Wonder-Centered Education Begins With Educators

In the past few weeks, three people involved in education have brought wonder in the classroom back to my attention. Angela Stockman is reconsidering her work in educational assessment and facilitation after reading the book Tracking Wonder. She wrote in her Substack recently,

"How might tracking wonder, rather than curiosity, offer richer rewards? How might it make it my documentation practice more meaningful? I’m not sure. But… a practice that slows us down enough to stay open, that gives our curiosity something real to work on, that treats bewilderment as a legitimate place to stand, that produces the evidence hope requires, that puts us in the company of colleagues, and that gives us a way to admire one another out loud and deepen the qualities we admire in our own selves? That seems like a profoundly rewarding practice that might help me find surprising answers.

I think this is where documentation can begin to widen the aperture around what it means to be a teacher or a professional learning facilitator."

Another person is seeking a Doctorate of Education (EdD) and is directly involved with a university center that provides educators with professional development. Her EdD focus? Wonder. A third serves on a board of education and a teaching and learning committee as educators and school leaders in her state reconsider their priorities and how they assess learning. Their questions have me wondering about education itself and about educators.

Consider this post a timely update from "The Creative State of the Union: 6 Bold, Wonder-Centered Ideas for Obama’s Education Initiative," which I wrote in response to fellow wonder-tracker and psychologist Todd Kashdan’s post from 2011, "3 Ideas to Prevent Schools from Killing Creativity, Curiosity, and Critical Thinking."

My questions now: What would happen if we placed wonder closer to the center of education? and What would happen if we began with the educators themselves?

It’s possible. I’ve witnessed the most seemingly jaded educators and educational leaders reignite their capacity for wonder. And that capacity can be contagious.

What Happens When Students Wonder?

But let's start with students and educational design. With deliberate design, educators and educational leaders can foster a necessary ecosystem of wonderers.

A March 2026 phenomenological study showed—in my subjective view—stunning and encouraging results. Led by Andrew Gilbert and Steph N. Dean of Clemson University, the researchers studied an eight-week “wonder-infused” project with students in grades 3-5. Although science-directed and situated in an outdoor learning laboratory, the project gave students considerable freedom to pursue what fascinated them. Teachers set up outdoor stations across related fields of study. Students kept wonder journals, recorded observations and questions, pursued self-selected scientific phenomena, and participated in a culminating Wonder Fair.

Students discovered wonder as an adventure with immediate relevance to their lives. As one student described it, “Well, it kind of helps you open up your mind… it helps get you ready for the world. It helps you figure out answers on your own.” With the teachers' guidance, students learned to move from their initial wonderings toward testable questions and their own experiments. Wonder for its own sake seemed to become a meaningful part of the learning experience.

The researchers also found evidence of what they call "joyful struggle." The students struggled in coming up with hypotheses and then getting collaborating students to agree. But the joyful context of wonder made the struggles more light-hearted. Every adult I work with, frankly, would savor a culture of “joyful struggle” because struggle is inevitable in meaningful work.

Wonder spreads, and in and of itself seems like a relevant “outcome.”

But What About the Teachers?

I want to back up. In the Clemson study, teachers themselves participated in the wondering and what researchers identified as “shared vulnerability.” Teachers shared their wonders with students, encouraging students to share theirs. One teacher noticed how often she'd walked through the woods without really seeing anything. Dean particularly is on a mission to help science teachers regard themselves as part scientist and part educator. So, this approach is to get teachers to regard themselves as scientists in wonder themselves, as scientist-educators who do not always have the answers but who often share questions with their students.

In their work on “wonder-full education,” Wolbert and Schinkel suggest that teachers' own capacity to wonder is essential to cultivating wonder in students. They note that such teachers do not simply view wonder as some mechanical element to deliver a lesson, but they more or less inhabit contemplative wonder (to wonder at) and inquisitive wonder (to wonder about—and more in line with curiosity in the Tracking Wonder Framework).

Their research also points toward vulnerability. They note that wonder can expose our vulnerability because it reminds us of how much we don't know. Teachers, accustomed to being expected to have answers, must sometimes be willing to admit their uncertainty. In my observations, that openness can create conditions in which students feel free to wonder themselves. Teacher and students are questing and wondering together.

Other research points in a similar direction. Gilbert and Byers' 2017 qualitative study of preservice elementary teachers out of George Mason University found that wonder-based pedagogy helped participants reconsider their relationship with science and envision new possibilities for teaching.

And I want to call out something else. Too often, wonder-centered pedagogy focuses on elementary school children. I've been saying at least since 2010 that “Wonder is not kids' stuff. Wonder is radical grown-up stuff.”

For years, I've worked with adults to help them recognize and cultivate different facets of wonder. In workshops with undergraduates at Western Connecticut State University and doctoral students at Boston College, for instance, I have seen how much permission adults sometimes crave to wonder openly. There is often a palpable relief in recognizing that they can practice wonder and integrate it into their academic and professional lives.

How many educators have opportunities to rediscover what first excited them about learning? And what happens to their students when they do?

Cultivating a Culture of Wonder

Wolbert and Schinkel describe the need for a schoolwide ethos of wonder. Such an ethos is not unlike the work I have done with leaders and teams of adults.

So, here are three invitations to consider and share with educators and leaders you care about:

1. Let questions live longer. Teachers don't have to turn every question immediately toward an answer or measurable outcome. Students and teachers alike can make some room for uncertainty and inquiry, for receptive wonder. Rather than jumping to answer questions, teachers can have students record more open-ended questions or questions that students could research. Teachers also can practice humility and say, “I don’t know. Let’s explore that together.”

2. Give educators experiences of wonder themselves. Professional development usually emphasizes skills, standards, techniques, and outcomes. What would change if some educator development also restored teachers' own curiosity, imagination, and sense of possibility? What if a faculty meeting or professional development day included time for educators to explore a question that genuinely fascinates them? What if they were invited to notice what has become overly familiar in their classrooms? What if they were trained in practices, project design, and classroom culture that engender wonder? A teacher's own wonder could become a starting point for professional learning.

3. Build cultures where wondering is encouraged. Fostering wonder cannot depend entirely on an inspired teacher or one elaborate project. For educational leaders, where do their assessment systems, meeting agendas, and professional expectations encourage exploration? Where can teachers admit uncertainty, experiment with an approach, elicit delight, or bring an unresolved question to colleagues?

Maybe bringing wonder back to education begins before the lesson plan. Maybe it begins with the adults who design the learning environment. What are they still in wonder with? What has surprised them lately? Where are they allowed to experiment?

So much is possible.