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SUBLIME SCIENCE: TEACHING FOR SCIENTIFIC SUBLIME
EXPERIENCES IN MIDDLE SCHOOL CLASSROOMS

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Shane Cavanaugh

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SUBLIME SCIENCE: TEACHING FOR SCIENTIFIC SUBLIME EXPERIENCES IN
MIDDLE SCHOOL CLASSROOMS

By

Shane Cavanaugh

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Educational Psychology

2005

 

 

ABSTRACT

SUBLIME SCIENCE: TEACHING FOR SCIENTIFIC SUBLIME EXPERIENCES IN
MIDDLE SCHOOL CLASSROOMS

By
Shane Cavanaugh

Due to a historical separation of cognition and emotion, the affective aspects of
learning are oﬁen seen as trivial in comparison to the more ‘essential’ cognitive qualities
- particularly in the domain of science. As a result of this disconnect, feelings of awe,
wonder, and astonishment as well as appreciation have been largely ignored in the
working lives of scientists. In turn, I believe that science education has not accurately
portrayed the world of science to our students. In an effort to bring the affective qualities
of science into the science classroom, I have drawn on past research in the ﬁeld of
aesthetic science teaching and learning as well as works by, Burke, Kant, and Dewey to
explore a new construct I have called the “scientiﬁc sublime”.

Scientiﬁc sublime experiences represent a sophisticated treatment of the cognitive
as well as affective qualities of science learning. The scientiﬁc sublime represents
feelings of awe, wonder, and appreciation that come ﬁom a deep understanding. It is only
through this understanding of a phenomenon that we can appreciate its true complexity
and intricacies, and these understandings when mixed with the emotions of awe and
reverence, are sublime. Scientiﬁc sublime experiences are an attempt at the re—integration
of cognition and feeling.

The goal of this research was twofold: to create and teach a curriculum that
fosters scientiﬁc sublime experiences in middle school science classes, and to better

understand how these experiences are manifested in students. In order to create an

 

approach to teaching for scientiﬁc sublime experiences, it was ﬁrst necessary for me to
identify key characteristics of such an experience and a then to create a pedagogical
approach, both of which are described in detail in the dissertation.

This research was conducted as two studies in two different middle schools. My
pedagogical approach was used to create and teach two ﬁve-week 7th grade science units -
-— one on weather (approximately 50 students participated) and the other on ecology (24
students participated). Both units proved to be a success in terms of the learning that
resulted and in the positive experiences of the students and myselfas the teacher.

In both cases, students were give a pre and post multiple-choice test that covered
questions typical of those found on the state’s achievement exam and the schools’ regular
tests covering weather and ecology. Both groups of students showed a signiﬁcant
increase in learning. In an attempt to gain an understanding of student experiences with
this type of learning, surveys and interviews were administered. The units appear to have
profoundly affected students’ ideas of weather and ecology — many reporting to see these
concepts in new, richer ways. The goal of teaching for scientiﬁc sublime experiences is
not only content knowledge, but to transform students’ understanding of the world. Based
on student comments and observations of classroom discussions, I feel that I largely

achieved my goal.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I ﬁrst want to thank my advisor, David, for having such compelling ideas, for
piquing my interest in the sublime, and for encouraging me in my research of the topic
and attempts to teach towards this goal. Our varied conversations, delving well beyond
educational psychology and into the areas of science, philosophy, literature and art, were
always inspiring.

To my committee - David, Dick, Punya, and Lynn - thanks for your guidance,
encouragement, and patience as I at times struggled through the dissertation process.
Each of you brought a unique and important perspective to my learning and I appreciate
the freedom you allowed me.

There are many aspects of my doctoral education at MSU that I have beneﬁted
from, but above all I feel lucky to have found a group of people - David, Punya, Dick,
Mark, John, Kevin, and Steve - who were also interested in exploring the seldom studied
connections between science, learning, philosophy, and aesthetics. I am grateful that I
was able to add my little take on these issues and look forward to continued collaboration
with each of you.

In addition, this whole endeavor would not have been possible without the humor,
encouragement, and intellectual stimulation from the incredible friends I made at MSU —-
Mark, Mandy, Cheryl, Carolyn, Valerie, J ing, Ken, Ed, Steve, Blaine, and Andrew. I
must also thank my non-grad school friends - Sheila, Pam, Quinn, and Terry - thanks for

being my biggest fans and helping me keep things in perspective.

Finally, I need to express my gratitude to my parents for their continuous support
in so many ways throughout my graduate career. Their optimism and pride in what I was

doing gave me the needed conﬁdence to see me through.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................. ix
CHAPTER 1: THE SUBLIME AND SCIENCE
Introduction” .. . l
Aesthetics, Affect, and Science ........................................................... 2
The Sublime .......................................................................................... 5
Extreme Sublime .............................................................................. 7
Connective Sublime ........................................................................ 12
The Sublime, Science, and Science Education ................................................. 15
The Scientiﬁc Sublime ............................................................................. 17
The Instinctual Aspects of the Extreme and Connective Sublime .................. 18
Scientists and the Sublime — The Scientiﬁc Sublime .......................................... 19
Scientiﬁc Sublime as Compelling Experiences ................................................ 23
Why Sublime Science Education? ............................................................... 25
Provide students with a More Accurate View of Science ............................ 25
Appreciation for Science and the Natural World ...................................... 27
Seeing and Being in the World Differently ............................................ 29

CHAPTER 2: A PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH TO THE SCIENTIFIC SUBLIME

Introduction .......................................................................................... 3 1
Qualities of a Scientiﬁc Sublime Experience ................................................... 31
Teaching to Foster the Scientiﬁc Sublime: A Pedagogical Approach ....................... 34
An Emphasis on the Content’s Big Ideas .............................................. 35

Big Ideas: The Weather Unit .......................................... 36

' Big Ideas: The Ecology Unit ........................................... 38

The Use of Metaphor ..................................................................... 39
Metaphor: The Weather Unit .......................................... 40

Metaphor: The Ecology Unit .......................................... 41

An Emphasis on Visualization ........................................................... 42
Visualization: The Weather Unit ...................................... 43

Visualization: The Ecology Unit ...................................... 44

Highlighting the Sublime ................................................................. 44
Highlighting the Sublime: The Weather Unit ........................ 45

Highlighting the Sublime: The Ecology Unit ........................ 46

Encouraging Imaginative Exploration of Scientiﬁc Ideas ........................... 46
Imaginative Exploration of Ideas: The Weather Unit ............... 47

Imaginative Exploration of Ideas: The Ecology Unit ............... 48

Modeling a Sublime Sensibility ......................................................... 48
Modeling a Sublime Sensibility: The Weather Unit ................ 50

Modeling a Sublime Sensibility: The Ecology Unit ................ 50

vi

 

CHAPTER 3: SETTING AND METHODS

Introduction .......................................................................................... 52
Settings and Participants ........................................................................... 52
Study 1: Semi-Rural Middle School .................................................... 52
Site 2: Large, Urban Middle School .................................................... 54
Research Design .................................................................................... 56
Measures ............................................................................................. 60
WeatherUnit............... ................................................................ 60
Survey .............................................................................. 60
Ecology Unit ............................................................................... 61
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS — STUDENT EXPERIENCES
Introduction .......................................................................................... 63
Analysis of Sublime Experiences ................................................................ 63
Site 1: The Weather Unit ................................................................. 63
Site Two: The Ecology Unit ............................................................. 67
Discussion of Sublime Experiences .............................................................. 70
Extreme Sublime ........................................................................... 70
Connective Sublime ....................................................................... 74
Scientiﬁc Sublime: Affect Coupled with Understanding ..................................... 75'
The Weather Unit .......................................................................... 75
Being awed by how science ideas reveal the world .......................... 76
Developing Insight ............................................................... 78
Seeing and Being in the World Differently ................................... 80
The Ecology Unit .......................................................................... 82
Ecology Student Interactions with Pictures: The Scientiﬁc Sublime ......85
Content Learning ................................................................................... 89
The Weather Unit .......................................................................... 89
The Ecology Unit .......................................................................... 89
CHAPTER 5: RESULTS — EFFICACY OF THE PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH
Introduction .......................................................................................... 91
An Emphasis on the Big Ideas .................................................................... 91
Big Ideas: Weather Unit .................................................................. 92
Big Ideas: Ecology Unit .................................................................. 94
The Use of Metaphors .............................................................................. 95
Metaphors: Weather Unit ................................................................. 95
Metaphors: Ecology Unit ................................................................. 98
An Emphasis on Visualization .................................................................. 100
Visualization: The Weather and The Ecology Unit ................................. 100
Highlighting the Sublime ............................................... . ......................... 1 05
Highlighting the Sublime: The Weather Unit 105
Highlighting the Sublime: The Ecology Unit ........................................ 108
Imaginative Exploration of Scientiﬁc Ideas ................................................... 109

Imaginative Exploration ofIdeas: The Weather Unit 110
Imaginative Exploration ofIdeas: The Ecology Unit 112

vii

 

Modeling a Sublime Sensibility ................................................................. 113

Teacher Narrative ................................................................................. l 15
Reﬂections on the Pedagogical Approach ............................................ 118
Generalizability Concerns ............................................................... 120

CHAPTER 6: IMPLICATIONS

Introduction ........................................................................................ 125

Themes that Emerged from the Research ...................................................... 126
Fascination with the Extreme Sublime ................................................ 126
The Extreme Sublime and the Dangerous Aspects of Nature ...................... 129
The Elusive Connective Sublime ...................................................... 133

The Teaching Approach ........................................................ 134
Students are Less Inclined Towards the Connective Sublime ............ 136
The Connective Sublime as Intangible ....................................... 137
Concerns from My Teaching: Did I Merely Scare My Students? . ..... 138
Limitations and Future Research ............................................................... 142

viii

List of Tables

Table 3.1: Student characteristics of site ......................................................... 53
Table 3.2: Student characteristics at site ......................................................... 54
Table 3.3: Sequence of Research at Site 1 — Weather Unit ................................... 57
Table 3.4: Sequence of Research at Site 2 — Ecology Unit ................................... 57

Table 4.1: Words “Weather” Students used in Surveys that Demonstrate An Aspect of the
Sublime .............................................................................................. 64

Table 4.2: Responses Showing Aspects of the Sublime from “Weather” Student Surveys
......................................................................................................... 65

Table 4. 3: Percentage of “Weather” Students showing some type of Sublime Experience
in Survey Responses ............................................................................... 66

Table 4. 4: Breakdown of the Percentage of Each Type of Sublime shown in Weather
Survey Responses .................................................................................. 66

Table 4.5: Percentage of Ecology Students Showing Some Type of Sublime Experience
in Interviews ......................................................................................... 68

Table 4.6: Breakdown of the Percentage of each Type of Sublime Shown in Ecology Unit
Interviews ............................................................................................ 68

Table 4.7: Words Ecology Students used in Interviews that Demonstrate Some Aspect of
the Sublime .......................................................................................... 68

Table 4.8: Examples of Sublime Experiences Ecology Students Showed Evidence of
Having — From Interviews ........................................................................ 69

Table 4.9: Examples of How Science Ideas Revealed the World From Weather Survey 78
Table 4.10: Examples of Developing Insight from the Weather Survey .................... 79

Table 4.11: Examples From the Weather Survey of Students Seeing the World
Differently ........................................................................................... 81

Table 4.12: Examples ﬁom Ecology Interviews of How Ideas Revealed the World ......83

Table 4.13: Examples for Ecology Interviews that Show Insight ........................... 84

 

Table 4.14: Examples From Ecology Interviews that Showed Evidence of Students

Seeing the World Differently ..................................................................... 85
Table 4.15: Average Score for Pre and Post Test by hour for the Weather Unit ........... 89
Table 4.16: Average Score for Pre and Post Test for the Ecology Unit ..................... 90

Table 5.1: Student Survey Comments that Show Evidence of Learning Through Team
Metaphor ............................................................................................. 98

Table 5.2: Student Interview Comments that Show Evidence of Learning Using Metaphor
........................................................................................................ 010

Table 5.3: Weather Unit Student Comments on Surveys Pertaining to Visualization ...104

Table 5.4: Ecology Unit Comments from Interviews Pertaining to Visualization ....... 105
Table 5.5: Student Responses to How the Unit Was Structured Around Storms . . .. . ....107
Table 5.6: Student Comments From Interviews on the Unit’s Structure Around Animals

........................................................................................................ 109
Table 6.1: Nature as Danger Theme: Examples from Student Interviews ................ 133

Chapter 1: The Sublime and Science
Introduction

Science is generally thought of as a discipline that seeks to objectively scrutinize
the natural world in search of answers. Scientists are seen as people who view
phenomena from a distance; who systematically, logically, and analytically explore the
world around them. Science educators have been taught to look to the ﬁeld of science and
practicing scientists to guide them in their teaching of important ideas, processes, and
approaches (N SE Standards, 1996). As a result, science pedagogy characteristically
instructs students to step back from objects and events in order to dispassionately observe
and analyze them. Recently, in an attempt to guide students towards thinking like
scientists, the process of scientiﬁc inquiry has become popular in science education (NSE
Standards, 1996) as well as the promotion of strong inductive reasoning skills (N SE
Standards, 1996). While each of these efforts has enriched our understanding of science
teaching and learning, if we are to more accurately depict the discipline as many
scientists see and work in it we must connect these cognitive aspects with the equally
important affective features of science.

A surprisingly large literature exists on the role emotion, creativity, beauty, and
passion play in the working lives of scientists (Chandrasekhar, 1987; Dawkins, 1998;
Dirac, 1963; McAllister, 1996; Poincare 1946; Root-Bernstein, 1989, 1997; Tauber,
1997; Wechsler, 1978). Unfortunately, the role of emotions and aesthetics in science has
been largely overlooked in terms of science education. Recently, however, a few
educational researchers have sought to include affect and aesthetics in science education

by developing and testing theories of aesthetic scientiﬁc learning (Wong, 2000, Pugh,

 

2000, Pugh, 2002; Girod, 2001; Girod, Rau, & Schepige, 2003). This dissertation
research builds on these previous studies of aesthetic science teaching and learning, but
focuses on a particular branch of aesthetics, the sublime.

The sublime has been seen alternatively as a part of and as a contrast to the
beautiful, but always associated with feelings of awe and exceptionality. It has captivated
poets, philosophers, musicians, and artists for hundreds of years. I argue that scientists
and naturalists should be added to this list and that we as science educators should strive
to see and convey the sublime as well. An assortment of writings by scientists suggests
that they in fact not only experience the sublime but also value it as part of their process
of understanding. With these examples from science, and through research on the history
of the sublime and its various characterizations, I have developed an approach for
teaching that fosters sublime experiences in the science classroom.

This research is designed to a) develop a theory of sublime experiences had
through learning science, b) create curriculum for teaching science that fosters sublime
experiences, c) examine student experiences that result from this teaching, and d)
investigate the efﬁcacy of the teaching approach designed to foster experiences of this
type.

Aesthetics, Affect, and Science

Like the poet, the man of science also must always be able to put himself in

thought in the place of Nature, to learn how she acts. . . the hypothesis is a kind of

sublime romance, a scientiﬁc poem (Guyau, 1877, p.358).

Before I delve into the philosophy of the sublime, its connection to science, and
my approach to teaching, I must ﬁrst describe what I mean by aesthetics and where the

sublime ﬁts in. Aesthetics, a notoriously difﬁcult concept to characterize, is nevertheless

deﬁned by The American Heritage Dictionary (2004) as “of or concerning the
appreciation of beauty or good taste”. A more thorough deﬁnition is “An evaluation of
some aspect of nature or human creation in terms of whether or not it is acceptable and
satisfying within a given cultural and historical context” (Root-Bemstein, 1997 p. 25).
This description of aesthetics describes beauty as a culturally based judgment; what is
beautiful to one person may not be to another. To take the concept of aesthetics a step
farther and closer to the ways in which I will use the term, Root-Bemstein (1997) offers
another deﬁnition:

It is the integration of thinking and feeling that characterizes the highest forms of
aesthetic experience in both science and arts (p. 55).

In this deﬁnition, Root-Bemstein, a physiologist who also studies interactions and
connections between science and the arts, emphasizes the importance of emotion in
aesthetics. But he also pairs the emotional with the cognitive, claiming that aesthetic
experiences are a combination of “thinking and feeling”. This deﬁnition of aesthetics is
also interesting because he explicitly mentions science as being capable of inducing such
experiences. It is this version of aesthetics, a combination of cognitive and affective
components, which I will refer to throughout this work and ﬁnd particularly useful in
terms of thinking about science education.

While Root-Bernstein’s description of aesthetics includes science, this is not a
particularly common view. In fact the worlds of science and the arts have at times been at
odds with each other and partially as a result of this division we have experienced a
historical separation of cognition and emotion. The affective aspects of science
experiences have been seen as trivial in comparison to the more ‘essential’ cognitive

qualities of learning. As a result of this disconnect the feelings of awe, wonder, and

 

astonishment as well as an appreciation of beauty have been largely ignored in the
working lives of scientists. In turn, I believe that science education has not accurately
portrayed the world of science to our students. As previously mentioned, in an effort to
bring the affective qualities of science into the science classroom, I have begun an
exploration of a particular branch of aesthetics — the sublime. I chose to investigate the
sublime and how it can relate to science and science education because of two reasons: 1)
It is a word often used to describe strong emotions inspired by nature, and science is
ultimately the study of nature; and 2) The sublime represents the ultimate of emotions,

what has been called, “the strongest of passions” (Burke, 1757, p.51).

 

The Sublime
We call that sublime which is absolutely great (Kant, 1790, p. 106).
Sublime: Characterized by nobility; majestic. 2a. Of high spiritual, moral, or

intellectual worth. b. Not to be excelled; supreme. 3. Inspiring awe; impressive
(American Heritage Dictionary, 2000).

The word sublime comes from the Latin word ‘limen’, meaning ‘lintel’ — the
beam that forms an upper part of a door or window. Therefore, the metaphorical
meaning behind the word sublime is to be lofty, or as high as a lintel. The word also has
two interesting forms: sublimate and sublimation.

To sublimate, means to convert, transmute, or purify. Originally sublimate was a
word used by alchemists to describe their work as they tried to convert sulfur into salt,
salt into mercury, and ﬁnally mercury into gold. Sublimation, the process of sublimating,
is today seen as the transformation of matter into purer substances as in changing from a
solid to a gaseous state. Sublimation occurs when a step in the normal sequence of things
(e. g. solid to liquid to vapor) is skipped as in the case of dry ice where solid water moves
directly to water vapor. Quite understandably, these early chemists were confused and a
bit taken aback by the seldom seen process of sublimation. Reportedly, alchemists
believed that through sublimation they were witnessing matter dissolve into a higher
spiritual form. In their own laboratories they were watching what seemed to be
supernatural transformations of solid substances into escaping vapors. These experiences
not only leﬂ the alchemists awe-struck but also convinced that they had witnessed a spirit
or force that pervades all matter. Through these mystical encounters the early chemists
attached feelings of fascination and reverence mingled with a sense of trepidation to the

process of sublimation. Today the word sublime is oﬁen associated with these ideas of

 

perfection and transcendence that arose from the alchemists’ belief that sublimation
involved moving to a higher state.

As a subject of philosophy, sublime ﬁrst dates back to the rhetorical writings of
the essay, 0n the Sublime, by Longinus in 1St century Greece. Through emotion and
language Longinus believed we are capable of transcendence; “the soul is raised by true
sublimity, it gains a proud step upwards, it is ﬁlled with joy and exultation.” Longinus
used the sublime to describe excellence in writing that originated from ﬁve sources:
reason, emotions, ﬁgurative language, noble diction, and elevated composition. Sublime
writing, he believed, had the power to enthrall the reader through its imaginative and
emotional depth (Klein, 2000). And so from the beginning, the sublime was associated
with a sense of deep emotional transcendence.

The philosophical study of the sublime went largely untouched from the time of
Longinus until the 1600’s when an Englishmen, John Dennis, wrote write again of the
emotions of the sublime. Dennis took Longinus’ idea of the sublime as a deeply felt
emotion, but he added something to it that would greatly inﬂuence future aesthetic
philosophers. Dennis’ delving into the sublime began as he described the sensations he
felt during an expedition he made across the Alps. Like many before and after him,
Dennis was awe-struck by the enormity of the mountains and the very real fear he felt
trying to cross them. Before his actual journey Dennis had been enamored with his
romantic imaginings of the mountains, but faced with the reality of the enormous snow-
capped Alps, in 1693 he wrote:

The sense of all this produc’d different emotions in me a delightful Horrour, a

terrible Joy, and at the same time, that I was inﬁnitely pleas’d, I trembled.”
(Wiener, 1973).

 

By writing of this experience Dennis developed an aesthetic theory which became one of
the ﬁrst distinctions between the beautiﬁil and the sublime, two contrasting concepts of
aesthetics most commonly associated with Edmund Burke (175 7) and Immanuel Kant
(1764, 1790). Dennis’ description captured the essence of how Burke and Kant would
later characterize the sublime - as an enthralling combination of fear and delight.

While it was philosophers, and later poets, who labored to describe and analyze
the sublime, it is important to remember that the word and its feelings were ﬁrst
associated with the work of early scientists — the alchemists. The relations between
science, scientists and the sublime will be further explored and connected to ideas of
science education later in this dissertation. But for now I will eXplore the sublime in
works of prose and poems in hopes of making connections between the worlds of
science, philosophy, and literature and to classify the various types of sublime.
Philosophers and poets have taken a variety of stances on the sublime, but out of these
writings two very different forms emerge, what I call the extreme and the connective
sublime.

The Extreme Sublime

The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate

most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is the state of the soul, in

which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror (Burke, 1757, p.
57).

The ﬁrst type of sublime that I have identiﬁed, what I have come to call the
extreme, is associated with words such as: astonishment, enthralling, fear, horror, delight,
awe-inspiring, and humbling. I found that this type of sublime ﬁrst emerged ﬁom
Dennis’ 1693 description of his feelings associated with a dangerous crossing of the Alps.

Inspired by nature, his account included the seemingly contradictory feelings of

“delightful Horrour” and “terrible Joy”. Over 60 years later, Dennis’ treatment of the
sublime greatly inﬂuenced the two philosophers most associated with it, Edmund Burke
(1757), and Immanuel Kant (1764, 1790). Both writers expressed feelings of reverence
towards the power cf nature in events like hurricanes or in the vastness of space. These
authors, mainly writing about the sublime as a contrast to the beautiful, described the
feelings of being awe struck, amazed, and astonished by the sublime in nature. To
contrast the sublime with the beautiﬁrl, Kant (1764) wrote:
Tall oaks and lonely shadows in a sacred grove are sublime, - ﬂower beds, low
hedges and trees trimmed in ﬁgures are beautiful. Night is sublime, day is
beautiful. . .The sublime moves, the beautiful charms (p. 27).
While Kant considers the beautiful as a matter of taste and culture, the sublime is
attributed with a deeper, overwhehning and undeniable presence. Kant valued the
sublime over the beautiful oﬁen portraying the beautiful as trivial while the sublime is
seen as powerful and moving. The sublime is found in ‘sacred’ places and is cast with a
solemn tone — being associated with the ‘lonely’ and with the ‘night’. In contrast, beauty
is linked with more tamed and cultivated aspects of nature like ‘ﬂower beds’ and ‘trees
trimmed in ﬁgures’. Here Kant (1764) describes the sublime as intensely emotional and
stirring while beauty is seen as static and superﬁcial:
For just as we charge with want of taste the man who is indifferent when passing
judgment upon an object of nature that we regard as beautiful; so we say of him
who remains unmoved in the presence of that which we judge to be sublime, he
has no feeling (p. 131).
Notice also the emotions associated with the sublime in contrast to those that come with
beauty. We can “regar ” or view something as beautiful, but we are moved and stirred

by the sublime. One who does not recognize beauty has no “taste” — clearly a subjective

term, but those not affected by the sublime have “no feeling”.

 

Kant’s sublime as portrayed in “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
Sublime” (1764) and “Critique of Judgment” (1790) is squarely that of the extreme. In
Kant’s works the extreme sublime is provoked by the huge, by dizzying heights, and
terrifying depths, always including a sense of fear mingled with captivation. Kant (1764)
writes of the sublime as “the description of a raging storm arouse[ing] enjoyment but
with horror” (p.26). When trying to imagine the extreme sublime, consider the person
who despite the wails of sirens cannot tear herself away from staring at an approaching
tornado. With this type of sublime we are overwhelmed by what our senses and
imagination cannot fully comprehend. Regardless of the sense of danger the viewer
simply cannot turn away, since mingled with the terrifying, is something even more
enthralling. Kant (1790) describes this mix of fear and enthrallment when he writes,

The mind feels itself moved in the representation of the Sublime in nature

quickly alternating attraction towards, and repulsion from, the same Object (p.

120)

The extreme sublime lures us into ignoring our fears in order to feed our fascination.

Like Kant, Burke focuses on the terror in the sublime and explores our attraction
to it. In his 1757 book “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and Beautiful”, Burke (1757) describes our fascination with frightening, at times
dangerous, events as arising from our natural feelings of self-preservation. He explains:

The passions which belong to self-preservation, turn on pain and danger; they are

simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when

we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances

Whatever excites this delight, I call sublime. The passions belonging to self-

preservation are the strongest of all the passions (p. 51).

Our instinctual feelings of self-preservation allow us to recognize situations that are

potentially dangerous and to ﬁnd delight in these moments. Similarly, Burke writes:

 

When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight,
and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modiﬁcations,
they may be, and they are delightful (p. 40).

The delight arises when we realize we are not in immediate danger but instead in a
position to watch with awe and respect. Kant (1790) also describes the sublime in this
way, “. .. the sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is; provided only that
we are in security...” (p. 125). Burke argues that our feelings of self —preservation
explain our fascination with the sublime, explaining why, from a safe distance, we like to
watch dangerous animals or why we enjoy peering over the edge of the Grand Canyon.
The drop of our stomachs, the raised hairs on the back of our necks, and the basic urge to
ﬂee oﬁen accompany our experiences with the most extreme sublime.

Based on his notion of the sublime resulting from feelings of self-preservation, Burke
breaks up the sublime into several categories. Some of his categories include:

1. Terror: “terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently the ruling
principle of the sublime” ( p. 57).

2. Obscurity: “To make any thing very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be
necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom
our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes” (p. 58).

3. Power: “I know of nothing sublime which is not some modiﬁcation of power” (p.
64).

4. Vastness: “Greatness of dimension, is a powerful cause of the sublime” (p. 72).

. Inﬁnity: “Inﬁnity has a tendency to ﬁll the mind with that sort of delightful

horror, which is the most genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime” (p. 73).

