ABSTRACT
For many children much of the time their experience in classrooms can be rather dull, and yet the world the school is supposed to initiate children into is full of wonder. This book offers a rich understanding of the nature and roles of wonder in general and provides multiple suggestions for to how to revive wonder in adults (teachers and curriculum makers) and how to keep it alive in children. Its aim is to show that adequate education needs to take seriously the task of evoking wonder about the content of the curriculum and to show how this can routinely be done in everyday classrooms. The authors do not wax flowery; they present strong arguments based on either research or precisely described experience, and demonstrate how this argument can be seen to work itself out in daily practice. The emphasis is not on ways of evoking wonder that might require virtuoso teaching, but rather on how wonder can be evoked about the everyday features of the math or science or social studies curriculum in regular classrooms.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|85 pages
The Nature of Wonder and its Educational Uses
chapter 2|18 pages
Wow! What If? So What?
part II|59 pages
Engaging Wonder in Everyday Classrooms
chapter 5|8 pages
Opportunity To Teach
chapter 7|12 pages
From “Unknown Questions” Begins a Wonderful Education
part III|96 pages
Dimensions of Educational Wonder