Cunningham:

[Wondrous events] astonish the spectator so that he stands for the moment stone-still, but at the same time they demand explanation, and with this explanation, his emotion subsides and order prevails as on the stage at the close of the play order prevails in the state. (in Platt, p. 15)

The other Renaissance position towards wonder is opposite to the first, Aristotelian one; it emphasizes the power of wonder—as process—to push forward the frontiers of intellectual and aesthetic experience:

In this vision, wonder is ongoing and its own end; what diminishes is not wonder but the desire – indeed, the capacity – to bring reason to bear upon 166 Annabella Cant

it. This notion of the marvelous as a challenge to, rather than ultimately an affirmation of, epistemological certainties and aesthetic wholeness has recently received attention… (p. 15)

Both perspectives have the power of transforming education today. Imagine the curriculum and the teacher being able to constantly astonish children and make them “demand” explanations! Imagine learning as an ongoing desire for more knowledge fueled by educators’ talent to create this desire for knowledge in their students! This kind of education is not easy to institute because school—as we currently conceive of it—demands order and predictability. And yet, wonder requires something entirely different. Wonder breaks boundaries and creates new ones; it re-draws the contour of the known as artists have been doing for millennia.

The Boy Was Right! So, the little boy running away from my table was right: most people already possess what I am offering, others used to and lost it and yet others hid it so deeply that they forgot about it. Yes, my product is precious and every human being seems to be born with it. Every time I talk or write about childhood I remember the words of a well- known Romanian writer (who was also a teacher):

…what good times those were, for parents and brothers and sisters were hale and hearty, there was everything needful in the house, the sons and daughters of our neighbors were forever romping with us, and everything was exactly as I liked best, without a shadow of ill-humor as if the whole world were mine! I, myself, was as happy as the day was long, whimsical and playful like the gusting wind. (Ion Creanga, 1978, Part II)

Reviving some of our childhood memories, as Creanga did, might make us view them in an idyllic way, but it might also help us pin-point some of the specific abilities that made us capable of seeing and feeling wonder in the simple moments of life even if our childhood was not the happiest. This journey in time is most possible for those of us who are playing the remarkable roles of parents or/and teachers. Being with children should awaken in us the traces of wonder that hide under the serious mask of adulthood. Letting children take control sometimes is not a bad thing. At least, this is what one of today’s renowned molecular biologists, John Medina (2008), suggests while recounting the lessons he learnt during a life-changing walk with his two-year-old son: Wonder for Sale 167

My 2-year-old son Noah and I were walking down the street on our way to preschool when he suddenly noticed a shiny pebble embedded in the concrete. Stopping midstride, the little guy considered it for a second, found it thoroughly delightful, and let out a laugh. He spied a small plant an inch farther, a weed valiantly struggling through a crack in the asphalt. He touched it gently, then laughed again. Noah noticed beyond it a platoon of ants marching in single file, which he bent down to examine closely. They were carrying a dead bug, and Noah clapped his hands in wonder. There were dust particles, a rusted screw, a shiny spot of oil. Fifteen minutes had passed, and we had gone only 20 feet. I tried to get him to move along, having the audacity to act like an adult with a schedule. He was having none of it. And I stopped, watching my little teacher, wondering how long it had been since I had taken 15 minutes to walk 20 feet[…] I will never forget the moment this little professor taught his daddy about what it meant to be a student. I was thankful and a little embarrassed. After 47 years, I was finally learning how to walk down the street. (pp. 278–279)

Medina’s lesson is a quintessential one. It showed him how learning is driven by curiosity, how children seem able to educate themselves about the world with a minimum of or, sometimes, no adult-like structures. He states that babies should be the model of how we learn: not by passive and reflex-like responses to the environment, but through “active testing through observation, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion” (p. 280). His claims are backed by his knowledge about the brain. He argues that the ability of babies to learn through this scientific approach is developed by the prefrontal cortex that looks for errors in the hypothesis and as a result, a neighboring region of the brain dictates changes in certain behaviors. I had an experience yesterday that might help support this point. I had to hold a two-month-old baby for a half an hour. I looked around for something to keep her busy. I was wearing the perfect thing: a beaded necklace. It had color and sound, so I thought the little baby girl would love it. She held the beads for a moment, but kept on looking attentively at something else. She dropped the beads a few times, but me, the all-knowing adult, put them back in her hands. She did not give up; she was extremely interested in something completely different, even reaching for it. After a few minutes I realized that her interest was sparked by the busy design of my blouse. Who would have thought? How many times do we involuntarily dictate to children what they should or shouldn’t like, or what they should or should not wonder about? We do this as caring humans, of course, but this role we take makes us believe that babies and young children “do not yet know” what they like, or what they wish to explore. Thus we do not trust in their abilities and strategies of understanding the world around 168 Annabella Cant them. The tiny girl in my lap knew exactly what she liked and she wished to explore it more in a somatic way: touching, pulling, tasting, etc. As Medina stated above, and Egan (1997) describes it in his Imaginative Education theory, babies have a well-developed “tool-kit” for understanding the environment around them. Alison Gopnik (2012), after many years of research, has tried and succeeded in exploring how children are able to create intuitive theories about the world, about themselves, and about others. She has come to the same conclusion: children’s learning follows, almost identically, the flow of scientific thinking and discoveries:

New theoretical ideas and empirical research show that very young children’s learning and thinking are strikingly similar to much learning and thinking in science. Preschoolers test hypotheses against data and make causal inferences; they learn from statistics and informal experimentation, and from watching and listening to others. The mathematical framework of probabilistic models and Bayesian inference can describe this learning in precise ways. These discoveries have implications for early childhood education and policy. In particular, they suggest both that early childhood experience is extremely important and that the trend toward more structured and academic early childhood programs is misguided. (p. 1623)

Some of the structured early childhood programs have good arguments for how the rooms should be set up, how the day should be planned in detail, how the materials should be placed, what materials best prepare the children for life, what questions should be asked of children, what guidance strategies are best for challenging behavior, etc.,1 but I wonder if they acknowledge some input from children in those decisions? If we would consider for a minute that adults are capable of seeing wonder, or should I say: do not have the time, place, or opportunities to perpetually feel the sense of wonder in their lives (as I lately failed to even look at the design of my blouse that once fascinated me enough to pay money for it), we might consider designing childcare centers by using the input of children: listening to their intentions, observing and documenting their favorite activity rhythms, trying to see wonder where they see it, and adapting the environment to what we might perceive through their eyes. Rinaldi (2001) acknowledges the fact that “from the beginning children demonstrate that they have a voice, know how to listen and want to be listened to by others” (p. 3). She also notes that this process is a difficult one because “it requires energy, hard work and, sometimes suffering, but it also offers wonder, joy enthusiasm and passion. It is the path that takes time – time that children have and adults often not, or do not want to have” (p. 3). Wonder for Sale 169

I know this sounds unrealistic, but we should become more aware of the fact that life itself drives us into its senseless sense. We live in a wonderless world as Hove (1999) put it:

A world without wonder is bereft of possibility. Sometimes even the taken- for-granted quality of things can be missing. Things sit mutely in the shadows of time and space, where they merely exist (or do they?). Our ‘disinterest’ is a felt distance from and absence of another: people and things make no difference to us and so we are indifferent to them. Under this pervasive attitude they fail to offer themselves to us for engagement. We lack relation to them and they to us. In a world without wonder there is nothing to enter into relations with; because the world is mute, colourless and inanimate, we lack the means for really living in it. We are implicated in – stuck and pressed into – a deepening wonderlessness. (p. 8)

Even if this image is painted in a gloomy color, I agree with the fact that refusing to acknowledge the world around us is like living our lives at such a speed that the view is blurred, the senses are numb, and the air slaps us with blinding power. I believe that a careful slowing of the speed of our life might allow us to fully, not just merely, exist, as Hove states. It would teach us to walk again; yes, walk as little Noah taught his father to do: walk and look around, walk and notice, walk and feel, walk and wonder… Edith Cobb in The Ecology of Imagination (1977), quoting Misch’s analysis of the sense of wonder, is another author who argues that the presence of wonder in early childhood represents a quintessential factor in the building of “true acts of genesis” of a personal image of the world. Children need the ability to see and feel wonder in order to grow and paint for themselves a photographic image of the world around them using the filter-like lens of their complex senses. This is how the “wordless dialectic between self and world” (p. 31) takes place in the early years. When words are born within this relationship, the period of “loud” questioning arises.

Why? Life and research show us that a natural phase in children’s life seems to be the “why-phase” (Isaacs, 1930; Hood & Bloom, 1979; Callanan & Oakes, 1992, Hickling & Wellman, 2001; Teitelbaum, 2006): the period when children start asking causality questions about the world around them: Why is… ? Why do I…? Why do I have to…? Why is that…? Some parents might believe that these questions are sometimes an expression of attention seeking by means of prolonging child–adult conversation (Kaiser & Rasminsky, 2007). 170 Annabella Cant

If we take the time to research some parenting websites we are sure to find endless versions of the following questions: “Why does my toddler constantly ask ‘why?’;2 “My child loves to ask WHY – do I always have to explain?”;3 “Will kids ever stop asking why?”.4 Even if some reactions to these questions are: “Why would you ever want them to stop?” (Cassey, 2009); “How will they know if they don’t ask?” (Charlie, 2009); “Why would u want to stop your child from asking questions?... kids are curious and they want to learn... u need to encourage them to ask questions” (Anita, 2009), advice coming from other parents and specialists proposes strategies that ought to be successful in stopping the question-chain. Sometimes these strategies tend to forget about the importance of listening in a child–adult relationship. Here are two examples of specialists tutoring parents about the why-period in their children’s life. The first example found at: http://www.ahaparenting.com, reduces children’s reasons for asking “why” to a devious intention:

When kids repeatedly ask, “why?” they don’t always require a reason. Often, they just want to get you to change your mind. “Why?” is their way of expressing displeasure with a decision you’ve made. Or it can be a way to get your attention. Parents, meanwhile, often believe that if they take the time to explain their reasons, their kids will more readily comply and they can avoid making their children unhappy. Not so! When you try to reason with your child about why he can’t have a cookie, stay up late, or ride his bike in the dark, your goal is to get him to see things your way – to give up wanting what he wants. His goal is quite different – to nudge you from a no to a yes. […] Reasoning is an acquired skill, which requires a cognitive ability that young children don’t yet possess. (Samalin, 2009)

My second example comes from a site titled “Good Education – The Teaching Spot” where parents are given an actual lesson plan called: “Kids asking why: Cease The Disrespect” (Booe, 2012). Here are some excerpts of her lesson plan that is meant to save the parents from the disrespectful questions of their children:

Objective: You will learn how to recognize and take charge of the situation when kids question ‘why?’ to your request.[…] Kids asking why as a request for your reasoning behind a decision or command should only be met with ‘because I said so.’ (Para: Rationale)

The lesson plan continues by offering the “BAD” reasons of children for asking “why?.” The first reason is: they are too young to understand. The teacher Booe Wonder for Sale 171

(with an impressive bio, I must add) considers that “kids won’t understand the explanation fully even into teenage years. They’re kids and most of the time, the reasons you do something are too complicated to break down, without actually losing the meaning.[…] If you must simplify your reasoning to reach they’re5 level of understanding, it’s not truly the reason anymore. So, why bother?” (para: Rationale). The second reason: they won’t agree. “When you start explaining why, they’re just going to try their best to knock dents into your reasoning and change your mind. That’s the main purpose in them asking why in the first place” (para: Rationale). The other reasons are: undermining parents’ authority by questioning their decisions, children’s reasons are not justified, “children aren’t asking why because they really want to know. They ask why to ‘buy time’ so they can figure out how not to do what you’ve told them to do; they ask why to challenge your role as parent” (para: Rationale). I will conclude the citing and paraphrasing of this teacher’s experienced opinions by sharing the fact that she is adamant in the final part of her lesson plan to let parents know that they “must change the habit of responding with long, drawn-out explanations with these responses: Because I said so; Nothing at all; You don’t ask why, you are too young to ask why; Do as I said and that’s all you need to know” (para: Content). These answers remind us of the movie Matilda where a dad addresses his smart little girl in the following way: “I’m smart, you’re dumb; I’m big, you’re little; I’m right, you’re wrong, and there’s nothing you can do about it” (1996).6 In my opinion, these types of responses have the power to stop the chain of questioning, and once this exploratory inquiry meets repetitive blocking knocks, it stops advancing. (This was not the case of our Matilda.) Some recent research (Bronson & Merryman, 2010; Kim, 2011; Teitelbaum, 2006) tries to prove that these misconceptions are wrong and even if they seem to be common, they should not be adopted by parents and educators. An example of such study is Preschoolers’ Search for Explanatory Information Within Adult–Child Conversation. It was performed by psychologists from the University of Michigan and the University of Hawai’i and it has focused on the value of explanatory versus un-explanatory responses to children’s causal questions:

[…] the different patterns in children’s reactions following explanatory versus nonexplanatory information confirm that young children are motivated to seek causal information actively and use specific conversational strategies to obtain it. In fact, when preschool children ask why questions, they are not merely trying to prolong conversation (as previously suspected by many parents and researchers alike). Upon receiving an explanation, but not otherwise, children often end their questioning and react with satisfaction. (Frazier, Gelman & Welman, 2009, p. 1600) 172 Annabella Cant

With the risk of sounding idealistic, I would assert that if all parents and educators were aware of the importance of answering the “why questions,” maybe the following phase in children’s life would be postponed or even erased. This process of asking questions is extremely important from all developmental points of view. Wonder is the driving force and outcome of this process. The answers to the causal questions of young children, instead of hindering the sense of wonder seem to actually ignite it. The verbal and non-verbal explorations are part of a continuous method employed by children in order to strengthen their communion with the world around them. So, even if most questions seem “out of this world” to parents, they might be meant to actually express the willingness of children to understand life. As parents and teachers we should feel honored by the fact that children involve us in their own search for identity and place in the world around them. They ask us to “interfere” with hopes and dreams of opening a new window into the world. So, if we allow ourselves to consider that one of the capital moments of the dissipation of wonder with years passing by is the “cutting” of the “why-chain,” we might find that the next “natural” phase is the very disappearance of these questions. Children seem to stop asking questions around the age of 12:

Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why – sometimes parents just wish it’d stop. Tragically, it does stop. By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. (Bronson & Merryman, 2010)

A recent study involving 300,000 subjects (kindergarten to grade 12) shows a visible decrease of creativity at the same age:

Until fifth grade, children were increasingly open-minded and curious and more apt to produce unique responses. After that, they began a trend of increasing conformist thinking that continued through high school. This may reflect an influence toward conformity in middle and high schools. (Kim, 2011, p. 8)

Athough the results of the study are very convincing, the researchers fail to identify the cause of the “slump.” If children are closed-in by conformity, by rules that need to be respected and not questioned, a natural augment of this state could be the lack of opportunities and reasons to ask questions. Thus, if their initial state of wonder helped them be curious and excited about exploring, now, the state of conformity drives them toward an organized known that is not theirs anymore, and thus does not need their creative input. This “known” is the society’s “known;” this “known” does not require questions or questioning Wonder for Sale 173 anymore. It becomes the only accepted “known.” As a result, school itself becomes the new lens for viewing and understanding the world. This lens, as the following research shows, could have the power to block the light of wonder, erase the exploratory doubt, clean up the messy emotions, and show a strange world that needs to be accepted. Kim (2011) presents in her research that numerous previous studies show a drop in creative thinking at the age of 8–9, the age when children start being taught “socialization.” Coincidentally (or not) this is the same age when children seem to show a decreasing level of enjoyment with regards to going to school and being in school (Kirikkaya, 2011):

The mean scores on ‘liking school’ change between groups 4th grade and 8th grade, the correlations with ‘liking school’ fall significantly over this period.[…] Variance analysis was applied to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between the means of ‘liking school’ according to grade levels. It was found out that there were significant differences among groups according to the grade levels. […] In other words, ‘liking school’ falls significantly at high grade levels. (p. 376)

Lack of space for wonder, questions, and exploration might produce the inevitable emotional detachment between children and schooling. If children’s input is not requested, not accepted, and not fructified, they might become uninterested, unoriginal, and unhappy:

All forms of participation were lower among older students. Participation in school was significantly associated with liking school and higher perceived academic performance, better self-rated health, higher life satisfaction and greater reported happiness. (de Róiste et al., 2012, p. 88)

By summarizing the previous journey into the life of wonder we find that it all seems to start with the natural ability of seeing wonder, continues with questions inspired by what wonder presents, goes on with the decreasing of the number of questions asked by children, and ends up with the disappearance of questioning that drives toward the lack of “school liking.” I consider that once children stop asking questions, adults are taking over the questioning role. Furthermore, questioning might become answering, exploring might become training, imagining might become imitating, and wondering might become listening and reproducing adult-created content. 174 Annabella Cant

So, What is the Cost of Wonder? Adults at my market table start becoming anxious about my product. They are slowly realizing how indispensable wonder is in their lives and that they need to get more than their present needs; they will have to get reserves for the future of their children. This realization pains them because, as any survival product in this world, wonder should presumably be the most expensive. They start to move around feeling helpless…

Instead of asking payment from my customers, I reveal a giant contract that explains what people who take wonder home have to give me in return. I hear a sigh of relief: no financial strains!!! Wonder is for free as I promised earlier. Here are some excerpts from the contract everyone has to sign:

The WONDER-BUYER (hereinafter called W-B) agrees to see the genius in every child and to greet it every time by a friendly smile. The W-B agrees to erase “otherness” from his/her relation to the child. The W-B must not, at all costs, ignore children’s questions. The W-B agrees to first become passionate about curriculum content and, then and only then, teach it to children. If the content does not produce emotional reactions, it should not be taught! It is further mutually agreed that the adult will receive continuous resources of wonder if he or she respects the terms of this agreement.

