Encountering fascination
Didactic reconstruction of aesthetic approaches in general knowledge lessons for all children

"Wider eine Verödung der Lernkultur" - Oskar Negt's plea for 'pedagogical imagination' and 'experimentation' in everyday school life (Negt 2006) ties in with Rumpf's demands from the 1980s, who draws the conclusion from analysing everyday school scenes and teaching materials from the last 150 years, that schools had suppressed the sensual and physical in educational processes in favour of the acquisition of scientific knowledge, "which is said to annul or exceed personal experience in sensually perceptible detail" (Rumpf 1981). This call for a return to learning processes characterised by the senses and aesthetics focuses on a mode of children's exploration of the world that is considered an embellishing but also dispensable form of dealing with facts in everyday action processes, especially by adults. As a relief and compensation for strenuous, cognitive learning processes, dealing with the aesthetic side of a subject is often marginalised in school education processes and is considered subordinate to the 'core subjects' of school. In recent years, however, numerous approaches in various subject disciplines, including primary school and subject teaching, have been characterised by efforts to integrate sensory perception processes into teaching processes and to take their significance for the subjective appropriation of an object into account in this way. This is because the aesthetic dimension of visualising an object is regarded as an elementary 'mode of experiencing the world' (cf. BMBF 2003), which is complementary to the fundamental dimensions of general education and is therefore regarded as a necessary form of expanding knowledge in every learning process. The dimensions of an aesthetic approach to the world are extremely diverse and refer to a long history of tradition that has produced various disciplines with their own discourses on aesthetics right up to the present day. In this study, the concept of aesthetic experience as a way of approaching the world is therefore first developed from the historical perspective and its differentiated discourses in philosophy, psychology and biology. This focus on the traditional discourse of philosophical aesthetics is then extended to include the aesthetic perception of nature in particular, with a view to the aesthetic observation of a specific object of subject teaching, the way of life of snails. With Schiller's letters on the aesthetic education of human beings, the perspectives of aesthetic experience lead to the hope that aesthetic experiences are educationally effective. The focus of the study presented here on the didactic significance of aesthetic approaches in subject teaching is based on this 'promise of the aesthetic' (Ehrenspeck 1998): To what extent do aesthetic approaches represent a meaningful access to the world and what insights do they provide for one's own actions? Can the aesthetic experience or the aesthetic recognition of an object be made fruitful for the didactics of subject teaching? With the help of the previously diverse perspective on aesthetics, an explicit framework is created for the discussion of didactic designs. In this way, the dilemma in which the discourse of aesthetic learning finds itself in a subject teaching for all children becomes clear: in subject teaching, there are numerous concepts for practice that often restrict the concept of aesthetics to 'learning with all the senses' in an abbreviated dimension. The critical-reflexive claim of an aesthetically based relationship to the world is thus lost. In contrast, the discourse on aesthetic perception in curative and special education hardly deals with the educationally relevant dimension of aesthetic learning, but generally focusses aesthetic approaches on the therapeutic aspect. Following on from the dimensions of aesthetic education, the study presented here is the first to explicitly generate a comprehensive concept of aesthetic learning based on a specific subject (the way of life of snails) in general education, which goes far beyond the claim of merely emphasising the sensory perception processes in the appropriation of a subject and focuses on the critical-reflective dimension of aesthetic learning. This discussion ultimately leads to a general concept of aesthetic learning in general knowledge lessons, which is based on the empirically determined aesthetic sensitivities in the imaginations of all children regarding the way of life of snails.

Monographs

• Beyond the senses. Aesthetic approaches in general knowledge lessons for pupils with learning disabilities, Göttingen: Duehrkohp and Radicke 2000 [CD-ROM]
• Encountering fascination. Aesthetic approaches in general knowledge lessons for all children. Oldenburg: DIZ 2007.
• Aesthetic education in science lessons. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag (in print).

