Experiences of Transformative Awe and the "Small Self" in Scientific Learning and Discovery The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Cuzzolino, Megan Powell. 2019. Experiences of Transformative Awe and the "Small Self" in Scientific Learning and Discovery. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42081562 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Experiences of Transformative Awe and the “Small Self” in Scientific Learning and Discovery Megan Powell Cuzzolino Tina Grotzer Paul Harris Richard Weissbourd A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education 2019 © 2019 Megan Powell Cuzzolino All Rights Reserved i For Spud. ii Acknowledgements First, none of this work would be possible without my research participants and the vast network of people who helped connect me to them. I am thankful for the generosity of your time, your welcoming spirit, and the openness and candor with which you shared details of your lived experiences. I hope you will someday feel the benefits of this research in your own lives as producers and consumers of scientific knowledge. I am immensely grateful for the guidance and wisdom of my dissertation committee – Tina Grotzer, Paul Harris, and Richard Weissbourd. Rick offered valuable insights on my conceptual framing and pushed me to think about the ideas in new and creative ways, always with the ultimate goal of producing research that would be of value to teachers and learners. Paul’s innovative and probing questions about the nature of human development in his own research have inspired me for over a decade. His thoughtful feedback on numerous drafts and in our brainstorming meetings has significantly improved the methodological and analytic rigor of this work. Dissertation Chair is far too narrow a title to capture the many roles Tina has played in my life, including mentor, mom-away-from-home, and cherished friend. I chose to return to the Harvard Graduate School of Education for my doctoral work because I could not imagine pursuing such an endeavor with anyone other than Tina as an advisor. Since we first met in 2006, she has consistently modeled for me what it means to lead an academic career guided by intellectual curiosity, compassion, and integrity. Tina is also responsible for assembling the Causal Learning research group, which provided immeasurable support as I experienced all the growing pains of a young researcher. In particular, I am greatly indebted to Lynneth Solis, Maleka Donaldson, iii Shane Tutwiler, and Meredith Thompson for their multifaceted roles as intellectual sounding boards, professional mentors, and personal friends. I am fortunate to have begun my doctoral journey alongside the other members of the 2013 HGSE Ed.D. cohort – an exceptionally kind and humble group of scholars. The members of my writing group, Pei Pei Liu and Bryan Mascio, have read countless iterations of this work over the past three years. They have seen me through bursts of productivity and bouts of writer’s block that I feared might never end, and I am thankful for their generous and constructive feedback throughout this process. My cohort-mates and friends Dara Fisher, Simone Fried, Brent Maher, Lauren Yoshizawa, and Max Yurkofsky made the entire doctoral experience much more joyful. Several other members of the HGSE community have played critical roles in my doctoral career – both pragmatically, by keeping me employed, and substantively, through their mentorship. Joe Blatt has offered enthusiastic and unwavering support since we first met during my undergraduate days, and I cherish my role on the HT-123 teaching team, which has recharged my batteries every January for six years running. Liz Dawes Duraisingh provided my earliest formal training in qualitative research methods; serving as her Teaching Fellow for the past four years has been a valuable opportunity for me to sharpen my research skills and maintain my connections to the doctoral community. Josh Bookin has been a thoughtful collaborator and coach throughout my varied roles with the HGSE Teaching and Learning Lab. Matt Miller’s support of my doctoral module enabled me to share what I have learned about public engagement with science with a broader audience of practitioners. iv I am also grateful for several important professional opportunities outside of HGSE. Norwood School in Bethesda, Maryland took a chance on me in 2010 when I was an inexperienced would-be science teacher. The powerful classroom teaching experiences I had there, thanks to amazing students and a brilliant and supportive science department, inspired many of the initial research questions that led to my doctoral work. In 2015, Rabbi Geoff Mitelman welcomed me into the Sinai and Synapses Fellowship, a program that introduced me to an incredible group of scholars, enriched my personal and academic life, and opened my eyes to new bodies of literature that greatly influenced the direction of this research. I am fortunate to have an extended network of family and friends who have consistently cheered me on and reminded me that there was life outside the dissertation. Meghan Pasricha, Anna McCallie, Emma Coleman Emmer, Alex Papalia, Christine Malkmus, and the Gifford Girls were always just a text message away whenever I needed them. Sharing an apartment with Liz Brenner during the first year of the program made my transition back into student life a lot less lonely (and a lot more lime green). Karen and Bob Cuzzolino and Natalie and Neal Gillies are the second family I cannot believe I’ve been lucky enough to acquire. Every opportunity I have been afforded in this life has stemmed from the love and generosity of my parents, Catherine and Gerald Powell. Mom and Dad, I am blown away by everything you have achieved through your lifelong perseverance and dedication to learning, and I always knew that your commitment to education inspired my own general career trajectory. Now, as I reflect back on my doctoral studies, I can recognize more specific threads of your influence. Dad, you are the best professional role model I could v ask for, not just because you earned your doctorate but because you have applied it to a career dedicated to making the world a safer, better place. Decades ago, experiences like our Philosophy for Children sessions and visits to the Franklin Institute sparked the intellectual curiosity that continues to fuel my work. It is because of you that I first discovered the relationship between science and awe. Mom, I am grateful that you encouraged me to explore academic and professional pursuits that brought me joy and filled me with wonder. You empowered me with a simultaneous sense of freedom and responsibility through the insistence that your only non-negotiable expectation for me was kindness. It is because of you that I believe we have a moral obligation to contribute to something larger than ourselves. Finally, thank you to my husband, Dan Cuzzolino. Thank you for uprooting your life in D.C. to be here with me on this journey. Thank you for being my draft reader, brainstorming partner, and sanity checker. Thank you for always believing in the worthiness of this goal and the corresponding sacrifices that it meant for our family. Thank you for picking up the pieces when I was too tired to make dinner, wash dishes, or string together a coherent thought. Thank you for giving me the motivation to work efficiently so I could put the laptop away and spend precious hours enjoying our life together. I love you. I can’t wait for what’s next. vi Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vii Section 1 .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 | Dissertation Overview ............................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 | Conceptual Framework ............................................................................................. 4 The History of Scholarship on Awe ......................................................................................... 4 The Epistemic and Collective Dimensions of Awe ................................................................. 6 Gaps Addressed by This Dissertation .................................................................................... 12 Section 2 ........................................................................................................................................ 16 Chapter 3 | Study 1: Scientists’ Experiences of Transformative Awe ....................................... 16 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 16 Research Questions ................................................................................................................ 19 Methods ................................................................................................................................