ABSTRACT
If our way of being and meaning making, following Bruner and Ergas, is sculpted within narrative and the domain of the personal respectively, then wisdom as “lived exercise,” following Hadot (Hadot, 2002, p. 220), can also be seen to emerge within a methodology which is configured within the personal. This premise underscores Chapter 6 and is scaffolded by the question how can wisdom be fostered in the classroom within a narrative configuration which is also artful?
Powerful images, such as the landscape photographs of Edward Burtynsky, have potential to teach and offer wisdom. Yet, following Ergas, meaning making is a personal domain; herein the promise of their lessons also turns upon the student’s potential to absorb them. How is such potential developed within the student? How is the methodology of one nurtured? Importantly, how is such method seeded within an aesthetical ethos?
These questions underpin Chapter 6. Drawing on exemplars, such as the Berlin Wisdom model (Baltes, 2004), Balance Theory of Wisdom (Sternberg et al., 2008) and the child-centred research of Reeve et al. (2008) the chapter explores what can be extracted from such precedents in formulating a classroom practice for fostering wisdom through art. The discourse of wisdom research though is most often associated with texts and less so with the aesthetical; and as such, my suggestions for beginning to construct this new bridge are offered as a prolegomenon which I hope will encourage further study.