Editorships

• The (subject) lesson and one's own life. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2007 (together with Ruth Stockmann)

Contributions to anthologies and journals (also online)

• Instructions and tips. How do we make a box for teaching non-fiction? together with Sabine Schröder. In: neue deutsche schule 11 (1997), pp. 34-35.
• Everything revolves around wheels, with wheels, on wheels ... A project with Maria Wigger. In: Primary school lessons 10 (1998), pp. 36-38.
• Possibilities for implementing a concept of holistic health promotion. In: Sache-Wort-Zahl 24 (1999), pp. 24- 28.
• Life in the Middle Ages. Suggestions for an action-orientated subject lesson on a historical topic. In: Reeken, Dietmar von: Historical learning in non-fiction lessons.
• Didactic principles and practical teaching tips, Seelze: Kallmeyer 1999, pp. 87-105 Old McDonald had a farm ... Farm today? In: Kaiser, Astrid (ed.): Praxisbuch handelnder Sachunterricht. Volume 3, Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag 2000, pp. 33-44.
• 'I'll make you well', said the bear. In: Kaiser, Astrid (ed.): Praxisbuch handelnder Sachunterricht. Volume 3, Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag 2000, pp. 95-110.
• Is the wheel rolling? In: Kaiser, Astrid (ed.): Praxisbuch handelnder Sachunterricht. Volume 3, Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag 2000, pp. 138-146.
• Why girls' lessons and boys' lessons. Thoughts on the diary. In: Kaiser, Astrid (ed.): Praxisbuch Mädchen- und Jungenstunden, Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag 2001, pp. 55-57.
• Wheels and vehicles. Learning circles in science lessons together with Astrid Kaiser. In: Lessons. Arbeit+Technik 12 (2001), pp. 6-7.
• That's beautiful! Aesthetic approaches in primary school science lessons". In: PädForum 5 (2001), pp. 369-377.
• With all senses...or? On the relevance of aesthetic approaches in general knowledge teaching. In: Kaiser, A./Pech, D. (eds.): Basiswissen Sachunterricht. Volume 3: Integrative approaches for teaching non-fiction. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag 2004, pp. 49-58.
• 'Welcome to the snail circus' - Suggestions and ideas for implementing aesthetic approaches in general knowledge lessons. In: Kaiser, A./Pech, D. (Eds.): Basiswissen Sachunterricht. Volume 3: Integrative approaches for teaching non-fiction. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag 2004, pp. 213-218.
• Individual interest in knowledge and the demand for standardisation in subject teaching. In: Götz, M./Müller, K. (eds.): Grundschule zwischen den Ansprüchen der Individualisierung und Standardisierung. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2005, pp. 201-207.
• Meaningful education in subject lessons. On the didactic relevance of aesthetic approaches. In: www.widerstreit-sachunterricht.de, No. 5/2005 (ISSN 1612-3034).
• Possibilities and limits of aesthetic experiential spaces in subject teaching. In: Cech, D./Fischer, H. J./Holl-Giese, W./Knörzer, M./Schrenk, M. (eds.): Bildungswert des Sachunterrichts. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2006, pp. 253-262.
• 'But in the rain, that's nice with them! Aesthetic learning paths in science lessons. In: Pfeiffer, S. (ed.): Neue Wege im Sachunterricht. Publication of the DIZ, University of Oldenburg 2006, pp. 153-164.
• 'Sondern auch der Weisheit Lehren...' Didactic relevance of aesthetic learning paths in future non-fiction teaching." In: Cech, D./Feige, B./Hartinger, A./Lauterbach, R. (eds.): Promoting and recording the acquisition of competences in subject teaching. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2007, pp. 37-46.
• 'The co-viewed view'. Famous discoverers and inventors in science lessons (together with R. Stockmann). In: Schomaker, C./Stockmann, R. (eds.): The (non-fiction) classroom and one's own life. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2007, pp. 244-254.
• 'On sticky tracks. Children explore the way of life of snails'. In: Weltwissen Sachunterricht, H. 4/2007 (in print). 'Learning in learning workshops'. In: Beck, I./Feuser, G./Jantzen, W./Wachtel, P. (eds.):
• Behinderung, Bildung, Partizipation - Enzyklopädisches Handbuch der Behindertenpädagogik. Vol. 4: Didactics and teaching. Edited by Astrid Kaiser, Birgit Werner, Ditmar Schmetz, Peter Wachtel. Stuttgart. Verlag Kohlhammer 2007 (in print).
• 'A thing is a thing'. Learning from, with, on and about things. In: Becker, C. (ed.): Perspektiven textiler Bildung. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag 2007 (in print).