Phenomena of a candle – helping students to perceive, wonder and ask: an updated Victorian teaching example

Martin Wagenschein’s ideas of prioritising phenomena in making sense of science processes have influenced the German Lehrkunstdidaktik (art of teaching) approach. This article sketches a Lehrkunstdidaktik teaching unit inspired by Michael Faraday’s Chemical History of a Candle. It shows how primary and lower secondary students (ages 10–13) understand scientific concepts through close observation. The seemingly trivial example of a burning candle teaches students to inquire into which burns – wick or wax, how the wax gets to the flame, and what happens to it once it gets there. By the end of the unit, students will have discovered for themselves the carbon cycle in the candle.