Aesthetic, Spiritual, and Flow Experiences: Contrasts and Educational Implications

The idea for our paper began with a practical problem. As curricularists dedicated to an aesthetic approach to teaching, curriculum, and learning, we regularly provide workshops on this topic for teachers in K–12 schools. Our own work is based on Dewey’s aesthetic ideas1 and we have developed a theory called CRISPA2 that teachers may employ to create what we might call “wow” experiences in their own classrooms.3 That is, they can set up the conditions for students to have aesthetic experiences with the material they are learning. When conducting such workshops for teachers, we often hear the observation, “This is like flow,” or we get the question, “How is this different from a spiritual experience?”Thus, this...