6. Magniﬁcence: “A great profusion of things which are splendid or valuable in
themselves, is magniﬁcent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently
to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur” (p.78).

(Jr

Today our fascination with the types of sublime experiences that Burke and Kant
wrote of has permeated into popular culture. No longer are these rare occurrences where
the observer comes into actual contact with the natural sublime. The sublime is now

enthralling people everyday through television programs that focus on such topics as

 

 

violent storms, dangerous animals, or on nature’s extremes and oddities. The extreme
sublime is everywhere and our students are watching. In fact, “The Most Extreme” is
currently a popular show on the channel “Animal Planet” where they “countdown the
most extreme animals on the planet” such as the deadliest, most venomous, and overall
scariest creatures. Of course watching the sublime on TV is not the same as
experiencing it oneself; viewing a documentary on sharks cannot compare to the horror
of seeing an actual dorsal ﬁn slide through the water. Still, we must feel some of the
delight that Burke mentioned from the sublime that we experience vicariously. Perhaps
some of the fear is removed, but we are nevertheless fascinated.

While the extreme sublime begins as horror mingled with fascination, according to
Kant it ﬁnishes with a humbling sense of knowing one’s place in the world. When
looking into the clear night sky at the endless pinpricks of light, we cannot help but feel
that we are just a glint of life in the vastness of the universe. There is something both
beguiling and frightening in the inﬁniteness of space that ultimately leaves the viewer
with a sense of being deﬁnitively small. This is the sublime of Kant, the sublime that
leaves people conscious of their own destinies and gives them a sense of their human
worth. Kant’s view has a distinct Christian tone in that the person is left with a feeling of
being small and insigniﬁcant in relation to larger, more powerful forces. “When we are
conﬁonted with the overwhelmingly powerful, the weakness of our empirical selves
makes us aware of our worth as moral beings” (1790, p. 232). This extreme sublime
serves to distance the observer from nature and from God. Kant’s (1790) following lines
describing the sublime perhaps best sum up the extreme sublime:

Bold, overhanging, and as it were threatening rocks; clouds piled up in the sky,
moving with lighting ﬂashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence of

 

destruction; hurricanes with their track of devastation; the boundless ocean in a state
of tumult; the loﬂy waterfall of a might river...these exhibit our faculty of resistance
as insigniﬁcantly small in comparison with their might. But the sight of them is the
more attractive, the more fearful it is; provided only that we are in security...” (p.
125)
These lines capture all the essences of the extreme sublime, the frightening power and
enormity found in nature and the resulting feeling of our own insigniﬁcance that we are

leﬁ with upon viewing these awesome things.

The Connective Sublime

A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,

- A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.
- Wordsworth (1798), from Lines Completed a Few Miles Above Tintem
Abbey.

Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe ...a ...degree of the sublime is felt
(Emerson, 1836).

The second type of sublime that I have identiﬁed is found in the Romantic poetry
of Wordsworth and Coleridge and the American Transcendental philosophy of Emerson,
Whitman, and Thoreau. These writers emphasize different aspects of the sublime than
found in the extreme, and I call this second perspective the connective sublime. In both
views, there is initially a sense of uncomprehending and even sometimes fear, but while
the distanced, extreme sublime ends with humility, the connective sublime results in a
connection between the person and nature. Rather than feeling one’s insigniﬁcance and
separation ﬁ'om the world through an experience, in the connective sublime the observer
is leﬁ with a feeling of connection to and intimacy with the world. The connective

sublime highlights feelings of unity with nature along with the mixture of fear,

12.

fascination, and awe. The following quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836) captures the
feeling of the connective sublime as he describes a winter walk:

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky,

without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have

enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am Standing
on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into inﬁnite
space, - all mean egotism vanishes I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the

Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

The sublime experience described by Emerson is similar to that described by the
extreme sublime in some ways, but in other ways differs greatly. Unlike the sublime
described by Kant, Emerson is not leﬂ with a feeling of humbleness and modesty, but
instead is elated by his connection to the universe. He has tapped into the energy
coursing through nature and experiences “exhilaration”. This universal current is the
same mentioned earlier in regards to Emerson, an important idea for the
transcendentalists representing one’s connection to the world. When Emerson writes that
he “is nothing” it may sound Kantian in character, but he follows this line with “I see all”
and moves into a description of being a “part or particle of God”. While Kant writes that
God’s presence is also revealed in the sublime, he would not claim that the viewer
becomes a part of God or nature through this experience. For Kant, the sublime occurs
when we recognize some aspects of our separation and autonomy from nature rather than
the unity expressed by Emerson.

Another important distinction between Emerson’s experience and that of the
sublime described by Kant and Burke is that Emerson’s experience happened with the
ordinary. Kant (1764) saw the sublime in displays of great natural forces like hurricanes

and tomados, or in objects of great height or depth, writing, “The sublime is always

great” (p. 125). In contrast, Emerson felt the sublime on an ordinary winter walk through

13

 

New England. woods. Emerson’s lines do not describe anything unusually large or great,
yet the poet still felt that he tapped into the “currents” of nature and allowed “the
Universal Being to circulate through” him. Another example from Emerson (1844)
illuminates both the writer’s feeling of connection to nature and his ability to ﬁnd the
sublime in the small and commonplace as he describes his feelings upon gaining insight
into the workings of an ant:
The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ant’s; but the
moment a ray of relation is seen to extend from it to man, and the little drudge is
seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, than all its habits
becomes sublime.
It is unlikely that either Kant or Burke would have found any sort of sublirnity in a mere
ant, but here Emerson highlights several important parts of the connective sublime.
There is sublirnity found in a connection to nature when “the ray of relation” is realized,
when the onlooker sees how similar he is to an outwardly simple insect. For Emerson the
sublime represents a universal connection and happens the moment we realize this unity.
Similarly, Emerson (1844) wrote of the ultimate connection to nature:
A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes
to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of
the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and
every form signiﬁcant of its hidden life and ﬁnal cause.
In these lines Emerson writes that in order to reach sublime understanding we must lead
“A life in harmony with nature” and come to know the true ways of the world like an
“open book”. This sense of harmony with nature is an important aspect of the connective
sublime and has interesting implications for thinking about science education since it
implicitly addresses how the world becomes more intelligible as a result of the

experience.

14

 

Along the same line, in “Art as Experience”, John Dewey (1934) writes of the
integration of the viewer and the object as an essential quality of aesthetic experiences.

For the uniquely distinguishing feature of esthetic experience is exactly the fact

that no such distinction of self and obj ect exists in it, since it is esthetic in the

degree in which organism and environment cooperate to institute an experience in
which the two are so fully integrated that each disappears (p. 249).

Similarly, Wordsworth in his famous poem Lines Completed a Few Miles Above Tintem
Abbey described this moment or feeling as “A sense sublime of something far more
deeply interfused”, “A motion and a spirit, that impels” and “rolls through all things”.
Here Wordsworth is describing an idea common to many transcendental writers that
within everything is an underlying, unifying force and to Emerson and Wordsworth, this
force is sublime. Both Emerson and Wordsworth devoted much of their writing to this
idea of a union with nature and the sublime represented the ultimate emotion of awe and
unity.

The Sublime, Science, and Science Education

At this point it is important to address the question, “Why use the sublime in
science education?” To answer this, it is important to again mention the historic
separation of cognition and emotion in science. I see the sublime as a lens through which
to examine nature as a way to call attention to the affective qualities in science and to
help foster compelling, moving experiences in the science classroom.

One reason the sublime lends itself well to science is simply that in both the
connective and extreme philosophies of the sublime, the word has been used to describe
the most awe-inspiring aspects of nature. A central goal of science learning is to make
sense of the natural world and the sublime provides a lens through which to do this. The

extreme and connective sublimes capture different yet equally compelling aspects of

15

 

nature and can be used to create deeply affecting learning experiences in the science
classroom. The extreme sublime of Kant and Burke represents our universal fascination
with terror, obscurity, power, and vastness. The feelings evoked by these experiences -
astonishment, horror, and awe mingled with delight can serve as a motivating force for
students. These feelings are described as arising from self-preservation and Burke called
them “the strongest of all passions”. The sublime is more than an intense emotional
reaction; it is the ultimate, the most compelling of all feelings. An understanding of what
makes up the extreme sublime allows teachers to create experiences in the science
classroom that tap into these strongest of all feelings. In teaching, by presenting science
content that astonishes our students - that alternately repulses and attracts them - we are
tapping into the sublime.

Some cognitive theorists see our motivation to learn as a way to achieve goals, to
solve problems, to reduce cognitive dissonance, or to maintain equilibrium (Piaget &
Inhelder, 1969; Gardner, 1985, Greeno et al., 1996, Posner et al., 1982). For other
theorists, understanding is not most commonly driven by practical or instrumental
reasons. Instead, the drive to learn is to seek connections — to nature, the universe, ideas,
or others. This view of understanding does not see the sense of connectedness as only
being at the cognitive level; instead it is a merger of emotions and understanding
(Dewey,1934; Prawat, 1993) and this is where the connective sublime comes in.

.While the extreme sublime astonishes and often bewilders, the connective
sublime works more subtly to convey a largely different set of emotions. The connective
sublime and its associated feelings of connection, harmony, respect, and unity are

particularly relevant to science and science education. According to the National

Science Education Standards (1996), “Certain attitudes such as wonder, curiosity, and
respect for nature are vital parts of the science learning community.” Understanding and
promoting the connective sublime in science classrooms is one way to reach these vital
aspects of science learning. We want science students to be moved and engaged by these
feelings of connection and can strive for them to reach the ultimate feelings of unity that
Emerson, Wordsworth, and Dewey speak of. In terms of education, the connective
sublime is particularly important to pair with the extreme sublime since it provides a way
of ﬁnding wonder and awe in even the ordinary. While the two types of sublime that I
have identiﬁed, the extreme and the connective, represent two different takes on the
sublime, they both provide an interesting lens through which to examine the often
ignored emotional side of science.
The Scientific Sublime

While the extreme and connective sublime both represent exhilarating emotional
experiences, they are based on the instinctual rather than the intellectual. Both Kant and
Burke claim that the sublime deﬁes reasoning and logic. On this point, Burke (17 57)
writes,

.. the mind is so entirely ﬁlled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other,
nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it (p.52).

Similarly Kant (1790) writes:

...if we are to call the sight of the ocean sublime, we must not think of it as we
ordinarily do, as implying all kinds of knowledge (that are not contained in
immediate intuition). For example, we sometimes think of the ocean as a vast
kingdom of aquatic creatures; or as the great source of those vapours that ﬁll the
air with clouds for the beneﬁt of the land; or again as an element which, though
dividing continents from each other, yet promotes the greatest communication
between them: but these ﬁrrrrish merely teleological judgments. To call the ocean
sublime we must regard it as poets do, merely by what strikes the eye (p. 138).

17

A

While, many would take issue with Kant’s ﬁnal sentiment that poets only consider the
world “merely by what strikes the eye”, his lines do make it clear that the extreme
sublime is not about understanding the phenomenon, but about its powerful presence.

The connective sublime is also about the emotions associated with an experience
with nature. Wordsworth describes the sublime as a “sense” that “impels” and “rolls
through all things”. Similarly, Emerson writes of being “exhilarated” and “upliﬁed”
when a “ray of connection” is recognized between the viewer and the natural world.
These are certainly overwhelming feelings, but as in the extreme sublime, they do not
necessarily involve an understanding of the object. While I see value in fostering these
two types of sublime in the science classroom, I also see potential to take the aesthetic
ideas of the sublime further. I have been inspired by the powerful emotional aspects of
both the extreme and connective sublime, but want to add to them to create a sublime that
can be applied to science learning. Unlike the two previously discussed types of sublime,
in this new sublime scientiﬁc knowledge is at the center of the experience.
The Instinctual Aspects of the Extreme and Connective Sublime

It is not just poets and philosophers who have written about the sublime, scientists
have also written about experiences in language that conveys feelings of the sublime. I
argue that it is often the sublime aspects of science that initially attract people to the study
of science and sustains their interest in the ﬁeld. While the initial level of the sublime
may at ﬁrst impress and pique their interest, I think that scientists are continually
compelled to pursue scientiﬁc study as a result of deeper sublime understandings. What I
am describing is another, secondary type of sublime, the scientiﬁc sublime that results

from a combination of cognition and emotion. The scientiﬁc sublime may incorporate

18

 

aspects of the extreme and connective sublime, but most importantly it represents
feelings of awe and wonder that come from a deep understanding of a phenomenon. This
sublime differs from that experienced by poets, philosophers or casual observers in that it
arises from knowledge of the phenomenon. This is in stark contrast to Kant (1790) who
writes that the sublime does not include what we know about an object or event and that
instead things are judged sublime “merely by what strikes the eye” (p. 138).

With this type of sublime the feelings of awe and astonishment are based on
scientiﬁc understandings of the object’s inner workings. It is only through a deep
understanding of a phenomenon that we can appreciate its true complexity and
intricacies, and these understandings when mixed with the emotions of awe and
reverence, are sublime. Although Kant describes the initial impressions felt upon the
sight of an ocean as sublime, I argue that so too is the experience that comes with
understanding the oceans. Truly knowing and appreciating that the oceans are “a vast
kingdom of aquatic creatures” can be just as great and inspiring as appreciating the
ocean’s powerful presence.

Scientists and the Sublime - The Scientiﬁc Sublime

While the actual word “sublime” may not be used, the feelings behind the sublime
of philosophers and poets are apparent in the writings of many scientists. In the
following quotes, each of the previously mentioned qualities of the scientiﬁc sublime are
evident on some level. For example, an emotional response brought on by scientiﬁc
understanding is evident in Werner Heisenberg’s (1925) writing about developing a new
atomic physics:

At ﬁrst I was deeply alarmed. I had the feeling that through the surface of atomic
phenomena, I was looking at a strangely beautiful interior, and felt almost giddy

 

at the thought that I now had to probe this wealth of mathematical structures
nature had so generously spread out before me (Miller, 1996, p.23)

Much of Heisenberg’s description of physics echoes Kant and Burke’s depiction of the
extreme sublime. Heisenberg feels “deeply alarmed” and yet is fascinated and “giddy”
upon looking into the structures of atomic phenomena found in nature. True to the
extreme sublime, for Heisenberg there is something terrifying about peering into the
inner workings of the universe. But it is also clear that these feelings of sublime came
about only through his deep understanding of atomic physics. His brush with the sublime
is not something that a casual observer could experience, instead only someone who truly
understands atomic physics could be moved by its “beautiful interior”. This awe and
wonder that comes from scientiﬁc knowledge is also apparent in the following lines
Heisenberg wrote to Einstein:
You must have felt this too: the almost ﬁ‘ightening simplicity and wholeness of
the relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none
of us was in the least prepared (Heisenberg as quoted in Chandrasekhar, 1990, p.
53)
This second passage by Heisenberg again conveys feelings of the extreme sublime where
Heisenberg is in awe of the “frightening simplicity” associated with the relationships he
has suddenly understood. Heisenberg also highlights another important aspect of the
scientiﬁc sublime, that through understanding, one can see the unity or
interconnectedness in nature. He describes this unity as seeing the “wholeness of the
relationships” which had so unexpectedly become evident.
This insight into physics was also a very emotional experience for Heisenberg, a
necessary ingredient in the scientiﬁc sublime. For example, the passage to Einstein

begins with “You must have felt this too”; Heisenberg uses the word “felt” rather than

20

 

words like “seen”, “discovered”, or even “realized”, making it clear that he is describing
n emotion. In both of Heisenberg’s passages his language is not the objective, neutral
words that are ordinarily associated with scientists. Instead they are brimming with
excitement and anticipation, embodying the sublime. His passages unmistakably show
an emotional response to something great, powerful, and perfect that comes about
through scientiﬁc understanding. From his writings, it appears that Heisenberg is also
actively engaged with the ideas behind physics and that his world has changed as a result
of his understanding.

Another example of the scientiﬁc sublime can be found in the writing of Nobel
laureate physicist Richard Feynman. Where Heisenberg’s writing showed an emotional
response similar to Burke and Kant, Feynman’s (Sykes, 1995) writing more closely
resembles the connective sublime of the romantic poets:

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas

atoms. Nothing is “mere”. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.

But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination —

stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year—old light... (p. 17).
In this passage, Feynman disagrees with those who would argue that understanding the
science behind a phenomenon reduces its aesthetic and romantic appeal, its sense of the
sublime. He reports that he not only sees the stars for what they are scientiﬁcally, but he
feels their presence as well. Feynman’s lines are reminiscent of those of Emerson who
was exhilarated by his feelings of a strong connection to nature. The sublime is apparent
in Feynman’s emotional connection to the stars, his amazement at the ‘Wastness of
space”, and in the understanding that he can glimpse “one-million-year-old light”.
Feynman makes it clear that his understandings of the working of nature have not taken

away ﬁ'om his enjoyment and appreciation of it, but instead have added to it. While poets

21

 

can marvel at the stars’ appearance, through an understanding of the stars, a scientist can
also marvel at and be moved by their amazing complexity. In this case and in the
examples from Heisenberg’s writing, it is apparent that scientists have a different
understanding of the sublime than poets and philosophers. These scientists can feel the
awe, admiration, and connection of the sublime when interacting with nature on an initial
level, but they also experience these feelings as a result of a deep understanding of
nature.

Another example of elements of the connective sublime is apparent when Einstein
wrote, “I am a little piece of Nature” (Holton, 1973, pp. 366-374). At ﬁrst glance, his
comment may not seem particularly enlightening, but considered in the context of the
feelings aroused by the connective sublime, the simple statement becomes more. Root-
Bemstein (1997) elaborates on this same idea,

That which is true is what satisﬁes me after I have struggled with it, interrogated

it, and pondered the meanings of its answers in light of my experience, my

existence myself. I become what I study, and when the I and It merge,

understanding has been achieved (p. 69).

Here Root-Bemstein emphasizes the importance of the connection between himself and
his object of study in forming true understanding. With Root-Bernstein’s statement in
mind, Einstein’s words become more meaningful and more sublime. Einstein’s statement
is reminiscent of Emerson’s words in the “Crossing a bare common” passage where
Emerson claims that through his experience he has become a “part or particle of God.”
These feelings of supreme unity with nature or an object of study are at the heart of the
connective aspects of the scientiﬁc sublime. Another example of a scientist who has
expressed feelings of connection with aspects of nature and her objects of study is animal

scientist Temple Grandin. Grandin’s connection with the animals she-studies is described

22

by Oliver Sacks (1995), “...her sense of animals’ moods and feelings is so strong that
these almost take possession of her, overwhelm her at times” (p. 267).

A ﬁnal example of a scientist clearly expressing the emotional as well as
cognitive aspects of the scientiﬁc sublime is apparent in an interview on National Public
Radio with astrophysicist Janna Levin:

fact has turned out to be stranger than ﬁction and not only stranger but

somehow more moving, more amazing, blows your mind away more than any

fantasy that you could hear about more than any mythology that you’ve learned
about. The facts that we’ve uncovered scientiﬁcally are absolutely moving,
staggering, overwhelming, difﬁcult to believe and yet you can believe them
because they follow logically from the ﬁrst step to the last and that to me is

incredibly exciting and powerful.” (Jan 30, 2004)

Notice the sheer number of classic sublime words and terms Levin uses in these few
lines: “moving”, “amazing”, “blows your mind away", “staggering”, “overwhelming”,
“exciting”, and “powerful”. Levin’s statement is charged with emotional enthusiasm. It
is also important to point out that Levin uses these emotional words in conjunction with
more conventional scientiﬁc ways of thinking. Her feelings of the sublime are
“turcovered scientiﬁcally” and “follow logically ﬁ'om the ﬁrst step to the last”. Levin’s
quote epitomizes the scientiﬁc sublime where strong emotional responses are coupled
with deep scientiﬁc understanding.

Scientific Sublime as Compelling Experiences

The combination of the cognitive and affective found in the scientiﬁc sublime do
not come about by memorizing concepts, but arise from understanding ideas. Scientiﬁc
sublime experiences result from stirring ideas and become compelling experiences.

Dewey referred to ideas as encompassing every part of an educative experience,

except those that are stagnant and retreating. Ideas instigate action and lead to an

23

 

experience as they are tested out either physically or in one’s imagination (Wong &
Pugh, in press). Dewey’s notion of an experience, alternatively called aesthetic
experience or educative experience, differs from everyday experiences in that it is a
dramatic, compelling event with a history or plot that is full of emotion. Just as in a good
novel where the reader cannot help but read on while anticipating what will come next, in
a Deweyan experience the learner is driven forward by anticipation. This anticipation not
only leads to a sense of drama or excitement, but is also a natural motivation for learning.
Through anticipation “learners get a sense of what might be and are inspired to move
forward. Thus, learning not only results in understanding, it is also compelled by it.”
(Girod & Wong, 2002, p. 204)

I have drawn on Dewey’s explanations of educative experiences to think about
scientiﬁc sublime experiences. Both are ﬁlled with emotion and involve the learner being
overwhehned and engulfed by the experience. “The child is simply absorbed in what he
is doing; the occupation in which he is engaged lays complete hold upon him.”
(Dewey,1900, p. 145) As a result of these experiences, the learner begins to see and be in
the world differently. Just as someone who has witnessed the awesome power and
destruction of a hurricane can never look again at the ocean in the same way, sublime and
educative experiences transform the way we see the world. And while Dewey recognized
that aesthetic experiences and their vital appreciations apply to science, an exploration of
the scientiﬁc sublime can shed much needed light onto the area of science teaching and

learning.

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Why Sublime Science Education?

The goal of my dissertation research is to meaningfully connect these ideas of the
scientiﬁc sublime with science education. I have identiﬁed three main rationales for
pursing this purpose: 1) To provide students with a more accurate view of science, 2) To
help foster an appreciation for science and the natural world, and 3) To provide
experiences that allow students to see and be in the world differently.

Provide students with a More Accurate View of Science:

The previous examples of scientists experiencing the sublime in their work show
a side of science that is rarely seen. Because science educators look to the ﬁeld of
science to determine the content, processes, and mind-sets that should be taught, it is
problematic that the affective side of science is rarely mentioned. Unfortunately, students
are most often given an image of scientists as unemotional and objective, distant and
painstakingly rational. Recent science education has focused on cognitive aspects of
science such as conceptual change (Posner et. a1, 1982), scientiﬁc inquiry (NSE
Standards, 1996) working and talking as scientists (Lemke, 1990), and strong inductive
reasoning skills (NSE Standards, 1996) Each of these efforts has enriched our
understanding of science teaching and learning, but the affective aspects of science are
missing. As a result, our students are receiving an inaccurate view of the domain. In
contrast to the widely taught view of science, scientists like Levin, Heisenberg, and
Feynman have more recently shown us that science is full of emotion, excitement, and
wonder. The following words by Shirley Tilghman a molecular biologist and president
of Princeton represent a new approach to incorporate some of the affective qualities of

science into science education:

25

 

I’d like to see us teaching more than a canon, a collection of facts, but why this is
exciting, why is the exploration of nature one of the most wonderful ways to
spend one’s life (New York Times, July 8, 2003).

While it is important that students have a strong conceptual understanding of the
material, ask important questions, feel enough a part of the scientiﬁc community to talk
like scientists, and develop reasoning skills, I want more for my students. I want them to
be fully engaged with science ideas, to be impressed, awe-struck, and moved by what
they are learning. I want my students to encounter the sublime in science and be inspired
and stirred by what they study. Aspects of sublime experiences compliment these other
endeavors in teaching and learning science by helping to explain why students would
want to engage in science learning. These other approaches only emphasize the cognitive.
aspects of science and for the most part leave out the affect. Scientiﬁc sublime
experiences represent a more sophisticated treatment of the affective qualities of learning.
The affective aspects of experiences are typically seen as separate and even superﬂuous
to the more ‘central’ cognitive qualities of learning. However, this account cannot explain
the leamer’s motivation, the awe and exhilaration experienced in the act of learning that
sustains the often difﬁcult process. We are motivated to learn not simply to make sense of
and adapt to the world, but also to have experiences in which we feel the exhilaration of
learning. Scientiﬁc sublime experiences are an attempt at the re-integration of cognition
and feeling.

It seems that at the core of all these approaches to science education is a desire to
change the way students understand the world in light of what they have learned. In order
for learning to have a lasting effect on students’ perceptions of the world, they must

connect with it in some way. Science is potentially an exciting ﬁeld of study that helps

26

explain the natural world, but it is usually taught in ways that do not highlight its inherent
interesting qualities or even worse destroy any natural curiosities students have. It seems
essential to highlight the dramatic, compelling aspects of science in order to promote
science learning. Of course it is not enough to pique student interests through the extreme
and connective sublimes, instead sublime experiences that are coupled with
understanding must be the goal.

As is evident from the writings of many scientists, the emotional and aesthetic
aspects of science are an important part of discovering, creating, and understanding
science. The previous quotes by Feynman, Heisenberg, and Levin make it clear that
aspects of the sublime underlie their understandings of science. When these dramatic,
emotional, and aesthetic aspects of science are not allowed to surface in the classroom,
students may ﬁnd it difﬁcult to relate to science and form negative opinions of the
subject. Along this same line, feminist theory has criticized the common way science is
portrayed as being an objective and dispassionate domain (Harding, 1991;Duran, 1998).
Students are encouraged to emulate scientists who are represented as detached and
removed from their objects of study. This depiction of science, while largely false, surely
has a negative effect on some students and may discourage them ﬁ'om pursuing science.
Perhaps by teaching science with the explicit goal of fostering sublime experiences for
students, students will gain a more accurate view of and appreciation for science.

Appreciation for Science and the Natural World

Reform in science education has consistently recommended that students should
have an appreciation for the natural world, positive attitudes towards science, and general

enthusiasm for learning. Unfortunately, typical science education rarely works towards

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fostering this. In contrast, appreciation is an important component of a sublime
experience and entails not only respect and understanding, but also a sense of rousing
engagement. Using Dewey’s work I will elaborate on what is meant by appreciation and
its centrality not just to sublime experiences, but also to science education as a whole.

There are aspects of the sublime in what Dewey (1933) called “vital
appreciations”, something he deﬁnes as “ideas involving emotional response and
imaginative projection” (p. 341). For Dewey, appreciation is a special kind of experience
not a state of possessing a certain set of knowledge or facts. In terms of education,
appreciation is a word usually only applied to art or music appreciation class. In these
classes students are expected to gain more than an understanding of how a piece and its
artist ﬁt into a period or a general sense of the quality of the work, they are also expected
to form feelings of admiration and regard. Students should be able to do more than rattle
off aspects of the work; they should come to respect and appreciate it through interacting
with it. Students can gain new insights when they incorporate what they have learned
about the background of a piece along with time spent studying and puzzling over the
actual piece. Works of art and music are meant to elicit emotional responses and through
interactions with them it is expected that students will respond emotionally and be in
some way moved.

