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You
are here: Imagine This:
A Report on the 2nd International Conference on Imagination and Education
"Educating Imaginative Minds"
July 14-17, 2004 Vancouver, BC
by Jack Yantis
Imagination has a questionable role in Western education. From ancient perspectives to contemporary definitions, imagination is recognized as a powerful presence in human life, yet how it can be utilized in the educational process has mystified educators for generations. As we are engaged in a 21st century struggle with 19th century visions of mass education through our tests and rigid quantitative views of academic performance, it may be wise to consider imagination and how it can support cognitive development of today's learners. What this might be has emerged through the groundbreaking vision and scholarship of Kieran Egan and his colleagues of the Imagination Education Research Group based at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Through their pioneering efforts in imaginative education, a large community of educators, scholars, administrators and teachers dedicated to research and implementation of Imaginative Education is emerging around the world. Many members of this community gathered in July 2004 for the 2nd International Conference on Imagination and Education.
What is Imaginative Education?
Imaginative Education is meant to be flexible and responsive to the learner's experiences. It is intended to move beyond the "banking" or "assembly-line" method of education where the learner is required to memorize a predetermined set of facts and processes and then be able to retrieve the "correct" information when called upon by a teacher or test.
Imaginative education supports the learner in developing their understandings of their own experience and that of the culture and context in which each learner is embedded. In Egan's writings, teaching and learning has always been a narrative or story-telling process. Over the last two decades, this Storyform approach has developed into five essential understandings. These understandings emerge in a continuum that is different than the dominant mechanistic models of cognitive development. Rather than replacing each previous understanding, the new one is supported and grounded by the earlier ones. Each understanding brings a new collection of cognitive tools with it. These understandings are:
• Somatic is bodily understanding centered on the child's body, the ways the body moves in space, and the way it relates to the objects and persons it encounters in the space. The body is the primary tool, the first way of making sense of experience. [1]
• Mythic is oral understanding, shaped by story. Cognitive tools that emerge are binary opposites, fantasy, metaphor and rhyme and rhythm.
• Romantic is where experience is organized through an exploration of the extremes of experience and the limits of reality. Central to mastery of the tools of Romantic Understanding is a sense of the self as an autonomous unit, that interacts with, but is separate from the world. [2]This is where literacy and written language appears.
• Philosophic is where the learner focuses on the connections among things, seeing laws, theories, and larger purposes. Generalization is central to Philosophic: the search for new organizing principles to make sense of the multitude of experience in the adolescent's expanding horizons. [3]
• Ironic has a certain transparency or reflective quality to it. We become aware that meaning has been constructed by us, and does not exist 'out there' in some objective world. An Ironic understanding of the world tells us that the way we had made sense of our world is dependent upon our historical and cultural perspective. [4]
Each one of these understandings weaves back and forth. For further information and examples of how these understanding are used in shaping lessons and curriculum, visit the Imagination Education Research Group Web site and explore the Ideas and Research and Teaching and Curriculum pages.
Highlights of the Conference
The extent of how Imaginative Education is influencing global education was quite apparent at the conference. Nearly 400 people attended with every continent represented (except Antarctica). There were over 100 presentations including papers, roundtables, panels and workshops.
The conference was organized around seven themes: A) Imaginative Curriculum Design Across the Disciplines, B) Imagination in Education Philosophy and Research, C) Imagination and the Arts, D) Imagination, Language and Literacy Learning, E) Imagination and Science Education, F) Imagination and Critical Thinking in Education, and G) Imagination, Technology and Media Studies.
The conference began on Wednesday, July 14 with an address by Kieran Egan, "What are Cognitive Tools and How Many Are There." In his speech, he reiterated much of his work and that of the IERG with much humor and informative insights. One resonating observation was that imagination is often seen as the frosting on the educational cake while it really is a key ingredient that gives buoyancy and texture to the delicious creation of learning.
The next morning, Dr. Nel Noddings, the conference's keynote speaker, presented "Imagining the Worst". In her address, she examined the need to imagine ourselves not only as 'victim' but also as 'perpetrator'. In so doing, we may be able to see the great psychic damage war and violence brings to all of us and how 'educating the shadow' might contribute to more generous human relations and world peace.
