Engaging children’s imagination and emotions in learning Conference on Imagination, Spirituality and Creativity in Early Childhood Education: The Neglected Side of the Curriculum Efrata College of Education, Jerusalem, Sept. 15 th Kieran Egan Simon Fraser University

Overview – Initial Questions What is new about IE? a new understanding of how knowledge grows in the mind, and how our imaginations work and change during our lives innovative teaching methods based on these insights offer new ways of planning and teaching So what is the imagination? ability to think of the possible, not just the actual source of invention, novelty, and flexibility in human thinking that greatly enriches rational thinking tied to our ability to form images and our emotions 2

Development of children’s minds Knowledge accumulation Psychological development Cognitive tool acquisition What are cognitive tools? 75,000 years ago to today. 3

Kinds of Understanding 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, pre-linguistic way

Somatic: the body’s toolkit Bodily senses Emotional responses & attachments Humor & expectations Musicality, rhythm, & pattern Gesture & communication Intentionality “little factories of understanding” Ted Hughes 6

bodily senses Minds and bodies--rather than enminded body and embodied mind. Mind spreads into senses Games that bring them together--plops, clicks and touch Basis for further understanding--Einstein and light waves; Taliban education minister. 7

emotional responses & attachments Orientors to knowledge throughout life Fundamental organizers of our cognition Expectation and frustration, or satisfaction “perfinkers” Setting us in a network of love & care 8

humour & expectations The smile appears at a uniform time in children everywhere, even deaf/blind Peek-a-boo The unexpected and incongruous Affectionate communication nets 9

musicality, pattern & rhythm Singing Neanderthals (Steven Mithen) Rhythm tracking Walking, marching, and dancing We are a musical animal Meaning in pattern 10

gesture & communication & intentionality Baby, cat, and door Novel combinations, from the beginning “interlock the infant’s growing mind with those of its caretakers and ultimately the broader society” Merlin Donald (1991, p. 255) 11

Mythic Understanding understand experience through oral language

Mythic cognitive tools: Story 13

Mythic cognitive tools: abstraction and emotion 14

Mythic cognitive tool: Opposites and Mediation 15

Mythic cognitive tools: Images Teacher and Japanese garden Image and concept in teaching Image and emotion 16

Mythic cognitive tools: Jokes and humor When is a door not a door? Observing language as an object, not just a behavior. Vivifies thought and language, and, incidentally, gives pleasure to life. 17

Mythic cognitive tools: Sense of mystery & wonder Isaac Newton as an old man Representing the world as known, and rather dull. What a wonderful adventure! 18

Mythic cognitive tools so far : Story Abstract and affective binary opposites Affective images Jokes and humor Mystery and wonder 19

From cognitive tools to planning teaching 20

Examples Teaching place value 21

Romantic Understanding understand experience through written language

Romantic cognitive tools: 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. 23

Romantic cognitive tools: Extremes and limits of reality 24

Romantic cognitive tools: associating with the heroic 25

Romantic cognitive tools: matters of detail 26

Romantic cognitive tools: humanizing knowledge 27

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Examples Teaching about eels Teaching “interior opposite angles of a parallelogram are congruent” 29

Conclusion 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. 30