Aesthetics and science education: Beauty at Work podcast

by | Wednesday, February 01, 2023

Beauty at Work is a podcast that “explores how beauty shapes our lives and the work that we do” hosted by Brandon Vaidyanathan, Associate Professor of Sociology at The Catholic University of America. In its first season the focus is on beauty in science. As part of this series, Brandon has spoken with physicists, philosophers, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, entrepreneurs, psychologists and more. I was lucky to be a guest on this podcast, in an episode titled: Why Aesthetics is Essential for Science Education.

Brandon and I had a wonderful conversation and you can watch the video version or listen to it on your favorite podcast app (links below). Note: there are some glitches in the video due to some bandwidth issues that came up during our conversation – so the audio version may be better. An added benefit of the audio is that you don’t have to see my face 🙂

Among the many things we discussed was a framework we published in 2019 about the role that the aesthetic plays in learning in the STEM disciplines. You can learn more about the framework by going to Aesthetics & STEM education: A new framework. Other publications in this area include why science teachers should care about beauty in their teaching, the aesthetics of coding; its role in science education; and its presence in popular science media.

Links:

A few randomly selected blog posts…

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KJZZ interview on STEAM education

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Why teachers should care about beauty in science

Why teachers should care about beauty in science

Figure 1. â€śWe are a way for the universe to know itself” - Carl SaganScience 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...

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