Dewey believed that these appreciations were not limited to the arts. Vital
appreciations “are ultimately as necessary in history, mathematics, scientiﬁc ﬁelds, in all
so-called ‘informational’ and ‘intellectual’ subjects, as they are in literature and the ﬁne
arts” (Dewey, 1933 p. 341). In regards to science education, appreciation is certainly one

of the most important things we can work to convey to our students. To get at this

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appreciation, science class should be taught more like a good art or music appreciation
class. Students should be expected to learn concepts and ask questions, but just as
importantly they should be moved by what they study. In order for students to be affected
by science, science teachers should take a cue from good art and music appreciation
teachers. Art appreciation classes point out remarkable and exemplary works and help
students understand what makes them so, likewise science teachers should highlight the
amazing and awe-inspiring in their ﬁeld.

Art teachers also call attention to the interesting aspects of a work of art that may
otherwise seem ordinary or chaotic to the inexperienced student. This should also be a
goal of science teachers - to show students the sublime in not just the extraordinary but
also in seemingly ordinary experiences. This line of thinking again comes from Dewey’s
concept of appreciation, he saw it as an “. . .enhancement of the qualities which make any
ordinary experience appealing, appropriate — capable of full assimilation — and
enjoyable.”(Dewey, mw.9.246) It is through the scientiﬁc sublime, a combination of the
cognitive and affective, that students can gain an appreciation for things that may have
once seemed ordinary.

Seeing and Being in the World Differently

I am certain that most science teachers hope their teaching causes students to see
and understand the world differently. Often this results in students who can name and
describe objects and events in the scientiﬁc or natural world. These students can identify
and categorize various ﬂora and fauna or describe the steps involved in a process like

photosynthesis, but the world has not necessarily changed for these students. Teaching

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for sublime experiences goes farther than this, where the result of such experiences is an
impossibility for the learner to see the world in the same way.

Sublime experiences are more than a state of knowing, but are emotional events
or interactions between the observer and the content. As in the examples from
Heisenberg and Feynman, out of a scientiﬁc understanding arise feelings of awe, insight,
and connection that forever changed the way they saw the world. To brieﬂy return to art
appreciation, Jackson (1998) discusses Dewey’s ideas of appreciation in ways that
emphasize the resulting change in the way learners see and live in the world:

The true appreciator of an art object, for Dewey, is not the casual listener or

viewer. Rather, he is someone who has spent time with a work, has found it

engaging, stimulating, puzzling, perhaps even troubling, and as a result of his
sustained exploration of it, has undergone a signiﬁcant change of some kind. His
encounter with the object of performance forces him to modify his former habits,
his old ways of looking at things. The new and the old become integrated. They
form a new pattern, a new way of perceiving.
This passage highlights several crucial factors not only in appreciating art, but also in
experiencing the sublime. Just as in the scientiﬁc sublime, a true appreciator is not a
casual viewer, but is someone who has spent some time with an object. An accidental
observer can easily see the extreme sublime in the power of tornadoes, but only someone
who has spent time studying them is moved by the surprising delicacy of such a storm.
These sublime experiences “inspire moments of heightened awareness; once one sees a
tornado, vast pattern of limitless energy, he never quite sees nature the same way again.”
(Wilson, p. 74, 1998) As Jackson points out, the viewer undergoes a “signiﬁcant change”

and is forced to forever alter the way in which he sees the world. After experiencing the

scientiﬁc sublime, the world becomes a richer, more interesting place for the learner.

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Chapter 2: A Pedagogical Approach to the Scientific Sublime
Introduction
The goal of this research was twofold: to create and teach a curriculum that
fosters scientiﬁc sublime experiences in middle school science classes, and to better
understand how these experiences are manifested in students. In order to create an
approach to teaching for scientiﬁc sublime experiences, it was ﬁrst necessary for me to
identify key characteristics of such an experience. Based on previous work by Prawat
(1991, 1993) Wong (2001), Girod (2001, 2003), and Pugh (2000, 2002) in the ﬁeld of
science teaching and learning, and drawing heavily from Kant and Burkes’ aesthetic
philosophies of the sublime, as well as the poetry of the Romantic and Existential poets,
and ﬁnally from the writings of scientists, I have developed a set of qualities that make
up a scientiﬁc sublime experience.
Qualities of a Scientific Sublime Experience
I deﬁne a scientiﬁc sublime experience as one which combines the cognitive with
the affective; an experience where the learner is inspired, awed, and moved by a deep
understanding of scientiﬁc ideas or processes. I have determined three main qualities of
the scientiﬁc sublime experience that I hoped to foster in my students. They are:
1. Being awed by how science ideas reveal the world
2. Developing insight through engagement with the ideas
3. Seeing and being in the world differently
The ﬁrst and second qualities, being awed by how science ideas reveal the world
and developing insight through engagement with the ideas, represent understanding in the

scientiﬁc sublime. These experiences do not exist only as an instinctual emotional

31

 

A

reaction to the sublime; instead, the scientiﬁc content is at the center of the intense
emotional experiences. This ﬁrst quality focuses on emotion in the scientiﬁc sublime
while the second focuses on the insight and understandings that arise. Rather than
concepts, which are simple forms of knowledge, ideas provide different, richer ways of
understanding and being in the world (Wong et al, 2000). In the scientiﬁc sublime, when
ideas are realized, they create a compelling, awe-inspiring experience for the student.

Dewey wrote of the power of ideas to transform our perceptions of the world and
felt that art could play a special role in these transformations (Jackson, 1998). Based on
this notion, Pugh (2000, 2001) focused on using carefully crafted science ideas to expand
student perceptions in similar ways. He called these experiences transformative and
deﬁned them as actively using the scientiﬁc concept, an expansion of perceptions, and an

‘ expansion of value. In scientiﬁc sublime experiences, I build on Dewey’s notion of the
power of ideas and on Pugh’s work with science learning. Like Pugh’s transforrnative
experiences, the second quality of scientiﬁc sublime experiences involve engagement
with the science ideas, resulting in insight.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary (2004), insight means, “The act
or outcome of grasping the inward or hidden nature of things or of perceiving in an
intuitive manner.” The second quality of the scientiﬁc sublime involves the learner
reaching a level of insight in which occurs a growing awareness and realization of
connections and patterns within a phenomenon and nature. An important part of the
scientiﬁc sublime is the realization of the coherence between various parts of the
phenomenon and the connection to other aspects of nature. Just as physicists search for

the grand unifying theory, in a scientiﬁc sublime experience the learner seeks to ﬁnd

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unity between and within objects or events. It is only through an insight into the
phenomenon that one can recognize these connections. This insight must come from a
deep, imaginative engagement with the scientiﬁc ideas and results in feelings of awe,
excitement, and exhilaration. These are the sentiments expressed by astrophysicist Janna
Levin as mentioned in chapter 1:

The facts that we’ve uncovered scientiﬁcally are absolutely moving, staggering,

overwhelming, difﬁcult to believe and yet you can believe them (The Next Big

Thing, NPR, Jan 30, 2004)

The last essential quality of a scientiﬁc sublime experience is seeing and being in
the world differently as the result of the experience. This different way of being in the
world does not result simply from scientiﬁc understandings, but comes from the total
experience with the scientiﬁc sublime where sublime emotions arise in connection with
content understanding. Just as Jackson (1998) emphasized that a true appreciator of art
undergoes some type of change, so too must an appreciator of science. Dewey (1934)
writes of the transactional nature of educative experiences where the resulting disposition
of the learner is one in which we live, see, and act differently in the world. Based on
Dewey’s notions of transaction, Girod’s (2001, 2003) work on aesthetic learning stressed
the importance of students being able to “re-see” the world as a result of their
experiences. In “re-seeing”, Girod hoped his students would come to see the world anew,
to look upon familiar objects in the light of their new aesthetic science understanding and
to see them differently. Similarly, after a scientiﬁc sublime experience students have
gained new cognitive understandings merged with the overwhelming feelings of the
sublime and are forced to see the world in a new way. For example, once hurricanes are

understood through a scientiﬁc sublime lens, the Atlantic will can longer be just an

33

ocean, but instead a vast energy reserve capable of unleashing horrendous storms.
Because of an experience with the scientiﬁc sublime, the world has forever changed and
one cannot help but see the world in a richer, more interesting way.
Teaching to Foster the Scientiﬁc Sublime: A Pedagogical Approach
Since the goal of this research is to foster sublime experiences in the process of

teaching and learning science, it is important to describe my pedagogical approach.
Again, based on work in aesthetic science education by Pugh (2000, 2002), Wong (2001),
and Girod (2001, 2003) and by building on my own experiences as a science learner and
teacher, I have identiﬁed six aspects of teaching to foster scientiﬁc sublime experiences:

1. An emphasis on the content’s big ideas

2. The use of metaphor

3. An emphasis on visualization

4. Highlighting the sublime

5. Encouraging imaginative exploration of scientiﬁc ideas

6. Modeling a sublime sensibility
Based on the aforementioned aspects of teaching for sublime experiences, I developed
and taught two 7Lh grade science units - weather and ecology. Each unit was based on
content typically taught in middle school science classes and teachers at both sites
allotted approximately ﬁve weeks teaching time for the particular units I taught. For this
research, I incorporated each of these pedagogical elements into my teaching, worked to
monitor and study their efﬁcacy, and to understand how students responded to them.
Each of these aspects of teaching to foster scientiﬁc sublime understandings and brieﬂy

how they were represented in the two units I taught will be elaborated on in this section.

 

A more thorough discussion of how each of these teaching techniques were employed
and their efﬁcacy is found in Chapter 5.
An Emphasis on the Content’s Big Ideas

The ﬁrst aspect of teaching for scientiﬁc sublime experiences is to identify and
emphasize the content’s “big ideas”. Often in science education, facts are over
emphasized and the more important, unifying ideas are left out. Prawat (1991, 1993,
1998) has written of the importance of focusing on essential ideas developed by content
experts within the various disciplines. This view works on the assumption that some
ideas are inherently more valuable than others and should be given greater emphasis in
teaching. “The true test of an idea is thought to lie in its ability to open up new aspects of
the world, in a cognitive-perceptual sense, for the inquirer" (Prawat, 1998). Identifying
and emphasizing the essential concepts around the science encourages the type of
conceptual understanding necessary for scientiﬁc sublime experiences. Through this
understanding, students can gain a perspective that allows them to begin to acquire
insight.

In addition, big ideas should be identiﬁed as ideas that not only explain the
content, but are also compelling in the Deweyan sense — inspiring possibilities to be
explored (Prawat, 1993). Rather than teaching a series of small, often disjointed concepts,
in teaching with big ideas, the ideas drive the curriculum. For example, the weather
unit’s big idea is that “weather is the movement of energy”. This idea is akin to the way
meteorologists think of weather, but is not typically taught in middle school weather
units. The idea is powerful because it provides an overview for truly understanding

weather, what it is and why it exists. The text book used by the middle school I worked

35

with on the weather unit did not contain any mention of weather as being driven by
energy. Instead, the book built a weather unit on particulars, i.e., various types of
precipitation, pressure systems, and fronts. This typical reliance on speciﬁcs gives
students understandings of what weather consists of, but not what weather is. Pugh
(2000) used a Deweyan aesthetic approach to teaching science that focused not only on
working to create experiences that foster conceptual development, but also in engaging
students in content that fosters enriched experiences. Similarly, big ideas should be more
than just stagnant concepts to memorize, but should provide unifying understandings that
create interesting ideas for students. A big idea should also help be broad enough as to
connect other important ideas in science. When such an idea succinctly explains a
scientiﬁc object or process and when this idea is realized, it can be a powerful and
moving experience. It can be astonishing for students to look at a phenomenon like
weather, something that most of them felt simply could not be understood or explained,
and to realize that the whole process can be summed-up in one sentence.

Big Ideas: The Weather Unit

The weather unit that I taught and researched was developed with a team of
university educational researchers as part of a large funded project to develop
technology-rich middle school science curriculum. This development team included me
as well as two university professors (Prawat and Bell) and another doctoral student
(Wojcikiewicz) who met weekly to discuss theoretical foundations as well as our
pedagogical goals and sequencing for the weather unit. While this input from the team
was invaluable, I was ultimately the one who wrote, revised, and taught the lessons. The

group began by deciding on a big idea for the unit. Alter conferring with a university

36

meteorologist, we determined that the essential understanding for the unit would be:
‘weather is the movement of energy’. In more detail, ‘weather is the movement of energy
in response to the disequilibrium of the sun’s energy on earth’. The second part of this,
disequilibrium, is also an important idea seen throughout almost every branch of science.
Nature is full of examples of disequilibriums and harmonious processes that work to
maintain and restore balance and to a system. An understanding of disequilibrium is not
only useful in learning weather, but in many other areas of science as well. In fact with
the weather unit we tended to think of it as being about two big ideas; the movement of
energy and disequilibrium. The big idea behind weather proved so compelling for a
science teacher that we later worked with on the project that for the upcoming school
year he has decided to structure his entire 7’h grade science course around the unifying
idea of the movement of energy.

In addition to being an important and unifying scientiﬁc idea, the weather unit’s
big idea is also potentially ripe for fostering scientiﬁc sublime understandings. As
previously mentioned, most students came to the weather unit with some knowledge of
the component pieces of weather, but did not understand why weather happened. In a
survey question that asked students if their understandings of weather had changed as a
result of the unit, one student, J imrny wrote, “Yes, because I didn’t know that weather
was like that, like weather has energy, that’s something I didn’t know”. Another student,
Kyle, found weather, and storms in particular, “interesting because they are made of
energy moving.”

By giving students a simple explanation as to what weather actually is, there is the

potential for scientiﬁc sublime experiences based on elements of the connective as well

37

 

as the extreme sublime. In terms of the connective sublime, the big idea can help students
understand through forming connections within nature and science. By understanding a
previously unexplainable prevailing natural process, the world becomes more
understandable, more harmonious. Alternatively, in terms of the big idea ﬁtting into the
extreme sublime, the understanding that throughout the world, our atmosphere is in a
constant state of instability — where energy builds up to a point that it must be moved,
often violently — can be an overwhelming idea. In this case, the learner can be left with
the Kantian sense of feeling small and insigniﬁcant in the universe. Of course, the learner
may experience both of these feelings connected with the sublime, alternating between
feelings of connection and feelings of astonishment.

Big Ideas: The Ecology Unit

For the ecology unit, I developed curriculum to teach for sublime experiences
based largely on the usual ecology lessons taught at this school. Unlike the weather unit,
which was in many ways dramatically different in terms of the content covered in a
typical weather unit, the ecology unit dealt with more representative ecology subject
matter. However, like the weather unit, I picked two related big ideas to emphasize
throughout the unit. The unit’s related big ideas were: ‘all living things are connected’
and ‘adaptation’ - in regards to an animal’s unique set of traits or behaviors that allow it
to thrive in its environment. As in the weather unit, these big ideas represent themes that
are important throughout other realms of science. Understanding that nature is full of
delicate balances actually connects with the weather unit’s big idea of disequilibrium as
the driving force behind weather. Obviously by focusing the big idea on connections

within ecosystems, the ecology unit’s big ideas ﬁt into the realm of the connective

38

 

sublime. Like the weather unit, understanding this idea can create a sense of harmonious
understanding of nature and in this particular unit, our personal relationship with nature.

Understanding adaptation can also be a sublime experience. When adaptation is
ﬁrst grasped, it can be an amazing idea that provides a new, interesting way for students
to look at animals. For some, animals will no longer be just ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’; the learner
now sees them through the lens of adaptation and wonders how survival in a particular
environment has helped detemrine the animal’s shape, size, and markings and what role
the animal plays in the lives of other animals in its ecosystem. These realizations can be
dramatic and compelling, transforming the way the learner sees nature. Adaptation
allowed my students to ﬁnd coherence in nature, to see the world and its creatures
differently.
The Use of Metaphor

Metaphors are also an important part of teaching for scientiﬁc sublime
experiences. Like big ideas, metaphors promote deep understanding by providing a lens
through which students can make sense of the world. The use of metaphors has long been
supported by cognitive scientists as a powerﬁrl way to connect concepts to objects and
events in the physical world (Johnson, 1990; Ortony, 1979). They give students a way to
grasp scientiﬁc complexity by engaging them in ideas. Dewey encouraged the use of
powerﬁrl metaphors and analogies that allow the learner to see patterns in nature and to
see “familiar objects in a new light” (Dewey, 1933, p. 278). Prawat (1999) discusses
how metaphors like plants’as “food factories” or the heart as “pump” are a natural part of
idea acquisition. In addition, scientists also utilize metaphors to aid creative thinking,

understanding, and discovery (Root-Bemstein & Root-Bemstein, 1999).

39

In science teaching, metaphors can highlight connections and patterns within and

between phenomena that would be hard to imagine without them. The process of
mapping a metaphor onto a phenomenon requires us to focus on a level of detail that may

V otherwise go unnoticed (Pugh, 2000). This level of focus then results in an expansion of
perceptions. Girod (2001) used metaphors as an integral part of his approach in teaching
for aesthetic understanding and found students. In the Girod study, students began to see
the world around them quite differently after he gave them the metaphor “erosion is a war
between earth and water”. A common element found in the use of such metaphors was
that eventually the details of the metaphor recede into the background and the scientiﬁc
ideas and new ways of seeing the world are brought to the forefront. Also important, as
literary devices, metaphors stir the imagination and encourage the having of aesthetic or
sublime experiences.

Metaphor: The Weather Unit

A critical element in the weather unit was the frequent use of metaphor. Early in
my teaching I introduced an intricate ‘team’ metaphor as a way for students to make
sense of weather. Throughout the unit, the metaphor became more developed and was
applied to different weather events to aid in student understanding and to highlight
weather patterns. The basics of the metaphor are as follows: Weather is made up of a
‘team’ of three ‘players’ -air, water, and land — that interact with each other in
predictable ways. The goal of this team is to combat disequilibrium and redistribute
energy on earth. Each type of weather event or storm happens in a speciﬁc ‘season’ and a
particular storm can be thought of as a ‘game’. Each weather game is made up of three

‘plays’ — the formation, strengthening, and landfall. Once students became familiar with

40 ‘

the framework that this metaphor provided, they were able to apply it to new weather
events. No longer were storms an unexplainable phenomenon, instead students
understood enough about the patterns and regularities in weather to make some sense of
them. Other, smaller metaphors were used throughout the unit such as seeing the
atmosphere as an “ocean of air”.

In terms of fostering sublime experiences, the metaphor highlights connections
within and between various weather events — an aspect of the connective sublime. Also,
in terms of the extreme sublime, the metaphor builds on the big idea: showing a global
team of natural elements battling out an epic ﬁght over energy, often resulting in
monstrous displays of energy relocation - storms. This metaphor paints a vivid,
compelling, and awe-inspiring picture of weather and the nature.

Metaphor: The Ecology Unit

Like the weather unit, there was one main metaphor that was used throughout the
ecology unit - that of “the web of life”. This visual metaphor was useful in terms of
helping students understanding the big idea of ‘all living things are connected’ and
stressed the importance of all forms of life within an ecosystem. Again, this metaphor
brings to the forefront the idea of the connective sublime.

Throughout the unit, other metaphors were used to explain aspects of the content.
For example, a particularly powerful metaphor showed the process of primary succession
' as a war between human made objects and nature. Through this metaphor, students saw
this war happening all around them — a scraggly weed poking through a patch of asphalt

or ivy climbing over and often enveloping old brick buildings. This metaphor was used

41

to evoke feelings of the extreme sublime in students as students realized there was an
epic battle between us and nature, and it appears that nature may ultimately win.
An Emphasis on Visualization

The third aspect of teaching for scientiﬁc sublime experiences is an emphasis on
visualization. Before I began teaching for this dissertation research, I knew that using
pictures and other images would be important both for scientiﬁc understanding and to
rouse emotion. However, it was not until my ﬁrst few days of teaching in the weather unit
that I began to fully realize the power of pictures and video to evoke sublime experiences.
As my teaching progressed it became clear to me how moving a carefully chosen picture
can be. Since the sublime is a type of aesthetic experience, and since aesthetic
experiences arise from one or more of our senses, it is only ﬁtting that ‘seeing’ should be
so critical to sublime experiences. Just as metaphors foster a creative or artistic way of
thinking about science, so too can pictures. Historically, the sublime has long been a part
of the world of art and artists. The work of Burke, Kant and others around the emotions
of the sublime inﬂuenced a group of artists who formed America’s ﬁrst school of art, the
Hudson River school. Much of the work of these artists today is called, “The American
Sublime”. Wilton and Barringe (2003) describe this school of painting as “...an
imaginative response to natural phenomena involving a 'delightful horror' prompted by
potential danger or the unknown.” Within this group, painters depicted different subjects
- from landscapes, to storms, to religious themes - with the same desire to capture and
convey intense, overwhelming emotion (Klein, 2000).

Much like these early American painters, science teacher can use pictures -

photographs, video, or paintings - to evoke similar feelings of the sublime. Such affective

42

pictures can either illustrate a unique or unfamiliar object, or show a familiar one in a
new light. Some of these pictures will instantly convey feelings of the connective, or
more likely, the extreme sublime. Other pictures need to be looked at more careﬁrlly and
analyzed through scientiﬁc understandings for their meanings to surface. With all types
of pictures, for students to experience the scientiﬁc sublime, they need to interact with the
image in some way - through personal or social sense making. In teaching to foster these
types of experiences, the teacher needs to model and scaffold the process of using ideas
to help evoke feelings of astonishment or harmony through the pictures. This can most
readily be done through a whole-Class discussion of what students as well as the teacher
see, feel, think, predict, or wonder about based on the pictures.

Visualization: The Weather Unit

Pictures and video were used extensively throughout the weather unit, particularly
of storms and their aftermath. These types of images were used to convey the extreme
sublime and just as Kant and Burke would have predicted, produced feelings of
astonishing, horror, and awe mixed with a large degree of delight. Students were
fascinated by pictures of storms, but they did not simply look at them, they talked about
them. Students seemed compelled to talk about what they noticed, what they imagined to
happen next, what they wondered about, what they saw deep inside the picture, and how
these storms came into being. Another way in which visualization was used in the
weather unit was through online simulations called “weather makers” where students
used their understandings of weather patterns to create virtual hurricanes, lake effect
snowstorrns, and tornadoes. The weather makers were a different type of visualization

that was engaging and fun for students, but also allowed them to form and then test their

43

weather understanding. This form of visualization offered potential for scientiﬁc sublime
experiences — by allowing students to ‘see through’ a storm into its inner workings and
realize the similarities and connections between each storm.

Visualization: The Ecology Unit

The ecology unit used images in much the same way as the weather unit.
Throughout the unit students and I looked at and discussed pictures of animals as well as
ecosystems in terms of the scientiﬁc ideas. The extreme scientiﬁc sublime was often
provoked, to the delight of my students, by looking at and later examining nature’s more
dangerous animals like lions, Cheetahs, wolves, or snakes. The big idea of adaptation was
frequently the focus of much of our investigation while looking at pictures. Students
would look at an animal and see it through their understandings of adaptation,
recognizing certain characteristics that enabled the animal to live in particular
environment and questioning other characteristics that may not seem to belong.
Highlighting the Sublime

Highlighting the sublime is the fourth aspect of fostering sublime experiences.
This includes calling attention to what is astonishing, terrifying, unifying, or harmonious
about the content. Aspects of the extreme sublime are often dramatic and compelling and
easily pique the interest of students. The most important part of highlighting the sublime
is what Pugh (2000) calls, “crafting the content” where “The teachers’ task is to craft
ordinary (and uninspiring) concepts into powerful ideas that have the potential to
instigate action, transform perception, and expand value” (p. 61). In terms of teaching for
the scientiﬁc sublime, this means teachers will have to examine the content and create

curriculum that either emphasizes the most potentially sublime ideas or emphasizes the

44

sublime in otherwise ‘regular’ ideas. Both the ecology and weather unit make use of this
crafting of the content as will be discussed in the following sections.

Other examples of highlighting the sublime are to read ﬁrst-hand accounts that
emphasize the emotional impact of the content - for example reading stories of hurricane
survivors, and sharing statistics that emphasize qualities like massive or minute size,
power, extreme speed, etc. To highlight the sublime, the science teacher needs to have
spent time with the content and been moved by its ideas, objects, and processes; and be
able to use her experience with the content to seek out various tools that will most
emphasize the scientiﬁc sublime for her students.

Highlighting the Sublime: The Weather Unit

To highlight the extreme sublime throughout the curriculum, the weather content
was “crafted” around storms. Beginning with a study of hurricanes, followed by lake
effect snowstorms, and ending with tornado outbreaks students learned the basic
processes, concepts, and vocabulary behind weather through the context of storms. Each
of these storms was chosen because of the massive destruction they can cause, which
never ceased to delight the students in a Kant and Burke sense, and because they well
illustrate the unit’s big idea. Speciﬁcally, it is easy to see the enormous amounts of
swirling energy that are moved in hurricanes and tornado outbreaks. Lake effect
snowstorms, though less obviously, are also driven by an energy surplus found in the
relatively warm lake waters. This storm, common in Michigan and unique to the great
lakes region, was chosen in an effort to connect the curriculum with typical student
experiences. Having grown up hearing the term lake effect snow, but never

understanding what it was or how it formed made the topic particularly interesting for my

45

students. This is a case where a more common phenomenon became more sublime
through scientiﬁc understanding. This crafting of the unit resulted in a very different
weather curriculum than is normally taught in middle school weather. The text-book used
in this classroom laid out a weather unit that taught vocabulary and concepts — like
precipitation, condensation, and evaporation and patterns like low pressure systems and
warm fronts, but only mentioned storms in the ﬁnal two pages of the unit. The way my
weather unit was structured, where students learned the concepts and processes in the
context of storms seems much more likely to evoke scientiﬁc sublime experiences.

