Why teachers should care about beauty in science

by | Thursday, August 04, 2016

Figure 1. “We are a way for the universe to know itself” – Carl Sagan
Science is one of the most powerful ways to engage with the beauty of the universe.
We use science to understand the cosmos and, in the process,
find beauty in our understandings and representations of it. 

•  •  •

iWonder: Rediscovering School Science is a new journal of science education focusing on middle school science teachers, published by the Azim Premji University. The second issue of the journal just appeared – and it has the first article in a series titled Research to Practice, that I am co-editing with my colleague Angie Calabrese Barton. Written by Rohit Mehta and Sarah Keenan, you can find the article, complete citation and abstract below:

Mehta, R., & Keenan, S. (2016, June). Why teachers should care about beauty in science education. iWonder: Rediscovering School Science (1) 2, 83-86.

Abstract: This article explores the role of beauty in science education. The authors use research in science education to highlight the importance of teachers consciously making connections to aesthetic aspects in science. Caring about beauty in science can inspire a sense of wonder and curiosity among students.

Incidentally, one of the most fun parts of writing this article was having to create the illustrations that accompany the prose. Both these images were created with resources shared freely under Creative Commons licenses, and labeled for reuse with modification. The first illustration is given above (at the beginning of the blog post) and the second one is below.

illustration2-small

Figure 2.Connecting across scales of beauty.
From the grandeur of the cosmos to the intricacies of sub-atomic particles,
beauty is all around us. These infinities (of the very small and the very large)
are bridged by the human intellect—the beauty of mathematics at work.

 

A few randomly selected blog posts…

The Tale of Two Tech Teams: How Small Interactions Expose Our Values

The Tale of Two Tech Teams: How Small Interactions Expose Our Values

A while back, I wrote about an email that made my heart stop—an auto-generated message declaring that an employee had been "terminated." That impersonal, poorly designed communication spoke volumes about the organization's attitude towards its people. And the fact...

Transplanted Man

I just finished reading Transplanted Man by Sanjay Nigam. A strange but entirely fascinating and satisfying novel with quirky and interesting characters. Nigam is quite willing to tackle difficult and "big" questions but does it with a light touch. I had read his...

Playing with Droste (on my iPad)

I have, for a long time, been interested in the Droste effect - a "specific kind of recursive picture... [in which] an image exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear....

On embodiment in online learning

Patrick Dickson just forwarded me an essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled The Sensuous Classroom: Focusing on the Embodiment of Learning [Subscription required]. In this article Suzanne Kelly, the author, bemoans the absence of the physical body from...

AMA with Digital Promise: An AI-opening Discussion

AMA with Digital Promise: An AI-opening Discussion

I recently had the pleasure of participating in Digital Promise's inaugural AI Education Exchange "Ask Me Anything" series, hosted by Kelly McNeil. This was my first LinkedIn AMA and was great fun, in large part due to the team that helped set it up and the broader...

How to author 85,000 (or is it 200,000) books…

Andrea Francis just emailed me a note about Professor Phillip Parker who is the world's fastest book author. He has over the past five years over 85,000 books to his name. He is also the most eclectic. As the article says, "He has authored some 188 books related to...

iVideos from Australia, the 2011 edition

Last June I had posted a note (Teacher as filmmaker: An update from down under) about the iVideos created by students from the University of Technology, Sydney (under the guidance of Dr. Matthew Kearney). iVideos or "idea videos" are short films often 2 minutes (or...

SITE 2025: Lost and Found

SITE 2025: Lost and Found

I spent the last week in Orlando at the SITE 2025 conference. During this conference, I set a new personal record for losing everything from my belongings to an election, from water bottles to conference panelists and more - all leading to unexpected tensions and...

Fractals, ambigrams & more

Fractals, ambigrams & more

Photo & and design © Punya Mishra.The photo of bubbles was taken with cell phone camera (equipped with a macro lens).  Fractals are mathematical/geometrical structures that exhibit self-similarity at increasingly small (or large) scales. Fractals were...

0 Comments

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Aesthetics & STEM education: Introducing a new framework – Punya Mishra's Web - […] research group have been exploring this issue for a while (for instance we have written on, why science teachers…

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *