More research to share

I recently encountered an interesting article by Lyubomirsky (click here for full article) regarding the human propensity for adaptation to both positive and negative experiences.  Research suggests that wellbeing relies on thwarting our adaptation inclination to positive experiences, allowing for more enticing encounters with the present moment.
According to Lyubomirsky there are several key elements that can thwart adaptation to positive experience and increase well-being.  These are as follows:

• Attention enticing: when something no longer captivates our attention we have become habituated to the stimuli.  What we attend to, on the other hand, becomes our experience and increases all the accompanying neurochemicals relating to that experience.
• Dynamic and varied activity: Humans attend to what is unpredictable and unexpected. Well being increases with continued engagement with positive experience.
• Novel and surprising: We are programmed for novelty.  An experience of not-understanding actually thwarts our tendency to adapt better than understanding ever could.

As a teacher engaged in research involving children, creative expression and nature, I am excited by the possibilities implied in this article.  Depth engagement with the natural world has the potential to forestall adaptation across experiential domains.   Nature is dynamic, varied, novel and surprising.  We have become habituated to it, like a background that we no longer attend to, so the question becomes how to we reengage?  Creative expression and observation have the potential to focus attention on nature in meaningful ways that bypass our cultural habituation to the natural world.  Thus increasing  wellbeing and interconnectedness.
This research reminds me that quality teaching must involve attention enticing experiences which are dynamic, varied, novel and surprising.  Thus the goal of education is not necessarily to understand, but to fall in love with the process of learning, wondering, observing, attending and mindful engagement with the NOW.  Paulo Freire writes, "Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.” Exciting!!!