Conclusion The market is in turmoil. I look around and all other tables are deserted, even by their owners. Everyone is lined-up at my stand. They are smiling. Adults are smiling like children: at each other, at the sky, at life. They know I meant every word on my posters and announcements; they knew before I came that wonder was something that belonged to children and that, somehow, it disappeared on the way to adulthood. Teachers and parents are blushing with shame, silently agreeing that they might have been contributing to erasing wonder from the eyes of their pupils and children… Well, clearly a fantasy of mine for now. Those times are far away. The above scenario is not even imaginable as part of today’s world. Teachers, parents, and curriculum designers should be well convinced by the fact that wonder can have a pivotal role in education, and that children come to school and into our lives with this possibly innate ability to see wonder in the world around them. We should not blur that view in any way; we should aid their exploration with programs that are designed together with them, proposing experiences that are part of their definition of childhood, not only ours. Wonder for Sale 175

I would like to end this journey into the world of wonder with a proposal to renew the present curricula that contain parts that seem to disregard the role of wonder in education. The following excerpt is part of the introduction to a grade 3 curriculum package:

Each grade in the model contains an Assessment Overview Table intended to support teachers with their assessment practices, and the assessment units organized by topic – including the prescribed learning outcomes and a sequence of suggested assessment activities for each topic. Sample assessment instruments are also included for each grade. (Preface to the BC Health and Career Education Curriculum Package, 2006, p. 7)

I strongly believe that it is possible today to turn the system around and, instead of looking at charts that hierarchize children according to “expected outcomes,” to look into their eyes and let the real teaching begin. Here I present my version of the above curriculum fragment:

Each grade in this model contains many strategies and methods intended to support teachers with their natural ability to include wonder in every lesson and to identify opportunities for listening to all children in order to be able to adapt their lesson plans to the rhythm of the questions and intended explorations initiated by children. (Preface to the Ideal Curriculum Package, Here and Now, p. 1)

Notes 1 Example of such a program: “The […] Child Development Program provides an early childhood learning environment that addresses the social, emotional, cognitive, language and physical needs of each child. This program provides the best possible start in the lives of our infants and toddlers. Early identification and intervention are program goals that guide our practice and enable us to provide a rich program aimed at assisting our children to meet their developmental milestones and “be ready” to start school with their age-mates.” (http://www.youvillecentre. org/childhoodprogram.html) 2 http://www.babycenter.com/404_why-does-my-toddler-constantly-ask-why_6725. bc 3 http://www.ahaparenting.com/_blog/Parenting_Blog/post/My_child_loves_to_ask_ WHY_--_do_I_always_have_to_explain/ 4 http://www.circleofmoms.com/welcome-to-circle-of-moms/will-kids-ever-stop- asking-why-347679#_ 5 Spelling and grammar of original text. 6 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117008/quotes 176 Annabella Cant

References Booe, J. (2012) Kids Asking Why: Cease the Disrespect. [Web log post]. Retrieved from: http://www.theteachingspot.com/behavior/64-defiance/148-kids-asking-why (accessed November 24, 2012). Bronson, P. & Merryman, A. (2010) The creativity crisis: For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong-and how we can fix it. Newsweek, 156(3). Callanan, M. A. & Oakes, L. M. (1992) Preschoolers’ questions and parents’ explanations: Causal thinking in everyday activity. Cognitive Development, 7, 213–233. Cobb, E. (1977) The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood. New York: Columbia University Press. Creanga, I. (1978) Memories of My Boyhood, Stories and Tales (Childhood Memories). Translated by A. Cartianu and R. C. Johnston. Bucharest, Romania: Minerva Publishing House. Retrieved from: http://www.tkinter.smig.net/romania/creanga/Part2.htm de Róiste, A., Kelly, C., Molcho, M., Gavin A. & Gabhainn, S. N. (2012). Is school participation good for children? Associations with health and wellbeing. Health Education, 112(2), 88–104. DeVito, D. (Director) & Dahl, R. (Writer) (1996) Matilda [Motion picture]. US: TriStar Pictures. Egan, K. (1997) Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape our Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Frazier, B. N., Gelman, S. A. & Wellman, H. M. (2009). Preschoolers’ search for explanatory information within adult–child conversation. Child Development, 80, 1592–1611. Gopnik, A. (2012) Scientific thinking in young children: Theoretical advances, empirical research, and policy implications. Science (New York, N.Y.), 337(6102), 1623. Hickling, A. K. & Wellman, H. M. (2001) The emergence of children’s causal explanations and theories: Evidence from everyday conversation. Developmental Psychology, 37(5), 668–683. Hood, L. & Bloom, L. (1979) What, when, and how about why: A longitudinal study of early expressions of causality. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 44(6, Serial No. 181). Hove, P. H. (1999) Wonder and the Agencies of Retreat. Unpublished Dissertation. Edmonton: University of Alberta. Retrieved June 24, 2012 from: http://www. phenomenologyonline.com/sources/textorium/hove-philo-pedagogy-in-the-face- of-wonder/ and http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/sources/dissertations/ hove-philo-h-1999-wonder-and-the-agencies-of-retreat-unpublished-dissertation- edmonton-university-of-alberta/ Isaacs, N. (1930) Children’s “why” questions. In: S. Isaacs (ed.) Intellectual Growth in Young Children. London: George Routledge & Sons. Kaiser, B. & Rasminsky, J. S. (2007) Challenging Behavior in Young Children: Understanding, Preventing, and Responding Effectively. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon. Kim, K. (2011) The creativity crisis: The decrease in creative thinking scores on the Torrance tests of creative thinking. Creativity Research Journal, 23(4), 285–295. Kirikkaya, E. B. (2011) Grade 4 to 8 primary school students’ attitudes towards science: Science enthusiasm. Educational Research and Reviews, 6(4), 374–382. Wonder for Sale 177

Medina, J. (2008) Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Seattle, WA: Pear Press. Merleau-Ponty, M., Baldwin, T. & NetLibrary, I. (2004) Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings. New York: Routledge. Michelangelo (n.d.) BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved January 22, 2012, from BrainyQuote. com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/michelange108779. html Ministry of Education. Province of British Columbia (n.d.) Health and Career Education. Grade Three. Retrieved January 22, 2012, from: http://www.bced.gov. bc.ca/irp/welcome.php. O’Donnell, D. P. (2005) Cædmon’s Hymn: A Multimedia Study, Archive and Edition. Charlottesville, VA: Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts, p. 205. Online Etymology Dictionary (n.d.) ”wonder”. http://www.etymonline.com/index. php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=wonder&searchmode=none (accessed 22 January). Oxford Dictionaries (2010) ”wonder”. Oxford University Press. http://oxforddictionaries. com/definition/wonder (accessed 22 January, 2012). Patrick, G. T. W. & Chapman, F. M. (1935) Introduction to Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass: Riverside Press. Platt, P. G. (1999) Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture. Newark: Associated University Presses. Rinaldi, C. (2001) The pedagogy of listening: The listening perspective from Reggio Emilia. Innovations in Early Education: The International Reggio Exchange, 8(4), 2–4. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, The Merrill-Palmer Institute. Retrieved May &, 2012 from: http://edocs.lib.sfu.ca.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/restricted/innovations_journal/ vol8no4.pdf Samalin, N. (2009, February 21) My child loves to ask WHY -- do I always have to explain? [Web log post]. RetrievedNovember 24, 2012. from: http://www.ahaparenting.com/_ blog/Parenting_Blog/post/My_child_loves_to_ask_WHY_--_do_I_always_have_to_ explain/ Sheets-Johnstone, M. (1999) The Primacy of Movement. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Teitelbaum, D. (2006) Why is the sky blue? Using children’s questions to motivate research. The English Journal, 95(4), 30–35. 12 An Educational Leadership Perspective

Managing and Revealing the DNA of Wonder in Teaching and Learning

Di Fleming

Introduction This chapter is based on the assumption that schooling can be strategically managed to influence teacher and student experience of wonder. Imagination has been central to my work as an educational leader in schools, universities and businesses – across classrooms and boardrooms. It is through children’s capacity to wonder and imagine that creative and innovative cultures result. It is equally true in the school as it is for businesses and corporations. Over the years, I have encouraged entire school communities, not just the teachers, to strategically introduce contexts and questions where aspects of wonder such as speculation, curiosity and sometimes doubt, would evoke and inspire the students to analyse, improvise and drive their quest for knowledge and understanding. No matter what the demands on educational leadership, be they financial planning or the structure of the school day, the focus on a wonder-driven experience within and across all age levels should be prime in order to ensure student engagement in their learning. Wonder-full education cannot be left to chance! While wonder and wondering is deeply personal, this chapter will reveal that the DNA of leadership is also based on the thoughtful inclusion of wonder through the conscious and unrelenting search for opportunities where wonder is actively cultivated across and within all domains of learning. For a school to stand tall it should be a place where its students, teachers and parents advance wonder as a dynamic characteristic of its culture. Since the invitation to contribute to Wonder-full Education, I have had the opportunity to talk about the concept of this book with educators, friends and the next generation of leadership. The interest in the title has generated many An Educational Leadership Perspective 179 enthusiastic responses. People in business are as enthusiastic as teachers in schools and universities in recognising the role of wonder for organisational success. Wonder, imagination and innovation are not synonyms but they are of the same essence that can make learning and living both fascinating and dynamic.

The Organisation of Wonder-full Education Ever since I was a little girl, and like most humans, I have contemplated the origins of life, the awe of nature while wrestling with questions about the purpose and meaning of existence. In our rear garden at home (in Australia), we have a huge Canadian maple tree. It holds my constant attention and joy. I am excited as it bursts into leaf in spring and always sad as the last leaves fall at the end of autumn. This tree fills me with wonder and the grandchildren love to climb the tree and hear the stories about the imaginary characters that populate this beautiful and awe-inspiring wonder of nature. Wonder and imagination are inextricably connected; however, they should not be used interchangeably. Wonder is multi-dimensional with contrasting and complementary characteristics that drive the passion to learn. Through imagining comes wonder, through wonder comes imagining, and through wondering comes colour, questions, more questions, some answers but normally more questions. To this end, we must encourage leaders to create contexts within and beyond the place called school where students can truly experience fascination, scepticism and at times bewilderment, all key elements in the drive to know and understand. Creating contexts for imaginative freedom (particularly in the middle and senior years of schooling) requires constant leadership. Such contexts evolve through strategic planning. While there are excellent examples of what can be described as wonder- full education programmes across the globe, the examples tend to be isolated. What appears to be missing is a strategic approach to “wonder-led learning” that is consistent across the whole school or school system. To achieve wonder- full education, the entire school must be committed and engaged. Successful organisation is premised on the following factors.

Philosophy First The school should begin by stating its philosophical position on wonder. For example, “Our school commits to the implementation and exhibition of wonder in all student learning,” or “Our school believes that wonder excites the imagination and leads to student innovation and life-long commitment to learning.” Philosophically, wonder-full education must be the responsibility of the entire school community to ensure everyone is part of its DNA of wonder 180 Di Fleming with the philosophy clearly stated in all public documents and practiced across all aspects of the school programme. From the very first interview between the school principal and a potential new student, to the valedictory message for the school graduand – it is this philosophy that will focus the excitement and awe of learning that will be remembered and sustained no matter what their chosen future.

Leadership and Process Wonder-full education requires educational leaders who believe in and imbue their organisational culture with its wonder-based philosophy. Such leaders have the ability and authority to shape the personality of the organisation so as to inspire and excite the whole community. Such leaders see the school assembly as a critical platform to innovate, and to exhibit and evoke wonder as a cognitive force by creating contexts for conjecture, questions and debate. Such leaders build cultures of expectation and anticipation through diverse programmes – such leaders make a difference. Many schools have artists in residence or mentor programmes. Typical programmes are enriching, but on their own, such programmes are not enough. What is needed is a holistic culture of surprise and constant change across whole school events and in classrooms. Principals, co-ordinators and class teachers must be assiduous in the introduction of dynamic activities into learning. The introduction of visiting specialists, local heroes and international personalities into the school will bring fresh conversation, will prompt some students to explore further, while others will share their excitement with family. Change is an essential element in creating wonder-full education. One of the greatest problems for children and challenges for schools is the battle against boredom. Through the strategic introduction of dynamic learning contexts from a student perspective, they will remember the unusual, be challenged by fresh ideas and respond to the adrenalin rush when taken by surprise. These are the learning experiences that will be talked about in decades to come, not just for days. Schools, as all organisations, earn reputations. Consequently some schools are in demand while others are avoided. The schools that we are growing will be described as creative, dynamic, schools that create opportunities full of wonder for children to be immersed. These schools will build a culture where the whole community is wide-eyed and exhilarated about what is possible. Visitation programmes will include parents, grandparents or local people telling stories, introducing new ideas, demonstrating experiments or sharing crafts and skills that may be dying art forms. It is through these processes that teachers and students will be motivated to make meaning and humanize their understanding through first-hand experience. It is through constantly changing contexts that students will ask, “how and why?” “when?” and “can I try?” that will help create An Educational Leadership Perspective 181 a school culture that is never still. The school website will be filled with images and interviews, examples of student responses to the experiences that were recent and newsworthy as a learning story. Successful leadership of wonder-full education is shared leadership; it involves the school board, the teachers, senior school students, administration staff, indeed the school community in its entirety. When the philosophy has caught the attention of the broad community, a culture of wonderment, anticipation and adventure will be enhanced very quickly. The principal and board should maintain an on-going philosophical discussion about wonder-full education and also retain it as a regular agenda item at Board meetings. One approach to keep the discussion alive is through “wishing time” at the end of every Board meeting. For fifteen minutes, the Board should be invited to share their ideas around a range of topics from architecture to strategic partnerships, and in doing so explore what is possible and how the Board can become directly involved in creating a rich community of creativity. The practice of wishing can expand into Wishing dinners where a cross section of the school community organises a dinner and spends two or three hours together sharing ideas and getting excited about the on-going cultural growth of the school. Wishing dinners could be held four times a year inviting a cross section of the school community; new approaches from the integration of the community groups are bound to occur. Frequently, ideas that may not normally be given currency in a standard school meeting, can evolve into wonderful projects delivered by a cross section of the community. By sharing talents, passion, commitment to a particular idea, innovation will add value and reinforce the school as a learning community. Underpinning the school philosophy and its organisation should be a commitment to continuous professional development, but in the broadest sense. Professional learning in schools should not be exclusive to teachers and the limits of the traditional classroom – it should be a whole school practice. School principals should ensure that every major professional development programme begins with an open invitation and an expectation that the representatives of the entire community come together to build a culture of creativity, passion and commitment. Involving the board, parents, grandparents and Alumni, including the school architect and other providers of professional services, inviting the gardeners and the ground-staff and administrative staff will lead to the unexpected and the exciting. Such an investment builds an integrated school culture instead of perpetuating organisational silos.

The “I”s of Innovation After years of working with architects of integrated elective programmes, I learned that the electives that capture student imagination require dynamic 182 Di Fleming facilitation. Over time, a number of cognitive activities such as interruption, improvisation and invention emerged as part of the role of the dynamic teacher. These phenomena have been coined the “i am” of innovation; however, they can provide access to wonder and innovation. To be innovative in the classroom is to bring into relationship that which has not been previously related (Fleming and Demkiw, 2003). Tapping into student imagination requires a learning context where students can explore ideas from diverse areas of knowledge and allow them to intersect (Fleming and Demkiw, 2003). Where do the “i”s of innovation fit into the strategic management of wonder-full education? They are central. The following approaches evoke imaginative thinking and, at times, creative outcomes. The “i”s of innovation encourage boldness and spontaneity across the whole organisation. Interruption can be used for dramatic effect in the midst of a study of a novel or an historical text. Introduce a new character and see how the stranger could change the dynamic, modify the context, then ponder how behaviour might change in a different circumstance. What actually happens when we are interrupted? Perhaps feelings of annoyance, frustration, resentment. But pehaps an interruption can be an opportunity? The context for the use of interruption in the classroom can be strategically managed by the teacher. Interruption can create strong intellectual, emotional and creative responses Interruption can challenge opinions or create instability at what could have been a critical moment, or chaos instead of a calmly anticipated outcome. Interruption upsets the status quo. Consider interruption a learning dynamic, an opportunity to change mind-sets, introduce alternative ways of thinking, to stop and wonder. An example: Imagine a year 9 Music class studying the history of opera. Simulate a chance meeting between Puccini’s character Tosca on her way to the prison to see Cavaradossi. Who is interrupted by a chance meeting with Monteverdi’s character Dido about to meet Aeneas? Work with students to explore this scenario and then create their own simulated chance meeting. Research operas from different historic periods, perhaps the 11th century coming face to face with the 20th century. The contrasts in music notation, lyrics and the place of sacred and secular music in the life of the community are a great starting point. All worthwhile and challenging aspects for student research. In contrast, the process of interruption could be applied to the discussion of a major world event from both a positive and negative perspective – a discussion of the Gaza Strip is an obvious example. The teacher could interject with new pieces of evidence or changed phenomena. The use of interruption in school assemblies can be funny, engaging and exciting. The unexpected visitor literally walks in and interrupts procedures. When the organisational culture around wonder is mature, such activities do not risk undermining the school values. With solid leadership, a sense of humour An Educational Leadership Perspective 183 and perhaps a theatrical streak, the most captivating outcomes can result. I will revisit the importance of assemblies later in this chapter. Improvisation is a fundamental response to all domains of life and learning. Human beings improvise for much of their waking moments but it is normally acknowledged in exceptional circumstances. Opportunities to improvise occur every day, in a moment and when you least expect it. By awakening student and teacher awareness of improvisation and the critical role it plays in all areas of learning, new dimensions of wonder–full education are available. People improvise all the time, during storytelling, music making, flower arranging or preparing a meal. Take Home Economic classes: one could begin by creating a subject name that inspires and excites! Once students master the basics of cooking (utensils, ingredients and processes), student improvisation could be boundless. For example, read Grimm’s fairy-tale, Hansel and Gretel, to 10-year-olds and challenge them to create a ginger-bread village through design solutions to problems all based on the improvisation from a very old story. Further, challenge the students to spend an evening creating a family meal. Open the refrigerator door, explore the cupboards, and create an adventure in the garden making the most of what is there, not what can be purchased. What can be mixed, melded, processed? What is missing? Substitute one ingredient for another? Garnish? What plates, bowls and platters would best display my concoctions and amazing creations? What can I harvest from the garden? Are there vegetables, fruit, leaves or flowers for cooking, adding to salads, using for decoration or perhaps to create a Zen flower arrangement? The quality of the improvisation is directly related to the knowledge and skills within a particular domain. I encourage educators to improvise within the context of what must be taught and what different ways children’s minds can be challenged to go beyond the obvious. Improvisation is all about building on what you know, what you have access to and making the most to create new meanings. Invention is where possibility comes into its own; however, educators can be the catalysts or provide challenges or problems for students to think about and respond to. Most educators would probably respond to invention by preparing a research project based on, for example, “The Greatest Inventors of the Renaissance”: who were they, what did they invent and how did their invention change the world? In this context, the difference here is to put the child in the shoes of the inventor – being an inventor without fear. A good starting point could be the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics (1942) as the basis for imagining and inventing a new story, device or process. Asimov’s Laws have a strong ethical framework providing a solid starting point for student invention. The three laws are:

1. First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 184 Di Fleming

2. Second Law: A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These laws could lead into a prolonged integrated project where the students work in teams to design, create and innovate. While Asimov developed these laws as the basis of his ethical approach to the story world of science fiction, students could equally invent new worlds, APPs for an electronic phone or tablet, or solve a problem for an ageing grandparent by inventing an enabling device. Many students are naturally inventors and, as such, can be guided along a path of invention through challenging questions, issues or problems to be pondered and possibly resolved through invention. A challenge to teachers is to help provide spaces for students to be able to build, construct and create, however, one of the keys to invention is the process of integration. Integration of diverse concepts and subject matter is critical in bringing together unfamiliar ideas and notions that may well evolve into something new and unique. Integration of ideas, cultures and contexts is hardly new, but it is still resisted, especially in the later years of schooling where the completion of the syllabus overrides the chance to mix, combine, integrate and identify common patterns. The majority of senior students select their subjects and launch into two or three years of generally siloed study. Many students at the age of 17, 18 and 19 begin to see that there are laws and theories that can bring together, and help them make sense of, what they earlier thought were disconnected details and experiences. Another dimension of wonder-full learning lies in the strategic management of hypothesis-based projects for senior students. An integrated project that could continue over the summer holiday, during a term, a semester or over a year would provide a learning context where philosophical understanding could be encouraged, included and valued. Such a project would be built on a hypothesis influenced by the connections between the students’ chosen senior schools’ subjects. What is a question that may reveal links, patterns, commonalities and possible innovation within and between their subjects? Modelling a project consciously encourages students to wonder about and become immersed in their chosen subjects or perhaps subjects that are demanded as prerequisites for tertiary studies. What could be learned by exploring patterns across Music, Mathematics and Art? What hypothesis could be posed around Physics, Music, Graphic Design and Literature? Or alternatively they could work in the community to explore the connection between their chosen fields of study; students could explore a range of contexts from the emergency ward of a hospital to the challenges of emergency services during a natural or human-made disaster. The initial discussion between the students and their mentors may well be one of the most challenging and satisfying conversations for both parties. An Educational Leadership Perspective 185

So many schools are afraid of taking time from core learning or core subjects by introducing integrated projects in the Middle years – around the age of 12–15 years (see, for example, www.ierg.net/wsp). These years are critical for on-going student engagement. For many students this is the time when boredom sets in and the antidote is engagement, construction, creation and respect for time to wonder and explore. But where can students explore? What credibility do we give for incubation of their ideas, both individual and shared? Incubation. While the media, including business magazines, are littered with stories of businesses coming out of local garages to huge international success, we might ask where the garages are in learning philosophy for twenty-first century students. Most educational briefs prepared for school architects do not include spaces for students to incubate their ideas outside the normal classroom. In most cases, classrooms are crammed with inappropriate furniture, with barely space to move. Primary classrooms are generally better set up with cubby houses and dress up spaces; however, the excitement is often left at the door of secondary classrooms. It is not difficult to change current practice by introducing a wide range of materials, software applications, construction tools that are not subject- specific but readily available for those moments of improvisation, intersection and integration. Secondary schools need spaces and equipment where students can boldly explore their ideas. Having first-hand experience of the power of incubation for school students, I continue to advocate the dynamic and the philosophic. In 2004, the Victorian Government (Australia) funded the development of the first education incubator, lab.3000, in the centre of Melbourne. Students were taken out of their normal school environment to explore and play with some of the latest technologies and to delve into their imagination. Incubation was modelled as a significant cognitive experience. Part of this renewed focus on imagination has been concentrated in Victoria, Australia, beginning with the Ministry of Education having a significant impact on classroom practice. Lynne Kosky, the Minister of Education, was passionate (and remains so) about design and innovation. As a consequence, she worked with us to implement a strategic approach to innovation through design-thinking for all primary schools. Design was explored as an essential dimension of wonder, it was understood as a bridge between imagination and innovation. The incubator was a place where students and teachers were introduced to new ideas including nanotechnology, VOIP, microchips and digital story-telling. The incubator became a learning environment where students and teachers were inspired by the introduction to new technologies that caused them to wonder and to work to build their own innovative outcomes. Students became designers and, with access to the latest software and open source software, were free to dream, to build and to create.1 The Incubator became a place where innovation emerged from bringing into relationship those things that had not been previously related. 186 Di Fleming

The incubator focused on the integration of digital design technologies in a range of domains of knowledge including multi-media, digital story-telling, microchip technologies and flash development for the web. The incubator experience, as confirmed through the monitoring and evaluation completed by Lynch (2007), demonstrated the following lessons for the students:

• hypothesis-based learning engages and challenges students to explore the unknown; • provision of professional learning space promotes responsible, respectful behaviour; • access to a wide suite of technology platforms evokes possibility; • exhibition of student understanding builds self-esteem, while providing a beginning point for those that follow; • student instruction based on specific software applications occurs when the need arises. Classroom lessons on software are a waste of time unless the software has some direct relevance to what the student needs at the time.

