In graduate school I spent the summer in Saul, French Guiana – a sparsely inhabited village in the middle of a sprawling rainforest. The daily hot sweaty hikes deep into the rainforest to collect tree specimens of lecythidaceae (Brazil Nut) were punctuated with deep moments of wonder and awe. Columns of leaf cutter ants, flocks of macaws, swarms of butterflies and moths of every hue, spectacular orchids, a score of bat species and insects of every size and shape punctuated each of my days with moments of amazement and wonder. To this day, decades later, the memories of my research work with The New York Botanical Gardens in Saul endures. I am still filled with residual wonder.
Rachel Carson wrote about the experience of wonder in her book, A Sense of Wonder. She described wonder as “and unfailing antidote… to the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial… and the alienation from the sources of our strength.” (1) Richard Dawkins described wonder as “the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable.” (2)
Education is at an inflection point. While it is widely agreed that now and in the future students need skills of collaboration, creativity, problem solving and critical thinking, the real change makers of the future will also require flexible mindsets that are empathic, collaborative, experimental and confident. Change makers require one additional mindset that is crucial to learning: an inspired mindset born of wonder.
To fundamentally change education, we need authentic engagement with problems to solve, an empathic design process to solve the problems and an inspired mindset of wonder to inspire creative new ideas. Before I go into how to embrace wonder in the classroom, I want to think about two important questions. How does wonder present itself in the classroom? How will you know when you see it? The drive to explore and play is an expression of wonder. So too is the deep admiration felt in response to an experience or event. Wonder is at one moment diffuse and bewildering, while at other times a deeply focused engagement. When you hear a flurry of spontaneous questions, when gasps fill the moment, when the response is “wow!”, you know that wonder is present. Wonder is the awe we feel in the presence of incomprehensible ideas, mystery and discrepant events. Words are lost in astonishment, amazement, and awe.
There are ways that our classrooms become the playground where wonder thrives. Here are six of those ideas.
- Wonder is evoked.
School is often seen as something to “get through” We lose a major tool in the creation of meaning when learning is viewed as mundane. Posing learning as a problem can evoke wonder. Starting a familiar topic with an amazing story or an ingenuous challenge is a good way to embrace wonder. For example, in a chemistry class I might show a BBC clip iWonder about The World’s Largest Crystal Cave or the Tree That Shrunk the World. (3) Such videos bring a sense of wonder and joy to learning. Starting with objects, problems, or challenges lifts the brain away from routine to an inspired experience.
- Wonder fosters focus.
Edmund Burke once said that wonder fills the mind, “it cannot entertain any other.” Allowing students to become immersed allows wonder to emerge. I was once at an after-school science program teaching a lesson on soil to some students. I brought along some large African millipedes and earthworms. After some frequent “yucks”, in time a calmness settled as students allowed the specimens to move and sense the table. Wonder drove away fear and repulsion. The students watched, wondered and questioned. Provide the opportunity and wonder will focus on learning.
- Gratitude follows wonder.
If wisdom begins with wonder (As Socrates once said), so too does gratitude. GK Chesterton had a formula for gratitude. He said, “Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” (4) In class, naming and labeling the emotion of wonder helps students identify the internal feeling that accompanies wonder. Expressing gratitude for that moment and the students’ spontaneous expressions of wonder acknowledges both the moment and the resulting gratitude.
- Wonder endures.
Curiosity and wonder are close cousins. While curiosity is the human impulse to explore, wonder is the feeling that accompanies the resulting awe. Not everything we are curious about produces the feeling of wonder, but once the feeling is experienced, it is hard to forget. I remember the first time I stood by the ocean’s edge after a nighttime dive on the island of Cayman Brac and I first experienced bioluminescence. The eerie blue light in the water startled me. Questions poured from my mind. I felt like Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman when he wrote,
“Out of the cradle onto dry land, here it is standing, atoms with consciousness, matter with curiosity, Stands at the sea and wonders at wondering…” (5)
Have students write about moments of wonder or capture those moments in an artistic form. Since wonder and beauty are interrelated notions, translating one to another in words, or rhythm, or perspective is a valuable experience at all ages and stages of development.
- Wonder supports metacognition and reflection.
When I introduced my two-and-a-half-year-old grandson to the seeds inside a milkweed pod, he could hardly contain his glee as the tufted seeds took to the air with one brief blast of breath. “Again” he insisted, until I had exhausted all of the seeds on the plant and sent them skyward. My grandson found some other seed pods nearby. These seeds were from a maple tree. He blew on them but they stubbornly remained in his hand. He looked at me puzzled as if the rules of science had stopped working. A silent internal dialogue was going in his brain. Even at two years and some months, he knew these seeds were different and upon reflection he understood why. He launched his hand upward and the maple seed pod twirled to the ground. We laughed. In that moment of thought and reflection, a toddler launched his own wonder-producing inquiry and learned that seeds have the power to produce great joy. Before giving answers, we as teachers need to always provide students with the opportunity, time and space to understand a situation, a problem, an issue, or idea and construct their own meaning. There begins the wonder of “thinking about thinking”- a powerful motive for learning.
- Wonder is hopeful.
“Wonder taps the imagination” writes Yannis Hadzigeorgiou. (7)(8) “I wonder” launches the solutions to countless problems. It is the beginning of all problem solving and empathic design thinking. These two simple words provide the impetus and agency to think and create. Wonderers make. They look at challenges as opportunities. They are change makers. Every classroom needs to celebrate and encourage this perspective of wonder. Wonder is power. Because wonder is centered in each of us, that wonder is power and hope in our own ability to change the world.
“I wondered and I wondered.” If only we heard this refrain more often from our students. We teach with such certainty. We march through content absent the context of awe. Making schools the campus for wonder can humble us against the hubris that ignores the capacity of this world to astonish and amaze us. If all of our deepest held beliefs are mirrored in the mysteries of this world, then as educators it is our job and responsibility to share all the wonder that is teaching and learning.
- Carson, R. The Sense of Wonder. New York: Harper Press. Pg 43.
- Dawkins, R. (1998) Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, delusion and the appetite for wonder. New York: Teachers College Press. (xii)
- https://www.bbc.com/reel/playlist/world-of-wonder
- As quoted in Philip C. Watkin’s Gratitude and the Good Life.
- Feynman, R. (2015) The quotable Feynman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Universiy Press.
- Hadzigeorgiou, Y. (2010) Fostering a sense of wonder in the science classroom. Research in Science Education. 42. 985-1005.
- Hadzigeorgiou, Y. (2010) Fostering a sense of wonder in the science classroom. Research in Science Education. 42. 985-1005.
- Schinkel, Anders (ed)) 2020. Wonder Education and Human Flourishing: Theoretical, Empirical and Practical Perspectives. Amsterdam: VU University Press.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Charles (Chuck) James is an educator and curriculum development specialist in science and design education. Chuck’s education experience spans three decades and includes work as Director of Education and Public Outreach for NASA’s Astrobiology Division and Carnegie Institution of Science’s CASE program. His instructional work in Design, technology, and innovation, includes creating curricula for The National Science Foundation, NASA, The American Geologic Institute, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the American Chemical Society. He is a Director of St. Andrew’s D! Lab and a faculty member at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School and the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning in Potomac, Maryland.