Highlighting the Sublime: the Ecology Unit

The ecology unit was also “crafted” around potentially sublime aspects of the
content. I knew that most students are interested in animals and learning about them, so
the main focus of the unit was on animals, particularly dangerous animals. In order to
create the potential for sublime, rather than just interesting experiences, I worked to show
students different, captivating understanding of animals based on science - as in
adaptation, and also to expose students to new or particularly astonishing or terrifying
creatures. In addition, I ﬁ'equently attempted to bewilder students with statistics like the
fastest, the largest, the slowest, the smallest, or the most ferocious animal.
E neouraging Imaginative Exploration of Scientiﬁc Ideas

The fourth aspect of fostering sublime experiences is to encourage imaginative
exploration of scientiﬁc ideas. This can most readily be done in class discussions where
students interact with and try out the scientiﬁc ideas. Wong (2001) suggests that
educative ideas in the Deweyan sense “...are something that seize students and transform

them” and that “The goal of ideas-based teaching is to help students to be taken by an

46

idea and live with it, to be with it in their world” (p.15). Therefore, an important role for
the teacher is to create a classroom norm where students are encouraged to ‘play’ with
the ideas by asking questions, and posing hypothetical situations and outcomes. These
discussions should encourage imaginative speculation based on students’ understandings
of scientiﬁc ideas. When ideas are explored and applied to new settings, they have the
potential to awe and astonish. The following sections give examples from the unit where
ideas were explored.

Imaginative Exploration of Ideas: The Weather Unit

The students in the weather unit frequently used tested and explored their
understandings of weather in our class discussions. For example, during the weather unit .
students posed and pondered such student generated questions as, “Could we have a
hurricane on Lake Michigan” and “If the president made a giant ice cube and dropped it
on a hurricane, would it kill it?” In response to the ﬁrst question, students worked with
their understandings of what it takes to form a hurricane to form an answer that had
personal meaning and importance to them. Students were awed and astounded by the
idea of a possible hurricane on Lake Michigan; it represented a new degree of danger that
had not previously considered. The second question showed great imagination and
became a compelling and continuing thought process. Students used what they knew
about hurricanes to try to develop hypothetical ways to break one apart before it could do
any damage. While engaging in this type of thought process, students’ understandings of
the world were being transformed. These two examples typify the type of imaginative

“playing” with scientiﬁc ideas that can lead to sublime experiences.

47

Imaginative Exploration of Ideas: The Ecology Unit

Students in the ecology unit also participated in working with and trying out
scientiﬁc ideas during class discussions. A favorite idea these students liked to entertain
was ‘what makes an animal a top predator?’ and what made one predator better than
another. In discussions when we were analyzing a picture of an animal, it was common
for students to try to use adaptation as a lens for deciding how strong of a hunter the
animal would be. For instance, students may point out that a male lion has huge, sharp
claws and long, pointed teeth to tear apart its prey, that its color acts as camouﬂage and
its padded paws help it sneak up on an unsuspecting animal. Also, students use their
understandings of adaptation to look at an animal and imagine what type of ecosystem it
lives in based on its traits and behaviors. In these types of activity, students try out and
reﬁne their understandings and begin to adopt them as a new way of seeing the world.
These discussions can also illuminate aspects of animals that they had not seen or
realized before, resulting in new found feelings of awe and respect for the animal.
Modeling a Sublime Sensibility

The ﬁnal aspect important in fostering scientiﬁc sublime experiences in the
classroom is for the teacher to model her own ways of seeing and being in the world —
speciﬁcally for being moved, appreciative, and inspired by aspects of the sublime in
science. There is a large theoretical background supporting the importance of modeling
when trying ,to inﬂuence students’ perceptions. The situative learning perspective, which
places emphasis on participation in a. sociocultural activity, views learning as part of a
process of enculturation (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Greeno, Collins, & Resnick,

1996). As individuals participate more fully in the sociocultural activity, they begin to

48

adopt the culture’s values, knowledge, and behaviors (Lave & Wanger, 1991). From this
line of reasoning, apprentice type models of teaching emphasize the necessity of
scaffolding and modeling to bring learners into a culture’s way of thinking and knowing
(Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Collins, Brown & Newman, 1989, Palincsar & Brown,
1984). Pugh (2000) and (Pugh & Girod 2002) have focused on this apprenticeship model
of teaching in their work with transforrnative and aesthetic experiences since they see a
strong social component to these experiences. They worked to create a classroom
community of learners that valued an artistic appreciation of scientiﬁc ideas. This was
done by modeling their own ways-of-being in the world and by helping students
participate in these experiences through scaffolding.

In regards to scientiﬁc sublime experiences, the desired classroom community is
one where members are free to be moved and inspired by the content, and where
scientiﬁc ideas are appreciated for the astounding or unifying qualities they can bring to
elements in nature. The teacher’s task in creating this community is to model her own
sublime sensibility and eagerness to be ‘swept-up’ in the experience. To be truly
captivated by the experience is what Wong (2000) calls the “the opposite of control”
based on elements of Dewey’s educative experiences:

One must let go — as much as possible - one’s long held ways of seeing, doing,

understanding, and feeling. The degree that one undergoes, the degree that one

can truly experience, is the degree that one be open to the true nature of an outside

inﬂuence (p. 321).

By releasing control and letting go of our former ways of seeing, feeling, and
understanding, we are truly open to a new experience and can take in the effects of the

sublime - be they astonishment, horror, harmony, or unity. Through modeling this type

of learning experience, a teacher can work to enculturate her students to the scientiﬁc

49

sublime. The teacher should create such a compelling vision of the content that students
are eager to become a part of it. Part of modeling a sublime sensibility is to guide
students as they practice seeing the powerful, moving ideas in the content.

Modeling a Sublime Sensibility: The Weather Unit

Many of the ideas and images in the weather unit are compelling all in their own
right in terms of the extreme sublime and little modeling on my part was needed. The
delight experienced in the midst of horror and astonishment that Burke and Kant wrote of
is immediately evident to most everyone when looking at violent storms. However,
modeling the scientiﬁc sublime and its feelings of the sublime accompanied by
understanding is often necessary for students to have such experiences. Letting students
see how my understanding of the science behind such storms enhances my feelings of
awe and amazement, encourages them to want to understand these same scientiﬁc
processes.

Modeling a Sublime Sensibility: The Ecology Unit

Modeling of my own scientiﬁc sublime experiences was equally important in the
ecology unit. Like the weather unit, elements of the extreme sublime oﬁen immediately
arise from pictures and videos of dangerous animals, but experiencing the scientiﬁc
sublime required some modeling and scaffolding. Using my understandings of
adaptation, I was able to show students how to look at animals through the eyes of a
scientist and be moved by what I saw. Animals became more intriguing, fascinating, and
even terrifying when I helped students use their new understandings of science to look at
these animals. Throughout the unit, we practiced seeing animals in terms of adaptations

to gain a sense of admiration and respect for the animal’s design. While I was able to take

50

the feelings of the extreme sublime and motivate students to experience the scientiﬁc
sublime, it was more difﬁcult to instill feelings of the connective sublime. By telling
stories of my own feelings of sublime connection to animals and nature I hoped to inspire
my students, but as well be discussed later in this dissertation, I had great difﬁculty in

doing this.

51

Chapter 3: Setting and Methods

Introduction

This research was conducted as two studies in two different middle schools. In
order to test my theory of sublime understanding and the efﬁcacy of my developed
curriculum and teaching methods, I acted as the science teacher in both studies. Both
studies took place in 7th grade science classrooms where I taught for approximately ﬁve
weeks. While there was a great deal of similarity in my teaching methods at both sites,
the schools and students themselves were quite different.
Settings and Participants

Study 1: Semi-Rural Middle School

The ﬁrst study was set in a small, semi-rural middle school where I taught two
sections of 7m grade science — third and fourth hour. The classes were in two different
classrooms and regularly taught by two different science teachers, Mr. Platt and Ms.
Kelsey. These science teachers’ classrooms were connected by an ofﬁce where they both
worked together on developing content and aligning their classes’ progression through
the course. I taught a total of 46 students, 25 were in Ms. Kelsey’s 3rd hour and 21 in Mr.
Platt’s 4th hour. The composition of the students in the two classes was very different in
terms of school success. At this particular school, students were placed into science
classes based on their math placement. As a result of this tracking, my 3“1 hour science
students were typically in algebra 1 while my 4th hour students were in a remedial math
class. The regular science teachers commented on what they saw as the differences
between the students in the two classes. 3rd hour students were considered overachievers

while 4’h hour students were thought of as low-achievers. Teacher perceptions did not

52

stop at academic ability, Ms. Kelsey’s 3rd hour students were also considered well
behaved and a ‘perfect’ class for me to work with while Mr. Platt’s 4th hour students were
reported as not being so well behaved. I was told that these 4th hour students were
explicitly placed with Mr. Platt because he was known to be a strict disciplinarian and
best capable of controlling such students. This teacher was concerned that I would not be
able to mange his students and I was warned that the students would ‘not able to handle a

child-centered teaching approach’. Student characteristics for the two classes appear in

 

 

 

Table 3.1.
Table 3.1: Student characteristics of site 1
Class Female Male Total
3rd hour 10 14 24
Tn—hour 11 10 21

 

 

 

 

 

 

In both classes, I taught the same unit on weather every day for approximately
ﬁve weeks. The weather curriculum as discussed in Chapter 2 was a cohesive unit that
relied on a deﬁnite sequence to develop and strengthen understanding of the important
ideas. For this reason, I acted as the primary teacher with both classes. The regular
teachers, Mr. Platt and Ms. Kelsey, agreed to give me control as to the material I covered
and the manner in which I conducted class. As can be expected there was some
uncertainty in the beginning as to handing over their classes and both teachers would
oﬁen sit in the back of the room to watch while I taught. As a sense of trust developed, it
became common for the teachers to not be present during some or all of my teaching. The

transition for students to begin thinking of me as their teacher was relatively quick and

53

uncomplicated. I am sure part of this was because of the large number of student-teaching
interns and other pre-service education students from the university at this school. In fact,
Mr. Platt had a student teacher who was present throughout the time I was at the school.
There were some very noticeable differences in the way the two classes responded to the
curriculum and my teaching, but I will leave that for a later discussion.

Site 2: Large, Urban Middle School

The second study took place approximately 10 months later in a large, urban
middle school where I taught one section of Mrs. Marcella’s 70: grade science class. At
this site I also identiﬁed a control class of similar students with which to compare
learning outcomes. Both groups of students were regularly taught by Mrs. Marcella and
she considered both groups of students to represent typical 7th grade classes at this
particular school. The treatment class was made up of 16 regularly attending students
while the control class had 12 regularly attending students. Unlike the ﬁrst site where all
students were white, there was a great deal of ethnic diversity in this second school.
Student characteristics for both class the treatment and control class appear in Table 3.2.

Table 3.2: Student characteristics at site 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Class Treatment Class , Control Class Total

Ethnicity" A AA C H A AA C H
Females l 6 1 1 O 4 1 O 14
Males O 5 2 0 O 5 2 O 14
Total 16 12 28
*A: Asian

AA: African American

C: Caucasian

H: Hispanic

The two classes each progressed through a unit on ecology for approximately ﬁve
weeks. Both the control and treatment class largely covered the same material, but I
taught my class (treatment class) using the approach for fostering sublime experiences as
outlined in Chapter 2. In contrast to the weather unit taught at the ﬁrst site, I did not
develop a complex, cohesive unit where it was critical that the lessons and ideas be taught
in a speciﬁc order. Instead, I worked to develop lessons using my framework for sublime
understanding to teach within the district’s existing ecology unit. The main reason I took
this approach was to provide a different type of test of my approach to teaching for
sublime experiences. Rather than teach a unit that was conceptualized and planned in a
university setting as part of a larger project as was the case with the weather unit, I
wanted to work with more typical school curriculum for the next study. In the ecology
unit I took the district’s and state’s learning objectives for ecology to identify the ideas I
found most important and compelling. From there I created and constantly updated
lessons that would promote sublime understanding of ecology.

This also meant that I would not be required to be the sole primary teacher, but
rather to act as an additional teacher. The teacher at this site was reluctant to completely
give up her class for the ﬁve weeks since she wanted the option of taking one day a week
to teach. The days in which she taught were usually to practice reading comprehension
skills that were a part of the school-wide seventh grade curriculum or certain activities
that she particularly enjoyed teaching. On average I taught four days a week at this school
and acted as the regular teacher while I taught. At times Mrs. Marcella was in the room
doing work while I taught, but other times she would use the break to run errands and

other administrative duties. As in site 1, students at this school were accustomed to

55

having multiple adults in the room taking a turn at teaching. In fact, Mrs. Marcella’s
classes had one student-teaching intern, one pre-intem university student there to
observe, and one university student there to help tutor for class credit. The students I
taught easily accepted me as another teacher.
Research Design
Given this setting, the research questions were:
1. Will students experience the sublime as a result of my teaching?
0 What types of sublime will they experience — the extreme, connective, or
scientiﬁc?
0 Will students feel a combination of awe, horror, and delight?
0 Will students experience feelings of connection, unit, and harmony?
0 Will students be awed by how science ideas reveal the world?,
Develop insight through engagement with the ideas?, See and be in the
world differently?
2. To what extent did the various aspects of my teaching help to foster students’ sublime
experiences?
0 An emphasis on the unit’s ‘big ideas’ and the use of metaphors
0 An emphasis on visualization
o Highlighting the sublime
o Encouraging imaginative exploration of scientiﬁc ideas
0 Modeling a sublime sensibility
3. To what extent will students learn science content when taught in ways that promote a

sublime experiences?

56

In an effort to investigate these questions I developed a four-stage design that
involved developing an instructional unit, collecting various pre-instructional data,
teaching an instructional unit while gathering data, and gathering post-instructional data.
This four—stage design was similar for each site the difference being that at Site 1 for the
weather unit, students were given a written survey about their experiences with the unit
and at Site 2 for the ecology unit, students were interviewed at various points throughout
the unit to learn of their experiences.

The overall scope of research at site 1 for the weather unit appears as Table 3.3 and
Table 3.4 followed by further explanation of each stage.

Table 3.3: Sequence of Research at Site 1 - Weather Unit

 

Time; - Development Phase 0 Development of curriculum based on school and
state standards, but designed to create sublime
science experiences for students

 

Time; - Before teaching 0 Classroom observation to gain a sense of
classroom environment and to familiarize students
with my presence

Pre-test of content understandig

 

Time; - Teaching 0 Teaching the developed unit for approximately
ﬁve weeks

Video and audio tapes of classes

Teacher journal observations

 

 

Time4 — After Teaching Student experience surveys

Post-test of content understanding

 

 

Table 3.4: Sequence of Research at Site 2 - Ecology Unit

 

Timer - Development Phase 0 Development of curriculum based on school and
state standards, but designed to create sublime
science experiences for students

 

 

Time; - Before teaching 0 Classroom observation to' gain a sense of
classroom environment and to familiarize students
with my presence

0 Pre-test of content understanding

 

 

57

 

 

Table 3.4, continued

 

Time; - Teaching 0 Teaching the developed unit for approximately
ﬁve weeks

Video and audio tapes of classes

Teacher journal observations

Student interviews

 

 

 

Time4 - After Teaching Post-test of content understanding

 

In both units, Time] was an important and time consuming part of the study in
which I developed the units I would later teach. Starting with each school’s objectives for
the speciﬁc unit and working ﬁ'om the state’s standards and benchmarks, I worked to
create the units following the guidelines that I outlined in chapter 2 for developing
curriculum to invoke sublime experiences. The speciﬁcs of each unit will be discussed at .
length in the following section.

During Timez, I visited the classroom(s) where I would be teaching at least three
times a week two weeks before I began teaching. This was done for two main reasons.
First, I wanted to see the classroom’s enviromnent and norms, the current teaching
methods, and to get a sense for the students themselves. I was interested in observing the
regular classroom teachers’ teaching styles and to understand to what extent if any they
were already teaching towards evoking sublime experiences. As is to be expected, the
three teachers whose classrooms I would later teach in had different teaching styles, but
none of them showed signs of explicitly teaching towards sublime experiences for their
students.

The second reason I spent time in each classroom before my teaching began was
to. allow the teachers and students to become familiar with my presence. Each of the

teachers had volunteered to allow me to work with their classes and I felt an overall sense

58

 

of trust from each teacher largely because they were all connected in some way to the
university that I was coming from. The teachers introduced me to their students as
someone from the university who was going to do a special project with their class.

In two of the three classrooms (Mr. Platt and Mrs. Marcella) there was a
university intern who spent everyday in the classroom, had taught earlier lessons or units,
and was teaching in the classroom teacher’s other sections. In Mrs. Marcella’s classroom
at Site 2 there were also at times two pre-service university students who were there to
observe and assist in helping students in a one-on-one basis. All of the students I worked
with had at least one university student present in at least one of their classes. The
presence of these university students in the science classrooms, as well as throughout the V
schools in other classes, made it very easy for me to ﬁt in. Because of the consistent
university presence, students and teachers did not see my presence as unusual or
particularly intrusive. In fact, for the most part, students thought of me as just another
student teacher.

Also in Time; students were given a multiple-choice pre-test of the content
covered in the unit I would teach. In developing the pre-test for the second site I used the
district wide standard ecology test as the model for my pre and post test. The test I
created used the same multiple choice and matching format and covered the same type of
content.

During Time; I studied my own teaching of the lessons developed to foster
sublime experiences and observed the control classroom at Site 2. Most lessons were

either audio or videotaped and everyday I wrote down my impressions and reactions to

59

each lesson in a teaching journal. I also interviewed the ecology students about their
experiences at Site 2 throughout Time3.

During Time.,, after teaching, all students at both sites were given the appropriate
post-test. Weather students at Site 1 were also given the student experiences survey.
Measures
Weather Unit

In the weather unit, there were two sources of information used to look for
evidence of sublime experiences in students. The ﬁrst was my recorded observations
from the perspective as the teacher. The second source, and the main way in which I
collected information on student sublime experiences was through a written survey.
Students were also given the same multiple choice test for the pre and post test. The test
was developed based on state standards and on questions that I felt were important to
understanding relevant topics such as energy and disequilibrium. The Weather pre/post
test is attached as Appendix 1.

Survey

The survey students were given consisted of ﬁve open-ended questions that I
asked students to write on at the end of the unit.

The questions were:
1. What did you think of the weather unit? Was it interesting, boring, or just another
unit?
2. Since the weather unit, have you begun to think about weather differently? How?
3. Have you talked to people outside of class about weather?

4. What was your favorite part of the weather unit? Why?

60

5. Did you like the way the unit was structured around storms? Why or why not?
Ecology Unit
In the ecology unit, there were three sources of information used to look for

evidence of sublime experiences in students. As in the weather unit, the ﬁrst source was
my recorded observations from the perspective of a teacher. The second source of
information came from audio taped student interviews conducted throughout the unit. I
decided to use interviews as the main format for collecting student experiences because I
thought they would provide the best way of leaming about student experiences. I received
quite a bit of information from the students in the weather unit from the survey, but I was
hoping to get at a different understanding of student experiences through an interview. By
not having to write their answers, and instead being able to talk at greater length about
their experiences, I hoped to learn more about what sublime experiences are like for
middle school students.

. All but two of the students were interviewed. Due to timing conﬂicts at the
school, I was only able to interview most students once. Students were interviewed in
pairs in most situations, but there were a few students who were interviewed alone when
their partner did not attend. With the exceptions of two interviews, they were all
conducted aﬁer school. It was often difﬁcult for students to attend after school interviews
because they relied on the school bus to take them home and the busses left promptly
after school.

The third form of information that I collected was through audio taping student I
interactions with pictures of animals. In these interactions, typically pairs of students

would be asked to look at a series of pictures and to tell me what they saw. I used this

61

type of interaction in an attempt to hear students’ spontaneous reactions to pictures of
animals as part of the ecology unit. Since it is often difﬁcult to capture student
experiences after the fact, I thought it may prove effective to record students’ ﬁrst

interactions with potentially sublime objects in such a setting.

62

Chapter 4: Results - Student Experiences

Introduction

This chapter will discuss student experiences with the weather and ecology units
in regards to the having of sublime experiences and content learning.
Analysis of Sublime Experiences
This section discusses sublime experiences ﬁrst in the weather unit followed by the
ecology unit.
Site 1: The Weather Unit

At this site, for both sections of weather that I taught there were three main
sources of data I used to determine whether students had sublime experiences: student
surveys, student writing projects, and observations from my teaching journal. In both
classes, fourteen students answered and turned in the survey. When analyzing student
answers I looked for evidence of sublime experiences in each of the ﬁve questions. To be
considered a sublime experience, I was looking for emotional responses similar to those
described in Chapter 1 as being either the extreme or connective sublime. If these types
of emotions were shown in connection with scientiﬁc content, they were considered
scientiﬁc sublime. To review the types of sublime: the extreme sublime is brought on by
the huge, powerful and terrifying; the connective sublime represented as feelings of
connection to nature; and the scientiﬁc sublime as feelings of emotions that come from
understanding scientiﬁc content. I also found sentiments that did not seem to ﬁt neatly
into any one of these categories, but instead represented a more general sense of the

sublime.

63

To identify sublime experiences in student survey responses I examined student
word choice, their reasoning and support for their answers, as well as responses showing
a sense of appreciation or re-seeing of the world. When looking at student word choice, I
looked for language that matched those I identiﬁed earlier for each category of sublime.
The following chart shows the words ﬁ'om the student responses and how I have
identiﬁed them.

Table 4.1: Words “Weather” Students used in Surveys that Demonstrate An Aspect
of the Sublime

 

Type of Examples of Word choice
Sublime
Potential Beautiful, exciting, interesting, cool, amazing, “love how

they look”
Extreme Mysterious, fascinating, scary, dangerous, loud, “what they
can do”, weird, big, “power to destroy”, deadly,
destruction
Connective none

Scientiﬁc Complex yet simple, unpredictable, pondered, wondered,
knowing, comprehend more, more informed, makes more
sense

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Along with word choice, I also looked at the reasons students gave for answers as a way
of determining if they showed elements of the sublime and if so what type.

For example, scientiﬁc sublime responses showed some type of interest that
resulted from understanding an aspect of weather - a combination of the cognitive and
affective. The following chart gives typical examples of each type of sublime found in
student responses. I have also included comments that I am calling ‘potential sublime’
because they do not necessarily correspond to one particular type of sublime, but

demonstrate the potential for having a sublime experience.

Table 4.2: Responses Showing Aspects of the Sublime from “Weather” Student

Surveys

 

Type of
Sublime

Responses Showing Aspects of the Sublime from Student Surveys

 

Potential
Sublime

“I found it the most interesting part of science, it is exciting and fun
learning new things about weather, something we’ve seen every day
of our lives.”

”Tornadoes are interesting because I love how they look”

“Excitig stuff!”

 

Extreme

“Tornadoes are the most mysterious and fascinating thing”
“Storms are interesting because it has the power to destroy whole
towns.”

“I think storms are interesting because they’re dangerous, loud,
destructive, but can be beautiﬁrl too.”

“Storms are cool because of destruction”

“1 think weather is a lot more dangerous now”

“I’m fascinated by what they (tornadoes) can do”

“Storms are interesting because they can form into something big”
“In my eyes, storms are the most dangerous source of nature.”
“Storms are interesting because they are kind of deadlyand exciting.”

 

Connective

None

 

 

Scientiﬁc

 

Storms are “interesting because of all the amazing things weather can
do just with the resources from nature”.

“Storms are very interesting because they are always changing”
“Before I though of hurricanes as just deadly storms, now I think of
them as the weather team”

“I really like those (hurricanes) and how they form because they form
really cool”

“Storms are pretty interesting. They are so complex yet simple in the
way they form”

“Now I like to see how the weather will be from day to day and I like
to look at the sky”

Storms are “interesting because they are made of energy moving.”

“I didn’t know that weather...has energy, that’s something I didn’t
know”

 

Based on this analysis, I found that in both 3rd and 4th hour 71% of the student survey

responses showed evidence of some type of the sublime (See Table 4.4). In both classes,

most of the sublime experiences were the extreme, followed by the scientiﬁc, and the

potential sublime. No evidence of the connective sublime was found in the student

65

 

surveys. The percentage of each type of the sublime shown in survey responses by class
is summarized in the Table 4.4

Table 4.3: Percentage of “Weather” Students showing some type of Sublime
Experience in Survey Responses

 

3'"I hour 4m hour
”/0 of 71% 71%
Students

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 4.4: Breakdown of the Percentage of Each Type of Sublime shown in Weather
Survey Responses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Type of 3rd hour 4’“ hour
Sublime

‘Initial’ 21% 7%
Extreme 42% 57%
Connective 0% 0%
Scientiﬁc 36% 36%

 

 

In each class there were two students whose survey responses showed interest in
the writ and weather, but gave responses that I could not classify as sublime because they
seemed to lack the emotional aspects that must go with that. For example, one student
wrote that she liked the unit because “it was fun and interesting”, that she had been
thinking of weather differently in terms of “how it affects our land”, and reported telling
her parents about what she was learning in class. While this student expressed positive
reactions to the unit, based on her responses I did not include her in the group of students
who demonstrated sublime experiences. Each class also had one student who did not ﬁnd
the weather unit to be anything special, reporting it as “ok” or “ordinary”. In addition,

one student in each section reported the weather unit to be “boring”.

66

Site. Two: The Ecology Unit

At site two, there were three sources of data I used to look for evidence of
sublime experiences: student interviews, student interactions with pictures, and my
recorded observations ﬁ'om class as the teacher. The semi-formal interviews were
typically conducted in pairs, with a few exceptions where students were interviewed
alone, and occurred throughout the unit. During the interviews I asked students open-
ended questions about their experiences and understandings from the unit such as what
parts they found interesting and why, whether or not they had been thinking about”
ecology outside of class, if their perceptions of animals/nature had changed as a result of
the unit, and what they thought of my teaching methods.

As another way to collect information from students about whether or not they
were having sublime experiences, I asked students, again typically in pairs, to look at and
talk about pictures of animas that I showed them. From these transcribed interviews,

interactions with pictures, and from observation notes I took and recorded as the teacher,
I categorized student responses in the same way I did with the data from site 1.

Out of the seventeen semi-structured interviews, I found evidence for at least one
type of sublime experience in every interview. At this site I did not include a ‘potential’
sublime category in my analysis as I did at site 1. I chose to do this based on the large
numbers of vague comments in the transcribed interviews that could be considered to be
expressing some type of general sublime feelings such as “cool!”, “wowl”, or “pretty!”.
This is especially true in the interviews where I asked students to look at and comment on
Pictures. These types of comments were so frequent that it became hard to decide if

students were actually expressing some aspect of the sublime or simply reacting to the

67

pictures. Instead of counting all the initial utterances, I focused on student comments that
showed greater evidence of representing aspects of sublime feelings; the extreme being
based on the large, unusual, or dangerous; the connective as feelings of connection or
cahn; and the scientiﬁc being an emotional reaction that arises through scientiﬁc
understanding. The majority of experiences were categorized as the scientiﬁc sublime
(20), followed by the extreme (10), and connective (7). The following chart summarizes
the types of sublime experiences found in the interviews at site 2.