A further example of wonder-led incubation in schools was spearheaded by Dr Greg Wilmoth, a Melbourne-based educator who introduced industry- standard systems and technologies into middle schooling where he inspired teenage girls to build robots by programming logic control systems. Greg would pose a question, provide software platforms and excite the imagination. For example, Greg challenged year 10 girls to select a fairy story such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and then create a three-dimensional model where the characters would be constructed as robots with their individual personalities programmed into their actions. Greg created an exciting place to incubate by bringing tools, project planning and engagement in student competitions that would add to their motivation. In the year 2000, one of Dr Wilmoth’s student teams won the Beyond 2000 Technology challenge, winning over $100,000 in prize money. The real prize was the impact on the students’ engagement in innovation. Teachers who are confident in their role as facilitators will learn from and with their students every day. At the heart of such incubator programmes is the exercise of creativity and imagination as students explore the limits, and unravel the question that they wondered about. The lab.3000 incubator became a place where many students who had become “turned off ” through traditional learning pathways had a chance to enjoy their learning. Invited experts into the incubator included a range of professionals, many of whom were leaders in their field: web designers, photographers, graphic artists and games developers. They worked directly with the students on their projects and made sure they continued to communicate once the programme was completed. By bringing students together in a context where they were An Educational Leadership Perspective 187 not bound by timetables and set subject-based activities, students were able to wrestle with ideas that emerged from their personal interest, latest reading and desire to explore new software platforms or chosen areas of knowledge. Within the incubator, students researched and integrated their chosen fields, technologies and contexts. Similar incubators could be built in all schools where the following dynamics could occur:

• colliding with the unfamiliar – bringing together unfamiliar contexts, technologies and material; • integrating fields of study, global drivers and contexts; • collaborating with industry, government and researchers; • creating possibilities, rather than always aiming simply to solve problems; • sharing cultural responses to issues, problems and innovative approaches to global drivers – such as global warming, community ageing, mobility; and • creating spaces for students to diagnose, simulate, problem solve, negotiate, construct, explore new ideas and exhibit their understanding. (Fleming, 2008)

The Public Places to Wonder In total contrast to the perhaps more isolated incubator as a place for students to wonder, imagine and explore, every school should capitalize on each assembly and public event, including concerts or exhibitions, to provide a platform for wonder. School assemblies can be one of the most exciting and successful opportunities for the culture of wonder-full education to systematically evolve. Uninvited visitors have already been mentioned, but what is the purpose of school assemblies? Through reinforcement of the school’s code of behaviour and typical programmes, the culture is cemented. After speaking with peers and going into schools in Australia and recently across southern Africa, it seems that school assemblies are underestimated and underutilised as vital places of knowledge transfer, exhibition of student innovation, and creativity and inspiration. Every school assembly needs to be treated as a gift – an opportunity to enhance the personality and culture of the school where students are excited to go and the programme is so challenging that the teachers are not concentrating on poor behaviours but rather on fascinating outcomes. How can this shift be achieved? By integrating ways to engage imagination and wonder, for example, by connecting students’ common association with heroes and the extremes and limits of reality, almost magical programmes can evolve. Select a topic such as Nano-worlds and create a programme that explores a context that operates within 10-9. Invite a number of speakers whose lives and work revolves around the topic: a scientist, a multi-media designer 188 Di Fleming who creates Nano-robots and a manufacturer who creates intelligent materials through the integration of nanotechnology. Create a context where the Junior secondary students imagine and describe their Nano-worlds, their lives and their aspirations when it comes to exploring how evolving Nano-science and technology is creating new materials, products and medical innovation daily. Enable wonder to drive students’ imaginations. It is through wondering that imagination is exercised. It is through imagining that problems emerge and sometimes solutions can begin to bubble up (see Egan, 1997). School assemblies provide a brilliant context to explore big ideas. Evolve Speech Night or the Awards Evening into an aspirational event, balancing the acknowledgement of student achievement with an aspirational and memorable time. When an entire school is committed, the word will spread and the energy will develop and spread. Students will gather new experiences and ideas. Collections and hobbies are never far from 10, 11, 12 and sometimes 15 year olds. In their desire to know everything about something, to swap, bargain and share, to expand their control of a particular body of knowledge, then autonomy and wonder go hand in hand. This drive to know can be encouraged by the school principal and all the teachers across all domains of learning and to motivate students to showcase their understanding. Grandparents must be on the list of invited guests to enjoy and share. Grandparents have a strong leadership role in expanding the meaning of wonder-full education in schools by sharing knowledge and wisdom and mostly being interested in what is on the minds of these young people. It is the leader who invests in such things who stands to improve academic outcomes and create an innovative culture.

Exhibiting Wonder When students complete innovative projects, what happens to their work? So often projects are discarded. I ask, “Do we encourage students to respect their work and if so how do we invest in it?” Traditionally art exhibitions, music concerts and drama performances provide public appreciation of student learning, but where can we go to read the best essays and enjoy the problem- solving process in a Mathematics exercise, see the results of student incubation or marvel at their inventions? As we explore wonder-full education, I wonder why we waste much of the output of student knowledge and know-how. It should be captured online for global access. Many student projects articulate concepts and innovative approaches across all subject areas. Student work could be built into the school web portal, where two or three of the best examples of student work across all areas of learning are selected and banked at the conclusion of each semester. Businesses create Knowledge Banks; global companies know the importance of their human capital; but what of schools and our students? Every student An Educational Leadership Perspective 189 should have their “cloud space” to capture their work and have it available for on-going investment and appreciation.

Conclusion Leading a school that achieves “wonder-full education” requires passion and unfaltering commitment. Of the leader, one expects an insatiable and growing understanding of what it means to wonder and, in that wondering, finding ways to inspire staff and students alike. Richard Holmes ends his book, The Age of Wonder with this sentence: “Above all, perhaps we need three things … the sense of individual wonder, the power of hope, and the vivid but questioning belief in the future of the globe” (p. 469). Wonder is an essence of life; it gives us passion, fire and spontaneity and therefore is essential to our learning. It is a dynamic that keeps us motivated, inquiring and curious. Childish curiosity in seeing a rainbow for the first time is as important as the age-old question of “What is life about?” Wonder is what drives scientific thought and medical research; wonder is at the very centre of our being. Let it be at the centre of every school and of every learner.

Note 1 Lynch. Grace Lab Report 06: Innovation, Incubation and Evolution.

References Asimov, I. (1942) Runaround. Astounding Science Fiction, March. http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Runaround Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2011. Egan, K. (1997) Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fleming, D. (2008) Imagination, Design and Innovation: the Drivers of 21st Century Learning! Presentation at the Australian Council of Educational leadership, Melbourne. New Metaphors for Leadership in Schools. http://www.acel.org.au/ index.php?id=727 Fleming, D. and Demkiw, M. (2003) Generating Genius: Creating a Culture of Creativity. Melbourne, Australia: Accelerated Knowledge Technologies Pty Ltd. Friedman, T. L. (2006) The World is Flat – The Globalized World in the Twenty First Century. London: Penguin Books. 13 The Keys to Wonder-Rich Science Learning

Lynne Bianchi

What is science to you? A colossal subject with defined theories? Refined processes and vast quantities of knowledge? The mysterious whoosh, whizz bang and wow (of a car that skids on a gravelly road or of a balloon that bursts, a rainbow that appears in the sky, or of a new-born baby’s cry)? To live is to engage with all kinds of science. We cannot read today’s papers or turn on the news without reading about the way that some new science discoveries are enhancing the lives of us all. At the same time we cannot go from day to day without acknowledging the damage other scientific developments can cause, from the questions being asked about nuclear power following the lessons at Fukushima to the natural disasters resulting from floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and monstrous hurricanes. To live is to engage with science – be it for our benefit or to our detriment. Let’s not forget though that without technology, science may itself be inert and it is through the applications and interpretations of science by development technologists that we see, feel, hear and use the power of science on a day-to-day basis. And so we really need to start at the beginning and focus our attention as educators on developing a quality of science learning in schools that embraces the wonder of science. What is science learning like in primary schools today? Is it a colossal subject with defined theories, refined processes and vast quantities of knowledge? Or is it a journey of personal exploration and response to real experiences through which we make sense of our world in our own ways? No doubt some mix of these, but how many children share the sense of uncertainty that scientists feel in a research laboratory? How many get down and dirty as environmental scientists in the field, or apply their own theories to solve real-life problems The Keys to Wonder-Rich Science Learning 191 as forensic scientists, doctors, fire-fighters or builders might? As educators it is our challenge to decide how science education can offer learners some of the experiences that make science real in everyday lives, rather than sticking rigorously to schematic formulas, almost despite the young minds changing the scenery in their classrooms. Since 1992, and the introduction of the English National Curriculum, fewer primary science classrooms focus on learning related to real-life events. This has resulted in an over-reliance on the “delivery” of knowledge using predefined schemes of work which unwittingly have been heralded as beacons of “good” science teaching. In fact, those who might have tried to resist the temptation to take a more real-life stimulated approach would have had to stand strong in the face of inspectorate bodies observing their teaching pedagogy. Although the National Curriculum for Science has provided many useful benefits, such as establishing a place for science in the school week and broadening children’s scope of learning across physics, chemistry and biology, its application and assessment regimes have done little to encourage a sense of personal exploration and wonder. Over the past few years, there has been an increasing emphasis on enriching speaking and listening, scientific enquiry and investigative work that has resulted in children’s voices playing a more significant role in learning science. Yet, much is still required to allow their own wonderings to become a legitimate aspect of the curriculum. Work at the Centre for Science Education, Sheffield Hallam University, began in 1985 and set out, as it still does, to motivate and inspire learners in science education. Working with teachers across the UK and internationally, the Centre adopts a forward thinking attitude to curriculum development, playing with novel ideas about learning, underpinned by a long-standing research base about active teaching and learning approaches in science. Our conviction is that how children are taught as well as what they are taught is vital to their enjoyment, engagement and interest in science. The encouragement of scientific and personal capabilities may in fact outstrip the need to teach a multitude of science facts and information. I suggest that teachers need to use a range of different learning experiences for children to see and value the importance of science in their lives and the lives of others, and that children need to talk about, feel and engage with the wonder and mysteries behind science and take part in hands-on practical enquiries both in and out of the classroom. They must be given the opportunity to ask questions, discuss ideas, collect data, explain results, evaluate findings and reflect on the learning experience. The scientific language children use during enquiry is essential to enhancing access to scientific knowledge and understanding. This language is best modelled by teachers and facilitated by them, much in the way that Bruner described “scaffolded” learning (as derived from Vygotskian social constructivist theories of learning) and practised by pupils during collaborative investigations. 192 Lynne Bianchi

It goes without saying that curriculum developers can produce resources for schools that are creative and have the potential to arouse interest in learners, indeed aiming to encourage wondering in the classroom. However, the challenge comes not in the development but in the changing of teacher practice and philosophy such that the creative development stems inherently from the children, as opposed to being imported via a text, video or resource. To inspire children in learning science is firstly to inspire a teaching profession to acknowledge the relevance and need of such approaches, and to secure them in the scientific knowledge they aim to convey. Of course this does not come at the expense of a quality delivery of a National Curriculum, but as a means of enriching and extending it in ways that enhance the meaning and utility of the knowledge and understanding the learners are being asked to develop. I would like to take the opportunity given in this chapter to share some ideas developed at the Centre for Science Education which have aimed to make primary science teaching, learning and assessment “wonder-full”, by exploring a Three-Riches approach to curriculum development and pupil engagement in learning science.

Wonder-Rich: Coining a Phrase If you could only have been here today to see the glimmering eyes and the ear- to-ear smile that my four year old daughter, Kate, showed whilst standing in a rain storm with her boots and umbrella, “Cool!! Come on Eve, come on... it’s so cool!” she yelped as the rain hammered the surface of the umbrella and bounced off the tarmac. It drove home to me once more that it doesn’t take much to find the wonderful things in life and in learning. So let’s not get too complex about this; let’s hope this book does in itself inspire us to reflect, sit calmly and seek out what is inherently wonderful in learning, as opposed to thinking it’s all got to be a big effort, a convoluted situation or expensive undertaking. Goodwin (2001) helps us in understanding wonder, defining it in three ways that relate directly to the teaching and learning processes in science. He considers,

• “wondering about” reflects the activity of scientists and involves questions such as: how does it work? what would happen if?, why?, when?, what next? • “wondering at” reflects the human response to discoveries and understanding and, indeed, to our capability of “wondering” and pertains to exclamations such as wonderful!, wow!, how interesting!, how fascinating! • “wondering whether” reflects questions that explore our values, moral and ethical judgments should I do this?, must I do this?, is this right?, why is this important? The Keys to Wonder-Rich Science Learning 193

Other writers talk of “wow” moments in science learning. Feasey (2005) talks of the wow-factor in primary science and its direct interrelationship with creative science learning. She explores in very practical ways how children’s learning can be filled with awe and wonder, focusing heavily on the role that investigative science and scientific enquiry has. Her recent work into learning outside the classroom (Bianchi & Feasey, 2011) similarly explores strategies to enrich questioning, personal exploration and scientific talk within rich environments that provide opportunity for increasingly independent ways of learning and thinking. Eccles & Taylor (2011) provide examples of wow events, some of which are teacher demonstrations, others free exploration by the learner (e.g. children observing what happens when Mentos mint sweets are dropped into a bottle of Coke, or what happens with magic sand in water, or mixing corn flour and water into slime). Although fun in themselves and relevant to a primary classroom or home, the focus here is on how such activities aim to grab children’s interest for the key purpose of encouraging particular types of dialogue, in particular question posing, question musing and question answering. Developing interest and positive attitudes to science, and later confidence in learning science, are identified by Harlen (2011) as core justifications for why science should be taught in primary school. Along with the significant need to develop scientific ideas and enquiry skills at this age, developing positive attitudes towards science is considered important because it influences the way in which the study of the natural world is approached and, very likely, pupils’ decisions about continued study of the subject (Harlen, ibid). Harlen (2011) suggests that the curriculum should move away from the existing system which arose from the needs of industrialisation, and move into the 21st century to focus on the teaching of Big Ideas in science:

The goal of science education is not knowledge of a body of facts and theories but a progression towards key ideas which enable understanding of events and phenomena of relevance to students’ lives. (p. 2)

These smaller ideas form in a child’s exploratory early years and can be built on throughout school and into adulthood, forming the Big Ideas. Many students drop out of science education as it becomes more abstract and difficult to grasp, but Harlen argues that interest in science could be sustained by developing a more coherent science education programme linked to the “Big Ideas”. Murphy (personal communication, 2011) argues that the main function of learning science is to enable children to theorise scientifically about their experience of natural phenomena. She provides an example of children staring with disbelief when water poured on top of layers of syrup and oil formed a layer between them! This Vygotskian-inspired teacher invited children (working in 194 Lynne Bianchi groups) to repeat the experiment and, using very careful observation, come up with a reason to explain why the water moved beneath the oil (Beggs, Kerr & Murphy, 2009). If the reason was consistent with the observations, then it was scientifically correct, and would merit further investigation. One 7-year-old boy’s explanation was:

…the cooking oil is at the top and the liquid, you know, the cooking oil of a gas, amm, its particles can move easily and a water, and the water of a liquid can push, can move a little and a solid like that syrup won’t move a bit…there was bubbles in the cooking oil and it is free, like, it can move around and then it, amm, lifted up and then the water went underneath it.

The experiment was repeated and all children observed the air bubbles in the oil, so this explanation was deemed scientifically correct! The children were totally engaged with the science and commented that close observation was most important for scientific discovery (Beggs et al., 2009). Such argument will undoubtedly be given more airtime as reports continue to document how children seem to lose their ability to think creatively and divergently as they progress (or regress) through the education system (Ken Robinson RSA, 2010). In this chapter I propose that using a “wonder-rich” enquiry approach, that embeds thinking skills and personal capabilities into regular science learning experiences, could also warrant consideration in reversing this trend.

The Three-Riches The past 15 years of working actively in schools to develop the science curriculum has led us to frame an approach to teaching, learning and assessment that I feel promotes a scientifically and personally capable learner. More recently, I feel I can provide insight into how this “Three-Riches” approach can indeed lead to “wonder-rich” teaching and learning in primary science. Each of the riches is a core foundation on which to build powerful teaching, learning and assessment processes and products that can result in wonder-rich experiences. Simplicity is the key to the diagram in Figure 13.1. By making “rich”, and by that I mean paying particular attention to the way an activity is contextualized (given relevance and meaning), activated (constructed in terms of what the teachers and pupils do together and with resources) and responded to (how teachers and pupils illustrate their knowledge and understandings) we can aspire to a type of learning, and indeed teaching that inspire wonder. These “riches” allow teachers to realize learning styles that create awe, surprise and fascination. They provide quality time for children to marvel at unusual phenomena and The Keys to Wonder-Rich Science Learning 195

Wonder- Context Acvity Response Rich Rich Rich Rich Teaching & Learning

Figure 13.1 Three-Riches Approaches encourage a sense of puzzlement or doubt that stimulates a personal engagement with the content, often presenting itself in a “rich” form of questioning (during teacher–pupil or pupil–pupil talk). It is useful to consider each of the riches in turn to explore more fully the pertinence of this approach to a wonder-filled science learning experience.

