Where is the beauty of teaching? At present, people have different opinions on this.
"Teaching beauty, as a special form of beauty, also has the essential attribute of beauty. It is beautiful to be successful, excellent and in line with the teaching rules, because this kind of teaching shows the essential strength of people. " [2]
"Teaching beauty is the result of teachers and students objectifying their own essential strength in creative teaching activities ... In the teaching process, teachers and students intuitively perceive their own essential strength and feel the aesthetic pleasure brought by creative teaching activities. This is the beauty of teaching. " [3]
"Teaching beauty is the harmonious operation of all aspects in the teaching process, which makes teaching present the characteristics of beauty and realizes the aestheticization of teaching." [4]
"The essence of teaching beauty is the comprehensive aesthetic effect derived from teachers' humor, interest and taste in class. " [5]
"Teaching beauty refers to the beauty that exists in teaching activities. It is embodied in the creative teaching activities of educators and educatees according to the law of beauty. It is the result of the perceptual appearance and objectification of the essential strength of educators and educatees in creative teaching activities. " [6]
"Looking at teaching with meaning aestheticism, the beauty of teaching is the process of meaning presentation. The richer the meaning, the higher the aesthetics. Aesthetic teaching is to break through the closure of traditional teaching in the "meaning field". The beauty of teaching can not be limited to the beauty of external forms such as rhythm, rhythm and symmetry, but an inner beauty and an essential beauty, which is the aesthetic concept to be expressed by meaningful aestheticism. " [7]
To sum up, the author believes that the beauty of teaching refers to the synthesis of aesthetic factors and aesthetic effects created by teachers and students in the teaching process. In other words, teaching beauty is a kind of comprehensive beauty, which is a highly integrated and unified organic whole, which is composed of various potential reasons of beauty. As a comprehensive beauty, teaching beauty has many aspects: it embodies the beauty of teaching and learning, the beauty of teaching purpose and means, the beauty of teaching inner and outer, the beauty of teaching science and art, the creation and appreciation of teaching beauty, etc.
(A) Teaching beauty is the unity of teaching and beauty
The beauty of teaching is essentially a new thing produced by the intersection and synthesis of teaching and beauty. It includes teaching, but it is not general teaching, but teaching with the infiltration of beauty; It contains beauty, but it is not general beauty, but beauty based on teaching. It can be said that the beauty of teaching is the direct embodiment of the complex and profound relationship between teaching and beauty. Therefore, we can't simply ask questions in an "either-or" way: Is the beauty of teaching "teaching" or "beauty"? It should be noted that the beauty of teaching is actually neither a simple "teaching" nor a simple "beauty", nor a simple addition of teaching and beauty, but a complex phenomenon and existence state of "this and that". If we grasp this objectively, the integrity of teaching beauty will not be damaged in the research process.
(2) The beauty of teaching is the beauty of teaching and learning.
The beauty of teaching should not only be the beauty of teachers' teaching, but also have richer connotations. It should include the beauty of teaching and learning. In teaching, the relationship between teaching and learning is that teaching is guiding learning. For example, Chevreux, an American philosopher of analytical education, thinks: "Teaching is a conscious behavior, and its purpose is to guide others to learn." [8] Hirst (P.H.Hirst) said: "Teaching activities are the activities of one person A (teacher), whose intention is to realize the activities (learning) of another person B (student), whose intention is to complete a certain purpose modality (such as cognition and appreciation) and whose purpose is X (such as beliefs, attitudes and skills)." [9] Since teaching and learning are unified, the beauty of teaching and learning should also be unified. As some researchers have pointed out, "teachers' teaching activities should be aesthetic activities, and students' learning activities should be aesthetic activities". The unity of beauty and aesthetics is the highest unity of teaching and learning. It is a challenging subject to study teaching beauty on the basis of the unity of teaching beauty and learning beauty.
(3) Teaching beauty is the unity of purpose and means.