After this, the presentations began. Some of the ones I attended were:
• Waldorf Education: Observation, Imagination and the Development of Scientific Thinking by Abegael Fisher-Lang and David Hesketh. This was a rich and imaginative overview of how Waldorf education approaches science. Through story, creative art experiences and simple experiments, learners develop an imaginative connection to science. Waldorf shapes its curriculum around the emotional and physical worlds of their learners, i.e. 7th and 8th graders studied combustion, a process that clearly happening to their own development.
• Toward an Educational Theory of Everything: New Science for Imaginary Dimensions in the Science Classroom by Lyubov Laroche. This paper explored approaches to bringing the world of quantum physics, chaos and string theory and a conscious universe into the contemporary classroom.
• Learning Through The Arts with Tracy Houser. This workshop introduced the participants to the outstanding work of Learning Through The Arts, a ten-year old program based at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. LTTA provides opportunities for teaching artists and classroom teachers to create arts-based lessons in math, science, language arts and social studies. A high point of the presentation was learning about Canadian Government through dance.
• BrainSoup Laced with Imagination: An Australian Perspective by Miranda Armstrong. Armstrong linked Egan's Storyform model with the Brain Compatible Classrooms work of Robin Fogarty. Through examples of her highly engaging learning environments in Melbourne, she demonstrated that creating an imaginative and brain compatible learning environment might require a radical remodeling of the learning environment led by the learners themselves.
• The Imaginative Teacher: Contexts for Exploring New Practices with Diane Potts and Meredyth Kezar. This roundtable discussion explored the research project" From Literacy to Multiliteracies", an innovative approach to educational research in which teachers set the priorities for literacy research in the classrooms and choose how time and financial resources are spent. University of British Columbia provided the support and guidance for the 36 teachers involved in the project. This project demonstrates a way where research can emerge from the classrooms rather than the more traditional "hit and run" invasive academic model.
• Relationship Among Computer Games, Fantasy and Learning by David Kaufman. This paper examined the learning capacity of computer games and how they might be transformed into a tool for mindful learning. Kaufman is lead researcher for a major project in Canada that is developing computer games for learning about medical and health issues. Their Web site is www.sageforlearning.ca.
This brief list is unable to do justice to all the fascinating presentations that were shared over the three days.
Access to the conferences proceedings can be found at the Imagination Education Resource group Web site. Miranda Armstrong's paper, "BrainSoup" is available to download.
Concluding observations
This conference was a watershed experience for me. Having the opportunity to present a session on Imagining Math and Science Concepts through Movement and Dance at an international conference was thrilling enough; however, it was the openness, the energy, the warmth and joy of the participants that will linger long in my heart and mind. Imaginative education has the potential of offering a way of teaching and learning that honors the creative capacity of the universe and the beings that resided within its unfolding. At the same time, it honors the remarkable achievements and understandings that have led us to where we truly are today, co-creators in an ever-changing world. Imagination has always been central to this evolution. Now is the time to welcome it into the core of education with the awareness that William Wordsworth recognized, "Imagination is reason in her most exalted state."
Notes
1 Ruitenber, Claudia, "What is Imaginative Education", http://www.ierg.net/ideas_whatis.html, as viewed 8/28/2004.
Resources
For more on Kieran Egan, http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan/default.html
This has a list of his books and many articles that he has written over the last several years.
Jack Yantis has been actively involved in the worlds of performance and education for the last 25 yrs. He holds an MFA from New York University. Currently he is Associate Faculty, Center for Programs in Education, Antioch University Seattle, where he teaches integrated arts courses in their Teacher Preparation programs. He has taught in K-12 private and public schools in Washington State, Georgia and South Carolina. He is also a choreographer and director who has worked for several dance companies and community theatres and even still manages to dance himself. For more detailed information about Jack and his work in the world, go to www.jackyantis.com or email jmoving@mindspring.com.
Jack has written another article Arts Learning and the Creative Economy, which is posted here at New Horizons for Learning.
©September 2004 New Horizons for Learning
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