developing minds and imaginations
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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
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