Wonder, Education, and Human Flourishing. Theoretical, Empirical, and Practical Perspectives

Wonder, Education, and Human Flourishing. Theoretical, Empirical, and Practical Perspectives
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN: 9789086598212

The premƯise that underlies this volume is that there are strong interconnections between wonder, education and human flourishing. And more specifically, that wonƯder can make a significant difference to how well one?s education progresses and how well one?s life goes. The contributors to this volume ? both senior, well-known and beginning researchers and students of wonder ? variously explore aspects of these connections from philosophical, empirical, theoretical and practical perspectives. The three chapters that comprise Part I of the book are devoted to the importance of wonder for education and for human flourishing. Part II contains four chapters offering conceptual analyses of wonder and perspectives from developmental psychology and philosophy (Spinoza, Wittgenstein, philosophy of religion). The seven chapters that form Part III contain a wealth of ideas and educational strategies to promote wonder in education and teacher education. This volume not only underlines and articulates the importance of wonder in education and in life but also offers fresh perspectives, allowing us to look with renewed wonder at wonder itself.

Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene

Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene
Author: Maria F. G. Wallace
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2021-12-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030796221

This open access edited volume invites transdisciplinary scholars to re-vision science education in the era of the Anthropocene. The collection assembles the works of educators from many walks of life and areas of practice together to help reorient science education toward the problems and peculiarities associated with the geologic times many call the Anthropocene. It has become evident that science education—the way it is currently institutionalized in various forms of school science, government policy, classroom practice, educational research, and public/private research laboratories—is ill-equipped and ill-conceived to deal with the expansive and urgent contexts of the Anthropocene. Paying homage to myopic knowledge systems, rigid state education directives, and academic-professional communities intent on reproducing the same practices, knowledges, and relationships that have endangered our shared world and shared presents/presence is misdirected. This volume brings together diverse scholars to reimagine the field in times of precarity.

Reimagining Education for the Second Quarter of the 21st Century and Beyond

Reimagining Education for the Second Quarter of the 21st Century and Beyond
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2023-12-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9004688498

The authors in this volume offer a new set of lenses that brings into focus the possibilities offered by different pedagogical approaches. With these lenses, this volume recognizes and answers the growing call from learners, parents, educators, communities, and national leaders for a re-imagined way to educate. This volume creates a vision of the future of education that calls for engagement in such pedagogies as blended learning, disruptive technology, connected and personalized. Contributors are: Vinita Abichandani, Fatma Nur Aktaş, Anastasios Athanasiadis, Anastasios (Tasos) Barkatsas, Seth Brown, Athina Chalkiadaki, Grant Cooper, Carlos García Cuadrado, Kimberley Daly, Yüksel Dede, Zara Ersozlu, Andrew Gilbert, James Goring, Anne K. Horak, Kathy Jordan, Katerina Kasimatis, Gillian Kidman, Peter Kelly, Manolis Koutouzis, Alex Koutsouris, Huk-Yuen Law, Susan Ledger, Kathy Littlewood, Simone Macdonald, Elisa Arranz Martín, Tricia McLaughlin, Juanjo Mena, Claudia Orellana, Anastasia Papadopoulou, Vassiliki Papadopoulou, Kate Park, Scott K. Phillips, Ioanna Skaltsa, Micah Swartz, Hazel Tan, and Lisa Williams.

The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life

The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life
Author: Iddo Landau
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2022
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190063505

"The volume presents 32 essays on a wide array of topics in modern philosophical meaning in life research. The essays are organized into six sections: Section I, Understanding Meaning in Life, focuses on various ways of conceptualizing meaning in life. Among other issues, it discusses whether meaning in life should be understood objectively or subjectively, the relation between importance and meaningfulness, and whether meaningful lives should be understood narratively. Section II, Meaning in Life, Science, and Metaphysics, presents opposing views on whether neuroscience sheds light on life's meaning, inquires whether hard determinists must see life as meaningless, and explores the relation between time, personal identity, and meaning. Section III, Meaning in Life and Religion, examines the relation between meaningfulness, mysticism and transcendence, and considers life's meaning from both atheist and theist perspectives. Section IV, Ethics and Meaning in Life, examines (among other issues) whether meaningful lives must be moral, how important forgiveness is for meaning, the relation between life's meaningfulness (or meaninglessness) and procreation ethics, and whether animals have meaningful lives. Section V, Philosophical Psychology and Meaning in Life, compares philosophical and psychological research on life's meaning, explores the experience of meaningfulness, and discusses the relation between meaningfulness and desire, love, and gratitude. Section VI, Living Meaningfully: Challenges and Prospects, elaborates on topics such as suicide, suffering, education, optimism and pessimism, and their relation to life's meaning"--

Philosophical, Educational, and Moral Openings in Doctoral Pursuits and Supervision

