Developing minds and imaginations

1. Developing minds and imaginations A Brief Introduction to Imaginative Education Vancouver Community College February 8, 2012 Kieran Egan & Gillian Judson

2. 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.

3. 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)

4. Somatic Understanding understand experience in a physical, proto-linguistic wayphysically relates to the objects and persons encountered

5. the body’s toolkit • bodily senses • emotional responses & attachments • humor & expectations • musicality, rhythm, & pattern • gesture & communication “little factories of understanding” Ted Hughes

6. Mythic Understanding understand experience through oral languagenow rely on language to discuss, represent, and understand even things not experienced in person

7. 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

8. story

9. abstraction and emotion • The structure of children’s fantasy: • articulated on binary oppositions; • abstract; • affective. • Concrete content requires abstract concepts.

10. affective images • teacher and Japanese garden • image and concept in teaching • image and emotion

11. 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

12. sense of mystery and puzzles • Isaac Newton as an old man • representing the world as known, and rather dull. • What a wonderful adventure!

13. 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

14. examples • properties of the air • place value

15. your turn… Shaping Topics: Abstract Binary Oppositions

16. 3 topics—take your pick magnets (elementary science curriculum) sentence or paragraph writing (elementary language arts curriculum) locomotor / non-locomotor movement (elementary physical education curriculum)

17. the toolkit of Mythic Understanding • story • abstract and affective binary opposites • affective mental images • jokes and humor • metaphor • mystery and wonder

18. Romantic Understanding understand experience through written language

19. 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.

20. extremes and limits of reality

21. associating with the heroic

22. romance, wonder, and awe

23. matters of detail

24. humanizing knowledge

25. 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.

26. Romantic planning framework 1. Identifying “heroic” qualities 2. 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 passions 2.4. Employing additional Romantic cognitive tools 2.5. Drawing on tools of previous kinds of understanding 3. Resources 4. Conclusion 5. Evaluation

27. examples • punctuation • eels

28. your turn… Shaping Topics: Heroic Qualities

29. 3 topics—take your pick exploration (secondary social studies curriculum) statistics / probability (secondary math curriculum) basketball (secondary physical education curriculum)

30. 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

31. 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

32. 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

33. 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

34. Please contact us to give us your feedback, to join our online community, or to receive more information. egan@sfu.ca gcj@sfu.ca