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2000 Conference Proceedings (Vancouver, BC, Adult Research Conference Canada)

Cultivating Imagination in Adult Education

Ron Norman Castlegar, British Columbia, Canada

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Recommended Citation Norman, Ron (2000). "Cultivating Imagination in Adult Education," Adult Education Research Conference. https://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2000/papers/63

This is brought to you for free and open access by the Conferences at New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Adult Education Research Conference by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cultivating Imagination in Adult Education

Ron Norman Castlegar, British Columbia, Canada

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of imagination in teaching and , and to explore how Kieran Egan’s (1992) concept of “imaginative learning” contributes to adult edu- cation theory and practice.

Introduction look at imaginative learning’s place within a phi- The poet Archibald MacLeish (Williams, 1970, losophy of practice. p.887) once commented at the height of the Cold War that the “real crisis” facing modern society The Role of Imagination in Education wasn’t nuclear holocaust, but the demise of imagi- Egan contends that developing imagination is nation: crucial in education. The question that must be asked is: why? There are a whole range of . To me – not many others think so – the real For instance, imagination helps transcend conven- crisis in the life of our society is the crisis of tional thinking, or as Karen Hanson (1988, p. 138) the life of the imagination. Far more than we writes: “Imagination is what allows us to envision need an intercontinental missile or a moral possibilities in or beyond the actualities in which rearmament or a religious revival, we need to we are immersed.” Imagination is the ability to con- come alive again, to recover the virility of the sciously conceive of the unconventional, or, to imagination on which all earlier civilizations paraphrase Coleridge, it is thinking unsubdued by have been based: Coleridge’s ‘synthetic and habit and unshackled by custom. Imagination is also magical power’ by which ‘the whole soul of closely connected with . Immanual Kant man’ may be brought to activity and know l- ([1790] 1952, p. 134) notes: “The imagination is a edge may be known. powerful agent for creating as it were a second na- ture out of the material supplied to it by actual na- Nearly 35 years later, Kieran Egan (1992) ech- ture.” Then there is the role imagination plays in the oes MacLeish. However, the focus of Egan’s con- development of what Brian Sutton-Smith (1988, p. cern is not society, but education. Egan argues that 22) calls the “ concern”. Sutton-Smith educators are not doing enough to foster imagina- claims that people make of the world and of tion in students, that imagination has been relegated our in and that we to the dusty cloakroom at the back of the educa- items in narrative structures better than in logically- tional classroom. Just as significantly, the failure to organized lists. Imagination is not only a vital com- stimulate and develop the imagination in teaching ponent in the composition of narratives, but also in and learning shapes education theory and practice. narratives. As Northrup Frye (1963, “So much of the focus on students’ is in p. 49) points out: “The of listening to stories is a terms of logico-mathematical skills that our very basic training for the imagination.” concept of education becomes affected,” Egan says Egan has his own reasons for promoting imagi- (1992, p.5). nation’s importance in education. One is that In this paper I will examine the role of imagina- imagination plays a key role in the learning process. tion in education and explore a framework for de- There is a view common in both society at large and veloping what Egan calls “imaginative learning” in the education system that the is a (1992, p. 53). I will also out how imaginative sort of computer in which information is stored for learning fits within the broader goals of adult edu- later retrieval, such as on a test. Egan writes: “This cation. As well, I will identify and discuss potential has been going on so long and so ubiquitously in problems with imaginative learning. Finally, I will schools that the meaning of learning that is most common is this kind of mechanical and re- trieval” (p. 50). Egan argues, and I agree, that the knowledge, but also about the meaning that know l- human mind does not work in the same way as a edge has for the individual. He argues that what is computer and that our are quite unlike absent from what he calls the “neo-conservative computer “memories”: curriculum”, which stresses knowing a lot, is “at- tention to, and a clear sense of, how knowledge be- The human mind does not simply store facts comes meaningful in the lives of learners; how we discretely when it learns. Perhaps it can do can ensure that students engage, in the sense I am this, and we might occasionally use this ca- developing the phrase here, in imaginative learn- pacity to remember a phone number or a ing” (p.53). Teaching and learning which ignores shopping list in the absence of a piece of pa- the imagination--or what Egan calls “imaginative per. More typically when we learn even the learning”--ignores a central component that will simplest fact – that Vasco de Gama set off help learners to make meaning of their . from Lisbon to sail to Africa in 1497 or that Put another way, ensuring that knowledge and skills spiders have eight legs – we do not simply are meaningful requires engaging the imagination in lodge these as discrete data in our brains. the process of learning. When learned, they mix in with the complex of shifting emotions, memories, , A Framework for Developing and so on that constitute our mental lives . . Imaginative Learning .Whether