How many of you think that knowledge is a beautiful thing? If you agree, you are already halfway to agreeing with the premise of my paper.

How many of you think that learning can be beautiful also? Or is it just challenging? I believe that all meaningful learning is probably both. And that beauty often rises out of that challenge.

I hope these questions have you thinking about where my paper is going.

The paper I am asking you to consider reading is available from this Moodle site through the following link:

The Role of Beauty in Learning


My hope is that it offers another interesting and useful way of thinking about teaching and learning processes. I am very interested to hear about your own experiences as a teacher and learner that you feel can be described in the terms used in this paper--especially the term "beautiful."

The paper is long, but if you read only several pages, or the recommended 5 pages, that will be sufficient to get the general idea and contribute to the discussion.

In fact, for those with almost NO time to spare, I am going to paste some short excerpts from the paper below, including the first paragraph. Please join the discussion even if that is all you can manage. Maybe you will have time to finish after CALMet. Thanks!

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Excerpts from The Role of Beauty in Learning

"A beautiful learning experience is one that stimulates--and then satisfies--a desire for new knowledge or skill. The desire could be already existing and active, or latent and in need of stimulation. It might also be newly discovered in the context of a big question or challenge offered by a teacher or situation. A teacher’s role is to bring the desire into the foreground of a learner’s mind, making it a compelling curiosity and drive to learn. Then the teacher has to fulfill the promise of this offer by creating the conditions that allow a compelling effort toward mastery or deep understanding that the learner might grasp, grapple with and resolve. The effort is half the beauty.

That, in essence, is the narrative skeleton of the role of beauty in instructional design. It might be fleshed out in a thousand different ways, but the logic will always be similar."

"Nearly all seasoned educators will agree that teaching is about inspiring hearts as well as minds. It is about stimulating engagement, calling for creative thinking, building confidence, and even helping others develop their identities (Anderman & Wolters, 2006; Roeser, Peck, and Nasir, 2006). It is also about showing the beauty inherent in a discipline. For example, teaching meteorology is full of opportunities for creating awe about atmospheric wonders and natural threats, as well as the elegance of scientific explanations and equations. Weather products that depict surging and swirling atmospheric flow patterns are beautiful in their own right and inspiring to learners. This is more than what we usually refer to as a cognitive approach to teaching. It is also aesthetic. Explanations of any sort, in particular, are objects of beauty. Depictions of knowledge offer the most compelling and satisfying of symmetries (some concept = some explanation)."

"A great work of art draws us in through tension. In visual and musical arts, it is often a compositional tension--an ellipsis, or a visual or musical expectation to be met. In narrative works, it is more obvious--a normal situation is turned on its head and requires resolution--the hero goes on a journey or quest; a stranger comes to town and upsets the balance. In learning, it takes a big question or issue (Doyle & Bozzone, 2018), a puzzling non-intuitive demonstration, an elegant explanation, or an awesome natural event to trigger tension."

    Last modified: Monday, 27 September 2021, 1:10 PM