Table 4.5: Percentage of Ecology Students Showing Some Type of Sublime
Experience in Interviews

 

Ecology Students
% of 100%
Students

 

 

 

 

 

Table 4.6: Breakdown of the Percentage of each Type of Sublime Shown in Ecology
Unit Interviews

 

Type of % of
Sublime Experiences

 

Extreme 27%
Connective 19%
Scientiﬁc 54%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 4.7 : Words Ecology Students used in Interviews that Demonstrate Some

 

 

 

Aspect of the Sublime
Type of Examples of Student Word choice
Sublime
Initial Cool, tight, so prettg interesting
Extreme Poisonous, deadly, killers, super predator, huge, fastest, biggest,

toughest

 

Connective Everything is connected, alike, comforting, see it through others’ eyes

 

 

 

 

Scientiﬁc Thinking about the process..., now I see..., it’s interesting how...,

 

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Table 4.8: Examples of Sublime Experiences Ecology Students Showed Evidence of
Having - From Interviews

 

Type of
Sublime

Examples

 

Initial

“Amoebas are cool looking’
“That’s so beautiful!”
“That’s tight!”

 

Extreme

“He’s so huge, he’s probably one of the top predators, that’s so cool.”
“... lions and tigers trying to get food, they were killers... and these
tigers would like whack them, it was cool”

“that’s cool... because urn when animals...try to eat him he like sprays
something at them”

“It was interesting how the cheetahs and lions they eat the other animals
running around...and catch them like super predators”

“I think of them (animals) because like when I go outside I want to
know what little bugs are crawling on me and it might be poisonous.”

 

Connective

“I talk to my mom about . . . how they’re (animals) just really special.
We’re animals, I just found that out, I didn’t think about that last year.”
“I like being in nature because when you’re outside in a forest or in the
woods it’s like, you’re walking and it’s just so comforting.”
“Everything has its own way of living and it’s mostly the same you just
have to see it through others’ eyes.”

“It’s interestig how like animals are connected”

 

 

Scientiﬁc

 

“I never knew they (coyotes) lived in Michigan before until I learned
that in science, I saw it a few days ago. . .I didn’t think they lived in
Michigan, I think that’s so interesting.”

‘yvhen I used to look outside I see a squirrel I didn’t really know what
that means, but now I see them like gathering food to survive.”

“You know what’s interesting, why doesn’t the shark just eat the ﬁsh?”
“When I see a rock, I’ll be thinking about the process how it went from
bare rock to like a forest.”

“I watch my dog and how she reacts, like yesterday my dad brought her
a bone and she tried to bury it...I was thinking about how like lions are
chasing out the hyenas...when they’re eating...she wanted to hide the
bone so nobody would take it.”

“...you go outside and say you looking in the grass and you ﬁnd mold on
the tree or dead branches on the ground, now I got to pick them up and
think it’s making the environment and resources grow.”

“It’s interesting how it grows and breaks it down.”

“I think it’s cool that when you look at an amoeba how you just see it
splitting off and keep on splitting...”

“there’s a lot of layers to skin and underneath there’s tissue and muscle
and everything and I was just sitting there and staring at it... and I was
like wow that’s cool”

 

69

 

Overall, the students at site 2 had a greater variety of sublime experiences from the
ecology unit than the students from site 1 had with the weather unit.
Discussion of Sublime Experiences

Based on the data collected during the weather and ecology units at the two sites,
several types of sublime experiences were expressed. The extreme and the scientiﬁc
sublime were the two most common, but the connective sublime did surface some during
the ecology unit. Also, in both units students showed evidence of a potential type of
sublime experience, one that showed affect and interest, but did not necessarily ﬁt into
one category. For the most part, I found these ‘general’ sublime experiences to result
from a lower level of engagement with the content than the other types of sublime. These
were more along the lines of the ‘initial’ sublime I discussed in chapter 1, instinctual,
emotional utterances. While these ‘initial’ sublime utterances like “cool” and “how
beautiﬁrl” demonstrate affect and interest, these experiences were not the point of this
study and can be found in most types of science teaching. Instead in my teaching and
research, I focused on the three types of sublime experiences outlined in chapter one: the

extreme, the connective, and the scientiﬁc.

Extreme Sublime

From the interview and survey data as well as from my observations it was
common for students to have extreme sublime experiences. As previously mentioned, the
appeal of dangerous situations and objects is one of the deﬁning characteristics of the
extreme sublime. In both studies, students were fascinated with aspects of nature in

weather or with plants and animals that they saw as at least potentially perilous. It is not

70

surprising that students were so drawn to the dangerous, both Kant and Burke wrote of
this attraction:

they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being

actually in such circumstances Whatever excites this delight, I call sublime

(Burke, 1757).
In fact, Kant (1764) even described the sublime using extreme weather as an example, “...
a raging storm arouse[ing] enjoyment but with horror.” Certainly I had a suspicion
that students would be interested in these aspects of the sublime when the weather
curriculum was designed around storms. When attempting to highlight the sublime in
weather, what could be more awe-inspiring than focusing on some of nature’s most
powerful, destructive, and dangerous events like hurricanes, tornadoes, and snowstorrns?
The intentional focus on storms at site 1 predictably resulted in students showing V
evidence of the extreme sublime in classroom discussions and surveys. A quick look at
the chart of extreme sublime experiences from site 1 shows typical survey comments.
The following quote from a student in the 4‘h hour section typiﬁes the reactions many

students expressed:

I think storms are interesting because they’re dangerous, loud, destructive, but can
be beautiful too.

This student is drawn to the danger and destruction inherent in storms, but also
ﬁnds them both interesting and beautiful. All but two of the students from site 1
expressed some level of interest in storms and the large majority of students expressed
sentiments similar to the previous quote. My teaching, in efforts to feed student interest
and rouse emotions, placed a large emphasis on the power and size as well as the duration
and extent of damage caused by particular storms. I found that once students’ interests

Were piqued with images and statistics about the storms, they were eager to learn how

71

such storms formed and strengthened. It was also in the context of these storms that
students learned important, more typical middle school weather content like weather
patterns, high and low pressure systems, and the convection process.

The extreme sublime also became quite apparent in many of the writing projects I
assigned. After studying each storm, students were asked to write a narrative describing
the science involved in the formation, strengthening, and landfall of a storm ﬁom the
perspective of someone who is able to safely watch the storrn’s approach. While I did not
explicitly instruct students to emphasize the affective aspects of such an event, all
students did so. No students turned in narratives that simply stated the weather ‘facts’.
The danger inherent in the extreme sublime was obvious in each storm story, some more _
eloquently illustrated than others. A few powerful examples of student writing:

0 As I watch roofs being torn off, people dying, cars ﬂying through the air, I
can’t but watch in amazement how powerﬁil this cyclone is”

o I can hear the deep chilling moan from every direction. Just the sound sends
chills down my spine. ... no one will ever forget the destruction and fury of
hurricane Chad.

0 Hurricanes are mysterious and terrifying natural wonders and I was awed by
the immense power of Hugo. I am safe and sound, and I will never doubt the
power of Mother Nature.

0 I was wide-eyed with excitement. This was an experience of a lifetime! I was
so happy to get to observe this dangerous storm without risk of getting hurt.
This had been a wonderful, but disastrous storm.

While the poetic tone of these examples may not be typical of all student writings from
Site 1, the content is. It is remarkable how closely these student comments echo the

sublime sentiments of Kant and Burke, feelings of both fear and fascination are obvious

in these imaginative speculations.

72

While ’I intentionally highlighted the extreme sublime through a focus on storms
at site 1, this was certainly not my intention during the ecology unit at site 2. For the
ecology unit, I was hoping to take a different approach to teaching for sublime
experiences and to highlight the connective sublime. I knew that the much more subtle
feelings associated with the connective sublime would be more difﬁcult to foster, but I
thought ecology would be an ideal topic to emphasize the interconnectedness of nature.
Early into the unit I realized just how difﬁcult it was to maintain student interest and
affect without introducing elements of the extreme. With animals as the focus of my unit,
I found that my students had experiences and expectations of animals that I had not
anticipated. These aspects of my students’ experiences will be discussed later in greater ‘
length, but for now it is only necessary to understand that students were looking for the
ﬁightful awe-inspiring of the extreme sublime.

In the ecology unit, while I would emphasize how all living things were
connected in a cycle ﬁ'om a wolf to a rabbit to decomposers like mushrooms, my students
wanted to know how big the wolf s fangs were, how it would kill the rabbit, and whether
or not the mushroom was poisonous. It seemed that the students’ central interests lay in
the realm of the extreme. Due to student interest I frequently used aspects of the extreme
sublime to get their attention and lead them towards a scientiﬁc and at times connective
sublime experiences. In general, students found that the connections between living
things and their environment became more interesting as long as dangerous animals were
at the starting point. For example, much of the unit came to be centered large African
predators like lions and cheetahs. Examples of the extreme sublime in the ecology unit

were in most cases related to hunting and killing. Students were very interested in how

73

big, how fast, and how strong the world’s top hunters are. While this trend is not as
obvious in the results of the interviews as it is in the results of the surveys and narratives
from the weather unit, my observation notes are full of examples of the extreme sublime.
Connective Sublime

The connective sublime, associated with feelings of connections to and unity
within nature, was completely non-existent in the weather unit, but did surface
occasionally in the ecology unit. Predictably, with the weather unit’s focus on extreme
storms, students did not show evidence of feeling connected to weather, but instead
demonstrated feelings of a respect for nature. In contrast, several instances of the
connective sublime did appear in interviews with the ecology students at site 2. These
instances usually consisted of the student realizing a connection between themselves and
animals. Typically, these students thought of animals as something to fear and avoid so
being able to identify with them was very new idea. For example,

0 I talk to my mom about . .. how they’re (animals) just really special. We’re
animals, I just found that out, I didn’t think about that last year.

0 Everything has its own way of living and it’s mostly the same you just have to
see it through others’ eyes.

The realization that we are animals, and in fact mammals expressed by the ﬁrst quote,
“wally led another student to think that eating meat was wrong. She began to question
how she could eat a cow now that she realized it was a fellow mammal. Ultimately, she
decided hamburgers were too good to pass up, but it still bothered her that she ate
mammals. a dilemma she had never pondered before. Similarly, the second quote shows a
Students’ realization of a connection between living things. This same student stared,

mesmerized at the minute swimming creatures in a jar of swamp water. While many of

74

the students were disgusted by the green slimy water, this student reported seeing
connections between herself and the aquatic creatures much like Emerson (1844) found

connections between himself and an ant.

The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ant’s; but the
moment a ray of relation is seen to extend from it to man, and the little drudge is

seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, than all its habits
becomes sublime.

Scientific Sublime: Affect Coupled with Understanding

The most important type of sublime experience is the scientiﬁc sublime.
Scientiﬁc sublime experiences are emotional reactions that arise ﬁom a scientiﬁc
understanding of the content; a combination of the cognitive and the affective. These
experiences are the goal of my teaching and at the heart of my research. Throughout my ‘
teaching I worked to incorporate elements of the extreme and connective sublime with
content understanding to result in scientiﬁc sublime experiences. At both sites through
interviews and surveys, and based on my classroom observations, students showed
evidence of having these experiences. As mentioned earlier in chapter 2, I have
developed three aspects of scientiﬁc sublime experiences:

1) Being awed by how science ideas reveal the world;

2) Developing insight through engagement with scientiﬁc ideas

3) Seeing and being in the world differently.

In the following sections, I examine these three aspects of scientiﬁc sublime experiences
for both the weather and ecology unit.

"'8 Weather Unit

During the weather unit many students’ interest in the extreme sublime of storms

l . .
ed them to want to understand the rnner workrngs of such events. For many, once

75

aspects of a storrn’s formation, strengthening, and landfall were understood the storm
become even more interesting. Analysis of the surveys from the weather unit shows that
1/3 of the responses categorized as being sublime were of the scientiﬁc variety. The ﬁrst
piece of the scientiﬁc sublime that I will examine is the awe and interest experienced by

students as the science ideas learned in the weather unit revealed more of the world to

them.
1. Being awed by how science ideas reveal the world

In the surveys, many students wrote that as a result of the weather unit they began to
understand aspects of weather that had previously seemed inscrutable. Weather is
obviously something that we are exposed to everyday and something that directly affects
our lives, but despite our enormous experience with it most people know very little about
how or why it comes about. Weather reports are typically seen as little more than a guess
and weather events like storms are seen as largely unpredictable. At the same time,
because of their capacity for both beauty and destruction, storms are something most
PeOple are genuinely interested in. My students were no exception to this norm and came
into the weather unit with curiosities about weather and storms in particular, but also with
a sense that “weather is just weather”, not something that is or can be understood. When I
first introduced students to storms they were intrigued by their overwhelming enormity,
power, and destruction. They wanted to know the details of the biggest, the fastest, and
the most deadly — all aspects of the extreme sublime. But soon students also wanted to
know how such phenomena came into being as well as how and why they ended. The
faCt that there is some order and levels of predictability to storms was a new and

interesting idea for students. Many students reported that before the unit they thought

76

“weather was just weather” and that “weather just happens”, but as a result of the unit

were surprised to learn that “weather has energy” and reported that “now 1 know how

they [storms] start and end”.
This was a new and exciting idea for my students; it was as if some secrets of the

natural world were being revealed. Students were impressed by their continuing
understandings and were excited to delve deeper and to apply their understandings to new
weather events. The awe and excitement was clearly evident in class discussions and
oﬂen spilled over to before and after class conversations. I had several students who
would regularly rush to class to talk with me for a few minutes before the bell rang about
aspects of their new understandings; from showing me books on weather they had
checked out from the library or had at home, to discussing shows they had watched on
television or their own personal stories about weather. Other students reported talking
about weather with their ﬁiends and family after school, sharing the exciting things they
had learned in class. I had the sense that my students were impressed with what they were
I earning, with how they were able to explain the formerly unexplainable. There was one
c lass discussion in particular where several of my 4th hour students talked about how
much more they already knew about weather compared to the rest of their family and

c laimed they were becoming “weather experts”. They were proud of their understandings

of such a complex yet interest domain. The following quotes from student surveys give a

Sense of the awe and inspiration expressed by the students as the weather unit revealed

new and exciting aspects of the natural world.

77

 

Table 4.9: Examples of How Science Ideas Revealed the World From Weather
Survey

 

“I ﬁnd it the most interesting part of science. It is exciting and fun learning new
things about weather, something we’ve seen every day of our lives.”

“Tornadoes, I’m fascinated by what they can do.”

“Me and my friends were talking at lunch about how scary and cool it would be if
Michigan had a hurricane. It was a cool conversation.”

“I thought it was interesting because I’ve always wanted to learn about weather.”
“My favorite part was tornadoes; it is something I’ve always pondered about.”

“It was interesting because I like weather and always have”

“I like learning about meteorology because I’ve always been interested in weather.”

Nr‘
.0

 

 

”WW

 

- Developing Insight

N

The second aspect of the scientiﬁc sublime, that of developing insight, is an extension
0 f the previous quality. While the learner is ﬁrst awed by how science ideas reveal the
world in new ways, the next part of the scientiﬁc sublime experience involves a deeper
level of understanding. As the student, compelled by the interest piqued by the extreme
sublime, delves deeper into the phenomenon he or she may reach the level I am calling
insight. With this insight comes an awareness of connections and patterns within nature
and a realization of the coherence between various parts of a phenomenon. In this unit,
students came to recognize several examples of connecting patterns in weather. For
ex arnple, students were told early on that the ‘big idea’ behind weather is ‘weather is the
movement of the sun’s energy on earth’. As the unit progressed, this underlying principle
became clearer with each storm. In addition to the ‘big idea’, I gave students a guiding
metaphor and framework for storm formation that could be applied to each weather
Went- These principles became powerful lenses for students to use to make sense of
weather. Students were eager to apply their knowledge to new weather events and to use

weather themes and patterns to take a stab at the difﬁcult process of weather prediction.

78

Perhaps the most intriguing understandings for students were the necessary
ingredients and steps involved in storm formation. They were amazed that every storm
was made of the same three components — air, water, and land, and that each of these
‘players’ interact in predictable ways across all storms with the same ‘goal’ of moving

energy. Since students began the weather unit with little if any understanding of how and
Why weather happens, being able to use metaphors, a storm guideline, and their
understanding of the big idea to recognize themes and patterns was a powerful concept.
[1:1 the survey, students consistently expressed their excitement and amazement in being
able to understand storm formation as is evident in the examples given in the following

chart:
Table 4.10: Examples of Developing Insight from the Weather Survey

 

“It is interesting because of all the amazing things weather can do just with the

resources from nature.”

“I’m more interested in it [weather], I’m more informed too. I comprehend more
about it, it makes more sense too.”

“Storms are interesting because they are made of energy moving.”

“The unit was full of how weather forms, I liked these things because I’d always

wondered about it as a kid.”
“It was interesting because I enjoyed learning how different types of weather form,

those all were interesting to learn about.”
“The best unit was hurricanes, I really like those and how they form because they

form really cool.”
“It’s been interestiﬁbecause when I see the weather I know what it is.”

' “ ’ve found out things that make me think differently because I now know how the

L Weather system totally functions.”
' “I used to think that hurricanes just form when cold and warm water mix together but

I never knew how a hurricane formed, that’s why I liked it [the unit] so much.”

m Lstormstere really cool how they formed.”
' “I didn’t know that weather was like that, like weather has energy, that’s something I

i didn’t know.”
' “Before I thought of hurricanes as deadly storms, now I think of them as the weather

tem.99
' “:I‘Ornadoes, they are the most mysterious and fascinating thing...so complex yet

1% in the way they are formed.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

79

 

These responses emphasize how intrigued students were with understanding the
structures behind the still mysterious, but now more understandable phenomenon of
weather. As is apparent from the survey responses, storm formation was an especially
interesting topic for these students. They were amazed that the same principles behind

hurricane formation applied to tornadoes, lake effect snowstorms and most other storms.
As Heisenberg was awed by the “frightening simplicity and wholeness of relationships”
in nature, so too were my students. I am reminded of Heisenberg’s statement in the last
student response, “..the most mysterious and fascinating thing...so complex yet simple in

the way they are formed.” This recognition of relationships and patterns seen in insight is

the second quality of the scientiﬁc sublime.

3. Seeing and Being in the World Differently

The ﬁnal quality of the scientiﬁc sublime comes as a result of the previous two parts.
Students are ﬁrst awed by the ideas, then through deeper content understanding come to
recognize and be intrigued by nature’s patterns and relationships. Because of these two
processes, students see the world differently. These experiences create a new appreciation
and respect for nature. As mentioned in chapter one, Dewey believed appreciation comes
ﬁ'om an interaction between the appreciator and the object or phenomenon. Summarizing
Dewey’s idea on appreciation, Jackson described the appreciator as “someone who has
Spent time with a work, has found it engaging, stimulating, puzzling, perhaps even
troubling, and as a result of this sustained exploration of it, has undergone a signiﬁcant
change of some kind.” Many of my students underwent this signiﬁcant change as a result
0f their experiences in learning weather. They were engaged by the images and ideas, and

put in their time puzzling over the processes. Consequently, the weather and the world

80

around them began to seem different. Now storms are just as awe-inspiring as when
students began the unit, but for more than just their powers of destruction. Through a
gained insight, students would never be able to look at weather in the same way. Weather
is one of the few areas in science that we are constantly exposed to; from how it affects
our daily activities’to being mentioned in nearly every news report we read or hear. Wrth
tl‘ris constant exposure, new knowledge and awareness of weather patterns markedly
widens my students’ understandings of the world. The following chart gives examples

from student surveys of seeing and being in the world differently as a result of scientiﬁc

s ublime experiences.

4.1 1: Examples From the Weather Survey of Students Seeing the World Differently

“I want to know what the weather forecast is, I used to not care about rt.

“1 have thought about becoming a storm chaser”
“I have thought about weather more, like during homework I’m always thinking

about school and what I did.”
“I want to know what the weather forecast is, I used to not care about rt.

“Now I like to see how the weather will be from day to day and I like to look at the
Sky,”

“I looked out my kitchen window and saw that the clouds were gray ‘that could be a
tornado’ is what I thought, then I named all of the clouds that I know about.”
“I’ve found out things that make me think differently because I now know how the

weather system totally functions.”
“I think weather is a lot more dangerous now.”
“I thought that weather was just evaporation, precipitation, and condensation.
“Now I’m paying more attention to what the weather man says.
“I think about weather differently because now I know what could happen to us
because of tornadoes, hurricanes, and lake effect snowstorrns.”
“I watch the weather channel and I understand it now when I watch it.”
“I know a lot more about how storms form and how different weather can change the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

min...

stems 9’
“I found it the most interesting part of science, it is exciting and fun learning new

thin 3 about weather, something we’ve seen every day of our lives”

 

81

 

In addition to the examples from the survey responses of seeing the world
differently, there were frequent comments and discussions in class. These discussions
centered around how students were eagerly using their knowledge to make sense of
weather reports or television shows on extreme weather. This knowledge even presented

exciting new career aspirations for some students as several of them wanted to know how

one becomes a storm chaser.

j'he Ecology Unit

Like the weather unit, students who were a part of the ecology unit showed
evidence of having scientiﬁc sublime experiences. During their interviews, many of the
ecology students showed evidence of the three aspects of the scientiﬁc sublime: being
awed by the ideas, insight, seeing and being in the world differently. While the essence
o f each of these aspects is similar to those seen in the weather unit, the structure of the
data is quite different. In the ecology unit, I spent a great deal of time talking with and
recording students. These recordings consist of interviews as well as instances where I
asked students to look at pictures and describe what they saw. Both of these methods
resulted in rich information about student experiences with the ecology unit. From the
interviews, it became clear that many of the students did not have much ﬁrst-hand

experience with animals and often, these experiences were negative. , Consequently, since
much of the ecology unit was about animals, many of the ideas were particularly eye-

°Pening for some students. Examples of how ideas revealed the world in new ways for

the ecology students are in the following table.

82

4.12: Examples from Ecology Interviews of How Ideas Revealed the World

 

ﬁ\
O

“I never knew they (coyotes) lived in Michigan before until I learned that in science, I
saw one a few days ago. . .I didn’t think they lived in Michigan, I think that’s so
interesting.”

“You know what’s interesting, why doesn’t the shark just eat the ﬁsh?”

“It was interesting how the cheetahs and lions they eat the other animals running
around like the baby deer.”

“It’s interesting how it grows and breaks it down.”

“I think it’s cool that when you look at an amoeba how you just see it splitting off and
keep on splitting...”

 

11111111???

 

“oh that’s so cool, I’m learning something new”

“We are all animals, [just found that out, I didn’t think about that last year.”

“It’s interesting how like animals are connected.”

“I had no idea that like the lions and cheetahs have like glowing eyes in the dark, I

 

didn’t know that and it’s so interesting.”

After students were introduced to some of the scientiﬁc ideas behind ecology,

hey became interested in learning more. As they further explored ecological concepts,

be world of plants and animals and their interactions became even more fascinating. At

this point, the second level of the scientiﬁc sublime progressed and students began to

gain insight into the natural world. This insight included recognition of connections

between living things and their environment and a greater appreciation for nature. Nature

had been something largely alien to my students - as one boy put it, “I’m more of an

inside kind of guy”, so often the ecology unit fostered a new sense of respect and

admiration for nature.

83

 

Table 4.13: Examples for Ecology Interviews that Show Insight

 

0 “when I used to look outside and see a squirrel I didn’t really know what that
means, but now I see them like gathering food to survive.”

0 “When I see a rock, I’ll be thinking about the process how it went from bare rock
to like a forest.”

“...you go outside and say you looking in the grass and you ﬁnd mold on the tree
or dead branches on the ground, now I got to pick them up and think it’s making
the environment and resources grow.”

 

- “there’s like a lot of layers to skin and underneath there’s tissue and muscle and
everything and I was just sitting there and staring at it... and I was like wow that’s
cooP’

 

“The most interesting thing is how animals survive like lions and the big cats.”

 

“He’s probably one of the top predators of reptiles.” - based on size, sharp claws

 

“they’re [animals] just really special.”

 

“I saw a rabbit blending in with the grass...it made me think about when we was
looking at the pictures in class and we were talking about it and how it blends
in...it helps them with hiding from predators.”

 

 

- “Everything has its own way of living and it’s mostly the same, you just have to '
see it throug others’ eyes.”

 

 

I ust as storm formation was the most popular theme in the weather unit, a favorite theme

a1 so emerged in the ecology unit. At this second site, students were incredibly roused by

the general concept of survival, hunting in particular. Several students also described the

process of secondary succession — the breaking down of rock, cement, etc. by plants as a
- fascinating idea.

Student interviews also showed evidence of the world having changed for the
learner as a result of the scientiﬁc sublime experiences. Like the weather unit, many of
these changes were profound. Since the ecology students began the unit with little

kno‘W'ledge of nature, gaining knowledge and appreciation for the topic left the world
dTaStically different. As one student said, “I just know more about the world, I know

there ’8 more to the world now”. Other examples of students seeing and being in the

world differently as a result of scientiﬁc sublime experiences had in the ecology unit are
in the following table.

Table 4.14: Examples From Ecology Interviews that Showed Evidence of Students
Seeing the World Differently

 

0 “When I see a rock, I’ll be thinking about the process how it went from bare rock to
like a forest.”

 

- “when I used to look outside and see a squirrel I didn’t really know what that means,
but now I see them like gathering food to survive.”

 

0 “...you go outside and say you looking in the grass and you ﬁnd mold on the tree or
dead branches on the ground, now I got to pick them up and think it’s making the
environment and resources grow.”

 

0 “Science is all around you, why would you want to put yourself in a position where
you don’t know what is around you?”

 

o In reference to microscopic organisms in pond water: “I was just thinking how... like
a certain area in the world is just like your own home, there are certain parts of it and
there are certain ways that they move around, just the way they interact with things
and just like you wake up in the morning and see your father... a ﬁsh wakes up and
you know they’re like watching their father too.”

 

“Now I look at my doiand I see that she has fur so she’s a mammal.”

 

“I watch my dog and how she reacts, like yesterday my dad brought her a bone and
she tried to bury it...I was thinking about how like lions are chasing out the
hyenas...when they’re eating...she wanted to hide the bone so nobody would take it.”

 

 

0 “Everything has its own way of living and it’s mostly the same you just have to see it
through others’ eyes.”

