Aesthetic Flow Exerience in the Teaching of Preservice Language Arts Teachers

This interview study with 19 preservice teachers who were enrolled in a teacher apprenticeship program at a major southeastern U.S. university uses Dewey’s (1938/1988) concept of an experience and Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) concept of flow to investigate how participants identify and describe aesthetic flow experiences both inside and outside school settings. The researchers, two instructors of English education, suggest that recognizing aesthetic flow experience in the classroom sets the stage for pre-service teachers to have enriched notions of what counts as learning and knowledge. Further, we posit that these enriched notions of knowledge and learning will point to ways of appreciating the diverse settings, activities, and experiences that secondary students bring with them to school.