Situated in a public urban high school in a Midwestern city, this study followed four secondary humanities teachers for a semester to examine how each employed sensation and aesthetic texts in their practice, conceived of the relationship between sensing and learning, feeling and thinking, and made sense of and justified their practice(s) therein. Semi-structured interviews were guided by formal questions and explicit concepts but active interviewing techniques granted the freedom to venture into whatever directions participants' responses dictated. Geertz' thick description (1973) was taken up to move beneath the surface and to better capture the observed interactions, relationships, and social meanings. Critical realism was the theoretical lens through which phenomena in this study was viewed. That is, sensational teaching posited the ontological reality of various forms of truth -be they social or natural- while simultaneously acknowledging the limitations and socially situated nature of the epistemology people use to access and understand the world.Sensational teaching was formed and informed significantly by considerations of affect, aesthetics, experience, and an array of closely related concepts touching upon everything from art to neuroscience. As such, this study attended to the multifaceted ways inner experiences and the senses are necessary for deep learning. Not to be construed as a positive adjective, 'sensational' is concerned with instructional methods that act upon the body, produce shared experiences, and evoke feelings and address the affective domain. Furthermore, this dissertation is aspirational. Drawn towards non-traditional methods and materials, this work puts forth a robust conception of teaching and learning that insists -instead of denying the full spectrum of human nature- schooling ought to anticipate, embrace, and seize upon what happens bodily, emotionally/viscerally, and socially. This sort of teaching lends itself to personal and civic relevance and paves the way toward higher-order thinking and attending to the many issues of racial and class oriented justice that plague our time.
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