The heart of the educator: aesthetic experience shaping knowledge, identity and passion

This chapter explores Dewey’s construct of aesthetic experience and the role that the aesthetic plays in knowing: knowing as a coherence of things to be known, developing one’s sense of identity in relation to that knowing, and the passions that emerge in an ‘aesthetic experience’ that lays the foundation for future knowing, identity and passions. Drawing on Dewey’s ideas, Girod, Rau and Schepige developed the construct ‘Aesthetic understanding’ to provide a theoretical lens for describing students’ experience of coming to know science content. This chapter develops the aesthetic understanding construct further into a methodological framework, called a Knowledge-Identity-Passion (KIP) Analysis, that can be applied to research exploring aesthetic experience in two ‘research moments’: the immediate effects of an aesthetic experience on knowledge, identity and passion; and the life trajectory that follows an aesthetic experience. A KIP analysis can be applied to research examining the effects and meanings attached to experiences through close analysis of knowledge, identity and passion, both individually and in relation to each other. To illustrate the power of a KIP analysis narratives of four science educators are provided. The practical applications and methodological possibilities and limitations of a KIP Analysis are then discussed.