Context Rich These kinds of science lesson have contexts that are relevant and interesting to a group or an individual; they allow students to apply their ideas and knowledge to real, realistic or increasingly authentic scenarios. For instance, using traditional stories or issues within current affairs, mimicking crime scene investigations, going on a visit and working with visitors, responding to children’s day-to-day questions about what they see and find (a worm in the garden, a rainbow in the sky, pop-up tents, a cut finger, a salty teardrop). This contrasts to lessons in which the context simply informs the learner of the aspect of science knowledge or skills to be presented. Often this can have little direct linking or application to the learners’ own lives, for instance, “Today we’re going to do a lesson on separating solids from liquids,” “Tomorrow we will be learning about fair testing.” Such lessons may have been thought to have a curriculum or assessment utility in English schools, yet offer little “richness”. Indeed, they draw away from any form of individual wondering or questioning as the learning is pre-defined and formulaic, taking away any discovery or surprise. So does a context-rich activity inspire wonder in learning? One could say that indeed it has the potential to, yet inspiring wonder may be a search unnecessarily undertaken as the contexts for wondrous learning are plentiful and we have an infinitely rich resource sitting on the carpet in front of us! We recently asked primary children aged 5 to 10 what they wondered about – and “wow” can be our response. Take a moment to smile at these:

• How hot is it in Spain? (Erin, age 6) • Why can’t you see God? Why can’t I touch the sky? (Lauren, age 6) • What’s in the air? (Eve, age 6) • Which people have white skin and who have brown skin in the world? (Fred, age 7) 196 Lynne Bianchi

• What is gravity made of? (Ella, age 7) • Why do we have a beach on holiday? (Millie, age 8) • Why did someone make school and why is it so rubbish? (James, age 8) • Why do some bananas that are not ripe go a bit green? (Nathan, age 8) • Is fish meat? (Harrison, age 8) • What does alcohol have in it to make you drink? (Emily, age 8) • What’s God’s real name? (Spencer, age 8) • What is inside the Moon? What was the Earth before the big round solid ball? (Sam, age 8) • Is there such thing as a Big Foot? Have there ever been any UFOs? How are cows milked? (Matthew, age 9) • What in the world would [it] be like if humans were all talking animals and animals were humans? (anon, age 9) • Why can’t everyone get super powers? Why can’t everyone be rich? Why do we need to be clever? (Paige, age 9) • How do calculators work so amazingly fast and get the answer so quick and correct? (Isobel, age 9) • Why does counting sheep make you fall asleep? (Leo, age 10) • How did evolution first start? Why do I look like my mum and dad? (Harry, age 10) • Why does the sea have salt in it? (Marisa, age 10)

With such contexts so ready for the taking, it is surprising that teachers still struggle to sense the authenticity of these starting points for learning, looking towards more culturally routine science concepts such as forces, motion, light and dark, teeth, living things and food.

Activity Rich So now to turn to activity-rich-ness which aims to enable children to be physically, socially and mentally engaged in their learning, working purposefully with others to plan, design and fulfil their own activities and investigations. Often resulting from high quality questioning by the teachers and allowing children to ask their own questions, children explicitly think and reflect on what they are doing through role play, hands-on enquiry, simulations, modelling, etc. Together with the social dimensions of these activities, children tend to draw heavily on their personal skills and capabilities of teamwork, tenacity, self- management, problem solving and communication. Active science learning has been a long-standing trademark in the work of the Centre for Science Education, as championed in the publication ATLAS – Active Teaching and Learning Approaches in Science (1992). Smart Science (2006) was a resource developed to exemplify how ATLAS could be further enhanced by The Keys to Wonder-Rich Science Learning 197 infusing a range of personal capabilities within scientific learning. It illustrates the relevance of thinking and personal skills and capabilities and good scientific practice, and exemplifies ways of approaching a subject knowledge curriculum in a “rich” way, that both enhances children’s scientific capability whilst raising their self-awareness of personal skills and strengths. To exemplify the Smart Science approach, a summary of an activity written for 5–7-year-olds is given here: Smart Hunt. Children are asked to take something simple – sweets – and ask questions that they are personally interested in asking. Through the context of a contemporary children’s storybook, Dirty Bertie (Roberts, 2002), children are encouraged to wonder about and pose questions such as, “What might happen if...”. By considering this and other open questions, children are tasked with making choices, a skill that is a necessary area of development in the early years. From a science learning perspective children explore their own scientific questions about sweets that Bertie likes, and work collaboratively to decide on what questions to investigate – e.g. How hard is it? What does it smell like? How long will it take to melt in my hand? Which is the stickiest sweet? Which will make the most mess? Children are active in exploring, collecting evidence and predicting possible outcomes, before presenting outcomes to Bertie. The use of reflective dialogue is part and parcel of this task, as children consider how well they have worked together, how “good” their questions are and how they can best show their learning to others.

Response Rich Supporting children to “show” or make visual their thinking and learning, using a wide variety of technologies which assist the recording and evidencing of learning, is a direct attempt to shift the emphasis from individuals solely recording through “writing” in books. Response-rich methods embrace the outcomes from imaginative learning and provide the opportunity to capture “wow” moments or their resulting explorations. Children express the wish to move in this direction as they describe wonderful lessons to be:

when you do lots of experiments instead of just writing stuff. If you’re doing [science] about nature, then go outside and see it all. (Paige, age 9)

experimenting, doing different things, not writing everything down. (Mollie, age 9)

School-tailored technologies such as talking photo albums, easy-speak microphones, talk trackers and talk buttons (simple sound recording devices), and of course computers, are tools for seeking information from people and the 198 Lynne Bianchi internet and enable information to be shared in imaginative ways, exploiting software such as Photostory (computer software that enables users to produce a slide show with audio) or PowerPoint. Our work has shown how such technologies can help children illustrate their learning, for instance by reflecting on photographs taken during the course of an activity – in essence “reliving the experience” in slow motion and drawing on meta-cognitive abilities as they record a spoken descriptive summary of events and findings. The variety of “rich responses” extends to other methods such as role play, songs, art and PE or integrated into poetry, persuasive texts, letters and reports. These forms of expression help children test their understanding, and the outputs can in themselves lead to awe and wonder. The Top Marks Project (2010–11), a primary science curriculum development project undertaken with teachers associated with the Centre for Science Education, Sheffield Hallam University, adopted the Three Riches approach as the methodology for teaching and assessing science. Teachers, working with children spanning the age range of 5–11 years, designed and trialled activities centred around topics or Big Ideas in science. The activities were used as assessment opportunities, which helped us to observe whether this approach would lead to deeper, enriched learning. The example in Box 13.1 focuses on the question “What makes a great scientist?” which was explored through a Three Riches approach with 10–11-year-old children. This mini topic enabled children to make significant progress in their understanding of the work of important scientists and the impact those scientists had on people’s lives. The children had taken for granted basic household activities which served sophisticated scientific processes. Indeed, they had never really been encouraged to consider them – to wonder about them. Through the course of the activities children began to realise the qualities of scientists and to consider their own personal and scientific skills and capabilities. Although the rich context for this activity was teacher-driven, focus should ultimately be paid to addressing the wonders that children have themselves. Varied approaches to the exploration, including discussions, investigations and personal research, supported an activity-rich emphasis, and the demonstration and presentation of learning in a public and visual way enhanced the children’s responses, such that they became active communicators of their scientific learning experience.

The Teacher’s Role A crucial issue to address in this chapter is what happens when we spot children having these special wondrous and wonderful moments in learning. How does a teacher’s role evolve in response to these events? Often we experience moments of awe and wonder when we see or experience new things for the first time, things that are unexpected or perhaps The Keys to Wonder-Rich Science Learning 199

Box 13.1 Context Rich

This series of lessons are set in a real-life historical context. The children are made aware of the critical importance that scientific thinking can have on people’s lives. By setting the children a challenge that was faced by an actual (and very famous) scientist, the children are particularly motivated by potentially making the same scientific discovery as a legendary scientist.

Activity Rich

1. In pairs children reflect on the “qualities of an outstanding scientist”. They discuss and order statements from the most to the least important skills that a scientist should have. (Sample statements: scientists are imaginative; scientists test lots of things and don’t mind failing; scientists are determined to help people and solve their problems; scientists don’t question the work of other scientists; scientists’ predictions are always correct.) 2. Children watch a short photostory explaining the work of 3 famous 19th cen- tury scientists connected with microorganisms. 3. Children respond to a concept cartoon on “scientific explanations for decay” focusing on identifying children’s views on what causes milk to decay. From a range of opinions children decide which perspective they agree with and justify their opinions using scientific reasoning, writing down their ideas on the sheet. These responses are reviewed at the end of the series of lessons. 4. In groups, children plan and carry out the following investigation: What Affects the Speed of Food Decaying. The purpose is that they will begin to understand what causes decay and what we can do to help slow it down.

Response Rich

Children discuss the outcomes and draw conclusions together from their results. They compare their findings with those of Pasteur, to see how their work fits into the development of scientific theory. They finish the task by reflecting on their own strengths as scientists, and re-assess, based on their experiences, what they think are the most important qualities of an outstanding scientist. To assist this process children are given key statements to feed back on such as, “Luck doesn’t really play a part in scientific discovery.” Do you agree with this statement? Or, as Edward Jenner famously said “Don’t think, try!” Do you agree this is a good approach to learning in science? Presentations are filmed and compared with their original thoughts about what makes a great scientist. 200 Lynne Bianchi challenge our preconceived ideas. Our role as teachers is not to try and “do” much with the moments. They are precious in their own right, and possibly trying to jump into them, deconstruct and grab each one and move it on could spoil the moment. I believe that our role as teachers, when these moments take place, is to raise children’s awareness of them, to acknowledge them and to plan for opportunities in the future that will support and extend them. Giving a wow moment its breathing space is in fact the best way to preserve the moment. Maybe what’s required to nurture wonder-full moments is asking about how it makes the children feel, living the moment to its fullest and raising children’s awareness to the fact that these are “wonderful”. We could prompt children to decide what the next best step is – otherwise we run the risk of formalizing what is a free moment, capturing emotions that in fact need to be allowed to be sensed. Raising children’s self-awareness in this way assists the development of their “personal literacy” (Bianchi, 2008). Bianchi (2008) describes personal literacy to be:

having self-awareness that enables you to identify and talk with confidence about your strengths in relation to personal skills and capabilities such that you can celebrate and build on them, whilst recognizing your weaknesses in order that you actively engage in the management of them.

Advantages of developing personally literate pupils show in the way that they are able:

• to communicate or demonstrate to others how they use their personal skills and capabilities in learning, across a range of contexts; • to draw on such experiences to hone their knowledge and language of personal skills and capabilities; • to be increasingly aware of actions they can take that will enhance their strengths and manage development areas.

It is of interest to explore whether this notion of personal literacy can be effectively applied to wonder-rich learning experiences. If this were to be the case then children who become increasingly self-aware of the times in their learning where they feel or sense wonder, and are exposed to related language to help describe these experiences, may be better able to pinpoint the moments for themselves and understand how best to capitalise on such special moments in learning and indeed co-construct wonderful science lessons.

For a wonderful science lesson it would need to be an interesting experiment like finding out something that is new to us. (Taylor, age 7) The Keys to Wonder-Rich Science Learning 201

What makes a wonderful science lesson is when we do experiments with animals (not slicing them open and things like that – it’s evil!) (anon, age 8)

A wonderful science lesson is dissecting a rat, holding lambs liver and putting my hand on a static electricity ball. (Matthew, age 9)

You could make potions, drinks and we could have some fun talking about scientists. (Archie, age 9)

A wonderful science lesson needs to be exciting and make all the children amazed. It also needs to be fun and make the children learn at the same time. (Aiden, age 9)

Conclusion Do we have the keys to wonder-full learning in primary science? The Three Riches approach has enabled us to outline a pedagogical approach to support our theoretical desires to encourage wonder in the primary science classroom. I feel we are in a better position to actively plan for opportunities that can stimulate wonder in learning, we can look towards creating opportunities and challenges within a curriculum setting that encourages surprise and unusual outcomes. Scientific enquiry is key to this; explorations are key; investigations are key. Having an ethos of a classroom that talks about how we learn, how we feel when we’re learning and develops the language of learning is key. As teachers and parents we don’t have all the answers to children’s questions, but we can share with them the joy of “wonder” and encourage pondering and deeper thought. Science, as we have tried to illustrate, can act as a stimulus for wonder if it is approached in an enquiring way and rooted in real experiences. If wonder stimulates the search for meaning and understanding, then it justifies time spent in the classroom.

Acknowledgements Acknowledgements to children and staff at St Thomas More RC Primary School, Rochdale, England.

References Beggs, J., Murphy, C. & Kerr, K. (2009). Primary Science Review. 109, p. 17–21. Bianchi, L. (2008). Keynote presentation, at the National Science Learning Centre Primary Conference – “I’m an Independent Learner - get me out of here!”, University of York, March. 202 Lynne Bianchi

Bianchi, L. & Barnett, R. (2006). Smart Science. Sheffield: Centre for Science Education, Sheffield Hallam University. Bianchi, L. & Feasey, R. (2011). Science Beyond the Boundaries for 7–11 Year Olds. New York: Open University Press. Centre for Science Education (1992). Active Teaching and Learning Approaches in Science. Sheffield: Sheffield City Polytechnic. Eccles, D. & Taylor, S. (2011). Promoting understanding through dialogue. In E. Harlen, ASE Guide to Primary Science (New Edition) (pp. 77–84). Hatfield: The Association for Science Education. Feasey, R. (2005). Creative Science: Achieving the WOW Factor with 5–11 Year Olds. Oxon: David Fulton Publishers. Goodwin, A. (2001). Wonder in science teaching and learning: an update. School Science Review, 83 (302), 69–73. Harlen, E. (2011). ASE Guide to Primary Science (New Edition). Hatfield: The Association for Science Education. Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (2002). Scheme of Work for Science Key Stage 1 & 2. Retrieved November 19, 2012, from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov. uk/20090608182316/http://standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes3/subjects/?view=get Roberts, D. (2003). Dirty Bertie. Little Tiger Press, London Robinson, K. (2010). Changing Education Paradigms. Symposium given at the RSA, London. 14 Creative Imagination in Play-Worlds

Wonder-Full Early Childhood Education in Finland and the United States

Pentti Hakkarainen and Beth Ferholt

Introduction School systems all over the world are constructed as gates to adult life. Mastery of analytic knowledge and basic skills are emphasized from the beginning of school life. This leads to stagnation instead of “prospective education,” according to Kozulin (1998). The question that we as educators, educational researchers, and parents are presented with is the following: should we pursue alternative educational models and practices which prioritize children’s creative potential? The “play-world” educational activity offers an alternative educational model and practice which is based in play. The play-world activity is a means of organizing activity and learning environments based on the use of creative imagination. The theoretical core of play-worlds is “aesthetic reaction,” which Vygotsky proposed in his psychology of art (Vygotsky, 1971). Lindqvist (1995) next introduced the essential characteristic of experiencing the arts to the analysis and guidance of children’s play. There is a quality of aesthetic creativity that encompasses components of wonder—both doubt and curiosity, and amazement or awe—and we find this quality in children’s play, as well. Lindqvist (1995) designed play-worlds to explore what she calls the “common denominator” of play and aesthetic forms. In this paper we use two parallel play-worlds: a play-world in Finland and one in the U.S., both of which were based on the same work of art (a work of children’s literature), to discuss the means and ends of creative imagination in this wonder-full educational practice. Wonder is created in play-world environments by stimulating participants’ imagination. Play-world is a joint fantasy of adults and children. In other 204 Pentti Hakkarainen and Beth Ferholt words, without adult fantasy, play-world is not possible. How is this connected to wonder-full teaching? In traditional teaching, play is often considered the opposite of learning. In our two play-world projects it is the transitions back and forth between the play and the “real” world of learning that create the imaginative space and wonder. Finnish play-worlds are founded on the belief that the use of imagination in even the most “realistic” problem solving is essential, and that an educational system that ignores this truth will deaden wonder and reduce effectiveness in promoting learning. Play-worlds in the U.S. are an initial effort to bring some of this wisdom from Finland’s famously successful educational system to our own educational system, suffering as it is under the influence of “corporate reformers” who lobby ever more successfully for high-stakes standardized testing. Lindqvist’s (1995) thesis is that the emotional experiences of play and arts are similar and that the core of play is emotional. In other words, Lindqvist worked from Vygotsky’s (2004) claim that the source of children’s imagination and creativity is in play. This claim is derived from Vygotsky’s understanding of children’s play as early imagination that, like adult imagination, is not separated from the “real” world. Instead, play is both derived from the “real” world and leads towards innovation, thus, in turn, shaping this “real” world. Lindqvist used Vygotsky’s theory of imagination to design play-worlds: spaces in which forms of adult imagining and creativity (art such as novels, theater, etc.) are combined with children’s play in such a way that both the adults and the children involved are pushed by the art and play to develop their imaginative and creative potentials. These play-worlds can take many forms, but often involve children engaging in joint pretend play, which is based in a work of children’s literature. Lindqvist went on to make these practical conclusions concerning the use of play-worlds in education:

1. Imaginative (play) situations with adult participation should replace training in academic skills in early education (education for children 0–8 years in Scandinavia). 2. A play-world project should be based on a story or narrative dealing with basic human values, in order to make it of interest to both children and adults. 3. A holistic imaginative world should be constructed through adult–child joint play using all possible methods (story, actors in the roles of characters, dramatic events, space, music, lighting, etc.), and consecutive events should be elaborated from week to week over the course of an entire play-world (which might last as long as several months). 4. Emotional involvement of adults (“perezhivanie”) in play events is a necessary precondition of children’s aesthetic reaction: play-worlds are Creative Imagination in Play-Worlds 205

radically different from free play, in which adults try not to interfere with children’s “natural” play.

Hakkarainen (2006, 2008, 2009) elaborated the play-world model to be used as a psychological tool of transition between day care and elementary school. What he called “Narrative Learning” (Hakkarainen, 2012) takes place in a play- world environment aimed at developing imagination and creative potentials. The activity also includes the articulation of specific transitional goals focused on learning readiness. The following goals were set for mixed age groups (from 4 to 8 years):

1. development of advanced forms of social pretend play; 2. boundary crossing between imaginative and realistic problems (this involves the use of imagination in problem solving, without which no wonder is possible); 3. development of substantial motivation for learning.

This transitory play-world model divided adult guidance into two domains: indirect adult play guidance in role in the construction of the play-world environment and guidance of children’s joint problem solving outside the play- world. (Often the problem was encountered in the play-world environment, but required a realistic solution outside the play frame.) After researchers from several countries, but all working from the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, visited Hakkarainen’s Narrative Learning laboratory and became familiar with the transitory model (2002–2004), we decided to adapt play-worlds to a U.S. context. We then chose to organize two play-world projects simultaneously, one in California and one in Finland, both of which would use the classic story of C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (from the Narnia series), as their narrative framework. Having a common narrative framework allowed us to find significant similarities and differences in creative imagining in these play-worlds. Better interaction among children and self-regulation, to be achieved through the development of creative imagination, was the general goal of the Finnish play-world project of 2005. A key problem that concerned the teacher of the class that participated in the U.S. play-world project was the children’s sometimes violent, unkind and disruptive ways of expressing their emotions. It was hoped the development of creative imagination would lead to increased empathy. Comparative analysis of the Finnish and the U.S. Narnia play-world projects has led to our hypothesis that creative imagining is a key to wonder-full teaching and learning. In this chapter we use these two play-worlds, with their common narrative framework, different contexts and related goals, to discuss creative imagination 206 Pentti Hakkarainen and Beth Ferholt in the wonder-full teaching in play-worlds. We begin with a discussion of fantasy, creativity and learning in play-worlds, followed by a discussion of the development of psychological tools in play-worlds. After brief descriptions of both the Finnish and U.S. instantiations of this unique educational activity, we discuss creative imagination and the development of psychological tools in these two particular play-worlds.

