AERA Thursday: Dewey's Aesthetics and Classroom Experience

Dewey's Aesthetics and Classroom Experience -- SIG-John
Dewey Society, Papers at: homepages.utoledo.edu/kpugh/dewey-symposium.htm
-- When: Thu,
Apr 14 - 2:15pm - 3:45pm Building/Room: Hilton
Montreal Bonaventure / Montreal Ballroom, Section Verdun

Abstract: For over seven years, a group of faculty and doctoral
students at Michigan State University and other institutions has explored the
meaning and implications of Dewey's (1934) aesthetic experience. This particular
kind of intense, transformative experience is the core idea in Art as Experience
and, in our opinion, best represents what Dewey considered to be a worthwhile
educational experience. In this symposium, we will report how our program of
scholarship and classroom-based research has expanded our understanding of
Deweyan aesthetics and its implications for classroom experience. Renowned
Deweyan scholars Philip Jackson and James Garrison will serve as discussants.

Aesthetic, Transformative Experience and Educationby Kevin
J. Pugh, Mark Girod (Educational Psychology students from Michigan State)

• the relationship between experience and learning


• learning transforms experience and experience transforms learning


• exp deepens and makes enduring, and is the basis for learning


• focus on growth: educative experiences expand the capacity for richer experiences; -Experience
  and Education (p.26)


• driving question: how can content transform and expand experience? what
  would it look like? what would the defining qualities look like?


• Dewey: an experience represents important qualities (from Art as experience)




• consummation


• expansion of perception


• change of values




• "Ideas" ( from how We think)


• possibilities rather than accepted meanings


• compelling possibilities that instigate action -- a trying out of the idea


• worth is determined by their ability to illuminate experience


• learning that involves engaging wioth ideas possess many of the same qualities
  as a engaging in an experiences


• three dimensions of transformative experiences: behavior (display motivated
  use of contents); cognition(display expansion of perception); Value (display
  experiential value) (these three need to looked at holistically)


• model of teaching for transformative experinces




• crafting ideas out of Concepts


• Modeling and Scaffolding Transformative Experience (if you want students
  to engage in a TE, you need to model it)




• (Kevin's sort of a dorky geek -- that's good)


• get this paper! (at least for the Dewey citations)


• Dewey: life is about having worthwhile experiences.

Aesthetics
and Sublime Experiences in Science by Shane
S. Cavanaugh (central Michigan U)

• she says: science is taught as objective, removed, unemotionally (but real
  scientists don't operate that way.)


• Dewey's aesthetic experiences "An Experience"


• Kant: "We call that sublime which is absolutely great"


• extreme sublime: Kant, Burke (peering over the grand canyon or Niagara
  Falls) (humbling qualities)


• connective sublime Wordsworth (1798), Dewey Art as Experience,
  Emerson (1836) --


• scientific sublime: a little scary, very beautiful, exhilarating


• being awed; developing insight; change of sensibility


• emphasize big ideas


• use metaphors


• highlight the sublime


• emphasize visualization


• encourage imaginative exploration of scientific ideas


• model a sublime sensibility

Beyond
Control and Rationality in Aesthetic Experiences by E.
David Wong (Michigan State)

• Assumption A:the purpose of education is to provide deeply-engaging experiences


• Assumption B: Educative experiences are Aesthetic Experiences


• Deep Engagement examples: intense books "grip" us; we can't put
  them down; laughter infects us; we are swept away; we fall in love; (look
  at verbs -- what qualities do they have in common? Relinquishing control,
  being receptive to outside influence.)


• great ideas "seize us" before we "grasp them"


• we get a sense or feel of a concept before we comprehend it


• Dewey: "There is ... an element of undergoing, of suffering in it's
  large sense in every experience (L.W. 10. 47-48)


• (L.W. 10. 59) the esthetic or undergoing experience is receptive...


• (very good speaker/presenter)


• question: what is a good student? control


• Dewey: "... the sense of a thing ... is an immediate and immanent
  meaning; it is meaning which is itself felt or directly had" (LW.1.200)
  (Experience in Education)


• beyond control; and beyond rationality -- both are needed, but not sufficient


• (inspiration is beyond control and rationality)


• new virtues of good student:


• focused and open to inspiration; goal oriented and spontaneous; critical
  and embracing; logical and intuitive; self-aware and unselfconscious


• what does it mean to sense and feel? sensing is using more than 5 senses,
  feeling is more than positive and negative emotions.


• Dewey: scientific inquiry is not only doing, reflecting, planning, reasoning
  logically to construct meaning, but also to be spontaneous, etc.


• resist the inclination to teach -- let them discover, dwell on, attend
  to, value, etc the sense of a situation.


• teaching is the art of creating aesthetic experiences


• create alluring, sugestive, or evocative situations


• gist "geist" = spirit = spirare (breathe = inspire)


• Also a great paper -- GET IT

Philip
W. Jackson, pjackson@midway.uchicago.edu,
University of Chicago, Discussant

James
W. Garrison, wesley@vt.edu, Virginia
Tech University, Discussant

• art vs. science -- no distinction for Dewey


• aesthetic vs. artistic


• lots of Dewey quotes -- his quotes are generally left alone, untouched.
  there's a sacred approach to his words by many of the Dewey Society. A respect
  for the plain-spoken pedantics of them.


• Dewey's theory of motivation includes an element of desire


• it's not a matter of motivating to act, it's a matter of directing the
  action.


• behavior, cognition, and action are not separate.


• (this guy's smart, but like a religious librarian/scholar -- "the
  good book tells us...")


• far too drawn out...