 

Ecology Student Interactions with Pictures: The Scientiﬁc Sublime

Along with more typical interviews, I gathered information from students about
their understandings and experiences by showing them pictures of animals and asking
them to talk about what they saw and thought. Usually these episodes were not only
interesting for the student, but very telling from a teaching and research perspective. Each
of these sessions involved students looking at pictures of animals, some they were
familiar with, others that were new to them. I carefully chose visually appealing pictures
that highlighted sublime aspects of animals, many of which were from one of two books

of animal photographs. I was purposeful in selecting pictures that I thought would rouse

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an emotional response and, knowing my students I capitalized on the extreme sublime.
One of the books I used was a beautiful collection of photos of unusual and often
dangerous reptiles and the other contained many wonderful pictures of large cats in the
wild. Ultimately, I chose both books because they captured the dignity and splendor of
nature.

Once students were given a book to look through, they were quickly mesmerized
by the images and wanted to be able to leisurely look through and talk about the entire
book. On three occasions I pulled students out of class to work with me around these
pictures while a Halloween or end of the marking period party was going on back in the
classroom. I had expected students to rush through the interview in order to return to the
party, but on the contrary, each group of students asked to continue looking at and talking
about the pictures rather than rejoining the celebration. Students were continually amazed
and awestruck by what they saw and enjoyed telling me and their fellow classmate about
what they could tell about the animal from the picture. They were using their new
ecological knowledge to make sense of the animals they were looking at and found the
process deeply gratifying. This enjoyment was obvious in both the “ohs” and “ahs”
uttered upon the ﬁrst look, but even more so in the sense of animated urgency with which
they talked about what they were seeing. Of course students had become accustomed to
looking at and thinking about pictures in this way. since I led similar activities nearly
every day in class. But it was gratifying for me to see them initiate this type of interaction
on their own and to see how they not only had become quite adept at applying their new
understandings but also how much they enjoyed the process. Upon reviewing the

transcripts from these sessions, I have found elements of the scientiﬁc sublime in all of

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them. Students generally seemed to experience a Deweyan type of transaction with the
picture - scrutinizing, puzzling over, and appreciating the animal. As a result, both the
observer and their understanding of the animal were changed in the process. The student
often left the activity ﬁnding the animal more beautiful, interesting, and awe-inspiring.

In the transcripts of this type of student interview, clear patterns of cognitive and
affective processes emerge. Typically, there were sequential steps in these encounters
that map onto the four aspects of scientiﬁc sublime experiences: Initial interest (general,
connective, or extreme sublime), ﬁrst level of sense making (being awed by the ideas),
second level of sense making (insight and appreciation), and seeing and being in the
world differently.

The transaction begins when students ﬁrst look at the picture and are moved by
some aspect of the sublime; whether it is a shiver of fear provoked by a stalking panther’s
deﬁant, hungry stare; a glimmer of connection seen in an orangutan’s curious expreSsion;
or the breathtaking beauty of a leopard’s shiny spotted coat. Whatever the prompt, some
feelings of the sublime surface and pique the observer’s interest. This is when the “ohs”
and “ahs” were heard as well as typical utterances like “it’s so beautiful”, “how pretty”,
“that’s hugel”, “cooll”, “that’s tight!”, or “look at that!”.

In every case, the initial interest provoked by a facet of the sublime was followed
by the ﬁrst level of sense making. This is the step where students begin to apply the
concepts learned in the ecology unit. At this point it was as if students verbalized a
mental check list, pointing out things they could tell about the animal upon ﬁrst glance.
Examples of this list making include, “It has fur so I know it’s warm blooded”, “Look at

those sharp pointy teeth, it must be a predator”, “It has camouﬂage so it needs to hide

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from other animals, probably to not get eaten”. I was always impressed with the
enthusiasm with which students used their scientiﬁc lenses to begin to analyze the
animals they were looking at. Students enjoyed applying the knowledge they had gained
in class to a new setting and animal. And as they applied this knowledge it was clear that
the animal, and I argue the world, become more interesting in the light of powerful ideas
like adaptation.

In most cases, students did not stop at this ﬁrst level of sense making, but instead
looked deeper and showed not only awe, but also appreciation and insight. In this stage,
students noticed things that only those who have studied parts of ecology like adaptation
would notice. This includes a deeper understanding and appreciation for the animal and
its relationship with its environment. An example of this insight and appreciation was
common in students’ quest to identify nature’s ‘super predators’. A super predator, a term
introduced in a nature ﬁlm we watched in class, would have to be an ultimate killing
machine, adapted perfectly for hunting in its environment. Students loved to nominate an
animal for super predator status and then to analyze and debate its qualiﬁcations for such
a prestigious title. A typical scenario is one in which two boys are examining a picture of
a particularly elegant cheetah. At ﬁrst they notice that the cat has excellent camouﬂage
since it blends in well with the African grasslands and must be “good at sneaking up on
things”. They then call attention to its long slender legs, the ﬂexible spine, and long tail
to help it balance at top speeds, and correctly note that this animal “can probably outrun
anything”. The sharp claws that will enable the animal to “swat at” and knock down its
prey and the big teeth that will latch around an animal’s throat to suffocate its victim are

all noticed. Finally, one of the boys points out the black ‘tear stripe’ running under the

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cat’s eyes will help it hunt during the day, serving as an anti-glare device. After this
meticulous examination of the picture, the boys cheerfully deem the cheetah a super
predator. This typical example of insight in the scientiﬁc sublime shows how students
apply their knowledge of ecological themes and patterns to create a more complete
understanding and ﬁnish with a new sense of awe and appreciation.
Content Learning

For both units, students were given a multiple-choice pre-test before the unit and
given the same test again approximately six weeks later as the post-test.
Weather Unit
The weather test was based on the state’s standards for the content as well as some
questions that covered processes or ideas that I found important but were not necessarily
covered in the state’s standards.

Table 4.15: Average Score for Pre and Post Test by hour for the Weather Unit

 

 

 

Hour Pre-Test Post-Test
3" hour 56% 82%
7“ hour 56% 80%

 

 

 

 

 

The results from the pre and post tests at site 1 show similar learning outcomes
for both 3rd and 4th hour students. The following chart shows the average pre and post test
scores for the weather unit.

Ecology Unit

The ecology unit’s test was modeled very closely on the school district’s ecology

unit test. The same types of questions were asked about the same content, only the

speciﬁcs of each question were changed so the two tests would not be identical since it

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would be given to students, and used as part of their unit grade, a few days after I
administered my post test.

At site 2, the test was given pre and post to the students I taught and to a similar
control class that was learning the same material but with the regular teacher using the
teacher’s customary ecology unit. The following chart shows the average pre and post
test scores for the ecology unit.

Table 4.16: Average Score for Pre and Post Test for the Ecology Unit

 

 

 

 

 

Class Pre-Test . Post-Test
Experimental 71% 83%
Control 70% 77%

 

 

 

While students in both classes began with similar average pre-test scores, my students

outperformed the control group on the post-test.

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Chapter 5: Results - Efficacy of the Pedagogical Approach

Introduction

Drawing ﬁ'om my experiences teaching the weather and ecology unit and from
student feedback in class discussions, interviews, and surveys I have collected
information on the efﬁcacy of my pedagogical approach. From chapter two, the basic
components of my theory of teaching for sublime understanding are as follows:

1. An emphasis on the big ideas

2. The use of metaphor

3. An emphasis on visualization

4. Highlighting the sublime

5. Encouraging imaginative exploration of scientiﬁc ideas

6. Modeling a sublime sensibility
This chapter will describe how these aspects of my teaching approach were manifested in
the units and examine the effectiveness of them in terms of fostering sublime
experiences. In particular, I will address each aspect of my teaching model in regards to
how they materialized in each unit, how students responded to them, and their relative
success in fostering sublime experiences. Finally, the chapter closes with a reﬂection on
my experiences as the teacher of the unit and the generalizability of my pedagogical
model as a teaching tool.
1. An Emphasis on the Big Ideas

As discussed in chapter 2, identifying and emphasizing the content’s essential

understandings or ‘big ideas’ is a critical part of teaching for sublime experiences. In

order to inspire students with powerﬁrl science ideas and lead them towards sublime

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insight, the teacher must call their attention to the essence of the topic. Understanding and
applying big ideas throughout the content helps ensure that students form a holistic
understanding rather than simply memorizing facts. Scientiﬁc sublime experiences rely
on this type of deep understanding to move and inspire the learner.

Big Ideas: The Weather Unit

Both units were guided by what I identiﬁed as the content’s most essential
understandings - the big ideas. In weather this was, “weather is the movement of energy
in response to the disequilibrium of the sun’s energy on earth”. Understanding that
weather is driven by an energy disequilibrium gave students a more sophisticated
understanding of weather. This big idea helped students understand why we have
weather and became a powerful tool for making sense of new weather patterns. For
example, when investigating a weather event like blizzards, students used their
understanding of the big idea to know that the storm must begin in an area of energy
buildup.

The big idea was useful throughout the unit as we examined each storm and also
in explaining everyday weather like fog and rain. As the teacher I spent time setting up
the big idea by introducing the sun as an enormous ball of energy that gives life to the
creatures of earth. Students also exarrrined the unequal ways in which this energy reaches
earth and the ensuing disequilibrium that drives weather. It seemed that this introduction
was a necessary step for students to understand weather as the movement of energy in
response to a global or world-wide energy disequilibrium. In addition, this step served as
a powerful way to introduce students to aspects of the extreme and scientiﬁc sublime.

Many students seemed awe-struck when they learned of the massive size and incredible

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heat energy of the sun and were surprised .to learn that it was the origin of all weather on
earth. For the students, the sun had previously only been associated with what they saw to
be an absence of weather - such as a clear, sunny day. As the unit progressed, students
learned that weather actually arises in response to the sun — to counteract the sun’s
concentration of energy at the earth’s equator. Understanding this big idea proved not
only to be a powerful tool for students to gain a more complete understanding of weather,
but was also an interesting idea that helped move them towards scientiﬁc sublime -
experiences.

It is interesting to note that the standard weather unit normally taught at this
school did not include any mention of the sun’s energy or disequilibrium - concepts that .
were at the heart of my unit. Instead the regular weather unit focused on the particulars of
weather —- vocabulary and process like pressure systems and fronts -— but largely removed
from the context of weather events like storms. In the student survey given after the unit
some students made speciﬁc mention to the big idea and its role in their interest and
understanding of weather. For example, in response to the question of asking if students
thought of weather differently because of the unit, a third hour student, Mickey, wrote,
“Yes, because I didn’t know that weather was like that, like weather has energy that’s
something I didn’t know.” Similarly, Kevin, another third hour student wrote that storms
are “interesting because they are made of energy moving”. Another student, Dan, wrote
that his view of weather had changed as a result of the unit “because I thought that
weather was just evaporation, precipitation, and condensation.” These student comments

are gratifying to read and show a deeper understanding of weather than a mere

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memorization of weather details. I believe this deep student understanding came as a
result of explicitly teaching the unit with a continual emphasis on the big idea.

Big Ideas: The Ecology Unit

The ecology unit also made use of big ideas and metaphors, but in slightly
different ways. Rather than one dominant big idea as in the weather unit, the ecology unit
included two related big ideas -— 1) all living things are connected, and an extension of
this idea, 2) animals have adaptations to help them survive in their environment. While
adaptation is a large topic I taught it as the way in which animals are almost ‘perfectly’
designed for their environment. Both ideas emphasize how organisms live and interact
with their surroundings although we largely focused on animals rather than other types of
living things. These big ideas provided a very different way of thinking about animals for
my students. I found that many of the students came to the unit with some understanding
of ecology terminology, largely from the nature programs they watched on TV, but they
did not have a sense of the science ideas behind the terms. For example, they did not
understand how species interact with and affect each other or that animals had speciﬁc
traits and behaviors to help them survive in a particular environment.

I found that animals were an inherently interesting topic for the students and they
were eager to better understand them. For many students these understandings came as
revelations, especially when they applied to predator/prey relationships. An example of
this surfaced when we studied the big cats of Aﬁica. Students had some sense that the
coat colors and patterns of cheetahs, leopards, and lions helped them blend into their
surroundings, but they had did not know how much information could be learned from

the seemingly trivial detail of the coloring around the cats’ eyes. Cats with black around

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their eyes hunt by day while those with white ‘tear stripes’ hunt by night. The black fur
serves as anti-glare while the white works to reﬂect upwards to the eye what little
moonlight may be available. The fact that nature had provided these ‘super predators’
with traits and behaviors to maximize their likelihood for survival was a compelling idea
for many students. As with the weather unit, I think that this second group of students
gained a relatively holistic understanding of ecology as a result of my continuing focus
on the big ideas - that all living things are connected and as a result an animal’s
environment greatly inﬂuences an animal’s traits.
2. The Use of Metaphors

As mentioned in previous chapters, metaphors were an essential aspect of my
teaching approach. They played an important role in helping students form
understandings of the scientiﬁc content as well as fostering scientiﬁc sublime
experiences. By forming comparisons between scientiﬁc ideas and things or processes
students already know, deeper understandings of the scientiﬁc content are likely to result.
In addition, metaphors can help many students better imagine or visualize the science to
help them see the world as a richer, more interesting place. Both the ecology and weather
units made use of big ideas and metaphors, although the ways in which they were used
differed between the two units.

Metaphors: The Weather Unit

The weather unit centered around a detailed guiding metaphor that was used
extensively: namely, weather as a team. The team metaphor, where air, land, and water
are depicted as team members who must work together in an interactive and systematic

way to produce the desired outcome (e. g., score a goal in soccer or create a hurricane in

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weather), was a way to build on and illustrate the big idea and proved to be a powerful
way for students to think about weather. More the most part, students found it easy to
apply their knowledge of a sports team to the intricacies of weather.

Before the unit began, there was some concern as to whether or not all students
would be able to relate to a sports team, but ultimately this did not prove to be
problematic. In addition to assisting with understanding the big idea, the team metaphor
also provided a framework that students could use to analyze new weather events. To
help illustrate this, recall that the team metaphor was broken down into several levels:
each weather event is made up of the same three “players”, there are speciﬁc “seasons”
when each type of game (type of storm) occurs. In this extended metaphor, particular
storms, like Hurricane Andrew, can be thought of as “games”, and perhaps most
importantly, each game is made up of three “plays” -- formation, strengthening, and
landfall. These stages or ‘plays’ allowed students to understand that storms do not
merely spontaneously form, but instead progress through a predictable sequence. This
framework equipped students with a way of examining and making sense of new storms
and proved to be particularly powerful. Weather began to be comprehendible to students
when they realized they could apply a consistent framework to almost every weather
event.

In addition to the cognitive beneﬁts of using metaphors in teaching, as a literary
device the metaphor stirred the imagination and made weather more interesting. Students
began to envision weather and storms as an eternal competition between two forces -
those with energy and those without. This depiction was an entirely new way of looking

at nature, weather in particular. Most of these students began the unit with a sense that

96

weather just happened, but by giving them an explanative metaphor, weather became a
richer, more attractive topic of study.

Storms became more than isolated enigmatic events, but became part of a larger,
comprehensible, and fascinating pattern. For example, one student wrote in his survey,
“Before I thought of hurricanes as just deadly storms, now I think of them as the weather
team (J ames).” I found that teaching with this extended metaphor was an effective way
to focus many of the lessons. As I taught new material I could relate it to the familiar
weather as a team analogy. The use of the online weather makers that we created also
tumed out to be a nice connection to the metaphor. As students worked on the computer
to create a hurricane or lake effect snow storm, they used their understandings of the team
metaphor to create the ‘perfect storm’. For example, I instructed students to think in -
terms of the three ‘players’ — air, water, and land — when adjusting variables on the
weather makers. I encouraged students to think about the largely consistent role of each
of these elements in storm formation and students were able to test their understandings
on the weather maker.

Besides the team example, other metaphors were used throughout the unit to help
students better understand scientiﬁc concepts and to encourage imaginative thinking. As
an example of a particularly useful and vivid metaphor, students thought of the ‘
atmosphere as an ocean of air and us as the bottom dwellers. This metaphor enabled
students to grasp the difﬁcult concept of air pressure by comparing it to the pressure we

would feel at the bottom of an ocean of water.

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Table 5.1 lists students’ survey responses that show evidence of the team
metaphor and its framework being used to make sense of the key components of weather
and the three stages of each storm — formation, strengthening, and landfall.

Table 5.1: Student Survey Comments that Show Evidence of Learning Through
Team Metaphor

 

“I’ve found out things that make me think differently [about weather] because I now
know how the weather system totally functions.” - Brandon

 

“It is interesting because all the amazing things weather can do just with the resources
from nature” — Michael

 

“Before I thought of hurricanes as just deadly storms, now I think of them as the weather
team” - James

 

“Now I know how tornadoes and hurricanes and lake effect snowstorms start” - Kyle

 

“It was interesting because I enjoyed leaming how different types of weather form” —
Gabby

 

“Now I know how they start and end” - Ken

 

 

“Storms are pretty interesting. They are so complex yet simple in the way they are
formed.” - Steve

 

Metaphors: The Ecology Unit

As discussed in Chapter 2, the ecology unit had one metaphor that was used
throughout, that of thinking of nature as a ‘web of life’. The ‘web of life’ metaphor was
given as a visual representation that highlighted the big idea of the interconnectedness of
all living things. This metaphor seemed to help students understand ecological processes
like food chains where the existence of consumers, producers, and decomposers are
contingent upon each other. Again, this type of thinking was new to many students and
inspired them to see the world in a different way. An example of something that grabbed
their attention was the role of decomposers in the food chain. The fact that decomposers
like fungi break down dead things to help return the plant or animal’s nutrients back into

the soil was both disturbing and exciting for students. Students began to visualize and

98

 

talk about the layers of dead things they were standing upon and how without
decomposers the surface of the earth would be piled high with corpses.

I also used a computer simulation game called SimSafari to highlight the
metaphor of the web of life. In this game students build a virtual safari park where the
goal is to create a balanced ecosystem of diverse African plants and animals. In the game,
students learned about and choose from a large list of plants and animals native to
Aﬁican grasslands to place in their park. They also decided on the number of each
species to place in the park. Once students made their selections, the simulation ran and
they observed the results. For example, if enough grass and shrubs were not selected the
herbivores died off ﬁrst followed by the carnivores, and only the scavengers thrived. .
Without exception, my students added far too many large predators like cheetahs and
lions for their ecosystem to sustain. As a result, most of their beloved big cats quickly
died. Students were allowed to intervene in the simulation and add to the biotic features
of their ecosystem until it reached equilibrium. It was exciting to watch as students began
to realize how the ‘web of life’ was playing out in their safari park and came to realize
the delicate balance of nature in an ecosystem.

Throughout the unit other metaphors were used to illustrate speciﬁc points or
ideas. For example, adaptation was compared to the shoes students wore — each shoe
having characteristics that make it suited for a speciﬁc purpose much like animals have
traits that help them survive in their particular surroundings. Perhaps the most powerful
metaphor turned out to be a way of thinking of primary succession - the tendency for
plants to grow over and break down rock, cement or pavement in the creation of new soil

— as a war between human-made objects and nature.

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Ecological succession was the last t0pic required by the district for the unit and I
was wonied it would come across as a bit boring after the excitement of ‘super
predators’. In an attempt to reach the sublime, I introduced the process as an epic war
between people and nature. Echoing Wordsworth’s sentiment in A few lines above
T intern Abbey, I told students that we humans were always trying to build grand, strong
buildings that would last forever, but in the end nature always reclaimed them. I
introduced this idea while projecting pictures of ancient stone castles and churches
covered and half toppled by ivy and other creeping plants. I told the class that this war
was going on all around us all the time and showed and discussed examples of more
modern buildings covered in vines and patches of sidewalk and asphalt crumbling where
weeds were poking out. This session included a lively discussion where students gave I
examples of where they had seen secondary succession and discussed this ongoing war.
Examples of scientiﬁc sublime experiences based on this class discussion surfaced in
several student interviews and it was clear students were looking for and ﬁnding
examples of this ‘war’ all around them.

Table 5.2: Student Interview Comments that Show Evidence of Learning Using
Metaphor

 

0 “When I see a rock, I’ll be thinking about the process how it went from bare rock to
like a forest.” - J anessa

 

0 “...you go outside and say you looking in the grass and you ﬁnd mold on the tree or
dead branches on the ground, now I got to pick them up and think it’s making the
environment and resources grow.” - Misty

 

“It’s interesting how it grows and breaks it down.” - Allison

 

 

“You know when we were talking about the leaves growing on the buildings? There’s
one on this street...I say that house must have been there for a long time and one day
that house might not be there anymore” - Deanna

 

100

 

3. An Emphasis on Visualization

While I began each unit with the curriculum largely written, I found that
throughout both units I continually revised the lessons and my teaching approach. The
most signiﬁcant change occurred during the weather unit where within the ﬁrst few days
of teaching I began to realize the signiﬁcant impact images, both still and video, had on
my students and began to work in more and more of them.

Visualization: The Weather Unit & The Ecology Unit

The longer I taught, the more I became aware of important considerations when
using pictures as an attempt to foster interesting and moving experiences in the
classroom. Not surprisingly, the more dramatic, unexpected, and extraordinary the better.
This meant that I spent considerable time ﬁnding just the right picture or video clip for
each part of my lessons. The videos needed to be full of suspense and drama but also
present the science ideas behind the objects or phenomenon. In the weather unit we
watched a video of showing the power and destruction of hurricanes and tornadoes. With
the ecology students I showed what turned out to be a very popular video entitled Super
Predators which focused on the great cats of the African grasslands.

Some of the qualities I looked for in pictures were simply surface elements like
sharp colors, clarity, and close-ups or distance shots. But more importantly was the
subject of the picture. I looked for images that highlighted the sublime; rare objects
students were either not familiar with - like the perfectly camouﬂaged leaf frog hidden in
a pile of autumn leaves, or were seeing in a new way - like the earth from space. Also
particularly moving were pictures that emphasized aspects of the sublime -- like a NASA

satellite image looking down on a massive hurricane as it swirls over Florida and several

101

 

Surrounding states; or pictures that call attention to the perfection of the sleek, sinuous
body of a cheetah at top speed. Although searching for these pictures was time
consuming and often tedious, they successfully evoked feelings of awe and amazement in
my students and made many of them eager to learn more.

I also found a seemingly minor detail to be very important when it came to using
pictures to their greatest effect in the classroom; the bigger the better. Students were not
nearly as impressed with a picture they looked at in a book as they were with a picture I
could project from my laptop onto the projection screen. A massive tornado is certainly
more menacing when it is projected brightly on a big screen. The students also taught me
the importance of creating a more conducive mood by turning out the lights and gathering
near the screen to gaze upon and talk about the picture.

Discussing the pictures is the last detail that I found critical to maximize the effect
of using images to create sublime experiences. It was not enough to create a slide show to
quickly ﬂip through. Instead my students and I spent ample time looking at and
discussing each picture. We treated pictures of snowstorms or cheetahs like pieces of art
in a gallery, studying each of them and talking about what we saw. It was in the process
of teaching the units that I developed this manner of interacting with students around
images as a way to emphasize the power, structure, and beauty in science. In the
beginning I introduced each picture by asking students a series of questions like, “What
do you see?”, “What does this remind you of?”, “What do you think will happen next?”,
“What do you think happened before?”, “What science ideas to you see here?”. At times

when students did not seem to have much to say I would help them out by saying

102

something like, “This is what I see. . ..”, or “Let me show you what I think is so cool
about this. . ..” or, “I wonder if. . .”.

While I modeled this method for students in the early days, they quickly adopted
the process and no longer needed my prompts to think through the pictures. It is
important to note that students did not merely comment on superﬁcial aspects of the
pictures. They started with their initial reactions but then delved deeper into the object or
phenomenon they were looking at by pointing out things like the source of a stonn’s
energy or a particular adaptive characteristic of an animal. Through modeling and
scaffolding, my students channeled their feelings of awe, interest, and surprise into a
practice where they used their scientiﬁc understanding of the content to make sense of the
pictures.

Another form of visualization that I used in both units was computer simulations.
In the weather unit, students worked on ‘weather makers’ where they manipulated
variables in order to create hunicanes, lake effect snowstorms, and tornadoes. These
simulations not only allowed students to test and concretize their scientiﬁc
understandings, they also had a strong affective quality as well. Students saw the weather
makers as being “hands-on activities” that allowed them to better imagine the necessary
details in storm formation. This imaginative visualization was a powerful tool that gave
students new insight into the inner workings of weather and the necessary ingredients that
must come together at the right time to create a massive storm.

As previously mentioned, in the ecology unit students worked on an ecological
computer simulation where they were able to control the number of consumers,

producers, and decomposers in an effort to create a sustainable African wildlife park.

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Like the weather makers, this simulation allowed students to test out existing
understandings and form new ones based on the results. Students were able to see what
happened when an ecosystem’s delicate balance was disrupted and were astonished to see
just how fragile the balance was. While a different type of visualization than analyzing
pictures and video, computer simulations also proved to be a powerful way to provoke
sublime experiences.

This type of interaction with images and simulations became a central theme in
my teaching and I think differs from more typical approaches to teaching science. The
emphasis on visualization as depicted here is largely dependant on access to technology,
but to be effective it also requires some speciﬁc teaching techniques as previously
mentioned. In the surveys from the weather unit and in interviews from the ecology unit,
students often commented on how much they enjoyed looking at and analyzing pictures.
The following chart shows some of the responses made by students in regards to the
importance of visualization in this approach.

Table 5.3: Weather Unit Student Comments on Surveys Pertaining to Visualization

 

Liked the unit “because we got to see what they [storms] looked like” —Ken

 

“I thought it was really interesting. The way of using computers to learn and movies
instead of just reading our books.” - Steve

 

0 “really cool, I liked the pictures we looked at on the projection screen. It helped me to
know what a real hurricane/tomado looked like. I liked the weather maker stuff on the
computer it let me get in there with my hands and work.” — Molly

 

 

 

0 “My favorite part was hurricanes because I love how they look” — Jimmy

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Table 5.4: Ecology Unit Comments from Interviews Pertaining to Visualization

 

0 “[Mrs. Marcella], when she does her stuff, she talks about it, she tells us, she doesn’t
show us the pictures, well sometimes she does, but I can’t really get a better vision of
it when she don’t show us the pictures and the way you do it is different, you show
us the pictures and talk about it so we understand it more.” -Janessa

 

o “I like to look at stuff and I don’t like reading stuff out of the book most of the time
I don’t picture it in my head, but if I look at it then I get a better idea of what it is.” -
Allison

 

0 The unit was fun “because like you give us time to ask questions and we get to look at
cool pictures.” - Kurtis

 

o “it gives peOple a better picture of what the animal looks like and what it does.” —
Misty

 

“It’s good to see what you haven’t seen before, to learn more about animals.” — Brian

 

“[pictures] help a lot because when you explain and then there’s a picture there, then I
can understand more.” — Chee

 

o “I like when I get to see pictures and see how they look and see the way they move.”
— Jackie

 

 

0 “It helps me learn to just get an image in my mind when I think about this stuff.” -
Kurtis

 

4. Highlighting the Sublime

A critical part of teaching for sublime experiences is to deliberately and actively
highlight sublime aspects of the content. This includes calling attention to the amazing,
awe-inspiring, and astounding parts of the subject area in an attempt to motivate students.
In my teaching this often included showing remarkable pictures or videos, giving
astounding statistics, and reading dramatic ﬁrst-hand accounts. Also, and perhaps most
importantly, the structure of the units were designed around a core, at least potentially
sublime topic.