Fantasy, Creativity and Learning in Play-Worlds

Learning that Makes Sense Working from Vygotsky, Lindqvist (1995) was correct in concluding that aesthetic reaction is an essential characteristic of children’s play because of the close kinship between art and play. Vygotsky explained this kinship between play and art in part by turning to Buhler’s explanation about children’s emotional sensitivity towards outsiders’ fates in stories. It is only later in life that the authenticity of emotions is emphasized in contrast to pretend events, actors, and relations in play. In both children’s listening to and acting out stories, the emotions experienced are understood by the audience and players as fully authentic (El’konin, 1978, 2005; Sutton-Smith, 1997). We hypothesize that the emotional factors in play and drawing are expressing sense; sometimes children switched over from playing to drawing when their playing skills still were limited. A girl participated in the student teacher’s storytelling session of Little Red Riding Hood and the small children’s circle game of Watchdog. After these activities she asked for paper and started to draw her own story. In her drawing she made a huge watchdog, which could protect people from the attacks of the big bad wolf. In this “sense-making drawing” the girl adopted new cultural tools (brush, water colors and paper) in order to express in a concrete form her play experience. Physical proportions were changed because, for the girl, the watchdog had to be huge in relation to the bad wolf. (For teachers, however, this kind of hyperbole is often understood as a lack of drawing skills.) The following picture is an example of “sense-making drawing.” The most exciting aspect of such sense-making drawings is their ability to express the threat, not correct physical details. The sense (of the threat) is expressed by drawing the huge teeth and gaping mouth of the wolf in relation to the other parts of the wolf ’s body, as well as the fox’s teeth, indicating their joint menace to the poor hare. This kind of sense-making is primary for learning in play as well: facts, truth and details are not as important as expressing the sense of situations and relations. With this understanding of sense-making, we can appreciate that the dichotomy between play and learning that is so often made in schools, is false. Creative Imagination in Play-Worlds 207

Figure 14.1 “The wolf wants to eat the hare. The fox looks from behind.” by Andrei (5 years) (Muhina, 1981, p. 132)

The focus in play is not on certainties alone. Instead, key qualities of wonder— doubt, curiosity, amazement, and awe—are also central to play. Furthermore, it is this wonder that is, in fact, driving learning. Vygotsky’s (1987) claim that “absurdities are tools for the child in mastering reality” (p. 249) relies upon an understanding of imagination as a process in which wonder at reality and arts fuels the manipulation of this reality in our minds. This manipulation of reality in our minds then leads back to reality through creativity, or the creation of new reality!

Imagination and Creativity How should various aspects of children’s creative imagination be considered as we try to understand the development of creative potential? What is the core of creative imagination in childhood? How are imagination and creativity interrelated? Play-world researchers do not have specific responses to each of these questions, but we have found that the following characteristics of children’s imagination and creativity are important in the light of critical analysis of our data (Hakkarainen, 2012), and our hope is that our deepening understanding of these characteristics will help us to promote wonder-full teaching and learning:

1. Realism of Imagination as a Basis of Creative Potential Solutions have a clear connection to reality and, with the help of imagination, the essence, the general structure, or principles of development of a whole, are grasped. Imagination is holistic and naïve, but this does not mean that it is erroneous. Children strive to understand the significance and sense of situations with the help of their imagination, not truth (Gaut, 2003). 208 Pentti Hakkarainen and Beth Ferholt

2. The Ability to Discern Wholes Before Details There seems to be a contradiction between children’s holistic and adults’ analytic understanding of reality. Creativity is not possible on the level of details, but rather, a synthesis of different elements into wholes is needed. Understanding intuitively the essence of wholes before details is necessary in all creative processes. The essence is not on the level of visible details and can be reached only with the help of imagination (Davydov & Kudryavtsev, 1997).

3. The Other’s Point of View in Creativity In order to be able to connect our creative imagination with the social world we must be able to see the world through the eyes of another. This process starts from concrete encounters with others, and play is a specific environment in which imagination is developed in connection with mutual perspective-taking from different role positions. For instance, you imagine that you are the mother while you are still a child.

4. Creative Solutions are Connected to Change and to Crossing the Boundaries of the Present Situation Creative imagination is needed to understand how changes in details influence the whole. An essential aspect of change is that crossing the situational boundaries can mean crossing the boundaries of one’s own possibilities. We may ask how far it is possible to talk about creativity if children make choices between fixed alternatives. Children answering known questions in school, for instance, may only be able to exercise true creativity when they give a wrong answer.

5. Thought Experiments and Practical Experimenting With the help of thought experiments new imaginative situations are produced, which may reveal hidden essences of phenomena. An essential domain of thought experiments is social relation, which may teach children to know themselves and others more deeply. This characteristic is connected to number three, above. If creative imagining is indeed the key to wonder-full teaching, then understanding these central characteristics of imagination and creativity is essential. Such understanding would help us to stop designing in-school activities that preclude any of these characteristics. Furthermore, the play-world activity does not only help researchers and practitioners to better understand these characteristics, but also helps teachers to avoid those pitfalls of traditional education which are based on misunderstandings of imagination and creativity. Creative Imagination in Play-Worlds 209

Psychological Tools in Play-Worlds Representatives of the cultural-historical approach (Vygotsky, Leontiev, El’konin) have described play as an activity in which children can realize their unrealizable needs (Hakkarainen, 1999). The specific character of needs and motives of play was described by Vygotsky with the expression: “realization of unrealizable tendencies and immediately unrealizable desires” (Vygotsky, 1966, p. 2). This is the reason why children create imaginary situations for pretend play, and “illusory gratification of needs” takes place in imagination. A classic example concerning “illusory needs” in play is a child playing sleeping. In reality he is not tired and does not need sleep, but he may demonstrate realistic habits: yawning loudly, putting his head on the pillow, starting to snore noisily, etc. The short time of “sleeping” reveals the difference between “play needs” and physical needs. Play also offers a valuable environment for developing psychological functions and processes. In play-worlds, adults use play as an opportunity, creating joint fantasy and thus supporting these developmental activities of children. As play- world researchers, we are interested in, among other things, how play-worlds support children’s self-development and the development of psychological tools:1 wonder-full learning does not only promote wonder! Vygotsky emphasized that in play, imagination is closely connected to the emotional life of the child, and the productivity of imagination is better understood in relation to the development of psychological tools than in terms of cultural products. Psychological tools reorganize and structure psychological functions, which the child can use for changing himself. And the change of oneself is not a simple task: a prerequisite is the need and motive for change, which in play- worlds is stimulated with the help of heroes and, sometimes, villains, of stories. Psychological tools help the children to master their own psychological processes and behavior “from outside” (Vygotsky, 1981, p. 137). Imagination, the process of manipulating reality in the mind, frees them from the impulses of the present situation, but the children themselves create new limitations connected to imaginary situations by following appropriate rules of the situations. Vygotsky argues that there is no play in situations where no rules are present: “Only actions that fit the rules are acceptable in the play situation” (Vygotsky, 1977, p. 82). Play rules are different from ordinary social rules, which normatively regulate cultural practices. The child decides about the rules and regulates his own play behavior. These rules have affective character in play: obeying rules can bring satisfaction, but resisting an immediate impulse and compliance with the self- produced rules brings the greatest satisfaction in play. El’konin (2005) writes that the child sees his own actions for the first time in play because in play he is at the same time his own self and someone else (the 210 Pentti Hakkarainen and Beth Ferholt role character). Vygotsky gave an example of the inner tension of play: “the child cries in his role as patient and at the same time is happy as a player” (Vygotsky, 2005, p. 91). The child’s actions are objectified to role actions in play and they can therefore be controlled on a more conscious level than can actions of real people. The construction of a role character creates potential psychological tools for changing one’s own real-life character. In the Finnish research project we have shown how children construct psychological tools (e.g., for mastering their fears) in the play context (Hakkarainen, 2008).

The Settings of the Parallel Narnia Play-Worlds Before analysis we will provide a brief description of the two Narnia play- worlds.

The Finnish Classroom Setting The Finish vertically integrated classroom was composed in 2004–2005 of 14 school children (six boys and one girl were second graders; two boys and five girls were first graders) and 15 preschool children (six boys and six girls were kindergarteners; one boy and one girl were five years old and one boy was four years old). The class started in the middle of August with a new composition. This year a real problem was the composition of the class. Six second grade boys wanted to separate themselves from the small children and did not want to cooperate with the “babies.” The work of the classroom followed specific curriculum guidelines created for vertically integrated groups of four eight- year-olds which were designed to promote the development of children’s learning potential and the transition from play to school learning (Hakkarainen, 2008).

The U.S. Classroom Setting The classroom in the United States was composed of twelve kindergarteners and eight first graders (thirteen girls and seven boys). At the start of the year, the ages of the children ranged from 5.3–7.2 years. The class was in a public elementary school on a military base and the play-world took place during a time of war, meaning that many children had one or more parents abroad, “in combat,” once or twice over the course of the school year. At the time of the study, half of the students qualified for free or reduced-cost lunch (meaning their family’s income level was very low). The mobility rate at the school was 46%, in great part due to the movement of soldiers from one base to another. Many of the children in this school and their families were affected by the violence of war and/or the violence of poverty. Another key problem was helping Creative Imagination in Play-Worlds 211 these students to perform academically “at or above grade level,” as many of these students lagged behind their more privileged U.S. peers in many or all academic areas. To these ends the teacher, Michael, had developed, over his past seven years of teaching, his own curriculum to promote healing through art after trauma.

Transition to Imaginative Space Some of the transitions are results of improvisation or just happy accidents in planning. But all of them are supported with some symbolic tools, e.g., the wardrobe is the transitory tool to the imaginative play-world. The following are examples of these transitions from the beginnings of the two play-world projects:

At the end of their first visit to the magical land of Narnia Mr. Tumnus, the faun, one of the characters from the novel who appeared in the play-world, pointed out the way to the Beavers’ dam. However, the children returned to their classroom instead of deciding to remain in Narnia. Then they wanted to meet the Beavers very much and rushed back through the wardrobe (the portal between the real and the play worlds) before the adults had time to close the back wall of the wardrobe, which would have prevented their return through the wardrobe. The children were then again in the living room of Mr. Tumnus. This time Mr. Tumnus was away and the room was in disorder. Children started to construct their interpretation: “Mr. Tumnus was caught and arrested by the White witch because of children’s visit. Now we have to rescue him whatever it takes.” Children started a careful detective search for any trace of what had happened. But nothing was found. Children returned back to the classroom and wanted to meet the Beavers to ask for their advice.

The U.S. play-world began when the children came to their school to find the words in the novel had disappeared. (The original book had been secretly replaced by their teacher with a book with only blank pages.) To the sound of rain (played on a tape recorder )—the sound that began the adventures within the novel—adults playing the main characters appeared in the classroom and acted out the start of the story. The actors then left the classroom, and returned out of costume to draw murals and discuss the day’s events with the children. As the children became more involved in the planning of the play-world, and began to create set pieces of painted cardboard, time playing “in” Narnia moved from discreet sessions which required adult performances, to impromptu vignettes which took place at various times throughout the school day. At the end of the U.S. play-world project, the children decided to create and perform a play for their families about their play-world. The decisions about 212 Pentti Hakkarainen and Beth Ferholt the design of this play were very interesting as the children replicated means of resolving conflicts, which they had developed in the play-world activity and in class meetings with Michael. The final production of the play had many characters playing each part, including scripted and improvised sections, some of the props from the play-world itself and some props that were re-made especially for the final play.

Examples of Creative Imagination in Two Narnia Play- Worlds Creative imagination was not an explicit goal of the two Narnia play-worlds, but the defined objectives in both sites could not be attained without children’s creative imagination. In the narrative environments of play-worlds, the adults invite the children to participate and become emotionally involved, creating an urge to expand imaginative events. However, as we can see in these two parallel play-worlds, imagination and creativity in play have a specific character. We can presume that wonder is an aspect of the “common denominator” of play and aesthetics activities, but the examples below show that some of the complexity of this relationship lies in the unusual workings of imagination and creativity in play.

Realism of Imagination and Narrative Rationality The play-world approach to promoting children’s creativity is revealed by comparing tasks used in more traditional educational activities based on the Narnia story with the play-worlds under analysis. The C. S. Lewis website has published two educators’ guides for The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. The guide for value-based education proposes how to take up ten moral dilemmas presented in the story (e.g., good vs. evil, heroism, courage, sacrifice, etc.). An example of value-oriented tasks is a mock trial against Edmund (a child hero of the story), used to discuss the topic of guilt. The instructional guide emphasizes language comprehension. Vocabulary words used in each chapter are defined, comprehension is targeted through multiple-choice tasks, critical thinking is stimulated by group discussion for which themes and activities to stimulate creative expression are recommended. “Creative” tasks are mostly “artistic:” write a poem or song, make a picture, create a poster, etc. All the tasks of these teaching guides try to transform the narrative logic of the story into the logical/analytic rationality of school learning. Problems and dilemmas are distanced from children’s personal experiences, and tasks are phenomena found in the “outside” world rather than the novel. In contrast, the play-world approach tries to form personal tasks from the events of the story by asking children to help the imaginary characters to solve their problems. Creative Imagination in Play-Worlds 213

Metaphorically speaking, in play, the child is inside the problem (Hakkarainen, 2002). An example from the Finnish Narnia play-world explains the situation:

During a visit during the play-world to Mrs. Beaver, a character in the play- world, the children found a piece of ice in the forest. They wanted to break it right away, but Mrs. Beaver sent them back to school. Once they returned from Narnia to their classroom, the children took the ice to the bathroom in order to melt it and find out what was inside. A wet piece of paper was found. Children studied the paper and understood that it was a map of Narnia with strange combinations of letters and numbers. The children concluded that the letters referred to the initials of their names. The children formed subgroups on the basis of the letters on the map and a voicemail message from Maugrim, another character in the story, proposed that each subgroup should develop a specific ability. From this moment on the children had to combine all their individual abilities in order to solve any problems or tasks in their Narnia play-world (transition from individual tasks to whole mixed age classroom tasks). Tasks and assignments came from the characters of the story or children developed them on their own.

Experiential Holism When the students planned their play of the play-world for their parents, Michael worked to encourage his students to engage in rational debate and a voting activity to resolve their disagreements concerning the play’s design. However, in response to this encouragement from Michael, the children simply asserted their solidarity, saying: “Everyone (in this class) is my best friend,” which meant that they did not want to leave any other child in the class outside of their play group. The message of the novel, and of the play-world—that we must work together in solidarity and care for one another—was brought to the process of creating the play of the play-world, which took place during a traditional class meeting (not a play-world). This happened not through rational debate or attention to detail but through a syncretic and emotionally colored approach. In other words, it happened according to the model of “integrating affect and intellect,” as advocated by Vygotsky. In the Finnish project, the visit of the character of Lucy to the classroom revealed children’s experience of cooperating as a whole class. There were no problems of uniting the abilities (such as speed, courage, and wit), as these abilities did not resemble analytic school skills. Emotional experiences of helping others together and of fighting evil were the most important for all children: the children explicitly emphasized to Lucy how important cooperation was in solving complicated problems during their adventures in Narnia, explaining that without joint efforts they would not have survived. 214 Pentti Hakkarainen and Beth Ferholt

The Other’s Point of View In both play-worlds, the children wanted to eliminate the evil and transform its incarnation, the character of “The White Witch,” into a good ruler. In the U.S. Narnia play-world, on the day when the children’s friend, the character Mr. Tumnus, was set free and the White Witch was overthrown, the children decided not to banish or punish the White Witch. Instead, they decided to make the White Witch “nice.” One child, Nancy, even tried to understand how the White Witch could have been so mean, announcing to her classmates as she petted the White Witch that the White Witch was “mean for so long that she forgot how to be nice.” [Transformation as a wonder!] In the Finnish project, the magic wand of the White Witch was the central symbol of evil powers and the children proposed to swap it. They would give their power amulets to the White Witch in exchange for the magic wand. With their help, the spell that had frozen Mr. Tumnus expired and Mr. Tumnus came back to life. The Witch then asked the children to hurry and leave Narnia forever. She promised them Santa Claus and summer if they left immediately. At the end the Witch gave her wand to the children. The children invited the White Witch to the party which they held to celebrate peace in Narnia. The children reminded the White Witch that she had to order her collaborators to become good from now on. She then broke the wand and the children broke into applause. Now they knew that the White Witch would be good. The children said goodbye to the Narnians and returned one last time through the wardrobe to their classroom.

Imaginative Expanding and Crossing the Boundaries In the discussion about the play for the U.S. families (again, after the play-world was completed the children created a play of the play-world), Michael identified two options that the children had suggested for the cast of the play: in one there was a certain set of characters, and in the other, another set of characters. Michael then asked the children to choose and then support one or the other of these two options, and when the children could not reach consensus he suggested that the class split itself in half and each half create a different play. As the discussion became more akin to their play-world play, the children broke out of the prescribed choice between two alternatives. Through verbal assertions of their solidarity, as well as leaving their “sides” of the room and other physical displays, the children came up with a third alternative. They suggested that the whole class do several versions of the play. Then the children convinced their teacher, Michael, that their solution was better than either of the solutions that he had proposed! Creative Imagination in Play-Worlds 215

Thought Experiments In the U.S. play-world one child, Milo, tried to sabotage the play-world frame in a variety of ways. For instance, his suggestion for how to conquer the White Witch and to save Mr. Tumnus was to blow up the whole school with a hand grenade. In other words, Milo would not join the other children in pretending that the play-world of Narnia existed outside of the constraints of the real school. When Milo’s actions threatened the continuation of the play-world activity, Michael helped him to try the following experiment instead of asking him not to interrupt other children’s play and not to bring extreme violence into play with other children: Milo would make his violence, the grenade, very real in the play-world, but he would try breaking the actual props of the play instead of breaking the play frame. Milo brought the toy hand grenade he had designed, the one that was capable of blowing up the whole school, into the play-world. There he used the grenade to break some play-world props, the four beautiful, painted cardboard thrones that the class had built, reducing these structures to shreds. However, while in the play-world, Milo found himself protecting the other children by showing them how to arrange their shields before he threw the grenade, and during his process of destroying the thrones several other children joined him in his destructive rage. Michael did not feel the need to intervene in Milo’s involvement until much later, when Milo began to destroy the wooden wardrobe itself. (Interestingly, this intervention resulted in Milo rejoining the play peacefully, a result very unlike the results of past interventions by Michael.)