and how we learn and retain these Egan provides a framework, or model, to help particular facts is affected by the complex of teachers plan lessons or units in such a way that meaning structures we already have in place, students’ imaginations will most likely be engaged. which in turn are affected by our emotions, However, the framework refrains from establishing intentions, and so on. (p. 50) learning objectives. Rather, taking a cue from Sut- ton-Smith’s emphasis on the narrative, the curric u- The point is that almost nothing emerges from lum is set within a narrative structure. Egan (p. 64) human in the same form that it was ini- points to the primary role that narrative can play in tially learned. All kinds of associations are made making meaning of experience: with each new fact or bit of data, and these associa- tions are constantly shifting and blending, being The development of the narrative capacities constructed, taken apart and reconstructed. And of the mind, of its ready use of metaphor, of imagination is a crucial part of that process. its integration of cognitive and affective, of Another why Egan believes imagination its sense-making and meaning-making, and is vital to education is related to Sutton-Smith’s of its overarching imagination, is of educa- of the “narrative concern”: imagination helps tional importance because these capacities provide meaning to experience and understanding are so central to our general capacity to make to knowledge. MacLeish makes this point when he meaning out of our experience. says that imagination is important, in part, because it is how “knowledge may be known”(p.887). In Barbara Hardy (1968, p. 5) goes even further in other words, it provides understanding that goes detailing narrative’s role in individual lives: “We beyond facts. Though he doesn’t call it “logico- in narrative, in narrative, remem- mathematical” thinking (as does Egan), MacLeish ber, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, is clearly critical of the trend toward thinking that revise, criticize, gossip, learn, hate and live by nar- relies solely, or even heavily, on facts: “We are de l- rative.” The development of the “narrative concern” uged with facts, but we have lost, or are losing, our is, arguably, educationally relevant to any teaching human ability to feel them. Which means that we practice. (By narrative, I don’t mean fictional nar- have lost or are losing our ability to comprehend the rative, but rather the narrative shaping of content). facts of our experience. . .” (p. 887). The narrative, then, forms the basis for the Egan makes a similar point when he says that framework. But what must be included within this education--by which he means the formal process narrative? Certainly, we must include characteris- of teaching and learning within an established tics that engage learners’ imaginations. Egan sug- structure--is not only about the accumulation of gests several, among them: transcendent human out, meaning-making is a crucial element of adult qualities that are central to the topic (and the affec- education. tive images they evoke) such as romance, wonder, Brookfield says one of the goals of adult educa- awe, heroism, revolt and idealism. Egan then sug- tion is assisting learners in the creation and re- gests pursuing the content through details and by creation of their worlds: humanizing the knowledge. All are designed to stimulate the learners’ imaginative lives It is likely that most facilitators will sooner Egan’s concept of imaginative learning is not or later fall unthinkingly into patterns of fa- without flaws. The paramount problem for teachers cilitation that supports structures of organ- of adult learners is its focus on students within the izational convenience and confirm learners’ to Grade 12 education system. In par- patterns of dependency learned in the school ticular, Egan structures his planning model for classroom but have little to do with assisting teachers of students aged eight to 15. The question adults to create, and re-create, their personal, that those in adult education must ask is: can the occupational, and political worlds. (1986, p. model serve adult learners? Egan acknowledges that 297) adult learners and adolescent students are not the same: “As the imagination goes through age- and Brookfield’s comments are remarkably like experience-related changes, so too do the charac- those of the poet MacLeish. In fact, MacLeish uses teristics of the narratives that students find engag- the very same word – “re-create” – to describe ing” (p. 71). imagination’s role in helping people to understand Clearly, there are differences between the way the world about them when he says that imagination an eight-year-old responds to narratives and the provides a “re-creation, in terms of human compre- way a 48-year-old responds to narratives; differ- hension, of the world we have” (p. 887). ences based on age and experience; and differences Mezirow (1990) also points to the role of not just of degree, but of kind. For instance, the meaning and understanding in adult education. He eight-year-old is still in the early stages of forming defines adult education as a process of reflection and shaping meaning, while the 48-year-old may and action, adding: have many meaning-structures already in place. As well, developments in bring with them From this vantage point, adult education be- other intellectual tools for making sense of knowl- comes the process of assisting those who are edge and of experience – tools like analysis, refle c- fulfilling adult roles to understand the tion and reason. meaning of their experience by participating However, such differences do not negate the more fully and freely in rational discourse to value of imaginative learning, with its meaning- validate expressed and to take action making capacities. Nor do such differences negate upon the resulting . . . Rational the role that narrative can