Highlighting the Sublime: The Weather Unit

The weather unit represents a drastically different unit than what is typically
taught in middle school science class. In my teaching, the weather curriculum was

centered on storms, and speciﬁc weather vocabulary and processes were taught in the

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context of hurricanes, lake effect snowstorms, and tornadoes. The standard weather unit
that would normally have been taught at site 1 was not structured around storms; instead
the great emphasis was on introducing weather terms like precipitation, evaporation,
condensation, and fronts as well as process oriented weather recording. Most of the
content for the typical unit comes from the textbook. In this school’s textbook, only the
last two pages of the chapter were devoted to storms. The unit-long project that the
teachers normally used involved keeping a daily journal of weather forecasts from three
different sources and commenting every day on how accurate the forecasts were. From
my experiences and conversations with other middle school science teachers, this is quite
typical of weather units and very unlike the unit I taught.

As previously mentioned, the weather unit focused on the extreme sublime of
storms to foster scientiﬁc sublime experiences. This emphasis on storms was quite
successful in inspiring and motivating students to learn about weather and to gain a more
sophisticated understanding of the world. In their surveys students wrote that the unit’s
structure was “exciting stuff because storms have lots of action in them” (Neil), and that
the storm emphasis was “interesting, it made me more involved” (Hannah). I feel certain
that organizing the unit around storms was the most effective way to create rich learning
experiences and foster sublime experiences around the study of weather.

The following table shows student answers to a survey question, “Did you like the
way the unit was structured around storms?”— the main way in which the unit was crafted
to highlight the sublime. These student comments show the importance of focusing on

core science ideas that are of special interest to students.

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Table 5.5: Student Responses to How the Unit Was Structured Around Storms

 

“Yes, Storms are interesting because tlgy always change” — Joe

 

“Yes, I like storms and because storms are interesting” — Michael

 

0 “Yes, Storms are interesting because they have the power to destroy whole towns.” -
Brian

 

0 “Yes, Storms are interesting because they are kind of deadly and exciting” - James

 

“Yes, Storms are cool and because of destruction” — Charlie

 

“Yes, because they’re [storms] interesting because they are made of energy moving” -
Kyle

 

o “Storms are pretty interesting. They are so complex yet simple in the way they are
formed.” — Steve

 

o “It [the unit structure] was interesting, it made me more involved. I think storms are
interesting because they’re dangerous, loud, destructive, but can be beautiful too” —
Molly

 

“Yes, In my eyes storms are the most dangerous source of nature” — Troy

 

“Yes, because storms have lots of action in them, so their fun to learn about.” — Neil

 

“Yes, because they were really cool how they formed” — Gabby

 

“Yes, it’s cool, storms are interesting because I think water falling ﬁ'om the sky is
cool.” — Mark

 

 

- “Yes because it was interesting to see how different they were.” - Sarah

 

In the weather unit, I also included several other techniques to highlight the
sublime. In the beginning of my teaching I talked of the enormous size and power of
hunicanes, giving statistics for top wind speed, highest storm surges, the biggest and
most deadly hurricanes, showed pictures and video clips, and read accounts of hurricane
survivors. A particularly vivid example is in a true story of Hurricane Camille that I read
aloud in class. In my most dramatic voice, while projecting pictures of buildings before
and after the hurricane, I read the story of the lone survivor of a ‘hurricane party’. The
account involved a woman swimming out of her 2nd story apartment building window,
clutching debris and managing to stay aﬂoat despite the 200mph winds and 23 foot
tumultuous storm surge, watching her ﬁiends and family drown and the next day found

clutching a treetop ﬁve miles away. The students were enthralled by the details and eager

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to learn the science behind such natural monstrosities. Such a story allowed students to
gain a new perspective on the power of storms and the vast potential energy in weather.

Highlighting the Sublime: The E colog Unit

The ecology unit also included a reworking of a typical unit in an attempt to
highlight the potentially sublime aspects of the content. I knew that most students are
interested in animals and leaming about them, so the main focus of the unit was on
animals. Based on student interest, the focus of the unit quickly became further reﬁned
to center on dangerous animals (as will be discussed later in Chapters 5 and 6). I reached
an initial level of sublime by exposing students to new or particularly astonishing or
terrifying creatures. In order to create the potential for the scientiﬁc sublime, rather than ‘
just interesting experiences, I worked to show students different, captivating
understandings of animals. The understandings that I was after were based on science
ideas like adaptation.

In addition, I frequently attempted to bewilder students with statistics like the
fastest, the largest, the slowest, the smallest, or the most ferocious animal. A seemingly
trivial detail, but one that I think increased the potential for sublime experiences was for
me to read aloud from the book we used. Rather than have students read silently or take
turns reading out loud I was careful to read with drama and interest, pausing at important
or interesting information. In this manner I could call attention to the more sublime
aspects of the content and model my curiosity and enthusiasm for the material much like
I did when we discussed pictures. My students were attentive when I read, listening to
me while they silently followed along, asking questions or making comments when I

paused. This was again something that I only realized the importance of in the process of

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teaching the unit. Following the lead of the regular classroom teacher, I began the unit
with having students read silently and leading a discussion based on their reading. This
proved to be an unsatisfactory experience for me and the students. I found that many
students did not comprehend much of what they were reading - ﬁnding it difﬁcult to
sustain interest in the text-book writing style. When I read the same book aloud, with
strategic pauses, questions, and remarks, I noticed an immediate difference in how the
students interacted with the material. Using this method, I was able to highlight the
sublime in the book many students otherwise found boring.

The following chart shows examples ﬁ'om interviews of what students thought of
the unit’s emphasis on animals — the main way I reworked the curriculum to highlight the
sublime.

Table 5.6: Student Comments From Interviews on the Unit’s Structure Around
Animals

 

“I like learning this stuff, especially about the earth and animals, how they act’ -
Kurtis

 

o “ I like learning about animals, in my old school they didn’t teach about animals and
stuff” - Deanna

 

“It’s interesting how like animals are connected.” — Brian

 

 

“I’ve just always thought animals were interesting” - Brianna

 

r5.

. Imaginative Exploration of Ideas

. Another essential part of my approach to teaching for sublime understandings is
to encourage students to imaginatively explore scientiﬁc ideas. This type of social
construction is most readily seen in whole class discussions and involves creating a
classroom norm where students feel comfortable asking questions, sharing ideas, posing

hypothetical situations, and uttering spontaneous comments. I think I was able to create

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such a classroom environment with my students and that this was absolutely necessary
for the success of teaching for sublime understandings.

Imaginative Exploration of Ideas: The Weather Unit

It takes time to create this type of classroom community but I found that my 4‘h
hour weather students and my ecology students quickly embraced this way of learning.
The 3rd hour weather students took longer to come around to this type of classroom
interaction, but most of them eventually became accustomed to it.

For the 4th hour weather students who had a history of being lower-achievers, it
felt as if they had been waiting for a teacher to come along and ask them to talk about
their ideas. Within a few days of my teaching most of the students became quite engaged
in class discussions: questioning, sharing, and hypothesizing. Although I had been
warned after my ﬁrst day of teaching that they could not handle such a child-centered
approach, my 4th hour weather students seemed to do well in such an environment.
Although they were usually loud and a bit hard to settle down, most of them appeared
excited to learn and talk about science ideas. I watched several transformations in
students as they moved from at least appearing apathetic and annoyed to been active and
involved in class. An example of this is with Molly.

Molly rested her head on the desk, covered her face with her hair and rarely
looked up in the time I spent observing her classroom before my teaching began and in
the ﬁrst few days of my teaching. The few times I saw her face early on she wore a sneer
of contempt. This was a student I was not only wonied about reaching, but concerned
was going to be a discipline problem throughout the unit. It was within the ﬁrst week that

I saw Molly begin to come around. She would lift her head from her desk long enough to

110

 

listen to questions posed by her classmates and I noticed her being drawn into the
pictures I was projecting. Soon, Molly was like a different student altogether and was an
active participant in discussions. It even became common for her to quiet her classmates
so I or others could be heard. Molly went on to write particularly insightful and artistic
comments on her survey and reported being moved and inspired by the unit. Her ﬁnal

. comment on her survey was:

I wish we had this kinda stuff all the time...It’s more fun than just studying and

boring lectures when I feel like people are just throwing information on me.

When we discuss stuff with Ms. Cavanaugh I feel more open like I can talk more

and give my opinion. — Molly
I think Hannah summed up a large part of the reason why the 4th hour weather students
responded so well to the unit -- because they “felt more open” like they could “talk more”
and give their opinions. Similarly, Hannah, another 4th hour student reported that she
liked the unit because “we do more things together.” I think it was essential to create
such an environment where students felt free to explore ideas and share their feelings in
order to foster sublime experiences.

Along with creating an environment where students felt that they could share their
ideas and ask questions, I also worked to create an atmosphere that encouraged students
to play with ideas. By this I mean posing hypothetical situations and outcomes. These
questions and ponderings arose from students’ own curiosities and interests, but should
be based on their understanding of the scientiﬁc content. For example, students
developed and posed questions such as, “Could a hurricane form over Lake Michigan?”,

“Can a lake effect snowstorm form over a pond?”, “If the president made a giant ice cube

and dropped it on a hurricane, would it kill it?”

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In response to the ﬁrst two questions, students worked with their understandings
of what it takes to form a hurricane or a lake effect snowstorm in order to answer a
question that had personal meaning and importance to them. The third question showed
great imagination and became a compelling and continuing thought process for both
classes of weather students. Students used what they knew of hurricanes to try to develop
hypothetical ways to break one apart before it could do any damage. While engaging in
this type of thought process, students’ understandings of the world were being
transformed. These examples typify the type of imaginative playing with scientiﬁc ideas
that lead to scientiﬁc sublime experiences.

Imaginative Exploration of Ideas: E cologv Unit

Like my 4‘h hour weather students, the ecology students were also quick to engage
in conversations and share their ideas. But I noticed a difference in what types of
questions and comments students posed. For example, on the ﬁrst day of class, in a
darkened room, I projected an impressive, vivid picture of the earth. As soon as the
picture ﬂashed onto the screen it was met with several “ohs” and “ahs”, but one comment
was louder than the rest. That ﬁrst day Brian instinctually exclaimed in a dramatic
manner, “Isn’t it beautifull”. Several students laughed at Brain and teased him for making
such an unrestrained comment, about beauty no less. I was quick to agree with Brian and
pointed out what I saw as beautiful, cool, and amazing in the picture of the earth.

As the unit progressed, this became more of the norm and students often uttered
expressions of interest, awe, astonishment, or beauty. They also posed hypothetical
questions like the weather students and worked as a class to come to some level of

consensus as to the answer. Students moved from more simple questions asked at the

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beginning of the unit like “What kind of animal is that?” or “What’s the difference
between a lizard and an amphibian” to more sophisticated, inspiring questions that
required imagination as well as content knowledge. As mentioned earlier, the ongoing
qualiﬁcations of whether or not an animal qualiﬁed as a ‘super predator’ was always
popular, but so too were questions like, “Why are penguins black and white, doesn’t the
black make them stick out against the white background?” and “Who will ﬁnally win,
nature or people?”.

In some of the interviews, students mentioned the changed classroom atmosphere,
particularly in regards to being encouraged to ask questions. For example, Kurtis said,
“When we’re having the discussions I learn. if I have any questions I can ask my
questions and then I learn from the questions I ask.” Another student, Allison commented
on what she saw as the class working together to learn:

I like working with the class... it’s different now, you get to like be more open and

like ask all the questions that you need to ask and get all the answers that you

need. — Allison
While Allison and Kurtis’ comments about having a classroom environment that
encourages questions and discussions characterize all models of constructivist teaching, it
, is but one critical aspect in the model of teaching for the scientiﬁc sublime I developed.
5. Modeling a Sublime Sensibility

The ﬁfth aspect important in fostering sublime experiences is that of modeling my
own sublime sensibility. This involved showing my enthusiasm and appreciation for
what I saw as great, awe-inspiring, terrifying, or perfect in nature. I shared my excitement

for the content as well as how moved and inspired I am by the images and ideas.

Although there were certainly times when the students thought I was odd or amusing for

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being so enthused about things they could not care less about, for the most part they
responded positively to my enthusiasm. I worked to create a compelling image of
science and nature, one which I hoped students would ﬁnd so exciting that they could not
help but be swept up into. Of course it is hard to identify exactly what I modeled for my
students since this modeling is so entangled in my personality and my teaching persona.
However, I can say that this modeling was more than simply having an unreserved and
excitable personality (although this surely helped); it was about sharing my own sublime
feelings for the science. In their interviews, Jackie from the ecology unit told me that I
“make it more frm” and Kurtis, also of the ecology unit, paid me a great compliment by
saying, “You have like a big way of teaching, it’s more exciting...it’s like you have more
enthusiasm than Mrs. Marcella does.”

Along with students recognizing and appreciating my genuine enthusiasm and
sublime feelings for science, I saw the affects of my modeling in other ways.
In both rmits, I noticed that the behaviors and verbalizations of many students came to
reﬂect those of my own. Students became more likely to talk about what they saw as
awe-inspiring, surprising, or cool in the idea or picture we were studying. This was
especially apparent in the portion of the interviews with ecology students where I asked
them to look at and discuss pictures of animals. It was interesting to see how most of
them used the same process I had modeled in class and described in Chapter 4. This
process involved three levels of observation: the initial, instinctual examination followed
by the ﬁrst and second level of out loud sense making — all with enthusiastic, excited
comments. These similarities also appeared in writing as was the case when students

completed an assignment where they wrote ‘hurricane stories’. In these stories they

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described what they would see, hear, and feel if they could safely be in the midst of a
hurricane making landfall and what weather processes would be occuning at every point.
It was remarkable how frequently many students used words and phrasings similar to
Kant and Burke — things that they surely heard from me.

Finally I want to mention an interesting aspect that I observed in several of my
students related to my intentional modeling of the sublime - their trust in me and my
ability to show them something interesting. I began to think about this quality of teaching
as a result of a comment made by one of my weather students from the previously low
achieving 4th hour class. This student, Neil, asked me to help him with a concept that he
was having difﬁcultly understanding. I began by saying, “You’ll like this, let me show
you...” to which Neil responded, “Ok, what’s cool about this. . .”. This certainly sounds
like a trivial bit of conversation, but it was Neil’s trusting, expectant manner that caught
my attention. Although he had been frustrated with his inability to understand the
material, he believed that I was able to not only clarify the topic, but to help him see
something “cool”. This episode stayed with me as an ideal for me to work towards — a
classroom environment where my students were motivated to learn and experience the

sublime in science as a result of what I showed them.

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Teacher Narrative

This research represents my attempt at a lofty goal. I sought to understand how to
teach complex science ideas in ways that would be both exciting and motivating. As I
shared my excitement and enthusiasm for science I hoped to ultimately leave my students
with a richer, more complete understanding of the world. In much of my past experiences
as a science learner and teacher, science was taught as a series of facts to memorize or
processes to become proﬁcient in. I was never satisﬁed with these experiences because
science and nature meant so much more to me. I wanted my students to gain more than
conceptual understanding and inquiry skills -— I wanted them to be inspired, stirred, and
fully engaged with what they were learning. I was as interested in the affective qualities ‘
of my students’ learning experiences as I was the cognitive. I felt conﬁdent that I could
teach the material and students would learn, but I wanted to see if I could also teach in
ways that would create more interesting affective learning experiences with science.

As a means of accomplishing these lofty goals I turned to the study of aesthetics
as outlined in chapter 1. From my readings in aesthetics I found the sublime -- the
ultimate emotion that induces “the strongest passions” (Burke, 1757, p.51). Using my
understandings of the sublime in philosophy, literature, and science I developed a
pedagogical approach to identifying and creating scientiﬁc sublime experiences in the
classroom. I created two units in this manner and then found three teachers who were
willing to let me try it out. In these environments I undertook the difﬁcult role of
teacher/researcher. Throughout most of this dissertation I have tried to record my
methodology and ﬁndings as a researcher, but it seems that more of a reﬂection on my

role as the teacher is also pertinent to the discussion.

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This discussion needs to begin by acknowledging that in this study I found myself
pulled into my role as a teacher ﬁrst and researcher second. I had anticipated and planned
on these two roles holding equal importance, but the reality of being accountable for the
learning of some 80 children quickly overwhehned my responsibility as a researcher.
This is not to say that I did not think or act as a researcher, it is just that my duties as a
teacher were my primary concern. However, for the purpose of this study I see these two
areas as being intricately connected — it was only through my efforts as a teacher that I
was able to research my students’ sublime experiences. I also felt that I could not
adequately articulate my newly emerging and constantly developing understandings of a
sublime pedagogy to pass it off to another teacher. In order to understand this’type of
classroom experience it was necessary for me to act as both teacher and researcher.

In addition to the sometimes awkward role of teacher/researcher, I held another
ambiguous role — that of a temporary teacher in other people’s classrooms. While the
students quickly accepted me as a guest teacher, my presence was at times more difﬁcult
for the regular teachers. Taking over someone’s classroom for ﬁve weeks is a great deal
to ask of someone. The teachers, all of whom I had no previous connection with, were
gracious in their willingness to allow me to do my research in their classrooms. The
teachers surely had several legitimate concerns, some that they voiced to me and others
that I only guessed at. At the same time I often felt awkward and even anxious in their
classrooms. I felt like I was imposing on these teachers and was at times worried that
they saw my approach as too discussion rather than action based, too content oriented,

too student-centered, too long, too loud, or just too different ﬁ'om what they knew. With a

117

growing sense of student support for my teaching I was able to overlook most of these
feelings of uneasiness and continue with my pedagogical approach.

Yet another pressure that I experienced was the need to make every day ‘count’ in
the short amount of time I had to make an impact on student thinking and learning. Each
lesson had to be researched, structured, and presented in a way that I thought would
maximize the scientiﬁc sublime experiences of my students. Sometimes this was easy,
but other lessons or ideas proved to be more challenging and I spent enormous amounts
of time thinking through and re-working many of the lessons, not to mention searching
for just the right picture to use. Regardless of the pressures and tensions I sometimes felt
acting as a teacher/researcher, the entire experience was incredibly rewarding. I typically
left the classroom exhilarated by the discussions and activities of the day and the success
I was feeling in my teaching.

Reﬂections on the Pedagogical Approach

A clear advantage of acting as the teacher in this research was being able to
continually revise the lessons and help crystallize my understandings of the unique
pedagogical approach I was developing. I was able to instantly respond to student
reactions - or lack of reaction - and even modify the direction of my curriculum based on
this. At the same time, this freedom to change course in response to my students may
have been a detriment to my goals. For example, in my attempts to sustain student
interest in ecology I shifted my emphasis from the connective sublime to the extreme
sublime (this topic will be discussed in some length in the following chapter).

In previous discussions of my pedagogical approach for scientiﬁc sublime

teaching I have tried to include examples of how I developed or reﬁned the various

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aspects of my approach (big ideas, metaphors, visualization, highlighting the sublime,
encouraging imaginative exploration of ideas, and modeling the sublime). The process of
developing, teaching, and reﬁning the approach has given me new insights into the act of
teaching. Some of these aspects proved to be more inﬂuential than others. For example,
keeping the big idea at the core of the teaching was a critical difference between these
units and my past experiences as a science teacher, and I would argue, most science
teaching. In my previous experiences I focused on teaching several concepts rather than
structuring the unit around a big idea. While this may seem like a subtle difference,
through my work in creating and teaching these units I became aware of how valuable the
big idea approach is. Simply by forcing me, the teacher, to identify and understand the
reason behind weather or the interconnectivities in ecology inﬂuenced how I approached
and taught the unit to my students.

It is interesting to note that the standard weather unit normally taught at this
school did not include any mention of the sun’s energy or disequilibrium--concepts that
are at the heart of my unit. Instead the typical weather unit focused on the particulars of
weathernvocabulary and processes like pressure systems and fronts--but largely removed
from the context of weather events like storms. This standard way of teaching weather
represents the way I believe most science curriculum is taught - around particulars. In
teaching the model unit, I found that the big idea provided a useful framework with
which to connect these weather speciﬁcs. I also found it relatively easy to teach in this
manner, but this is likely a result of the large amount of time I put into developing the
unit. Through the extensive development process, which included meetings with MSU

faculty, other graduate students, and a meteorologist, I gained a solid understanding of

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weather and the big idea underlying it. I am convinced that strong content knowledge is
an essential part of teaching science from this pedagogical approach. The teacher must be
able to identify the content’s big idea, be able to connect the science speciﬁcs to this, and
convey the beauty, awe, and power in these ideas.

In addition, the experience of teaching this unit through highlighting core and
inherently interesting content has led me to a new understanding of teaching science.
Science teachers are typically drawn to the ﬁeld of science because of their intense
interest in the subject. Unfortunately, many curriculums and textbooks are unsuccessful
at conveying the sublime aspects of the domain. It then becomes a challenge for the
teacher to work with the existing resources to create a compelling science experience for .
students. As a result of teaching this unit, I realized how important it is for students to be
interested in what they are supposed to be learning. This does not mean that essential yet
perhaps seemingly dry concepts are not taught. Instead, if they are worked into an overall
more intriguing structure, like storms or animal adaptations, the learning can become a
more rewarding experience for students and teachers.

Generalizability Concerns

While I saw many positives that resulted from acting as both teacher and
researcher in this study, I have one main concern that has arisen from my dual role. For a
variety of reasons, I am concerned that the pedagogical approach I developed for sublime
teaching will be difﬁcult for teachers to use and the experiences my students and I had
will be difﬁcult to replicate. One of the main reasons I am concerned about this is based
on the fact that teachers do not have the time to develop the type of units I created. I spent

months developing each unit and this time was critical. Only with extended periods of

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time was I able to: learn the content material that proved at times to be quite difﬁcult (this
was especially true with weather) and decide on the big ideas; gather teaching tools like
pictures, video, and simulations; try out my ideas on others; and read aesthetic theory and
educational research. A

For example, the creation of an extended metaphor like the one in the weather
unit may prove to be difﬁcult for teachers to replicate. It took a great deal of time to
develop the extended ‘team’ weather metaphor and it came about as a result of strong
weather understandings the group formed in the development process. This development
process included periodic discussions with a university meteorologist. If a teacher was to
try to replicate this approach with new content it would likely involve a similar lengthy
development process. In addition, I taught these classes for only one or two hours a day
which enabled me to reﬂect on each lesson and plan for the next one. This type of
preparation for only one unit would simply not be feasible for a full-tirne classroom
teacher. .

While it may not be realistic to expect teachers to develop these types of units,
could they conceivably take one of the units I wrote and obtain similar results in terms of
learning and sublime experiences that I found? Each aspect of my pedagogical approach
may prove a challenge to teachers. I base this statement on more than presumption, but
on my experiences of watching much of the weather unit that I developed taught by other
teachers. During the ﬁve weeks that I taught the weather unit, the two teachers whose
students I was teaching decided that in order to keep all their classes aligned they would

also each teach my unit. To say the least, I was uncomfortable with this situation.

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The teachers did not have the same pedagogical goals that I had nor were they
familiar with the extent of my still developing teaching approach. They did not
understand what I meant by the sublime or why it was my goal. This problem was a
product of my inability to concisely explain my theoretical framework or my intended
outcomes much beyond saying that I hoped to motivate students and help them see the
power and beauty in the science ideas and processes. In addition, these teachers did not
have the time to delve deep into the material and theories like I had. For all these reasons,
their teaching of the weather unit looked very different than mine. Although I did not
observe all of their classes, I did see enough of them to notice the biggest differences.

The use of big ideas and metaphor by the two regular teachers was similar to the
way I used them in my teaching. This is not surprising since the teachers used the
curriculum I developed and the big idea and guiding metaphor were the central
components of the unit. The areas of my pedagogical approach that I observed to be the
most different in the hands of the other teachers were the use of visualization;
encouraging students to play with the ideas; and modeling a sublime sensibility. Each of
these aspects of my teaching approach is connected to affect and the emotional aspects of
learning. For example, although the teachers were given the same pictures that I used
with my classes, they used them quite differently.

Although both teachers had watched me teach the lesson before they later taught
it with their other classes, they did not use the pictures in the same way I did. In the
beginning they each dutifully projected the pictures in the same places that had done, but
they tended to go through them quickly with little or no time for discussion. Both

teachers pointed out the cognitive aspects of the pictures - science terms like the eye of a

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hurricane - but generally did not highlight what I saw as aspects of the sublime that could
be evoked from these images. I did not see them encourage much conversation around
the pictures; I never saw them treat the images as something to analyze, wonder about, or
even gawk at in the way that I tried to use them. The affective qualities of the experience
seemed to be lacking in comparison to my teaching.

This under emphasis of the affective qualities of learning weather explains why I
did not observe the teachers modeling a sublime sensibility or encouraging the
imaginative exploration of science ideas. As is often found in science teaching, both
teachers emphasized the cognitive aspects of learning science and largely ignored the
affective. It seems that the parts of my teaching approach that looked most different when
taught by other teachers are perhaps the areas most connected with my personality and
teaching persona. Of course it makes sense that I created a way of teaching that would -
come naturally to me, but it also calls into question the generalizability of this study. This
is troubling for me since it could mean that this type of teaching and the experiences
evoked by it are tied to the personality of the teacher. I am inspired and moved by nature
and science, and I tend to be excitable and expressive. Does this mean that teachers must
possess similar personality traits to use my sublime teaching pedagogy and expect similar
results?

On some level I believe the success of my teaching approach does lay in who I am
as a person and teacher. I think at least part of the reason that my teaching successﬁrlly
evoked sublime experiences was because my students sensed the genuineness in my
excitement and passion for the material. Some students made such comments in their

surveys or interviews. For example an ecology student said, “You have like a big way of

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teaching, it’s more exciting...it’s like you have more enthusiasm”. This enthusiasm and
‘big way of teaching’ were authentic and I doubt someone who has not had sublime
experiences with nature could evoke these types of experiences for students.

