Slow Wonder
Letters on Imagination and Education

Slow wonder is a declaration of the power of the imagination to resist and overthrow the dead orthodoxies strangling education.

Peter O'Connor (Author), Claudia Rozas Gómez (Author)

9781009124393, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 October 2022

75 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 0.4 cm, 0.1 kg

Slow wonder bears witness to the possibilities of the imagination. In a series of letters the authors playfully imagine alternatives to current orthodoxies that privilege technocratic approaches to education that have strangled discussion about what it might mean to make education good and right, or even beautiful. The authors position the imagination as a powerful site of resistance within education and academic life. They unpack their philosophical positionings through vignettes of their teaching practice, poetry written as reflective musings and discursive theoretical pieces, including letters they have written to others. They attempt to marry the poetic and the academic, the rational and the affective, to model a slow approach to wondering about the joy, beauty and possibilities of life. In this spirit, they contemplate new ways to think and live in education.

Introduction
1. Nailed to the Door
2. Slow Wonder
3. The Last Supper.

Subject Areas: Educational psychology [JNC], Philosophy of mind [HPM]