About this Research Topic

Background

Aesthetics concerns, on the one hand, people's feelings of pleasure and displeasure, and, on the other hand, the objects these feelings are directed to, that is, what people find beautiful or ugly (Wickman, 2006). Traditionally aesthetics and affect have been treated as separate from cognition and only rarely has it been studied how they are intertwined when learning a specific content (Wickman et al, 2021). However, recent situated and socio-culturally oriented research has begun to elucidate how aesthetics plays a key role for selection of content, what route learning takes in the classroom and for students' opportunities to develop an interest or taste for a specific school subject (e.g. Ainsworth & Bell, 2020; Sinclair, 2006; Wickman et al., 2021). This special issue compiles contributions from researchers examining these topics further.

Aesthetic judgements are not just reports of inner feelings but also concern outer objects and so constitutes an evaluation of what is the case (Dewey, 1934/1980). What beauty there is in educational settings such as mathematical inquiry (Sinclair, 2009), data modelling (Ferguson et al., 2021), writing a literary text (Gilbert, 2016), learning grammar (Ainsworth & Bell, 2020), cooking (Berg et al., 2019), a ball game (Maivorsdotter & Lundvall, 2009) or when art meets science (Hannigan et al., 2021) is a question of taste and is socially constituted, negotiated, and learnt (Bourdieu, 1984). Distinctions of taste make evident preferences of language and representations, procedures and actions, and ways-to-be as a person. Aesthetics is a question of what and whose content is included and excluded from a school subject (Anderhag et al., 2015). The goal of this special issue is to explore these little examined topics extensively and to widen the understanding of what may characterize a school-subject-specific aesthetics and what role it may have when teaching and learning different school subjects, separately or as integrated.

The Research Topic is grounded in the notion of disciplinary aesthetics, that is, school-subject-specific aesthetics. It will focus on the overarching questions of what may characterize such an aesthetics and what role this may have for teaching and learning in different school subjects. The contributions should address either or both of the following research questions:

- What are the objects (language, procedures and persons) that are aesthetically included or excluded as part of teaching and learning the subject?
- How can such distinctions be seen to be taught and learned as content of the subject?

We are not only interested in contributions on specific school subjects, such as mathematics and history, but also studies on intersections between school subjects, as for example art and science (e.g. Caiman & Jacobson, 2019). We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions.

Keywords: aesthetics, affect, teaching, learning, curriculum

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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