Passion in Learning: to be more fully human

When I wrote about Emotion and Designing Learning I was examining the idea proposed by Carmen Taran that instructional designers need to have chemistry with their content -- which I interpreted as passion for the content. This post received many comments - and V. Yonkers proposed the idea that people needed curiousity about what they were designing -- but not neccessarily passion. As I continue on my quest to design a game around accounting, I am agreeing with her more and more. Good instructional design requires curiousity, it requires our intellectual and emotional attention, it requires a passion for the design process as Jason W. pointed out, and identifying with a project as Mike B points out.

Still I couldn't let go of the idea of passion. And then I came across an article with this quote:

To be motivated, to have passion, is not merely to be working toward pre-determined goals, but to be swept away by the power of an idea or the drama inherent in all educative, transformative events.
Beyond Control and Rationality: Dewey, Aesthetics, Motivation, and Educative Experiences by David Wong

It made my heart sing! To incite passion in the learning, to remember that education can mean having fun, being in the flow. To be swept away by an idea -- haven't we all had this at some point in our lives?

South of Big Sur, CA, USA (Dec 2006)

Now back down to earth -- in our everyday working lives, in the world of constraints, we can't always have this. But we can aspire to this in our work, everyday. As David Wong continues to say in his article -- "to teach is to inspire." Yes it's a cliche, and it's true. If we as instructional designers cannot try to inspire with what we design, then why do we do the work we do?

Educators, at their best, create experiences in which students can feel more fully alive, more fully human. Perhaps, it is hard to imagine that learning can be so moving. Our darkest, most weary cynicism dismisses this vision of education as idealistic, romanticized, and too difficult to achieve. However, in the end the truth is this: we only wish our learning could be so compelling.
Beyond Control and Rationality

To be more fully human: to make a connection through words, images, sounds to another person's mind. To have them leap with you. "Whether the learner is engaged in reading a story, watching a film, or conducting scientific inquiry, anticipation is what moves us to the edge of our seat so that we may see better and be better prepared for what we might see." This is instructional design should aspire to: to have others anticipate what's coming next and anticipate what they are thinking, feeling and imagining -- and perhaps take them to places they never imagined.

Yes, I'm a dreamer.

Thank you E. David Wong.

For Further Reading:

• Beyond Control and Rationality: Dewey, Aesthetics, Motivation, and Educative Experiences by David Wong (Teachers College Record Volume 109 Number 1, 2007, p. 192-220 http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 12740, Date Accessed: 1/27/2009 12:23:26 PM)
• The Nature and Design of Compelling Experiences - reading list by David Wong