However, the vast majority of students taught the weather unit by the two regular
teachers, rated in a survey that the weather unit was one of their favorite science units.
This was interesting to me since the unit, which was based on the same lessons I used,
looked so different when taught by the other teachers. I think part of the success of the
unit may be attributed to the design - teaching focused on a powerful big idea, using a
guiding metaphor to make sense of complex processes, and highlighting the sublime
through storms. Perhaps teachers who are not accustomed to teaching the affective
aspects of science can still achieve some of the motivating characteristics of the sublime
based on the curriculum they use. This ﬁnding can be taken to mean that my units on
weather and ecology could be taught by other teachers and still induce at least some of
the sublime experiences that my students had. In addition, it is conceivable that such units
could be used as professional development or teacher education tools for helping teachers

to understand how to incorporate the affective, sublime aspects of science learning.

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Chapter 6: Implications
Introduction
This research began by addressing the following three questions:
1. Will students experience the sublime as a result of my teaching?
0 What types of sublime will they experience — the extreme, connective, or
scientiﬁc?
0 Will students feel a combination of awe, horror, and delight?
0 Will students experience feelings of connection, unit, and harmony?
0 Will students be awed by how science ideas reveal the world?,
Develop insight through engagement with the ideas?, See and be in the
world differently?
2. To what extent did the various aspects of my teaching help to foster students’ sublime
experiences?
0 An emphasis on the unit’s ‘big ideas’ and the use of metaphors
0 An emphasis on visualization
o Highlighting the sublime
o Encouraging imaginative exploration of scientiﬁc ideas
0 Modeling a sublime sensibility
3. To what extent will students learn science content when taught in ways that promote
sublime experiences?
The data reported in chapter 4 supports a positive answer to the ﬁrst question. It
alilpears that I was successful in fostering sublime experiences for the majority of my

Students, as deﬁned by the qualities of sublime experiences listed in Chapters 1 and 2. In

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fact, much of the language used in the extreme sublime experiences closely resembled the
language used by Kant and Burke to describe the sublime. In terms of the types of
sublime, the extreme and scientiﬁc sublime experiences were more common than the
connective sublime. This is an interesting issue that will be discussed later in this chapter.

In regards to the second question, the teaching approach developed to foster
sublime experiences was overall quite successful. Chapter 5 discussed how each aspect
of the teaching approach materialized in the units and how they helped to foster sublime
experiences for my students. Overall, the approach was effective, with each piece playing
an important part in the experiences of my students. Perhaps the two most inﬂuential
aspects of the approach were the emphasis on visualization and highlighting the sublime. .
In response to the third research question, students from both units showed evidence of
learning the scientiﬁc content as measured on the pre and post-tests.
Themes that Emerged from the Research

Beyond the research questions that guided this study, two themes emerged that I
found particularly interesting any may have implications for the ﬁeld of science
education and future research.
Fascination with the Extreme Sublime

In both the weather and ecology unit, students consistently showed an intense
fascination with the extreme sublime. More than 200 years ago Burke and Kant described
a type of sublime that arose from fear of danger, terror, and obscurity resulting in a sense
of “delightful horror” (Burke, 1757, p.73). These “strongest of all the passions” (Burke,
1757, p. 51) creates a situation where "The mind feels itself moved in the representation

of the Sublime in nature quickly alternating attracting towards, and repulsion from, the

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same Object” (Kant, 1790, p. 120). Be it a dark towering tornado, or a cobra poised to
strike, the extreme sublime astonished, moved, and ultimately delighted my students. The
extreme sublime often created experiences that compelled students to look further into
the phenomenon and begin to grapple with the underlying scientiﬁc ideas.

A striking similarity exists between the experiences with the extreme sublime and
what Dewey (1934) described as educative experiences. Dewey described the aesthetic
essence of educative experiences that hurried students along, pushing them towards the
consummation or completion of the experience. He writes, “The experience is of material
fraught with suspense and moving toward its own consummation through a connected
series of varied incidents” (p. 43). Certainly extreme sublime experiences can be
described as “material fraught with suspense”. Students felt suspense along with horror
and delight as they viewed and thought about storms and dangerous animals. The
suspense is perhaps the ultimate of its kind since it deals with what Burke calls “self-
preservation”. An essential part of Dewey’s educative experiences is anticipation as
described by Wong & Pugh (2001):

Anticipation is the intellectual and emotional energy that both drives and holds

together the development of an experience. Because the consummation of an

experience is the object of anticipation, it colors the entire activity. The
individual looks forward to, imagines what may or may not be, and is surprised,

disappointed, or fulﬁlled when consummation occurs (p. 340).

In the extreme sublime experiences of many of my students, this Deweyan sense
of anticipation seemed to be a part of the process. Anticipation in sublime experiences is
difﬁcult to capture on a survey or in an interview, but was often apparent in the

classroom as I worked with my students. When I presented a new object or idea, and if it

was connected to the extreme sublime, I often noticed not only outward displays of awe

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and astonishment, but also a sense of urgency on behalf of the students to make sense of
what they were seeing. Because students were so moved by the object, they felt
compelled to learn more about it. This is where the scientiﬁc sublime comes in, through
the anticipation built by the extreme. Much of the time students were equally awed with
what they learned about the phenomenon in light of the scientiﬁc ideas.

An example of this comes from the ecology unit on the day I introduced the idea
of adaptation and how animals have characteristics that help them survive in their
particular environment. I began by showing students pictures of some extreme cases, the
ﬁrst of which was a walking-stick bug. I dimmed the lights and projected the picture onto
the large screen in the front of the room and asked the students what they saw. By this
point in my teaching, students had become accustomed to my methods and most sat in the
dark, seemingly full of eagerness and expectation for what I would show them. When the
picture of a nearly perfectly camouﬂaged walking-stick bug appeared amongst leaves on
a branch, students seemed puzzled and a bit disappointed, seeing a stick and expecting to
see something better. Within a few seconds some began to recognize what they were
looking at and rushed to tell the rest of us what they saw. Instantly the class was buzzing
with their reactions.

For many students the bug was yet another example of the potential danger found
in nature. The fact that an insect, which many of them immediately assumed to be
poisonous, could be so hidden was horrifying. I was completely surprised by this
response; it had never occurred to me that it could be seen in such a way. I had

anticipated some students being disgusted, but I never imagined it would induce such

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sublime feelings of horror. The sentiment of many students was that nature was not only
dangerous, but now deceptive; threatening animals could be hidden everywhere.
However, students were not just ﬁightened, the delight was also apparent in

”
!

comments about the walking stick bug like Brian’s, “them things are sweet Prompted
by their fascination with the bizarre appearance of the animal, many students wanted to
know why these insects look the way they do. At this point, we began orn' discussion of
adaptation. In this example, the horrifying aspects of the sublime created anticipation in
the Deweyan sense and rushed students towards completion of the experience — scientiﬁc
understandings.
The Extreme Sublime and the Dangerous Aspects of Nature

While the sublime of Burke and Kant is in some way a gripping and moving force
for us all, my students often seemed to go to extremes themselves in the way they viewed
nature as being dangerous. Nature as an ever-present potential peril became a particularly
compelling idea for the students. This was not surprising in regards to the weather
students since I designed their unit around hurricanes, tornadoes, and lake effect
snowstorms. Admittedly, I capitalized on the enormous size, overwhelming power, and
chilling effects of these storms to pique their interest in leaming the patterns and
processes behind such incredible events. These students were drawn-in by the extreme
sublime, and I feed their fascination for the huge and honiﬁc storms. I very overtly
highlighted the dangerous parts of weather in hopes of fostering interest an appreciation
for the energy and processes involved in weather. Conversely, I set out to teach the

ecology unit to highlight aspects of the connective sublime rather than the extreme

' sublime of the weather unit. I knew this would be a difﬁcult task since feelings of

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connections and rmity are often less interesting than death and destruction, especially to
7th graders.

For my second teaching experience, I purposefully picked the topic of ecology in
an attempt to teach the connective sublime, thinking the two were a natural ﬁt. I planned '
to stress the connections between all living things and hoped to inspire Emerson or
Thoreau like experiences with nature. While I did teach about these connections, my
students were more intrigued by the biggest, fastest, and most dangerous specimens in the
animal world. Students were so enthralled by the extreme sublime, that it became
difﬁcult for me to include aspects of the connective sublime in my teaching.

It was difﬁcult to foster the'formation of little Emersons and Thoreaus when my
students were more interested in The Crocodile Hunter. Yet as anyone who has watched '
The Crocodile Hunter knows, he exudes feelings of awe, astonishment, and admiration
for these dangerous animals. I quickly came to the conclusion, right or wrong, that if I
was to promote scientiﬁc sublime experiences I was going to have to do so via the
extreme sublime. The perilous aspects of the extreme appealed to my students far more
than anything else I tried. This was obvious when I asked Misty, an ecology student,
what parts of the unit most impressed her. She appeared to think about her answer before
she replied, “Well, I really like the tapeworms and the poisonous salamanders.”

Besides the Kantian sense of delight we get ﬁom the extreme sublime, I think my
ecology students had other reasons for being drawn to the dangerous aspects of nature.
As previously mentioned, very few of these students had much of any experience with
animals or nature, and the experiences they did have were largely negative. On the

second day of my teaching I asked Jackie, a particularly candid student, if he spent much

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time outside in nature and received a quizzical look as he explained, “I’m more of an
inside kind of guy.” This was a typical sentiment. These students were ‘city kids’, they
attended a large urban school and were not in close proximity to the forests, ﬁelds, and
swamps that were the backdrop of the stories I told. As an illustration of this, I am
reminded of a time when the class was discussing animals with warning colors. I
mentioned that while lethal animals like the poison arrow tree frog had bright markings to
warn its prey, so too do animals more common to us like the skunk. I asked the class
where they would be likely to ﬁnd skunks, expecting to hear something along the lines of
forests or meadows, but instead Jackie replied, “in the projects”. Perhaps since the
students had few positive experiences with nature and were more familiar with its
dangerous aspects, they were more drawn to the extreme sublime and resistant to the
connective sublime.

As a further example, in the ﬁrst week of class we studied the role of
decomposers in the web of life and I brought in examples of tree fungus, mushrooms, and
mold that I found on a forest ﬂoor the day before. The majority of students made it clear
that they had never seen such things before, that they were not about to touch them, and
that they could not believe I had nothing better to do than look for such things in a forest.
There was only moderate interest in the objects until one of the students mentioned that
he heard mushrooms were poisonous, at which point a large crowd gathered around the
mushrooms in an attempt to get a better look. When it came to animals, some of the
students had pet dogs or cats, but they often had sad or scary stories to tell of these
animals. Many of the dogs students knew were ‘tough’ dogs who were not so much pets

as they were potential sources of danger. Several students had violent dog stories like

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Allison who explained that, “Dogs are good predators ‘cause when my dogs killed my
cat, they broke his back legs.”

The other common experience the majority of my students had with plants and
animals was what they saw on nature television shows. Most students reported
frequently watching such programs, the content of which tended to focused on predatory
animals. In interviews when I asked students if they had begun to look at animals
differently as a result of what they were learning in class, only a few students mentioned
animals they had actually seen. Many more talked about TV shows they were watching
and how the actions of animals were making more sense to them now. Of course I added
to this common collection of experiences by showing the Super Predator nature
documentary early on in the unit. An informative yet graphic movie that seemed to have
made more of an impact than anything else we did in the ﬁve weeks I spent with them.

Given that the majority of experiences students had with animals involved some
type of violence, it is not surprising that they were drawn to aspects of the extreme
sublime in ecology. Animals and many plants were seen as something to be fearful of, as

Misty made clear when I asked her if she was afraid of animals. She looked at me as if

 

this were a ridiculous question and sarcastically replied, “Duh, if I like walked up to a
lion it would eat me.” Like Misty, many of these students saw the world as being full of
potentially dangerous plants and animals and they were eager to learn more about them.
They saw science as a way to better understand the risky natural world; knowledge that
could help keep them safe. Instances of the nature as danger theme from student

comments during interviews are given in the following table.

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Table 6.1: Nature as Danger Theme: Examples from Student Interviews

 

o “I think of them [animals] because like when I go outside I want to know what
little bugs are crawling on me and if they might be poisonous.” -Dameka

 

“If I don’t know what they [animals] are I don’t know what they’ll do to me.” ~Misty

 

“If you think about it, if you don’t know what plants are poisonous, if you’re outside
than you might accidentally eat it because that’s all you have to eat.” -Kevin

 

0 “... you need toknow things about plants so you can avoid things like poison ivy.”-
J ensine

 

o “I watched a good show about people having lions and tigers as pets and this girl got
killed by one ‘cause she was stupid and had it as a pet.” -Dion

 

0 “Dogs are good predators ‘cause when my dogs killed my cat, they broke his back
legs.” - Allison

 

 

o “...if I like walked up to a lion it would eat me.” - Misty

 

The Elusive Connective Sublime
I have already mentioned in some detail that my hopes of creating connective
sublime experiences in the ecology unit went largely unrealized. I have identiﬁed three
rationales to help explain my lack of success in consistently conveying the connective
sublime in my students:
1. My teaching approach for fostering scientiﬁc sublime experiences is not
adequate for fostering the connective sublime.
2. The students, for perhaps several reasons, were less inclined towards the
connective as they were the extreme sublime.
3. The connective sublime in itself is a more intangible, elusive sense than
the extreme sublime.
I. The Teaching Approach
It is likely that aspects of the teaching approach that I developed to foster sublime
experiences are actually more ﬁtting for teaching the extreme rather than the connective

sublime. In particular, my heavy reliance on imagery to convey the sublime seems better

133

 

 

suited to the enormous and terrifying than the calm and connected. Projecting an image
of a swirling tornado onto a large screen in a dark room stirred more emotions than an
image of three deer in a meadow. This brings up another difﬁculty; it is hard to identify
images to explicitly communicate the feelings of the connective sublime.

In addition to my use of imagery, an aspect of my teaching approach that I was
certainly more successful at with the extreme sublime was my modeling of a sublime
sensibility. I could effectively convey my awe and excitement when discussing a
hurricane or a stalking lion, but my wonderment and enthusiasm were not realized 'or
appreciated when I described the peace and ease I felt observing wildlife in a forest. In
the previously discussed mushroom episode, I clearly remember describing my feelings .
of the connective sublime. I told my class of the amazing afternoon I had, of the
incredible things I saw — mint green tree mold, a perfectly hidden (non-poisonous)
salamander, a rabbit scurrying along the trail, a delicate little mushroom colony - and
receiving back bewildered looks. They had no interest in my story and instead let me
know that it was a sad thing that I had nothing better to do after school. My extreme
stories were much more interesting to students, they could not hear enough about the time
my horse and I were engulfed in a bottomless bog. I was clearly not an effective modeler
of the connective sublime.

Or perhaps Ijust gave in too soon. As I mentioned earlier, I was eager for students
to experience some sort of sublime, for them to be interested, amazed, and, awed. After
the rousing experience I had teaching the weather unit, it is likely that I was not patient

enough for the connective sublime to emerge.

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Along with evaluating the efﬁcacy of my teaching approach in fostering the
connective sublime, I question the expectations I had as to what sublime experiences look
like in the classroom. I was quite consciously aiming for a classroom full of strident,
enthusiastic discussions; students brimming with comments, ideas, and questions. It
occurs to me now that the connective sublime is likely a more subdued, personal type of
experience. It also seems that forming feelings of connection to nature would have been
easier to do if we had actually been able to go outside. Before and during the ecology unit
I wanted a chance to immerse my students in nature - to expose them to some of the
wondrous plants and animals we were leaming about. Unfortunately, there was not any
sort of natural area directly around the school, so it would have required a ﬁled trip and
for several reasons this was not a possibility.

Even if I had I been able to, simply taking my students outside would certainly
not have solved the problem. Countless groups of children have tromped through nature
centers all over the world without experiencing sublime feelings of unity with their
surroundings. For any hope of the ﬁeld trip being successﬁrl, I would have had to take
some cues from the best hiking and safari guides. I would need to impress students with
the often unseen beauty, delicacy, and peace of the woods. To convey to students that
they have entered another world where all organisms are connected in an intricate web of
life, a world that has gone on in much the same way for thousands of years. While I think
a carefully performed ﬁeld trip would help foster feelings of the connective sublime, it
may still be difﬁcult to interest students in a natural setting where there is no chance of a

lurking super predator.

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2. Students are Less Inclined Towards the Connective Sublime

Since I did not attempt to convey the connective sublime with my weather
students I cannot be sure how they would have responded to it. But I hypothesize that the
weather students, with a very different background than the ecology students, may have
been more open to the connective sublime. I base this only on an assumption that the
weather students, who attended a semi-rural school, had more experiences with nature
and animals. I know that several of these students went hunting with their fathers, others
lived on farms and raised animals, and they all generally lived near some type of natural
area. Of course this does not mean that they would have responded any differently to the
ecology unit than the ecology students did. However, in contrast to the weather students,
the ecology students were ‘city kids’ and seemed to have few if any experiences with
nature. When I ﬁrst started observing their class I was amazed how few Michigan wild
animals they could recognize. Mrs. Marcella showed them a picture of a common red-
tailed hawk and asked what it was; no student in the class could identify it as a hawk,
instead most called it ‘a big bird’. Although these children did watch nature TV shows,
they were only familiar with the more extreme animals. I think the fact that these children
did not have many positive ﬁrst-hand experiences with nature likely affected their lack of
inclination towards the connective sublime.

The effects of popular culture on both the weather and ecology students cannot be
ignored. The ease with which students became swept-up in the extreme sublime may at
least partly result from their exposure to TV shows and movies that focus on the extreme
and dangerous. Students were eager to study potentially perilous phenomena; events and

animals many of them were already familiar with from nature programs.

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3. The Connective Sublime as Intangible

The ﬁnal reason I think the connective sublime was more difﬁcult to foster in my
students than the extreme sublime goes back to the writings of Burke and Kant. Both
philosophers wrote of our human fascination with the dangerous and terrifying. We are
both repulsed and attracted to the extreme sublime; we enjoy looking upon danger from a
safe distance. This explains why many enjoy scary movies and stomach churning roller
coasters; why The Discovery Channel devotes an entire week to sharks and why Storm
Stories is a regular show on the weather channel. The extreme sublime is popular with
students because it is part of our human nature to be fascinated by what can hurt us. In
contrast, the connective sublime may not be as common of an experience for all people. .
Certainly, I believe that everyone has the potential for experiencing the connective
sublime, but it seems that many people will go their entire lives without feeling “the
perfect exhilaration” of “Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a
clouded sky” that Emerson described or begin to feel “the sense sublime” that
Wordsworth wrote of. While the connective sublime results in feelings that are just as
intense and overwhehning as the extreme sublime, they are of a decidedly different hue.
The connective sublime is not only more elusive and intangible than the extreme; it
seems much more personal and relative. What may be deeply moving in the connective
sublime to one person may be of little value to another. In contrast, it is likely that if
something in the realm of the extreme sublime is awe inspiring and a bit terrifying to
someone, it will be to most people. For these reasons, I think truly fostering the
connective sublime to a classroom of students is much more difﬁcult than it is cultivate

the extreme sublime.

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Concerns from My Teaching: Did I Merely Scare My Students?

My ecology students clearly saw the natural world as a dangerous place; a world
full of potentially poisonous plants, venomous reptiles, and ferocious mammals. While
many of them came to the unit with some fear of nature, I have to wonder how much of
this trepidation I instilled in them through my teaching. I did not intend to make my
students afraid of nature, in fact I was hoping for the opposite. I have an intense feeling
of connection to nature and I hoped to model some of these feelings of harmony and awe
for my students. In this regard, I was clearly ineffective.

My students were not so interested in these things and were always asking for aspects
of the extreme sublime — the dangerous, the massive, the overpowering. Along with the .
previously mentioned example involving the excitement over the idea of a possibly
poisonous mushroom, I remember another pivotal point in my teaching where the
extreme sublime crept in and took over.

We were discussing the important animal adaptation of camouﬂage and I was
hoping to expose students to the wondrous abilities animals in our part of the world have
to blend into their surroundings. We were looking at a picture of a grassy meadow where
three very alert white-tailed deer stood like statues ahnost dissolving into their
surroundings. My students were hardly impressed. Out of courtesy to me, they looked
over the picture and agreed that ‘yes the deer had good camouﬂage’. But they knew
enough about prey animals now to know that these deer were trying to hide from
something and they wanted to know what that was. I explained that in our area humans
were really the only predators these deer needed to fear. As I said this I saw some of

them lose interest. Many sat back in their chairs, others looked up at the clock or at their

138

ﬁiend, some went back to work on the note they were writing. I wanted so badly for my
students to be engaged, interested and even entertained that I abandoned my hopes of the
connective sublime and added, “but maybe the deer saw a coyote.”

The mention of a coyote instantly aroused their interest. Some students actually
sat up straighter in their seats and leaned in towards the screen to take another look at the
deer. Excited by their attention, I began to talk about coyotes. I explained that the
animals had recently made a comeback in our area and that there had even been reports of
them killing farm animals. Although I explained that coyotes were too small and skittish
to be a threat to anything bigger than a rabbit or new born calf, students were fascinated
with the very idea of a predator roaming the area. For my students this was an inﬂuential
experience that changed the way they saw the world -- as was evident from the several
student-reported coyote ‘sightings’ that occurred throughout the unit. For me, this was
also an important moment, because it was when I too easily gave up my quest for
conveying the connective sublime in the ecology unit.

To return to the issue as to whether or not I intensiﬁed my students’ pre-existing fears
of nature, I have to conclude that in many ways I did. I have described what happened in
the ecology unit in terms of giving up on the connective sublime and giving students
what they wanted - danger. In the weather unit, I showed my students the most
dangerous parts of ‘the movement of energy’ — violent storms. In response to a survey
question that asked if students were looking at weather differently as a result of the
weather unit, Mark, a 4th hour student wrote, “Yes, I think weather is a lot more
dangerous now.” However, Mark also wrote that he liked learning about storms,

hunicanes in particular, and that storms were “cool”.

139

Teachers know what Kant and Burke so laboriously described; students are fascinated
with the dangerous aspects of science. The interesting question then becomes, is it wrong
to explicitly teach to the extreme sublime in order to reach the understanding and affect
of the scientiﬁc sublime? Should science teachers use their students’ fascination with the
terrifying and awe-inspiring to act as a motivator for content learning?

This is obviously a complex issue and one that I have mixed feelings about. Looking
back on the experiences of my students, I ﬁnd some justiﬁcation in teaching towards the
extreme sublime. In both classes, my students were more often than not engaged and
excited about learning science. I was able to use their fascination with the extreme
sublime to teach scientiﬁc processes and ideas that enabled them to make sense not only ‘
of nature’s extremes like tornadoes and lions, but also of the more common and everyday
like a cloudy sky or a pet dog. These are all positive, yet difﬁcult to attain things, so I
certainly see some merit in the approach. But is engaged, active learning worth
encouraging a fear of nature? Ultimately my answer to this question is yes, for the
following reasons.

If respect and appreciation for nature is a goal in science education, then teaching
to foster the extreme sublime is an effective way of instilling these feelings. I argue that
the feelings of appreciation for nature may initially arise out of a fear and our fascination
with this fear, but I think through increased understanding, the fear becomes something
different. Rather than an ignorant fear, a positive ﬁrst step for our students may be a fear
based on knowledge rather than ignorance. My ecology students began the unit aﬁaid of

lions simply based on their alleged ferocity. As we progressed through the unit, students

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were still afraid of lions, but at least this fear was now based on an understanding of the
lion’s incredible physical prowess and behavioral traits that make him a ‘super predator’.

As a result of the unit students had a much more complete understanding of lions
and the animals became more than just mysterious, ferocious killers. Once we have some
understanding of what makes the animal terrifying, some of the terror must begin to
subside. As discussed in Chapter 1, in Burke’s types of the sublime “obscurity” was
second on the list. Of this topic he wrote (1757, p.58),

To make anything very tenible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary.

When we know the ﬁrll extent of danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a

great deal of the apprehension vanishes.

By teaching to the extreme sublime, perhaps I not only engaged and motivated my
students to learn science ideas, I also helped “accustom” their “eyes” to their fears.
Similarly, Burke (1757) also wrote,

Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the
inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.

While I am troubled by the thought of leaving my students with an ampliﬁed fear of
nature, these last two lines by Burke help ease my conscience. I did capitalize on my
students’ natural fascination with the extreme sublime, but I also taught them a great deal
about the natural world in my attempt to reach the scientiﬁc sublime. If I was able to
help them understand the things that scare them, perhaps my students moved beyond pure
“astonishment” and were left with what Burke calls the lesser effects of the sublime -

“admiration”, “reverence”, and “respect”.

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Limitations and Future Research

The most serious weaknesses of this research come from the fact that I was both
teacher and researcher. First, I have no way of knowing whether the effectiveness of my
teaching approach should be attributed to the approach or simply to who I am as a teacher
— the excitement, energy, and sublime sensibility that I bring to science learning. I
suspect that these aspects of my personality account for some of the sublime experiences
my students had.

Other weaknesses exist as a result of acting as both teacher and researcher. I
found it difﬁcult to focus on both tasks at the same time and tended to put the majority of
my emphasis on the more pressing job of daily teaching. I was able to use the general
outline of the units that I had developed before teaching, but found that I was constantly
changing my lessons based on the previous day’s experiences. I put in considerable effort
to be sure that in every lesson I did the best I could in terms of fostering sublime
experiences. The teaching process of writing and rewriting lessons, identifying
materials, reﬂecting on each class, and actually teaching every day often superseded my
role as a researcher. As a result, I was not able to collect as much data from the students
around their experiences as I would have liked.

A solution to address both of these problems would be to conduct similar research
in a situation in which I was not the teacher. This type of research would allow me to
better determine how much of a role my personality as a teacher and science learner had
in the students’ sublime experiences as opposed to the teaching approach I worked from.
In this process it would also force me to become clearer in regards to my teaching

approach, and allow me to discover effective ways of instructing others to teach using the

142

approach. Perhaps most irnportantly, it would give me the chance to act solely as a
researcher to better record the experiences of students. In this role I would be interested
in investigating: ’

o How student sublime experiences change over time

o How student experiences taught using this approach compare to the

experiences of students taught using another approach (e. g.. inquiry teaching)

Along a different line, I am also interested in whether or not this type of teaching
could be taught to others. Given the teaching framework I developed, would other
teachers be able to replicate the experiences my students had? This could prove to be a
challenging task for many of the reasons I outline in the teacher narrative at the end of

chapter 5.

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