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The Role Of Poetry In Cultivating Attentiveness, Curiosity, And Affinity In The Science Classroom, Albert Cheng, Rian Djita

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Poetry is endemic to classical education and often studied for its own sake. However, poetry is also posited to possess a pedagogical power not shared by prose or formal scientific language. Poetry’s distinctive effects on learning outcomes have been well articulated by philosophers since Plato and Aristotle, but their claims have not been subjected to an empirical test. We fill that gap in this study. We collaborated with a local classical grammar school and divided kindergarten, first grade, and second grade classrooms into two groups for a two-week science unit. One group of classrooms integrated poems about the topic of …