Developing minds and imaginations

Developing minds and imaginations

A Brief Introduction to Imaginative Education

Vancouver Community College

February 8, 2012

Kieran Egan & Gillian Judson

development of children’s minds

homogenizing/socializing

accumulating privileged knowledge

psychological development

cognitive tool acquisition

What are cognitive tools? 75,000 years ago to today.

kinds of understandings

IE is based on five distinctive kinds of understanding that enable people to make sense of the world in different ways

enable each student to develop these five kinds of understanding while they are learning math, science, social studies, and all other subjects

needs to be accomplished in a certain order because each kind of understanding represents an increasingly complex way that we learn to use language

Somatic Understanding (pre-linguistic)

Mythic Understanding (oral language)

Romantic Understanding (written language)

Philosophic Understanding (theoretic use of language)

Ironic Understanding (reflexive use of language)

Somatic Understanding

understand experience in a physical, proto-linguistic way physically relates to the objects and persons encountered

the body’s toolkit

•bodily senses•emotional responses & attachments•humor & expectations•musicality, rhythm, & pattern •gesture & communication

“little factories of understanding”Ted Hughes

Mythic Understanding

understand experience through

oral language now rely on language to discuss, represent, and understand even

things not experienced in person

the toolkit of oral language

• story

• abstraction and emotion• opposites and mediation• affective images generated from words• jokes and humor• metaphor• sense of mystery and puzzles

story

abstraction and emotion

The structure of childrenThe structure of children’’s fantasy:s fantasy:

• articulated on binary oppositions;• abstract;• affective.

Concrete content requires abstract concepts.

affective images

teacher and Japanese garden

image and concept in teaching

image and emotion

jokes and humor

When is a door not a door? What do you call a bear with no ear? Why did Lucy cross the playground?

observing language as an object, not just a behaviour

vivifies thought and language, and, incidentally, gives pleasure to life

sense of mystery and puzzles

Isaac Newton as an old man

representing the world as known, and rather dull.

What a wonderful adventure!

Mythic planning framework

1. Locating importance  2. Shaping the lesson or unit

2.1. Finding the story 2.2. Finding binary opposites 2.3. Finding images 2.4. Employing additional Mythic cognitive tools 2.5. Drawing on tools of previous kinds of understanding

3. Resources  4. Conclusion 5. Evaluation

examples

properties of the air

place value

Shaping Topics:Abstract Binary Oppositions

your turn…

magnets (elementary science curriculum)

sentence or paragraph writing (elementary language arts curriculum)

locomotor / non-locomotor movement (elementary physical education curriculum)

3 topics—take your pick

the toolkit of Mythic Understanding

story abstract and affective binary opposites affective mental images jokes and humor metaphor mystery and wonder

Romantic Understanding

understand experience through

written language

from oral to literate culture

Cinderella to Superman: Peter Rabbit to Hazel and Bigwig

‘win’ in ‘window’ : ‘at’ from ‘cat’ : stop and watch the stopwatch

White bears on Novaya Zemla; Blue shamrocks on Sirius 5.

extremes and limits of reality

associating with the heroic

romance, wonder, and awe

matters of detail

humanizing knowledge

underlying principle

All knowledge is human knowledge; it grows out of human hopes, fears, and passions. Imaginative engagement with knowledge comes from learning in the context of the hopes, fears, and passions from which it has grown or in which it finds a living meaning.

Romantic planning framework

1. Identifying “heroic” qualities2. Shaping the lesson or unit

2.1. Finding the story or narrative 2.2. Finding extremes and limits 2.3. Finding connections to human hopes, fears, and passions2.4. Employing additional Romantic cognitive tools 2.5. Drawing on tools of previous kinds of understanding

3. Resources4. Conclusion5. Evaluation

• punctuation

• eels

examples

Shaping Topics:Heroic Qualities

your turn…

exploration(secondary social studies curriculum)

statistics / probability(secondary math curriculum)

basketball(secondary physical education curriculum)

3 topics—take your pick

the toolkit of Romantic Understanding:

the literate eye extremes and limits of reality romance, wonder, and awe associating with the heroic matters of detail humanizing knowledge

moving toward Philosophic Understanding

processes rather than discrete events (feudalism/local politics)

agents/victims within processes rather than transcendent players

from limits and extremes to charting terrain (kinds of maps)

from induction to deduction—more of the time from lay-literate to theoretic communities

cognitive tools of Philosophic Understanding

meta-narratives and emotion

the craving for generality

processes and the connections between things

general schemes and their anomalies

the search for authority and truth

becoming an historical agent

Ironic Understanding

irony and Socrates

“Tis all in peeces, all cohaerance gone” (“alienating”)

more inclusive irony (“sophisticated”)

modulator of other kinds of understanding and cognitive toolkits

Please contact us to give us your feedback, to join our online community, or to receive more information.

egan@sfu.ca gcj@sfu.ca

Imaginative Education Research Groupc/o Faculty of EducationSimon Fraser University

Burnaby, B.C. Canada V5A 1S6Ph: 778-782-4479 Fax: 778-782-7014

Email: ierg-ed@sfu.cahttp://www.ierg.net