Teaching for Romantic Understanding

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Kieran Egan’s notion of ‘romantic understanding’ and how it can be fostered in the context of school science education. However, it also discusses the idea of ‘romantic science’, as a science that emerged from the ‘romantic movement’ and which enriched natural philosophy with both aesthetic and moral elements. This discussion helps one understand that the central feature of ‘romantic science’, namely, the ‘romantic’ quest for knowledge and understanding (and hence the scientists’ emotional involvement with nature, as their object of study, along with their feelings of excitement, amazement, mystery, and wonder), is akin to the notion of ‘romantic understanding’, even though the scope of the latter goes beyond that of ‘romantic science’. A discussion of the specific characteristics of ‘romantic understanding’, such as a focus on the extremes and limits of reality and human experience, associating with heroic qualities (values), contesting of conventions and conventional ideas, a sense of wonder, and the awareness of the human context of knowledge and understanding, with examples of their relationship to science, makes it quite clear that ‘romantic understanding’ can indeed be fostered in the context of school science. Empirical evidence regarding the development of ‘romantic understanding’ and the problems associated with its evaluation are also discussed.