An Aesthetic (Deweyan) Perspective on Science Learning: Case Studies of Three Fourth Graders

After a critique of 2 popular and current perspectives on the nature of understanding in science education (learning as change in conceptual understanding and learning as change in discourse and participation with others), we offer our own competing perspective drawing from Dewey, aesthetics, and aesthetic experience. We believe complex learning is best viewed as a dialogic process between person, world, and socio-cultural context that ends in a rich network of knowledge combined with a deep appreciation for the beauty and power of subject matter that transform one's perceptions of the world and of her/himself as knower. We use our perspective, that of aesthetic understanding, as an analytic lens to critique and illuminate the learning of 3 students studying geology in a fourth-grade classroom.