What is Imaginative Education

In 2006 Professor Kieran Egan cited Wordsworth's line, "Imagination...is reason in her most exalted mood." He was using the poets's words to cast imagination in a new light. One tenet of Egan's educational philosophy understands the imagination not as a flight of fancy but a cognitive tool. One that oversees a host of other 'tools' and is developed along with them. Imagination is the power to see the possible. In order to develop the imagination we need skills, cognitive tools and knowledge, including rational thinking. Stemming from Lev Vygotsky's work in a sociocultural understanding of higher psychological processes, Egan created a new educational model for learning and teaching based on the imagination and emotional engagement.

As the quote on the home page states, all human knowledge is the result of human hopes, fears, passions or ingenuity. In order for our students to grasp the meaning of the squiggles and symbols found in our written language and metaphors in oral language, we must bring to life the emotional aspect inherent in them. Simply decoding them is not enough. The development of oral language and literacy bring with them unique tools of understanding to transmit and comprehend those meanings. Students must do more than simply memorize the knowledge, but make it their own. They must make it meaningful to themselves.

Imaginative Education is much more complex than I have stated here and I have provided links that can elucidate the components further. The seminars and presentations offered here are designed to show teachers how they can tap into and enhance their lessons and units in the core subjects. Educating our students is a difficult process. Teaching and learning can be frustrating at times as we struggle to illuminate concepts and students strive to understand them.

The programs and strategies offered through this website are intended to add to the teacher's arsenal of strategies to bring the curricular content and concepts to life. By considering the emotions, images, stories, metaphors, sense of wonder, heroic narratives and other cognitive tools, we can bring life and energy to the content and concepts. It is my intention to continue spreading the teachings of Professor Egan and Imaginative Education through seminars and workshops to teach various IE programs: Learning In Depth, Imaginative Ecological Education, Imaginative Literacy Program.

Come and find out how imagination is "reason in her exalted mood."

*IERG (Imaginative Education Research Group) has been renamed is is now called The Centre for Imagination in Research, Culture and Education. CIRCE