The reenchantment of science education: towards a new vision of engaging rural gifted children in science

Abstract

For Albert Einstein the experience of scientific discovery involves a sense of mystery and awe at the seemingly endless wonders of nature. We believe that science education no longer captures the mystery and awe of nature in what is taught because the epistemology of how we seek to know the world is itself in large part the source of our disconnection from the world. We have lost the experience of the mysterious in our scientific dealings with nature because we have lost our connection with nature. This is why the making of good teachers into better teachers of science is not enough. In the end, better teachers are simply better at promulgating the current epistemological presumptions of science which themselves covertly encourage detachment from nature on the one hand and its sterile reconstruction on the other. When science education loses its connection with nature, it also loses its capacity to engage students, especially those in rural contexts where distance can prohibit resources and provisions. At the affective level, gifted students in particular, need more than the intellectual challenge science might offer them. They need to be inspired by their emotional involvement within the educational process, which links with and translates into a purposeful and meaningful personal life. In the present paper, we endeavour to show that contemporary science cannot foster the mysteriousness of seeing the world scientifically without first reconceptualizing the epistemology of detachment which underpins it. The reenchantment of science and the awe of its teaching depend upon an epistemology which is itself enchanted. 'Reenchantment' pedagogy has the potential to re-engage gifted children by stimulating in them a sense of awe, mystery, purpose, and engagement that connects their perspectives, thinking, living and learning of science both empathetically and emotionally to the mystery and awe that teaching scientifically should engender.