The Development of Psychological Tools The children of the Finnish Narnia project were divided into subgroups and each group designed a badge as a sign of membership. But the evil power of the White Witch scared the children and so it was decided to transform the badges into amulets by adding magic powers to them.2 The magic powers were divided between the groups in the following way: vigor—The Giant; agility—Maugrim; cunning—The Bad Trees; wit—The Small Kid; courage—Aslan; speed—The Groke. The adults then invented “The Magic Stub,” which “recharged” the amulets with new magic power between the adventures. Children’s cooperation was promoted through a rule that each child had to find a partner from another group as indicated in some instructions, e.g., Giants had to find a partner from Maugrims in order to combine the magic powers of vigor and agility. The adults were worried about the pairing process, but even the smaller children were chosen in the formation of pairs.3 216 Pentti Hakkarainen and Beth Ferholt

Discussion Our analysis of these parallel play-worlds supports the idea that play is first of all a sense-making activity and that play is at the same time a creative process of self- construction. Imaginative play is a non-linear exploratory activity that cannot be programmed beforehand in detail. In the social situation of a play-world, adults are mediators, but their role is to present alternatives and to support children’s own initiatives. All of these findings define a break with the traditional result- oriented model of school learning. In the two play-worlds we have described and discussed above it is children’s perezhivanie that is most centrally important, not correct answers or solutions. We believe that the tendency to overlook the developmental potential of classroom activities and environments that highlight the importance of creative imagination, such as play-worlds, is a result of the strong cognitive emphasis with which schools pursue learning and understand development. In both the Finnish and the U.S. traditional school systems, the mastery of factual knowledge has been the main goal. The need for helping the development of students arises when they openly protest against learning. In this case development has a negative agenda: the elimination of obstacles to learning, not the development of children’s creativity. Play-worlds’ roots in creative imagination promote learning and development in many ways, some of which we have discussed above, but play-worlds also have the potential to challenge the cognitive emphasis of so much schooling. Play- worlds help us to see that the dichotomy between cognition and emotion is both erroneous and harmful. In their construction, and potentially through analysis of their workings and results, we see that there is no choice to be made between activities that “teach us things” and those that foster the sense of wonder that is required for all imaginative and creative endeavors. The two play-worlds we have described and discussed demonstrate that self-development and individual growth can be closely connected to intensive dialogues and cooperation in an imaginative environment. Role relations and different positions form the starting point for individual changes and developmental trajectories. As Vygotsky argued that individual higher mental functions are first social relations between persons, these findings should not be surprising. Play-worlds have the potential to show researchers, teachers, children, and parents both children and adults experiencing wonder in a classroom, together. Again, if we think of the key qualities of wonder as doubt, curiosity, amazement, and awe then we must doubt the obvious to conduct thought and practical experiments and to cross the boundaries of a present situation; we must have a great deal of curiosity to conduct such experiments or to experience others’ points of view; and we must sustain a sense of amazement and awe Creative Imagination in Play-Worlds 217 to appreciate that imagination is not erroneous and that one can understand intuitively the essence of wholes. Paradoxically, all of these characteristics of imagination and creativity help to foster wonder, while they are made possible by wonder itself. We hope that our focus on the character of social relations, as we construct and analyze play-worlds, has the potential to show how and why a classroom activity, which requires and nurtures creative imagination—and thus nurtures wonder in the classroom—does not take place at the expense of “real” learning, development, or growth. Up until now there has been little success in making this point to parents, teachers, and researchers in great detail and with substantial empirical as well as theoretical support. Play-worlds and the study of this alternative pedagogy may contribute toward this pressing, practical goal.

Notes 1 Vygotsky listed some examples from adult life: various systems for counting; mnemonic techniques; algebraic symbol systems; works of art; writing; schemes, diagrams, maps, and technical drawings; all sorts of conventional signs, and so on (Vygotsky, 1981, p. 137). 2 Each member of the groups wrote the name of the magic power of the group on the backside of the badge. 3 In ordinary classroom situations this would never happen.

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Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen

Introduction

Wonder is the special affection of a philosopher; for philosophy has no other starting point than this; and it is a happy genealogy which makes Iris the daughter of Thaumas, which treats the messenger of the gods, the winged thought that passes to and fro between heaven and earth, and brings them into communion, as the child of Wonder. (Martineau, 1901)

In this chapter we consider some of the epistemological implications of the role that wonder plays in cognition. We then investigate the educational implications of this discussion and outline a learning methodology and method that support our interpretation of wonder-full education. Following Goethe (2006) and William James (1909/2005) we explore the potential of “delicate empiricism” to inspire a review of pedagogy of love and moral values. As Steiner/Waldorf Education is an area of focus in our research, we draw on this source; however, we discuss these perspectives in the wider context of Imaginative Education Research. In conceptualising wonder, we synthesize various definitions and look towards the classical roots of philosophy. In Theaetetus (155d3), Plato calls “wonder” (thaumazein) the origin of philosophy (and Aristotle follows Plato in this assessment in Metaphysics 2.982 b). Philosophers have since debated whether Plato meant wonder as puzzlement and intrigue or wonder in its sublime mode as something that inspires awe and reverence. Perhaps this discussion is symptomatic in itself of how far from wonder we have travelled. Wonder as puzzlement on a deeper level moves naturally into the sublime in its action as a verb: a profound desire to know 220 Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen and (in the biblical sense of knowing) to have intercourse with that which is other than ourselves, to merge and join ourselves with the created world and through this loving communion to be wondrously transformed. The return movement is important for otherwise we risk losing ourselves forever in a noumenal world of shadows and illusions (Steiner, 1920/1983; 1977). As Martineau’s reference to Iris suggests, the winged thought needs to pass to and fro between heaven and earth. In our interpretation of “heaven” we draw on quantum physics (Mindell, 2000, 2010), integral theory (Wilber, 2000; Gebser, 1985; Gidley, 2007) and Steiner’s view of the spiritual worlds (1910–1922/1971) as further dimensions of reality that call forth from us the need to develop new forms of imaginative consciousness so that we can apprehend and explore them. Here wonder as surprise is significant; we wait in awe for inspiration to come back to us like a gift of grace as a wondrous new discovery, something amazing and marvellous, something awe-inspiring. To set the mood of wonder, we open in story mode by citing an incident from a classic novel and a contemporary classroom anecdote which both highlight the dramatic tension between the binary of fact and fiction (Gough, 2010). We observe that wonder acts as a door or gateway; when present, wonder enables the inquirer as gatekeeper to open a flow of movement between fact and fiction, one that enables them to merge with each other so that facts become wondrous. When this happens, learning becomes a joyous experience, and new and sometimes surprising light is cast on the phenomenon under investigation.

Only Facts Count!

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir! (Dickens, [1854] 2004, p. 1)

This opening passage from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times sets the tone of the novel and suggests that there is a close relationship between hard facts and hard times. The scene is a “plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room” where a class of children sit waiting “like little vessels … arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they are full to the brim”. Dickens is scathing in his satirical caricature of the three “gentlemen” who are present. The words are spoken by Thomas Gradgrind, whom Dickens describes as having an “obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders”, even a square forefinger which he uses to point imperiously at the children. Wonder as a Gateway Experience 221

The school master, a Mr. M’Choakumchild, is about to present a model lesson; but before he begins, the government officer, a “professed pugilist” and an “ugly customer” steps forth and asks the children: “Would you paper a room with representations of horses?” To this, the children uniformly shout, “Yes!” This “gentleman”, however, happens to be a protagonist of the utilitarian thinking of the day, and thus he retorts, “No!” and proceeds to explain why:

Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality— in fact? Do you? … Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. (Dickens, 2004, pp. 6–7)

He immediately launches a second attack:

‘Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?’ There being a general conviction by this time that ‘No, sir!’ was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of NO was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy Jupe. ‘Girl number twenty,’ said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge. Sissy blushed, and stood up. ‘So you would carpet your room … with representations of flowers, would you?’ said the gentleman. ‘Why would you?’ ‘If you please, sir […] They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy—’ ‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s it! You are never to fancy’. (Dickens, 2004, pp. 6–7)

Here the full force of Dickens’ well known ironic humour (Leacock, 2003) is directed against Victorian educational practices and the influence of narrowly interpreted empiricism on educational theories. By suggesting that over- adherence to the ideals of a rationalized society leads inevitably to great misery (that hard facts lead to hard times), Dickens critiques Enlightenment thinking in the Utilitarian guise it assumed in his time. Instrumentalism in particular is targeted: the idea that all things are in principle knowable and that “all learning is simply a technical process of analysing each potential object of knowledge into its constituent parts and committing these parts to one’s memory” (Jessop, 2012):

With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. (Jessop, 2012 , p. 3) 222 Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen

The names Gradgrind and M’Choakumchild capture the essence of the caricature as these characters convey Dickens’ most severe indictment against Victorian society for the exploitation of children and the attack on wonder, fantasy and autonomy (Jessop, 2012). Through the character of Louisa, Mr. Gradgrind’s daughter, who becomes unable to express herself and falls into a serious depression, the novel explores the emotional consequences of educational practices that focus solely on facts, rote learning and memory. Dickens also satirizes teacher training practices: “Ah, rather overdone, M’Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!” (p. 8). Jessop (2012) observes that Dickens is probably referring here to a current debate that was raging at the time he wrote the novel concerning the importance of “learned ignorance”. Dickens was fighting against the utilitarians and what he perceived as the negative features of post Enlightenment-styled rationalism and for the positive values that were being discarded in their wake: he was opposed to the loss of religious faith and moral agency, and argued in support of Carlyle, whom he greatly admired, that they were also living in an Age of Miracles. As he expressed in The Tale of Two Cities, they were living in both the worst of times and the best of times. Like Carlyle, he believed in the mysterious nature of existence and the importance of the discovery of the vastness of human ignorance that this experience inspired, and the sense of wonderment that it invoked (Jessop, 2012). Great advances have been made in educational theory since the Victorian era. Particularly in the last decade in the sphere of neuroscience, researchers have discovered that emotional growth is closely tied to intellectual development (LeDoux, 1996; Immordino-Yang and Damasio, 2007). The recent research findings note that the part of the brain associated with emotions is activated together with the cortex of the brain, which is where logical processes take place. Our thoughts, emotions, imagination and embodied knowledge have to be thoroughly integrated. In other words, the whole human being has to be emotionally engaged for optimal and long-lasting learning to occur (Immordino- Yang and Damasio, 2007). The pertinent question then is to ask: is Dickens’ critique still relevant in any way given that we have indeed now learned how to educate the whole person? We would suggest it is. A Steiner/Waldorf teacher, whose practice is inspired by an imaginative approach to learning, told us that in the most recent NAPLAN1 Reading test, the script instructed her Year 3 level students to look at the following practice question:

Once upon a time Amon was sailing his ship in a big storm. Suddenly, a giant fish came out of the sea. Amon quickly sailed away. Amon saved his ship.

The first task was a multiple-choice question asking how the story ends (Amon saved his ship) and the children all carefully coloured the circle next to this Wonder as a Gateway Experience 223 correct answer. At this point most of them were really enjoying the excitement of the experience and were still feeling very important and happy with their special new NAPLAN pencils, colourful magazine and test booklets. Then came question two:

This story is not true. Use information from the text to give a reason for this opinion. Write your answer on the lines.

Many of the children furrowed their brows and hands started to shoot up all over the room... “What does it mean by not true?” “But it could be true... do they mean the giant fish?” “But there are giant fish! This is weird....” “I don’t get this at all.” The test had placed the children in an awkward double bind (Bateson, 1972, 1999), similar to that which Mr. Gradgrind imposed on Sissy when he asked her the “flowers on the carpet” question. The pressure was on to go against their inner sense of knowing. The children wanted to write the “correct” answer on the lines, but they also did not want to “tell a lie” which they would in effect be doing if they argued that they believed the story was not true. To select the correct answer from the text according to the NAPLAN, the children were required to select “the lines” (the quote) which explained that because the text commenced with “once upon a time” that would indicate that it was a narrative piece, in the genre of fairy tales, and thus not true. As this Steiner/Waldorf teacher went on to tell us, for anyone truly familiar with story-telling and narrative, this is an unusual viewpoint, as narrative can just as readily be based in fact as fiction (Gough, 2010). Does commencing a story with “once upon a time” necessarily mean that there is no truth within the story? Conversely, does writing a report in the newspaper necessarily mean that there is truth in the report (as the NAPLAN script went on to suggest)? The Steiner/Waldorf teacher continued reading from the required script, responding only in the manner permitted and not allowing her class to have any indication of her bewildered disappointment that her children had to encounter such a philosophically shallow and reductionist question in such a highly regarded National test. Afterwards the teacher reflected that she, along with other teachers in Australia who had that day guided their classes through the Government legislated National test and who, like her, valued story, fantasy and the imagination, had all been culturally disadvantaged by the test (Hargreaves, 2003). Her children, who had been learning about story-telling and creating fairy tales themselves, were no less bewildered.

Shooting Down the Winged Messenger Despite the considerable progress that has been made in educational theorizing, the paradigmatic controversies (Guba and Lincoln, 2008) which still beleaguer 224 Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen researchers in the academy have their roots in the Enlightenment period when the empirical mode of investigation gained increasing status. “Direct observation” came to be recognised as the only valid and reliable way of conducting research. According to empiricism, “discussion, argument, and the opinions of various authorities (the rational approach) may give rise to important ideas, but proof always requires solid evidence” (Connole, 1993). This strong emphasis on the direct observation of outer objects overlooked the important yet subtle and powerful observation of inner images as objects that have the potential to impart information. Although imagination continued to be valued in many disciplines, including science, the realization that epistemological theory did not fully explain the nature or the significance of inner image-making was overlooked. Kant’s theories on the sublime, which claimed that imagination was inadequate to the task of representing ideas inspired by the sublime, were widely accepted. He observed that such ideas “cannot be restricted or brought down to size by any image-making power of the imagination” (Warnock, 1976, p. 56). In the extract above, Dickens reveals his keen grasp of the grave consequences of what he portrays as a type of utilitarian iconoclasm, the pugilistic destruction of inner images and the seeding of distrust in image-making activity. The government officer’s words: “Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact … You are never to fancy” are a direct attack on what Schopenhauer (1966) called a Vorstellung or mental representation. Dickens was aware that “Wondrous Phantasy” was losing status as a winged messenger and becoming something merely fanciful, whimsical or trifling. The lofty battle between Enlightenment Reason and Romantic Imagination had been brought down to earth and reduced to a grinding binary of grounded facts versus fantasy as fiction or something that is not true. Over time, empiricism and rationalism have had a profound impact on the collective psyche of Western culture. We have come to believe that the clarity associated with thinking is dependent on the thinker adopting the position of an onlooker or observer in relation to the outer world. Originally based on Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”), onlooker consciousness appears to offer only two options: either the thinker is confident only of their own inner thought activity (the “idealist” position where the objects of the world do not seem to connect with the inner subjective nature of thinking) or else the thinker is confident only in the scientific method (the “realist” position where objective knowledge of the lawful nature of the world is gained through sense observation and logical deductions). Both realist and idealist stances involve an inevitable sense of separation of the self from outside reality and the feelings of doubt associated with the classic existential dilemma (Kearney, 1988; Steiner [1894] 1964). Given that the world is external to our thoughts, the conceptions we make about it risk being fundamentally flawed: “Individually we can make mistakes, and it is also possible that everyone can be wrong about the nature of the world” (McCall, 2009, p. 81). Wonder as a Gateway Experience 225

Rainbow Dreaming Leading thinkers from the 1920s onwards have identified flaws in the premises at the root of the epistemological and philosophical edifices. Albert Einstein, Nobel prize winner for his work in quantum physics, pointed out that “certain sense perceptions of different individuals correspond to each other, while for other sense perceptions no such correspondence can be established” (p. 2). He notes further that we only accept as real the sense perceptions that are “common to different individuals, and which therefore are, in a measure, impersonal”. Einstein then delivers a resounding blow: “the only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy” (ibid.). He points his finger at philosophers for their removal of “certain fundamental concepts from the domain of empiricism, where they are under our control, to the intangible heights of the a priori” (1922/2003, p. 2). He seems to have Kant in mind in particular, both in relation to Kant’s “novel account of the formation of the solar system according to Newtonian principles” (Watkins, 2007) and for his dishonouring of the imagination, which Einstein highly valued:

I believe in intuition and inspiration. … At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research. (Einstein, 2009, p. 97)

Wolfgang Pauli, another Nobel Prize winning physicist, in dialogue with his close friend psychologist C. G. Jung, shared similar views to those of Einstein.

To us … the only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognises both sides of reality – the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychic – as compatible with each other and which can embrace them simultaneously. … It would be most satisfactory if physics and psyche (i.e. matter and mind) could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality. (cited by Mindell, 2000, p. 19)

Pauli and Jung both realised that the disciplines were divided against each other because the glue that should have held the theories together was lacking. As Heidegger observed, Kant had led Western consciousness to the edge of an abyss and then deserted the cause (Kearney, 1988, p. 195). Tarnas (1991) points out that 226 Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen

Kant’s delimitation of human knowledge to appearances renewed and deepened the Cartesian schism between the human mind and the material world (p. 351). Steiner was another thinker who was deeply troubled by these Kantian views. In the context of the intellectual thinking of his time, Steiner’s expertise as a mathematician and scientist and his knowing as a seer or clairvoyant necessarily battled against each other, creating deep inner confusion. How was he to truthfully represent “the complex of his experiences”? Ultimately this struggle led him towards a keen understanding of the blind and blank spots (Wagner, 1993) in the premises at the root of the epistemologies:

I strove for insight into the relation between the creation of natural phenomena and human thinking … I felt that thinking could be developed into a power which takes hold of the things and processes in the world directly within itself. (Steiner, 1977)

From this point on, Steiner worked tirelessly to lay the theoretical foundations for a philosophy that embraced soul and spiritual realities. His epistemological position is crystallized in the following phrase: “Thinking does not happen in our heads but in the things around us” (Schieran, 2010):

If I can formulate thoughts about things, and learn to understand them through thinking, then these things themselves must first have contained these thoughts. The things must have been built up according to these thoughts, and only because this is so can I in turn extract these thoughts from the things. It can be imagined that this world outside and around us may be regarded in the same way as a watch. […] The fact must be kept clearly in mind that the wheels have not united and fitted themselves together of their own accord and thus made the watch “go” […] Through thoughts the watch has come into existence. […] The works and phenomena of nature must be viewed in a similar way. Thus, when a human thinks about things he only re-thinks what is already in them. (Steiner, 1930, p. 11; cited by Schieran, 2010)

Rebuilding the Rainbow Bridge Every object, well contemplated, opens a new organ in us. (Goethe, 2006)

Directing his expertise as a quantum physicist and Jungian theorist, to the epistemological challenges of our time, Mindell (2000, 2010) offers clear indications about what needs to be done to restore wonder to its rightful place Wonder as a Gateway Experience 227 in learning: we need to address the knowledge divide and learn how to expand our awareness. Reinforcing Einstein’s opinion, Mindell draws attention to the fact that while physics is regarded as “the most central, most influential science, the basis and explanation of physics are still unknown” (2000, p. 14). Here Mindell offers another important piece of the puzzle: if imagination (according to Kant) is inadequate to the task of theorizing the sublime, then rationalism and empiricism (according to quantum physics) are inadequate to the task of theorizing the material world. In an attempt to address the gap (the “missing” explanation of laws) and the divide (the conflict between different branches of knowledge), Mindell (2000) describes a way that psychology, shamanism and physics can come together “in a new kind of unified field theory” (p. 13). Using Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to highlight the differences between two levels of reality, Mindell (2000) notes:

Like courageous shamans everywhere, she (Alice) sees the edge, hesitates, and then jumps out of time, space, and ordinary reality into Wonderland, the dreamworld we shall call lucid or sentient physics … (p. 20)

… Following the rabbit involves a shift in viewpoint, a paradigm shift, specifically, a shift from observer to participant. As long as you remain like a conventional physicist, you only photograph or catch glimpses of how the rabbit or particle appears above the ground. You remain in everyday states of consciousness. But to understand and experience matter, you must enter dreamlike experiences, altered states of consciousness, where space and time are less significant than they are in ordinary reality. You will have to explore the roots of your perceptions. You must learn lucid dreaming. (Mindell, 2000, p. 21)

The research agenda which Mindell sets out has many points of similarity with that which Steiner worked towards achieving. While their language is different, their underlying intention is similar. What Mindell refers to as the fusing of shamanism, psychology and physics, Steiner calls “spiritual science”. In particular, Steiner used a form of “lucid dreaming” (1914/1947) to explore the “roots of perception” (1909–1911/1999) which enabled him to offer a detailed account of the way in which our “soul-spiritual” or psychological aspects are embedded in our physiology (2005). This research underpins Steiner pedagogy (1919/1947) and provides the foundations for an educational philosophy oriented towards the nurturing of wonder (1963), imagination and a deep holistic understanding of the nature of the universe. These “rainbow dreamers” would all agree that re-finding wonder involves expanding our awareness and re-membering other ways of knowing. In 228 Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen particular, as we have emphasized that the direct observation of outer objects needs to be balanced by focusing attention inwards towards the observation of inner images, a style of observation which Goethe called “delicate empiricism” (2006). How do we begin to carry out this rather complex agenda? In this chapter we can only make a token gesture, a start. In the next section we focus on three pathways that are likely to help thoughts take flight so that Iris may wing her way to Thaumas – and back – with her pitcher wondrously full of the god’s own nectar.