Philosophical, Educational, and Moral Openings in Doctoral Pursuits and Supervision
Author: Yusef Waghid
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2023-12-20
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1040001696

This timely volume conceptualises and applies the philosophical notions of wonder, wander, and whisper, serving as evaluative paradigms for objective assessment of quality doctoral research work and supervision in South African higher education. Written by one of the foremost academics in the field, the book combines the normative philosophical, educational, and moral notions of wonder, wander, and whisper with academic life and studies, focusing on doctoral work and supervision not just as cognitive or scientific processes, but also as existential, ethical, and political shaping of the self. By reflecting on three decades of doctoral supervision, the author gives an account of how his students have been initiated into moral discourses of democratic citizenship education and the intellectual adventures they have embarked upon through scholarly texts. The book also presents itself as a decolonial venture that repositions and resituates doctoral education in resistance to the hegemony of colonisation, inhumanity, inequality, unfreedom, and injustice in Southern Africa. Ultimately arguing for the relevance of wonder, wander, and whisper in academic culture, the book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and postgraduates in the fields of higher education, philosophy of education, and sociology of education as well as African education and doctoral studies more broadly.

Children’s Creative Inquiry in STEM

Children’s Creative Inquiry in STEM
Author: Karen Janette Murcia
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030947246

This edited volume brings together international research that explores children’s creativity in STEM inquiry. It takes the position that creativity is relevant in all aspects of life and is essential for adaptable and innovative thinking. The research informed content of the book, highlights both challenges and opportunities for growing children’s creativity. The book focuses on fostering children’s creativity and natural curiosity in the world around them through STEM inquiry. Through STEM inquiry, children are learning through a cross- disciplinary approach where they apply concepts from multiple fields as they are thinking creatively, problem solving and constructing solutions. Educators play a critical role in encouraging children’s creativity by modelling creativity, providing creative projects for children and importantly, establishing rich culturally connected environments where children have the resources, conditions and opportunities for acting and thinking creatively. The book provides a lens for looking at children’s creativity in a range of different cultural settings. It offers insight and guidance to future research and will build educators’ capacity for developing children’s creative practices.

Wonder and Education

Wonder and Education
Author: Anders Schinkel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2020-11-12
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1350071919

Many people, whether educators or not, will agree that an education that does not inspire wonder is barren. Wonder is commonly perceived as akin to curiosity, as stimulating inquiry, and as something that enhances pleasure in learning, but there are many experiences of wonder that do not have an obvious place in education. In Wonder and Education, Anders Schinkel theorises a kind of wonder with less obvious yet fundamental educational importance which he calls 'contemplative wonder'. Contemplative wonder disrupts frameworks of understanding that are taken for granted and perceived as natural and draws our attention to the world behind our constructions, sparking our interest in the world as something worth attending to for its own sake rather than for our purposes. It opens up space for the consideration of (radical) alternatives wherever it occurs, and in many cases is linked with deep experiences of value; therefore, it is not just important for education in general, but also, more specifically, for moral and political education.

Balanced Wonder

Balanced Wonder
Author: Jan B. W. Pedersen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 149858778X

In Balanced Wonder: Experiential Sources of Imagination, Virtue, and Human Flourishing, Jan B. W. Pedersen digs deep into the alluring topic of wonder and argues in a scholarly yet accessible way that the experience of wonder, when balanced, serves as a strong contributor to human flourishing. Along the way, Pedersen describes seven properties of wonder and shows how wonder it is distinct from other altered states, including awe, horror, the sublime, curiosity, amazement, admiration, and astonishment. Examining the contribution of both emotion and imagination in the experience of wonder--—filtered through the Neo-Aristotelian work of philosophers Douglas Rasmussen, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martha Nussbaum--—Pedersen also makes it clear that wonder may contribute to human flourishing in various ways, such as the widening of perception, extension of moral scope or sensitivity, a wondrous afterglow, openness, humility, an imaginative attitude, reverence, and gratitude. Importantly, for wonder to act as a strong contributor to human flourishing one needs to wonder at the right thing, in the right amount, in at the right time, in the right way, and for the right purpose.

Human Flourishing: Volume 16, Part 1

Human Flourishing: Volume 16, Part 1
Author: Ellen Frankel Paul
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1999-01-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521644716

The essays in this volume examine the nature of human flourishing and its relationship to a variety of other key concepts in moral theory. Some of them trace the link between flourishing and human nature, asking whether a theory of human nature can allow us to develop an objective list of goods that are of value to all agents, regardless of their individual purposes or aims. Some essays look at the role of friendships or parent-child relationships in a good life, or seek to determine whether an ethical theory based on human flourishing can accommodate concern for others for their own sake. Other essays analyze the function of families or other social-political institutions in promoting the flourishing of individuals. Still others explore the implications of flourishing for political theory, asking whether considerations of human flourishing can help us to derive principles of social justice.