Kieran Egan

Simon Fraser University · Faculty of Education

We propose that teacher candidates need to have extended experiences with learning to teach imaginatively , which is to say that teacher candidates need to have experiences that enable them to consider new possibilities in education. We first attend to the general theoretical framework offered by imaginative education before moving on to consider t...

The “Learning in Depth” program is a simple but radical innovation, which was first implemented in Canada in 2008/2009 and is now being used in a dozen countries with many thousand students. The aim of the program is to ensure that every student becomes an expert on something during schooling. The unusualness of the program and the fact that it sti...

Imagination is rarely acknowledged as one of the main workhorses of learning. Unfortunately, disregarding the imagination has some clearly negative pedagogical impacts: Learning is more ineffective than it should be and much schooling is more tedious than it need be. In this paper, we outline a somewhat new way of thinking about the process of stud...

Teacher education programs attend relatively little to some areas that are crucial to an adequate education. Such programs tend to provide preservice teachers with inadequate opportunities to develop skills in how to develop students' imaginative engagement in learning, skills of story-shaping curriculum content, locating affective images in curric...

These accounts of the implementation of best practices, including mentoring, social and emotional learning, teacher leadership, and community involvement, illustrate instances where the knowing-doing gap has been bridged to create positive outcomes for students. Thoughtful practitioners will be inspired by this compendium of innovative ideas that h...

It has long been argued that being educated entails satisfying two criteria: first, one must know many things about the world and, second, one must know something in significant depth. There have been a number of proposals for attaining the depth criterion, none either clear or very successful. A curriculum innovation from Canada called ' Learning...

Students’ ready engagement in electronic games and the relative ease with which they sometimes learn complex rules have intrigued some educators and learning researchers. There has been growing interest in studying electronic gaming with the aim of trying to work out how learning principles that are evident in games can be harnessed to make everyda...

Imagination is the Source of Creativity and Invention – This series of essays has been collected expressly to bring readers new ideas about imagination and creativity in education that will stimulate discussion and debate. In a world that has leaped forward through creative innovation, an educational paradigm that seldom encourages thinking about t...

El artículo presenta la investigación del Grupo de Investigación de Educación Imaginativa (GIEI) en su trabajo que enfoca en la imaginación y en las emociones de los niños, la maneras en que las mismas se pueden comprometer en el aprendizaje diario en la clase. El trabajo muestra de qué modo estas herramientas se pueden insertar en un marco de plan...

Some Cognitive Tools of AdolescentsAn Inventory of Adolescents' Learning ToolsConclusion

Both local and global issues are typically dealt with in the Social Studies curriculum, or in curriculum areas with other names but similar intents. In the literature about Social Studies the imagination has played little role, and consequently it hardly appears in texts designed to help teachers plan and implement Social Studies lessons. What is t...

Nearly everyone who has tried to describe an image of the educated person, from Plato to the present, includes at least two requirements: first, educated people must be widely knowledgeable and, second, they must know something in depth. The authors would like to advocate a somewhat novel approach to "learning in depth" (LiD) that seems likely to m...

This article discusses the role of students’ imagination in classroom pedagogy. Using a constructivist framework the authors argue that engaging students’ creativity and imagination will result in quality learning and teaching.

This is a philosophical treatment of the conceptual and normative aspects of topics which are currently a matter of policy debate in education. The authors have focussed on such concepts as liberty, autonomy, equality and pluralism, and have provided a philosophical commentary which relates these concepts both to a background of philosophical liter...

This engaging book presents a frontal attack on current forms of schooling and a radical rethinking of the whole education process. Kieran Egan, a prize-winning scholar and innovative thinker, does not rail against teachers, administrators, or politicians for the failures of the school. Instead he argues that education today is built on a set of mu...

Spencer’s (1969) principles derive from thinking of children’s minds largely in terms of literacy-induced capacities, and forgetting that before they are literate, and also after they are literate, they also have the capacities of orality. The central fact of our minds from an educational point of view is not their biological nature, and all that f...

References to the past have taken one or another of two general forms, which we call mythic and historical, or a mix of the two. We tend to think of mythic accounts of the past as belonging to oral cultures and historical forms to be one of the “consequences of literacy.” Mythic accounts have tended to refer to an original beginning whose events ar...

For the educator interested in such topics as how to engage children in becoming more fluently literate, Vygotsky has offered a crucially important insight. Before his work ’ and, of course, still commonly the case for those who have been unable to see its richer implications for education – approaches to education generally have tended to take one...

This article proposes to explain why education is so difficult and contentious by arguing that educational thinking draws on only three fundamental ideas-that of socializing the young, shaping the mind by a disciplined academic curriculum, sand facilitating the development of students' potential. All educational positions are made up of various mix...

Educational writing commonly announces new approaches that lay claim to conforming with children's natural learning and development. Almost invariably such approaches repeat principles that were given a modern form in the 1850s in the writings of Herbert Spencer. His great but unacknowledged influence has discouraged recognition that humans are odd...

Somethingnew, irritatingandinexplicablehappenedtomost of thecitizens of Europe in the sixteenth century. Prices for staples like food and clothing begantorise. Theaveragecitizenblamedclothessellers for greedilyraising their prices. The clothes sellers protested that they were no more greedy than usual, and that the problem was due to the greed of t...