Listening to Iris As we have discussed, sense observation plays a significant role in the empirical knowledge tradition. But, as we have also seen, the rainbow dreamers were quick to point out that there are significant differences between the sense observations of a maestro musician or painter and the average person. Mindell and Steiner both therefore ground their research programmes in the training of expanded sentient awareness, rather than in Kantian-styled metaphysical speculations. Steiner’s epistemology supports the view that “the human body is capable of great knowledge without the use of concepts” (Sardello, p. xxxvii; in the introduction to Steiner, 1999). He argues that “our living body is not self- enclosed but open to the surrounding world and in constant interchange with it” (Sardello, 1999, pp. xxxii, xxxvi).

We are used to conceiving of the body as viewed from spectator consciousness. This ordinary conception of the body – as currently understood by science and medicine, for example – views the human organism as a closed system. The body that we are, however, is not a closed system as such. The living body is an open field, a locus for the convergence of relationships with the physical world and for more complex relationships with the spiritual worlds. (Sardello, in the introduction to Steiner 1909–1911/1999, p. xxxii)

Mindell (2000, 2010) refers to this openness which extends beyond the earthly sphere and encompasses the “spiritual worlds” (Sardello, 1999) or “cosmic realms” (Steiner, 1999), as “further dimensions”. Furthermore, this openness extends beyond the earthly sphere and encompasses what Steiner would call “cosmic realms” and Mindell would refer to as “further dimensions”. Steiner’s expanded framework, (1919/1947; 1909– 1911/1999) describes twelve senses which align with Body (movement, balance, life and touch); Soul (sight, smell, taste and temperature or warmth); and Spirit (hearing, language, thought, ego). This provides teachers with a larger frame of reference to draw on when appealing to the senses in teaching. Teachers are also able to use the framework to develop their own sentient knowing which Wonder as a Gateway Experience 229 is helpful in teacher research in supporting them to read and understand their students on a deeper level (Steiner, 2007). Training in aesthetics forms a core element of teacher education. Similarly, Arny Mindell, together with his wife Amy (Mindell, 2010), have established a theoretical framework for their Process Oriented Psychology which describes various channels of awareness, namely the proprioceptive, visual, movement, auditory, relationship and world channels (Diamond and Jones, pp. 64–67) that support the practitioner through training, to develop the metaskills (Amy Mindell, 1996) required for explorations of embodied states of awareness beyond what they call “consensus reality”. Although designed for application in a therapeutic context, knowledge of the channels, like Steiner’s senses, are likely to be helpful for teachers as a way of extending their understanding of embodied ways of knowing. In describing the senses, Steiner notes that a distinct contrast between the sense of sight and that of hearing can be discerned (2007). Looking appears to be characterised by a type of centripetal movement that focuses in on an object. We often step back from an object to get a better view of it, so that we can “zoom in” on it. The eyes act rather like limbs that try to grasp the object. We like to walk around an object we are observing and try to see it from many different angles. In thinking, we often employ this looking mode, and explore a topic from many different perspectives. If we were to capture this kind of looking diagrammatically we would draw a circle with arrows pointing inwards from the circumference towards the centre point. In strong contrast to this, the sense of hearing can be experienced as a centrifugal type of movement. When we listen carefully, instead of directing our attention towards a single focal point, we seem to send out several sensors or feelers that ray out in a more diffused way into many different layers of sound in an attempt to sense subtle nuances of tone. We tend to tilt our heads towards the sound. To capture this diagrammatically we would draw a circle with arrows moving outwards from the centre. Broadly speaking, the seeing style of sensing clearly aligns with the onlooker mode that is used in the empirical method. The listening style on the other hand, is well attuned to “other ways of knowing” which draw on embodied (Polanyi, 1966), experiential (Kolb, 1984) and dreaming (Mindell, 2000; Steiner, 1910– 1922/1971) sources of awareness. Here, when we dream into the phenomenon under investigation (Mindell, 2000; Zajonc, 2009), we blend ourselves with the object. We empty, suspend or “bracket” (Crotty, 1996, 2010) our normal thought processes and onlooker objectivity in a way that enables us to forget ourselves and the separating boundary of our skin. We listen in to the living (and constantly changing) nature of the experience; we describe and create rather than analyze (Van Manen, 1995; Geertz, 1973). This way of melding with a phenomenon involves our full participation and involvement. Critical detachment and 230 Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen distancing interfere with the creative process (Nachmanovitch, 1989) as they have the potential to block the participatory nature of the experience. Merleau-Ponty and Bachelard both suggest “the imaginary is not a single act sequestered from reality” but “a vital process of communication whereby we pass beyond ourselves towards what is other than ourselves” (Kearney, 1998, p. 136). To become one with the phenomenon we need to fill ourselves with one-ness, a particular kind of one-der, which involves a losing of ourselves in a larger Oneness or state of one-der-ment because as Mindell (2000) points out, surrendering our everyday ego-related awareness or “falling down the rabbit hole” is the only way to enter Wonderland. Like Mindell and Steiner, Zajonc’s expertise (1993, 2006, 2009; Palmer, Zajonc and Scribner, 2010) in both quantum physics and the humanities motivates him to work towards bridging the epistemological divide. His methodology of Contemplative Inquiry uses a strategy or device which he calls cognitive breathing (2009). Just as we are not able to only breathe in, or out, inevitably we use both modes on a cognitive level as well, we think in-and-out. However, by privileging only the in-breath (the taking in of the world in the onlooker mode) we under- develop the out-breath (the dreaming out into the world in the participatory mode). This mode passes us by as an unnoticed activity and our cognitive breathing therefore suffers from a kind of arrhythmia and dis-ease. Zajonc offers a diagram of a lemniscate to illustrate his cognitive breathing method which he characterises as a movement from focused to open attention (2009, p. 39). Calling to mind the two imagined diagrams of the circles discussed above, Zajonc’s lemniscate illustrates a flow from the one circle (focused attention) to the other (the open attention). In conceptualizing cognitive breathing as a lemniscate-like movement, Zajonc (2009) emphasizes the importance of the constancy of the movement from the one mode into the other. Furthermore, by connecting the two circles, the modes are brought into closer relationship with each other and the point of intersection between the modes becomes more significant. The mid-point functions as a balancing and harmonising centre; which in a meditative sense means that the pause between the two movements (À Beckett, 2010) opens a heart space that can be characterised as one of mindfulness or present moment awareness (see earlier work Haralambous, 2010). The lemniscate functions on holographic principles: the device is used in each of the steps of the contemplative inquiry method and holds the inquiry together as a whole. Zajonc illustrates the four-stage process (which moves from object to image, then to activity, and finally to agency) by using the analogy of an artist at work:

Suppose you chanced on a painter in her studio, fully engaged in the creative process. The canvas is before her, brushes in hand. She is glancing back and forth between the object she is painting and the image on the canvas, dabbing at her palette and applying paint to the painting. Her activity is bringing about Wonder as a Gateway Experience 231

the painting as image. The being of the painting as it lives in her has given rise to her activity, and so to the image as well. The object that she is painting is the fruit of a similar process. In the spiritual imagination of the universe, there is a mind in nature as well as in the human being. We are not the sole agents in the world. We create paintings, but a world mind makes the world. World mind is the agent whose activity results in sense objects. (Zajonc, 2009, pp. 192–193)

We have focused on the importance of the second step of inner image-making. Zajonc stresses the significance of the appearance of the after-image in a void, a Zen space of openness and emptiness, what Mindell refers to as the not- knowing mind (2010). Zajonc then takes the inquiry further. He observes that in the activity stage one needs to pay attention to patterns and correspondences, and in the final stage on relationships, metamorphosis, and what he calls agency. Zajonc explains that in, what he calls, the new science of spiritual experience, we need to move away from “automatic thinking” (the habit of reductionism) and learn how to think “in terms of relationships instead of objects, metamorphosis instead of stasis, and agency instead of mechanism” (Zajonc, 2009, p. 156). Schieran emphasizes the importance of inner “will activity” and disciplined practice that this kind of inquiry requires:

Because relationships are not predefined and cannot be perceived, it is up to the subject, by intensifying their own cognitive activity, to penetrate deeper into the object in order to grasp its inherent law-governed relationship, which is not a construction but a concurrence of an ontologically objective continuance. It is an active accord with the laws inherent in things. (Schieran, 2010)

Zajonc’s work reflects his deep respect for scientific inquiry; he offers his Contemplative Inquiry as a pathway of inner phenomenology that follows on from an outer phenomenology (p. 195). Although the features of Contemplative Inquiry as developed by Zajonc (2009) are directed towards Higher Education, they can be applied in school settings as well. Over the past year, the authors have facilitated teacher action research projects in a school where teachers have experimented with applying the methodology with very positive outcomes.2 The methodology of Contemplative Inquiry can be adapted and used as a teaching methodology. The Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework has been written in a way that supports teachers to apply the methodology (http:// steinereducation.edu.au/curriculum/). We briefly describe a specific example of a lesson with a focus on wonder: At the turning point between childhood and adolescence, the Steiner/Waldorf curriculum recommends a creative writing and grammar lesson called “Wish, 232 Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen

Wonder and Surprise”. As a “Main Lesson” it is allocated the first lesson slot in the timetable each day for three to four weeks (ASCF, 2011), which facilitates learning in depth (Egan, 2010), slow knowledge strategies (Orr, 2002) and arts- rich teaching methods (Eisner, 2003, 2009). Students of this age often experience strong fluctuating feelings: laughter turns easily to tears, love to hate, a buoyant mood to sadness (Lievegoed, 2005; Egan, 1986). The lesson is designed to help students to find their voice in a pedagogical sense (Gidley, 2009) and to bring their emotional lives into balance. Wishes are explored as feelings that emanate from the inner self outwards towards the world. Teachers guide students to articulate their wishes for themselves by experimenting with various styles of expression and different literary and artistic examples associated with this soul mood. Exploring surprises offers much opportunity for fun and laughter. Surprises can be seen to be the polar opposite of wishes: whereas wishes originate deep within our inner lives, surprises come towards us from the outside world. Students read and create literary examples, art works, role plays and dance forms that explore the mood and experience of that which comes towards them without warning. Finally, the experience of wonder takes centre stage as the meeting place between wishes and surprises. As we have pointed out above, the sense of wonder involves an inner response to an outer phenomenon – and both can be explored. Betty Staley, who is widely recognised in Steiner circles as a maestro of the art of teaching, recalls her experiences teaching this lesson, and her recommendations have a timeless quality. She was concerned that the lesson had not quite delivered its potential richness. The students had been trying to write compositions about wonder and some could access a real feeling, but others were finding the experience challenging. She then decided to try something more:

We took one week, the last week of school. On the first day I told the class something of the lives of Henry David Thoreau and his friends, Emerson, Alcott, Hawthorne, and a bit of the times they lived in and how they met their challenges. The students became caught up in the biographies of these fascinating individuals. In connection with Thoreau’s journals kept at Walden Pond, I told them that we were going to do something similar. Every day we were going to go to the bog on our school land, find a spot, and sit silently at that spot for twenty minutes. They could bring no pencils, no paper, and there had to be absolute silence. Their first reaction was, “How could they possibly sit quietly in one place for twenty minutes?” They were sure they would see everything the first day. I then showed them studies that people had done over a lifetime of one small aspect of the world. There was a collection of hundreds of photographs of different snow crystals. We looked at them and talked about the subtle differences, about their similarities to geometrical drawings we had done, with plant forms they had studied. … Wonder as a Gateway Experience 233

Day by day the experiences deepened. The young people’s conversations changed radically. They became very sensitive to the differences in their spot of bog because of the change in clouds or temperature. They spoke of how much one could observe when one was very quiet. Furthermore they were intrigued by the effort of condensing a thought into a few meaningful words. By the last morning … I as teacher felt that we had really experienced wonder. As a class, we were deeply changed by the experience. A sense of stillness and reverence settled over our otherwise active, bustling group of twenty-five. For a time we felt united in beauty, in awe … I, too, was overcome with wonder and could only utter heartfelt thanks. (Staley, 1974)

The Pot of Gold Let empiricism once become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I believe that a new era of religion as well as philosophy will be ready to begin. … I fully believe that such an empiricism is a more natural ally than dialectics ever were, or can be, of the religious life. (William James, 1909/2005, p. 81)

As Staley’s experiences with her class show, Nature is a “wonder-full” source of inspiration and a powerful way to enter into deeper ways of knowing and experiencing the world. “Delicate empiricism” brings the trainings established in the different disciplines together in one practice as it draws on close empirical/ scientific observation, aesthetic awareness and a deep sense of reverence and awe. In this way it opens the door to the remerging of the disciplines of inquiry and brings us to the gateway of wonder and renewed access to the sublime. Steiner refutes Kant’s theory on the basis that it merely substitutes another abstract plane – that of the noumenal world in place of the metaphysical realm (Steiner, 1920/1983; Welburn, 2004). Theories about sense observations, Steiner observes, can gain a momentum of their own, a type of inertia that carries them beyond the sense object; the ideas become more and more abstract and less and less related to the pulsing vitality of the original living sentient experience. From Steiner’s perspective, the researcher should wait for the return movement, for the information that comes back from the object (Steiner, 1920/1983), for the wondrous ambrosia in Iris’s vessel. In Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, the band of wanderers finds their entrance to the dark chambers of Moria that run beneath the Misty Mountains blocked because they are unable to decipher the words inscribed on the Doors of Durin. Finally the realization dawns that they need to “Speak: Friend, and Enter”. The symbolic truth inscripted in the puzzling riddle hints that wonder is the 234 Bronwen Haralambous and Thomas W. Nielsen guiding star that leads us through the first gateway by opening our hearts. The adventures that follow take us on the heroic journey whereby we learn how to educate ourselves in the mysteries of love. Although various maps abound, the pathway is not clearly defined but is one that needs to be discovered – it is a “path made by walking” (Diamond and Jones, 2004). Zajonc (2006) reflects that as a scientist “any attempt to relate knowledge to love feels like an enormous breach of etiquette”, but he nevertheless continues to suggest that this is “the most important task” we as educators can take up. Citing the words Rainer Maria Rilke used in his letters to the young poet, he points out that “young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love, they have to learn it” (2006). The need of young people for love today is great. “Given the litany of mental health issues”, we realise that “we have probably pushed them too far” (Gidley, 2005, 2009; see earlier work, Nielsen, 2011). Without a genuinely empathic values framework (Clouder, 2008; Noddings, 2005; Lovat et al., 2009) we are in jeopardy of losing qualities associated with love as our deepest value – warmth, caring relationships, community, a sense of belonging, reverence and connectedness. Following Kohlberg, Gibbs explores “the relation of moral development and behaviour to a deeper reality”, through an investigation of near death experiences (2003, p. 225). There is much consonance between the reports concerning the resolution of existential angst and the gaining of moral insight. Many of the respondents described experiences of a life review, and transcendent epiphanies related to peace, love and light (Gibbs, 2003). Gibbs observes that the heightened moral awareness gained from the near death experience prompted new spontaneous moral initiatives. This is the sense in which Steiner (1894/1964) uses the word Intuition, which in his view depicts the highest stage of moral development: by Intuition Steiner means the capacity to respond to a moral situation spontaneously, guided by an inspirational understanding of what the situation requires – to be able to carry out a free deed of love (1894/1964). Like Mindell’s (2010) Deep Democracy, this stage is based on a deep understanding of the underlying connection between self, others and the world. In tying together the various threads in this chapter, we propose that wonder is a powerful re-connector in our lives and that it has the capacity to help us to rebuild our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world of Nature. By acquiring a deeper understanding of the nature of the sublime we can open the door to the experience of wondrous epiphanies and the moral enlightenment that potentially accompanies these experiences. It is important to remember that we are not seeking to “supplant sense reality with a fanciful if glorious world of inner experiences” (Zajonc, 2006, p. 194) but, rather, reworking to extend a rigorous and disciplined pathway of inquiry, one that also pays homage to classic literary and religious texts of the world. The motive of the inquiry is one of service and love. Wonder as a Gateway Experience 235

The introductory anecdotes express our hope that curricula around the world – as well as standardised testing – will value imagination, wonder, the ability to care for others, and other artistic and humanistic qualities, as much as utilitarian facts and figures. Wallpaper is not used in classrooms so much these days, but we happen to know that – luckily – horses, dragons and hobbits are still decorating the walls in many primary schools, and that they are also cavorting wondrously in the imaginations of children all over the world.

Notes 1 In 2008, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) commenced in Australian schools. Every year, all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed on the same days using national tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) and Numeracy (http://www. naplan.edu.au). 2 Two of these teacher research projects have been submitted to the AIS: http://www. aisnsw.edu.au/FundedPrograms/AGQTP/Pages/default.aspx

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Electronic sources http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/wonder http://www.philosophy-foundation.org/ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wonder http://www.educion.fundacionmbotin.org http://www.naplan.edu.au http://www.aisnsw.edu.au http://www.waldorflibrary.org http://steinereducation.edu.au/curriculum/ About the contributors

David C. Berliner is Regents’ Professor Emeritus in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College of Arizona State University. He is a past president of the American Educational Research Association, a member of the National Academy of Education, and author, coauthor or editor of over 200 articles, chapters and books. His research interests are in the study of teaching and the effects of educational policy.

Lynne Bianchi is Principal Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University, England. Her research and curriculum development work focuses on the development of Personal Capabilities in the context of Science. She is Director of the AstraZeneca Science Teaching Trust Primary Science Research & Innovation Hub, as well as Director of the Comino Foundation’s Centre for Personal Capability & Leadership.

Annabella Cant is a PhD Candidate at Simon Fraser University in the Curriculum Theory and Implementation program under the supervision of Prof. Kieran Egan. She is an instructor at Capilano University’s department of Early Childhood Care and Education, and one of the Associate Directors of the Imaginative Education Research Group at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of the books: Dear Kindergarten Teacher. Thematic Teaching Projects with Narrative Integration of Curricular Content (Pitesti, Diamant, 2010), and A New Outlook on Preschool Education. The Annabella Method (Cluj-Napoca, Risoprint, 2010). Her areas of interest include: Somatic Understanding within the Imaginative Education philosophy, early childhood education, the development of divergent thinking in young children, and the employment of wonder in education. 240 About the contributors

Kieran Egan is a professor of education at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding, and Learning in Depth: A Simple Innovation That Can Transform Schooling (both University of Chicago Press), among other books. He is also a director of the Imaginative Education Research Group (www.ierg.net).

Lynn Fels is a writer, playwright, and assistant professor of arts education at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She co-authored Exploring Curriculum: Performative Inquiry, Role Drama and Learning (Pacific Educational Press), and was the academic editor of Educational Insights (www.educationalinsights.ca). She is co-director of SFU’s International Centre of Art for Social Change.

Beth Ferholt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Early Childhood and Art Education at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is interested in play, in emotional-cognitive development, in supporting the human rights of young children in preschools and schools, and in challenging the divide between method and object in conventional social science. She currently studies these topics through a recently-emerging form of adult–child joint play, called play-worlds.

Di Fleming is director of the Dūcere Foundation and president of the Africa Australia Business Council (Vic). Di was the founding director and associate professor at RMIT University’s Centre of Excellence in Digital Design 2003–2007 and, previously held an associate professorship in education at The University of Melbourne. As principal of Kilvington Girls’ Grammar from 1993– 2001, Di was the first educator awarded the Telstra Victorian Businesswoman of the Year Award. Di is a Member of the Advisory Board, Centre for Imaginative Education, Simon Fraser University.

