Guiding Intuitions in Education: Lesson Planning as Consummatory Experience

Abstract:In this paper I account for the role of guiding intuitions in teaching, focusing on the intuitions formed in the process of lesson planning. I start (in section one) by reviewing some research on lesson planning to locate the role of intuition in the process. I then turn to Wertheimer’s and Kohler’s gestalt psychology (section two) and Dewey’s theory of consummatory experience (section three) further to clarify and explain the process of lesson planning as the formation of guiding intuitions. I conclude that gestalt psychology is a less promising framework for explaining guiding intuitions than Dewey’s theory of experience.