play for adult learners. and action are cardinal goals of adult Rather, teachers of adult learners have to ensure education. (p. 354) that they construct narratives with characteristics that will engage their students. That may require Again, one of the key reasons for teaching some experimentation. And though the framework imaginative learning is to give meaning to experi- has been structured to engage the imaginations of ence and understanding to knowledge. younger students, it can still make a valuable con- As well, Habermas (1971) identifies meaning- tribution to adult education. making as a key to adult learning. He describes three types of knowledge that are critical to adult The Role of Imaginative Learning learning: instrumental knowledge, practical knowl- in Adult Education edge and emancipatory knowledge. His definition That contribution may be glimpsed, in part, in of practical knowledge refers to making meaning of imaginative learning’s capacity for meaning- knowledge. making. As Stephen Brookfield (1986), Jurgen Patricia Cranton (1996) points out that all three Habermas (1971) and Jack Mezirow (1990) point forms of knowledge are valid and necessary. How- ever, like Egan, she says that instrumental knowl- edge has been pervasively applied to inappropriate No doubt someone could, as it were, fill in domains, such as adult education: “For adult edu- the blanks by answering the framework’s cators, there is important instrumental knowledge, questions in a routine and dull way. But the and we should not trivialize this. On the other hand, call on teachers to construct affective images what we cannot do is view all of learning about requires primarily that they vivify their own teaching as the acquisition of instrumental know l- feelings with regard to the subject matter. edge” (p. 21). This framework cannot be adequately used if Imaginative learning clearly has a role to play in planning is seen solely as a conceptual task; developing meaning, which is in turn a key element it has to be also an affective task. (p. 113) of adult education. But imaginative learning can also play a crucial part in two other aspects of adult The problem for many teachers is that we are not education: critical reflection and transformative sufficiently attentive to our own feelings with re- learning. Cranton notes that the components of gard to the subject matter. We are often unaware of Brookfield’s are: “identifying and the affective images. Too commonly, we focus on challenging assumptions, exploring and imagining the concepts or the content that we want to get alternatives, and analysis and action” (1996, p. 80). across to students. Becoming better attuned to the The ability to identify and challenge assumptions affective components of our subject matter is involves stepping outside conventional thinking, clearly an area of professional development that which is clearly the domain of imagination, as Han- deserves further exploration1. Egan even suggests son (1988) indicates. But even more directly con- that learning how to engage students’ imaginations nected to imaginative learning is the component should have a “central place in teacher-preparation that Brookfield calls “imagining alternatives”, programs” (p. 114). which requires that people “break with existing If engaging the imagination is to be more than a patterns of thought and action” (1987, p. 117). skill or technique, and if teachers themselves are to Cranton says this feature is “one of the characteris- be imaginatively engaged, then imaginative learn- tics of critical reflection that makes it central to ing requires a place within a teacher’s overall phi- transformative learning” (p. 91). She also suggests losophy of practice. Cranton (1992) and Brookfield how adult learners might go about “imagining al- (1986) suggest that educators develop a broader ternatives”. All of the suggestions involve the view of professional practice. This broader view imagination. For instance, she suggests (paraphras- should include an of the educator’s own ing Brookfield): philosophy and beliefs about working with learners. Brookfield writes: “Technique is, after all, only a Immersion in an aesthetic or artistic experi- means to broader ends” (1986, p. 289). And Cran- ence can lead to imagining alternatives, espe- ton points out that if adult educators accept, even in cially for people who normally think in linear part, that transformative learning for emancipatory problem-solving ways. Brookfield (1987) education is the business of all adult educators, then suggests writing poetry, creating , “we must go beyond techniques--or minimally, we drawing, photography, songwriting, and must think about and question the techniques we dramatizing problems or situations as some use and the bases for them” (1992, p. 3-4). That media for stimulating imagination of alterna- said, I believe that teachers need to understand why tives. (p. 91) they are using imaginative learning and how it fits within their own practice. It is plain that imagination is a key part of criti- cal reflection, which in turn is central to transfor- Summary mative learning. I have tried to show the contribution that Egan’s Imaginative learning is connected to adult edu- idea of “imaginative learning” can make to adult cation practice in Egan’s (1992) comment that en- education theory and practice. In particular, I have gaging students’ imaginations is not simply a matter explored how imaginative learning relates to several of technique. Teachers must themselves be imagi- key concepts in adult education, such as making natively engaged: meaning out of experience and knowledge, critical reflection, and transformative learning. This does Habermas, Jurgen. (1971). Knowledge and Human not mean that there are still not problems with Interests. Boston: Beacon Press. Egan’s framework, which is designed for younger Hanson, Karen. (1988). 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