The proposal of teaching beauty is undoubtedly a leap to the traditional teaching theory. Traditional teaching theory only cares about how to "create people with beauty" and does not care about how to "educate people with beauty". The beauty of teaching will be devoted to the beauty of teaching itself. It should study how to make teaching itself beautiful and its role in bringing up a new generation. Extensive and profound aesthetic theory provides a brand-new perspective for teaching research and opens up an incomparably broad and distant prospect for teaching research. The more attention is paid to the pursuit of aesthetic value in teaching, the more aesthetic activities students participate in, the richer their aesthetic experience, the easier it is to improve their general psychological ability and aesthetic ability, and the better the teaching effect. But we should also see the importance of the unity of ends and means. "The artist's skill plays an important and necessary role in creation, which often brings the disadvantages of emphasizing it. This is also an undeniable fact. In fact, if artists pay too much attention to skills and focus on the pursuit of technical effects, they will easily lack the richness and flame of the inner life of art, making their works fragile, boring and unattractive. A work as skillful as a craftsman can only make people sigh at its skill, but it is also often disgusting. Those works that have not been practiced can make people feel the vitality of life immediately, but arouse people's love. " [1 1] Pursuing and realizing the unity of purpose and means will make the beauty of teaching more prominent in its educational value.
(D) Teaching beauty is the unity of internal beauty and external beauty.
Hegel pointed out: "the elements of beauty can be divided into two types: one is internal, that is, content;" The other is external, that is, what the content uses to express meaning and characteristics. "[12] The beauty of teaching does have different internal and external manifestations. The inner beauty of teaching is related to the purpose and content of teaching. The purpose and content of teaching are stipulated by a certain society, which embodies the characteristics and nature of the times, with both real requirements and good expectations. It has both regularity and purpose. Therefore, the teaching purpose and teaching content itself have the characteristics of beauty. The external beauty of teaching forms mainly refers to the beauty of teaching methods and means, the beauty of classroom atmosphere and the beauty of study style. Form and content are a pair of philosophical categories, and the unity of form and content is the basic attribute of objective things. As belinsky elaborated: "If form is the expression of content, it must be closely related to content. If you want to separate it from the content, it means eliminating the content; The reverse is also true: if we want to separate content from form, it is equivalent to eliminating form. "[13] Just like we appreciate Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, we can't feel which is the content and which is the form at all, and we can't separate the form and content of this painting. What we feel is a complete and unified meaningful form and the meaning in the form. When painting this painting, Leonardo da Vinci used pigments, colors and canvases, but in front of the audience, the pigments, colors and canvases disappeared, and only Mona Lisa was smiling.
When talking about the origin of beauty, the aesthetician Ye Xiushan thinks that beauty belongs to the world itself, not to people. Therefore, beauty is to present the "meaning" hidden in the world. [14] (45-46) The presentation of meaning is beauty and aesthetics. Ye Xiushan called the presentation of meaning "openness" of beauty, and [14](50) showed us a brand-new aesthetic concept. Looking at teaching with meaning aestheticism, the beauty of teaching is the process of meaning presentation. The richer the meaning, the higher the aesthetics. Aesthetic teaching is to break through the closure of traditional teaching in the "meaning field". The beauty of teaching can not be limited to the external beauty of rhythm, rhythm and symmetry, but an internal beauty and an essential beauty. Good teaching activities, teachers and students are open to each other and take care of each other, so that the beauty of human feelings, humanity and personality is revealed in teaching, which is the inner layer of teaching beauty. Above this is the beauty of form, including the beauty of language and the beauty of means. The highest state of teaching beauty is the beauty of teaching itself, that is, teaching itself is full of values such as pleasure, truth, goodness, freedom, harmony and equality. The inner beauty of teaching is a spiritual beauty and a fundamental beauty, while the outer beauty of teaching fully embodies the inner beauty and should be unified with the inner beauty. However, the phenomenon that inner beauty and outer beauty are not unified sometimes appears in teaching, which is undoubtedly a kind of destruction to the overall comprehensive beauty of teaching.
(5) Teaching beauty is the unity of scientific beauty and artistic beauty.
The relationship between scientific beauty and artistic beauty is relatively new. Huxley, a famous British naturalist, once realized: "Science and art are the pros and cons of the Medal of Nature. On the one hand, it expresses the eternal order of things with emotion; On the other hand, it expresses the eternal order of things in the form of thought. " [15] (2) American scientist W.S. Sutton once compared science, religion and art corresponding to "truth", "goodness" and "beauty" to three sides of a triangular pyramid, and thought: "When people stand at the bottom of its different sides, they are far apart, but when they climb to the top, [/kloc] Eisner (Eisner, 1982) said: "Every successful teaching process can be analyzed not only by the science of teaching and classroom management, but also by the art of knowledge background in the created environment." [16]( 18) Because "where science doesn't work, art will play a role. In other words, we should be more wise in both art and science. " [16](384) The scientificity and artistry of teaching are indispensable, otherwise the integrity of teaching will be destroyed.