Listen to all past episodes of the ERRR podcast here.
Imaginative Education is an approach to teaching and learning that aims to powerfully employ narrative, imagery, humour, movement, emotions, extremes and awe-inspiring occurrences in order to capture the minds of students and enhance learning. For this episode we're lucky enough to have the creator of Imaginative Education with us (Prof. Kieran Egan), along with the founder of ImaginEd (Dr. Gillian Judson), and two teachers who are currently using IE, to explore the ins and outs of this exciting new field of educational exploration.
The first article to stimulate discussion (download here) details how IE can be applied to the topic of second language learning. It explores how teachers can build upon the ‘cognitive tools' and learning ‘toolkits' that human beings develop as they grow up and, through connecting emotion and imagination with knowledge, activate these innate tools and bring second language learning to life.
To compliment this first article our authors have also nominated two of their blog posts Put Engagement First: Think Differently About Your Students (view here) and 4 Reasons Why “Relevance” Can Limit Student Engagement (view here) to help attendees to broaden their understandings of what imaginative education is, and why many think it hold much promise for educators.
Additionally, listeners may like to watch Gillian Judson's TED talk here.
If you're interested in exploring a greater range of imaginative pedagogical tools in your classroom, this ERRR episode is for your.
This episode's Guests
Gillian Judson is a member of the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University and co-directs the Imaginative Education Research Group (IERG). Her research, writing, and teaching are primarily concerned with the role of imagination in all learning.
Kieran Egan is an emeritus professor of the Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University. His academic interests have been in how we, as a species and individually, have come to make sense of our experience and the world around us. One aspect of this endless and hopeless task has been a recognition that the imagination plays a crucial role in both these, related, processes, and he has explored some features of this role with regard to current forms of education.
Christa Rawlings is a Grade 6 teacher at KB Woodward Elementary School in Surrey, BC. She has been implementing Imaginative Education in her classroom for several years and runs the LiD program at her school.
Clayton Stephens is a Grade 4 teacher in B.C., Canada. He recently graduated from the Imaginative Education Masters program at Simon Fraser University. He is a mentor in the online Graduate Certificate program in Imaginative Education.
Links mentioned during the interview
- The ImaginEd website
- Some poets that Kieran likes: Peter Porter, Alan Jenkins, Alice Oswald
- Voices of the Mind, James Wertsch (a book on the work of Vygotsky)
- LiD, The Learning in Depth program
Please consider supporting the Education Research Reading Room Podcast
If you're keen to help the ERRR podcast to stay independent and sustainable, please consider making a one-off or monthly donation through https://www.patreon.com/errr. Audio engineering, room hire, and audio-file web hosting cost Ollie upward of $70 per episode, and any donation (even as much as a cup of coffee), to help cover these costs is greatly appreciated : )