Fleur Griffiths is a retired nursery teacher, educational psychologist and lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at Sunderland University (UK). She has produced two collaborative books entitled: Communication Counts: Speech and Language Difficulties in the Early Years, and Supporting Children’s Creativity: Creative Conversations in the Early Years (David Fulton Press).

Yannis Hadzigeorgiou is a professor of education in the School of Education at the University of the Aegean in Rhodes, Greece. He teaches curriculum theory, and science methods and activities. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from the Aristotelian University in Greece (1981), a master’s degree in biomechanics/ physical education (1986) and a master’s degree in education/applied didactics (1987) from Leeds University, and a doctorate in curriculum and instruction (1994) from the University of Northern Iowa, USA. His research interests About the contributors 241 as well as his published work are in the area of science concept development, curriculum reform, imaginative learning and ecological education. He is author of six books, in the area of curriculum and instruction, one of which has been a standard textbook for undergraduate courses on curriculum at several universities in Greece.

Bronwen Haralambous is a doctoral student at the University of Canberra researching the place of imagination theory in Steiner teacher education. She has an Advanced Diploma in Holistic Psychotherapy. She was the English curriculum writer for the ASCF (Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework) High School English Curriculum and the lead writer of the ASCF Educational Foundations paper for the ASCF submission to ACARA in June 2011.

Pentti Hakkarainen is professor of psychology at Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences in Vilnius, Lithuania, and professor (emeritus) of education at University of Oulu, Finland. He has published books and articles about narrative learning, play-world pedagogy, and transition from play to school learning. He is also director of the Play Research Laboratory in Vilnius.

Gillian Judson is a lecturer at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, and one of the directors of the Imaginative Education Research Group. She is author of the book A New Approach to Ecological Education: Engaging Students’ Imaginations in Their World (New York: Peter Lang 2010) and editor of the book Teaching 360: Effective Learning Through the Imagination (Rotterdam: Sense Publishing, 2008). Her research is primarily concerned with sustainability and how an ecologically sensitive and imaginative approach to education can both increase students’ engagement with, and understanding of, the usual content of the curriculum but can show it in a light that can lead to a sophisticated ecological consciousness. Her research interests also include teacher education, professional development, and social studies education.

Kiyotaka Miyazaki was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1950. He graduated the Graduate School of Tokyo University and is currently a professor of cognitive psychology at the Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Saitama, Japan. His research interest is cognition within the teaching and learning processes viewed from a cultural-historical perspective. He also researches the dialogic teaching- learning process and art education in early childhood from the standpoint of cognitive study of creativity.

Thomas W. Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia. He has served in several of the Australian Government’s values education projects (see http://www.valueseducation.edu.au) and published 242 About the contributors widely on imaginative education and the ‘curriculum of giving’ in particular (see http://www.thomaswnielsen.net).

Laura Piersol is a wonderer and wanderer within the Fraser River Watershed. She is an ecological educator and has worked throughout Canada and the U.S.A, most recently coordinating a city-wide community mapping project in Lethbridge, Alberta. She has also recently worked for the University of Calgary, Stanley Park Ecology Society and Metro Vancouver Parks. Currently, she is a PhD Candidate at SFU researching the Maple Ridge Environmental School Project (http://es.sd42.ca/). Of particular interest is the role of wonder as a pedagogical tool in fostering ecological awareness and appreciation. Contact: [email protected]

Keiichi Takaya is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Letters, Kokugakuin University, Tokyo, Japan. He obtained a PhD from Simon Fraser University, Canada, and has been involved in the work of SFU’s Imaginative Education Research Group since its establishment in 2001. His research interests are in the philosophical and historical foundations of education.

Dave Trotman is Head of Education and Professional Studies, and Reader in Creative Education at Newman University College, Birmingham, England. His research interests include creativity and imagination, management of change processes and collaborative professional learning cultures. A former teacher in secondary and primary schools, he teaches on undergraduate, masters and doctoral programmes in Education Studies and works extensively with practitioners on school-based teacher-research projects. His doctoral research examined teacher interpretations of pupil imaginative experiences in primary phase education and he has contributed to a range of international work in the field of creativity and imaginative education.

Dov Zazkis is a PhD candidate in Mathematics Education at the Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education, run jointly through the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University. He is currently studying the effects of computer visualization on undergraduates’ understanding of calculus.

Rina Zazkis is a Professor of Mathematics Education at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. Her research focuses on learning and relearning mathematics by prospective teachers. Index

Note numbers follow page numbers Bronson, P. 172 with an n, followed by the note number Bruner, Jerome 104–5

3-D technology 33–4 Cant, Annabella 162–77, 239–40 Carriage upon the Banks of the Rhine 9 Active Teaching and Learning Approaches in Carson, Rachel 4, 99–100 Science (ATLAS) 196–7 Centre for Science Education 191, 192, Adeimantus 5 196–7 Adhami, M. 84 The Chemical History of a Candle 42 Age of Rationalism 7 Chiba-Ibaragi research group 121 The Age of Wonder 189 children. See also early childhood algebra 70–1. See also mathematics, education; play-worlds: emotional wonder in connection with education 37–8; Appelbaum, David 135–6 life as 6–7; listening to 117–18; Aquinas 28 memories and 166–7; parents and Arendt, Hannah 138, 142–3 126–7; at play 132–3; questions Aristotle 4–5, 28, 40, 149–50, 219 about wonder 47–8; self-awareness Asimov, Isaac 183–4 of 200; transition to youth 99–101; ATLAS. See Active Teaching and Learning vignettes about wonder 23–8; Approaches in Science why-phase of 169–74; wonder in Auguries of Innocence 29 early childhood education 122–34; awe 19n4, 149–61; reality and 151; sense wonder when sharing treasures of 149–53 127–8 classroom 217n3; dialogic 110–21; Bakhtin, Mikhail 115, 117 Finnish vertically integrated 210; BC Health and Career Education lack of wonder in 17–18; setting in Curriculum Package 175 Finland 210; students’ perception of beauty 68; in science 42–3 32–3; wonder in 11 Berliner, David C. 16, 89–96, 239 Cobb, Edith 98–9, 100–1, 169 Bianchi, Lynne 190–202, 239 cognition: conflict and 58; role of Blake, William 29 wonder in 219–38 244 Index

Coleridge, S. T. 18 104, 111–12, 115–16; leadership and college students 97–109 178–89; mentor programmes 180; communication, with students 89–91 opportunities for teaching 89–90; Creanga, Ion 166 “performativity”, 32; policy and creativity 207–8 93, 95; purpose of 98–9; questions Csikszentmihalyi, M. 30 as the beginning of a wonderful curiosity 45, 48 education 110–21; “rainbow curriculum 12. See also education; dreamers”, 227–8; rhythm of 101–5; Saitou pedagogy; performance school system as prison 11; school and its consequences 31–3; system for knowledge 19; science as stories and 157; teaching guides a prerequisite for engagement with 212–13; Three-Riches approach to 52–3; in Scotland 32; in the United development of 192–201; wonder States 203–18; wonder in early and 16, 157–9, 175 childhood education 122–34 Egan, Kieran 29, 30, 36–7, 41, 91–2, da Vinci, Leonardo 163 102, 105–6, 115, 149–61, 240; on Dawkins, Richard 41, 43 understanding 108n1 Deckard, M. F. 28–9 Einstein, Albert 44, 163, 225 de Róiste, A. 173 Eiseley, Loren 43 Descartes 28, 224; definition of Eisner, Elliott 144n4 wonder 29 El’konin, D. B. 209–10 Dewey, John 48, 104 Emile 16 dialogic classroom 110–21 Emilia, Reggio 123 Dickens, Charles 220–1, 224 empathy, imagination and 24–5 Dirty Bertie 197 England: early childhood education in drama: audience and 144n3; learning 122–34; education reform in 31–3; through improvisational play English National Curriculum 191; 135–45, 144n1, 144n2; performative ICAN project 125 inquiry and 136–9 The Excursion 8 experiential holism 213 early childhood education. See also children: children at play 132–3; family 138–9 discovery during 123; in Finland Faraday, Michael 42 203–18; initial gasp of wonder Feasey, R. 193 development 128–30; intervention Fellowship of the Ring 233–4 without breaking the spell 124–5; Fels, Lynn 135–45, 240 overview 122–4; sharing wonder Ferholt, Beth 203–18, 240 in 122–34; The Talking Table Feynman, Richard 42 125–6, 131–3; wonder when sharing Finland, early childhood education treasures 127–8 in 203–18; classroom setting in Eccles, D. 193 210; creative imagination in play- The Ecology of Imagination 169 worlds 212–15; fantasy, creativity education. See also curriculum: and learning in play worlds 206–8; advances in educational theory overview 203–6; psychological tools 222; communication and 89–91; in play-worlds 209–10 controversies in 223–4; early Fleming, Di 178–89, 240 childhood programs 168, 175n1; educational expectations and 141–2; Gadamer, G. H. 117–18 emotional connection with 37–8; Gaillet-De Chezelles 9, 10 in England 31–3, 122–34, 191; in games 77 Finland 203–18; interpretation of Gardner, Howard 40 classroom material 116; in Japan Gates, Bill 104 Index 245

GCSE. See General Certificate in Imagination 98 Secondary Education An Imaginative Approach to Teaching 30 General Certificate in Secondary Imaginative Education Research Group Education (GCSE) 32 (IERG), 35, 161 Gods 150–1 Immortality Ode 7, 10–11, 17, 18 Goethe, J. W. 226 Improvisational play 135–45, 144n1, “Good Education—The Teaching 144n2 Spot”, 170–1 incubation, as teaching tool 185–7 Goodwin, A. 192–3 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 8 Gopnik, Alison 168 Greene, Maxine 57–8, 138 James, William 233 Griffiths, Fleur 122–34, 240 Janecka, Laura 103 Grumet, Madeleine 138 Japan: commercial law in 114; education in 104; Kyouzi-Kaishaku Hadzigeorgiou, Yannis 40–65, 69, procedure 115–16; Saitou pedagogy 240–1 in 111–12; “Sidou-sho”, 113 Hakkarainen, Pentti 203–18, 241 Jessop, R. 221 Hall, Monty 77 Judson, Gillian 241 Hamlet 6 Jung, C. G. 225–6 Haralambous, Bronwen 219–38 Hard Times 220–1 Keats, John 15 Harlen, E. 193 Keen, Sam 18 Hartman, Geoffrey 8 Kim, K. 172–3 Heaney, Seamus 8 King, Clive 35 Heidegger, M. 8 Kirkbride, Tracy 124–5 Hershel, John 122 knowledge 11–13, 59, 61 high school students 97–109 Kolbe, U. 123 Hobbes, Thomas 28 Kosky, Lynne 185 hobbies 30 Kyouzi-Kaishaku procedure 115–16 Holmes, Richard 189 Hove, P. H. 169 Laboratory of Comparative Human Howe, A. 51 Cognition 205 human nature 5 Laborschule (Germany), 36 humility: Plato on 14; teachers and Lamia 15 12–13 language 164–5; ban on 122–3; foreign 102, 105–8; use of improvisation ICAN project 125 183; use of interruption 182–3 Ideal Curriculum Package, Here and Now Laws of Robotics 183–4 175 leadership 178–89; imagination and ideas: to help parents 126–7; students’ 181–7; overview 178–9; process of comments documenting a sense of 180–1; shared 181 wonder at science and 59 learning: cognitive conflict and 58; IERG. See Imaginative Education discovery in early childhood Research Group education 123; joy of teaching imagination 207–8. See also play- and 89–96; motivation and 52–3; worlds; in early childhood opportunities for 89, 142; in play education 124–5; empathy and worlds 206–8; scaffolding 123–4; 24–5; leadership and 181–7; realism science and wonder 190–202; of 207, 212–13; of students 153–5; sensible 206–7; students’ comments theory of 204–5; video games and documenting change in 60; 157; wonder and 22–39, 130–1, surprise in learning mathematics 179–87 69–70; through improvisational play 246 Index

135–45, 144n1; understanding and NAPLAN. See National Assessment 106; wonder as a prerequisite for Program — Literacy and Numeracy 56–61; wonder as part of 3–4 narrative rationality 212–13 “Learning in Depth” program 158 National Assessment Program — Learning in Depth (LiD) project Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) (Canada) 36–7 222–3, 235n1 legislation: commercial law in Japan National Educational Longitudinal 114; Primary Memorandum of Study (NELS 88 data set) 94 1965 (Scotland), 32 nature 233–5 “Let’s make a deal” game 77 NELS 88 data set 94 Lewis, C. S. 205, 212 Newton, Sir Isaac 46 LiD. See Learning in Depth project Nichols, Ashron 8 (Canada) Nielsen, Thomas W. 219–38, 241 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 205, 212 OECD. See Organisation for Economic literacy, in children 200–1 Co-Operation and Development (OECD) MacLure, M. 28 Opdal, P. M. 40, 67 magic 70–5, 217n2 Organisation for Economic Co- Malaguzzi, L. 123–4 Operation and Development Mandelbrot set 67, 69 (OECD) 31 Martineau, J. 219, 220 mathematics, wonder in 66–85; Paley, Vivien 125, 133 algebra and 70–1; counterintuitive Parmenides 6 probabilities 77–8; Parsons, Howard 15 counterintuitive results 75–8; Pauli, Wolfgang 225–6 magic and 70–5; “Mind Reader” Pearce, C. 28 and 71–5; overview 66–7; platonic pedagogy, of woodland walking 23–5 solids 76–7; probability and 78; Performative inquiry 136–9 Russian peasants’ multiplication “performativity” 32 78–81; Simpson’s paradox 81–3; philosophy 28, 219–20; Aristotle on 40; students’ questions about 67–9; Gadamer’s view on the dialectics surprise in learning and 69–70; of questions and answers 117–18; types of 69–70 Howard Parsons on 15; Opdal on Matilda 171 40; Plato on 5; understanding 106; Matthews, Gareth 15 Wadsworth on 7–9; of wonder Medina, John 166–7 179–80 memories 166–7 Piaget, Jean 101 Meno 4 Piersol, Laura 3–21, 241 mentor programmes 180 PISA. See Programme of International Merleau-Ponty, M. 165 Student Assessment Merryman, A. 172 Planck, Max 43 Metaphysics I 4, 5–6, 219 Plato 4–6, 149, 219; on humility 14 Michelangelo 163 Platt, P. G. 165 Milloy, Jana 143 plays. See Improvisational play Mindell, A. 226–7 play-worlds. See also children; “Mind Reader” 71–5 imagination: aesthetic creativity Miyazaki, Kiyotaka 110–21 of 203; creative imagination motivation, for learning 52–3 in 212–15; development of Mozart, Amadeus 163 psychological tools 215; experiential My Heart Leaps Up 7 holism 213; illusory needs in mystery: awe and 152; wonder and 44 play 209; imaginative expanding Index 247

and crossing the boundaries 214; “Sidou-sho”, 113 model of 205; others’ point of Simon Lee 10, 11 view 214; psychological tools in Simpson’s paradox 81–3 209–10; settings of 210–12; thought Sinclair, N. 68, 84 experiments 215; transition to Smart Science 196–7 imaginative space 211–12 Socrates 4–5, 6 The Prelude 7–8, 9 The Solitary Reaper 8 The Prestige 55 Staley, Betty 232–3 Primary Memorandum of 1965 The Star Thrower 43 (Scotland) 32 Steiner, R. 226 probability 78 Stig of the Dump 35 process oriented psychology 229 Stories: as a teaching technique 155 Programme of International Student stories 155–7 Assessment (PISA) 31 Strauss, Levi 40 students: comments documenting a questions: as the beginning of a sense of wonder at and about Tesla’s wonderful education 110–21; work on alternating current 60; Garamer’s view on the dialectics of comments documenting a sense questions and answers 117–18; new of wonder at science ideas 59; inquiries development 118–20 comments documenting change in perspective 60; communication religion 51, 151–2 with 89–91; imagination of 153–5; The Republic 5, 6, 12, 13–14 literacy and 200–1; opportunities for Research Group of Pedagogical Studies learning 92–3; renewing sense of 111–12 wonder in high school and college The Rhythm of Education 101 students 97–109; wonder as a Richards, Skye 144n5 source of questions and 53–6, 66–8 Robinson, Michael 103 supernatural 28–9 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 16 Russell, Bertrand 115 The Tables Turned 9 Russian peasants’ multiplication 78–81 Takaya, Keiichi 97–109, 242 The Talking Table 125–6, 131–3 Saddleford Academy (England) 33 Taylor, S. 193 Sagan, Carl 49 teachers: humility and 12–13; joy of Saitou, Kikaku 111–12 teaching 89–96; modelling a project Saitou pedagogy 111–12. See also 184; opportunities for teaching curriculum 89–90; role of 198, 200–1; teaching Sakuma, Katsuhiko 113–14 techniques and wonder 149–61; Samalin, N. 170 use of improvisation 183; use of Sardello, R. 228 incubation 185–7; use of integration Schieran, J. 231 of diverse concepts 184–5; use of Schweitzer, Albert 3 interruption 182–3; use of wonder science: beauty and 42–3; goal of 16–17 41; nature of wonder and 44–51; Thales 3–4 overview 40–2; as a prerequisite Theaetetus 4, 5, 6, 219 for engagement with 52–3; value Three-Riches 192–201; activity rich of wonder in 40–65; wonder and 196–7, 199; approaches to 195; learning 190–202 context rich 195–6, 199; overview Scotland, education reform in 32 194–5; response rich 197–8, 199 Scott, Walter 9 Tintern Abbey 7 Shakespeare, William 6 Tolkien, J.R.R. 233–4 Shaw, Bernard 159 Top Marks Project 198 248 Index

Trotman, Dave 22–39, 242 learning science and 190–202; Twain, Mark 164 learning through improvisational play 135–45, 144n1; in life 162–77; understanding 108n1; learning and in mathematics 66–85; “mature” 106 sense of 18; meaning of 164–6; United States: classroom setting in mystery and 44; nature of science 210–11; early childhood education and 44–51; one day 131–3; outside in 203–18 of the school system 35–6; parents and 126–7; as part of learning Varela, F. 138 3–4; philosophy of 179–80; at video games 157 the physical level 28–9; Plato Vygotsky, L. S. 123–4, 209, 217n1 on 4–6; in play-worlds 203–18; as a prerequisite for engagement Wai, Jonathan 103–4 with school science 52–3; as a Wallas, Graham 30 prerequisite for learning 56–61; Warnock, Mary 98 public places to wonder 187–8; Watson, A. 68 renewing in high school and Weisskopf, Victor 40 college students 97–109; reward Whitehead, Alfred North 17, 19, 48–9, from the experience of 61–2; role 101–2 in cognition 219–38; sense of Wilmoth, Greg 186 149–53; small 10; as a source of Wolfram Math World 77 students’ questions 53–6; stories wonder: at the astronomical and 155–7; students’ comments level 28–9; versus awe 19n4; documenting a sense of 59, childhood development of 60; student’s questions about 128–30; children’s vignettes about mathematics and 67–9; at the 23–8; in the classroom 11; cost supernatural level 28–9; teachers’ of 174; curriculum and 16, 33–8; use of 16–17; teaching techniques definitions of 29, 46, 152, 192–3; and 149–61; from unknown Descartes’ definition of 29; dual questions 110–21; value in science significance of 98–9; in early education 40–65; Wadsworth on childhood education 122–34; 8–11 educational expectations and 141–2; Woolgar, S. 42 in education in general 30–8, 162– Wordsworth, William 6–11, 122, 160 77; exhibiting 188–9; experience The World is Too Much With Us 7 of 50–1; familiarity with 15–17; Wrigley, T. 36, 37 as a gateway experience 219–38; imagination of 22–39, 130–1, Zabelina, Darya 103 179–87; importance as a learning Zajonc, A. 230–1, 234 tool 3–21; joy of teaching 89–96; Zazkis, Dov 66–85, 242 lack of in the classroom 17–18; Zazkis, Rina 66–85, 242