The Educated Mind offers a bold and revitalizing new vision for today's uncertain educational system. Kieran Egan reconceives education, taking into account how we learn. He proposes the use of particular "intellectual tools"—such as language or literacy—that shape how we make sense of the world. These mediating tools generate successive kinds...

Examines classic fairy tales, noting the lack of attention given the role of imagination in children's learning. Discusses features of fairy stories such as structure, oppositional concepts, and emotional component, then infers four principles about young children's learning. Gives two examples of how these principles can influence teaching to be i...

Conceptions of learning that influence teaching practice and curriculum structure have been largely derived from research on non-narrative tasks. If we focus on children's capacities as evident in their engagement with narratives, we are led towards conceptions of learning, practices, and curriculum structures that conflict dramatically with some o...

Drawing upon scholarship in the classics and in anthropology, Kieran Egan traces the richness of oral forms of expression used in non-literate societies from ancient times to the present. In the absence of written records, these peoples have used a particular array of intellectual resources and strategies in order to make sense of their world and t...

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. A Very Short History of the Imagination 2. Why is Imagination Important to Education 3. Characteristics of Students' Imaginative Lives, Ages 8-15 4. Imagination and Teaching 5. Image and Concept 6. Some Further Examples Conclusion References Index

Romanticism, romantic understanding, and education the transition to literacy reality and its limits associating with the transcendent human and inhuman knowledge rebellion, ideals and boredom the romantic imagination and philosophic ending cultural recapitulation - some comments on theory a romantic curriculum romantic teaching.

Book review discusses Howard Gardner's belief that schools typically fail in their most important missions, and accurate diagnosis is necessary for more effective education. Gardner recommends educating disciplinary experts who can help students integrate prescholastic and scholastic ways of knowing. A response by Gardner is included. (SM)

Considering children's mental life in terms of educational interests tends to direct attention towards future attainments. In relation to these aims, the mental life of young children is commonly seen in terms of little knowledge, narrow experience, and generally lacking the qualities which the process of education is designed to bring about. If we...

Educational researchers have traditionally drawn on psychology for methods of seeking knowledge of practical educational value. In turn, the dominant branches of psychology have striven to become more rigorous and scientific by drawing on the methods of the physical sciences. This general development has had beneficial effects on the rigour with wh...

Discusses four types of historical understanding and argues for a developmental sequence in historical understanding. Suggests two frameworks: (1) the story-form framework (ages up to 8) and; (2) a romantic framework (ages 8-15), sketching a curriculum based on each. Argues that these forms are necessary for acquiring more sophisticated levels of h...

Explores the profound connection between human memory and imagination. Educational ideas that find only incompatibility between memorizing and developing imagination and procedural skills are inadequate. Viewing teaching as story telling transforms the curriculum from a huge mass of predigested material to a collection of great stories reflecting o...

One of the most influential ideas in the history of the world was shaped by the ancient Persian Zarathustra, whom the Greeks called Zoroaster. Human life, he said, is part of a cosmic battle between good and evil, between Mazda, the good force, and Ahriman, the evil. When political and military leaders of America and the USSR talk about each other,...

Prominent in teacher preparation programs and in "methods" courses in departments and faculties of education are planning procedures derived from the "Tyler rationale." A key part of these procedures involves beginning the planning process by stating objectives. These procedures, and particularly planning-by-objectives, have been much criticized. A...

"I am very impressed by the practicality of [Egan's] introduction of the use of story-forms in curriculum for young children. His model is fascinating, and its various possibilities in a range of fields makes it worth a good look by many kinds of teachers."—Maxine Greene, Teachers College, Columbia

The purpose of this article is to discuss three ideas which seem to have had a profound influence in making the social studies curriculum what it is: the belief that one must begin all teaching and learning from the child's everyday experience, the distinction between natural and formal education, and the distinction between socializing and educati...

account of the main incidents. Other common uses differ from this primarily in their degree of abstraction from the narrative, leading to a more or less pronounced form/content distinction. At an intermediate stage of abstraction, "plot" is seen as the arrangement of the incidents, or as the relationship both among incidents and between each incide...

Suggests that educators will increase learning if they base curriculum on children's thinking patterns. Discusses prominent characteristics of young children's thinking and selection of content appropriate to these thinking patterns. (DB)

This paper explores the kind of secondary social studies curriculum which would result from beginning with students' developing forms of cognition. Most psychological theories say little about secondary school years, and even Piaget makes no distinction within his stage of “formal operations” that reflects the profound changes in secondary students...

It is a widespread belief that students will more readily learn and understand material if it is made relevant to their everyday experience. This truism is com-monly interpreted to exclude students' imaginative life as an element of everyday experience. This article explores students' imaginative lives and considers impli-cations for attempts to ma...

Excerpt from Working Paper No. 5, The Centre for Literacy, 2001 [This Working Paper is a condensed version of a manuscript that Kieran Egan submitted for the UNESCO Award for Research in Adult Literacy in 1999. When the judges met in April 2000, they agreed that because the submission was not based on empirical research, it could not be given the a...

Traducción de: The Educated Mind

Traducción de: Ethics and educational policy Incluye bibliografía e índice

Traducción de: Primary understanding : education in early childhood Incluye bibliografía e índice

Traducción de: Teaching as story telling. An alternative approach to teaching and curriculum in the elementary shool Incluye bibliografía e índice Reimpresión en 1999