An Imaginative Approach to Teaching - Softcover

Egan, Kieran

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0470928484 ISBN 13: 9780470928486

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2005

Synopsis

In this book, award-winning educator Kieran Egan shows how we can transform the experience of K-12 students and help them become more knowledgeable and more creative in their thinking. At the core of this transformative process is imagination which can become the heart of effective learning if it is tied to education's central tasks. An Imaginative Approach to Teaching is a groundbreaking book that offers an understanding of how students' imaginations work in learning and shows how the acquisition of cognitive tools drives students' educational development. This approach is unique in that it engages both the imagination and emotions. The author clearly demonstrates how knowledge comes to life in students' minds if it is introduced in the context of human hopes, fears, and passions. To facilitate this new educational approach, the book includes a wide variety of effective teaching tools - such as story, rhythm, play, opposition, agency, and meta-narrative understanding - that value and build upon the way children understand their experiences. Most important, Egan provides frameworks for lesson planning and more than a dozen sample lessons to show how teachers can use these tools to awaken intelligence and imagination in the classroom.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

How can we best help children through each stage of that long educational journey from pre-literate kindergarten to complex abstract thinking in high school?

In this book, award-winning educator Kieran Egan shows how we can transform the experience of K-12 students and help them become more knowledgeable and more creative in their thinking. At the core of this transformative process is imagination—which can become the heart of effective learning if it is tied to education's central tasks.

An Imaginative Approach to Teaching is a groundbreaking book that offers an understanding of how students' imaginations work in learning and shows how the acquisition of cognitive tools drives students' educational development. This approach is unique in that it engages both the imagination and emotions. The author clearly demonstrates how knowledge comes to life in students' minds if it is introduced in the context of human hopes, fears, and passions. To facilitate this new educational approach, the book includes a wide variety of effective teaching tools—such as story, rhythm, play, opposition, agency, and meta-narrative understanding—that value and build upon the way children understand their experiences. Most important, Egan provides frameworks for lesson planning and more than a dozen sample lessons to show how teachers can use these tools to awaken intelligence and imagination in the classroom.

Teachers, teacher educators, and staff development professionals will find this book to be an invaluable resource for understanding the theoretical underpinnings and practical strategies for effectively engaging students' imaginations.

From the Back Cover:

Praise for an imaginative approach to teaching

"As we come to expect from Kieran Egan, this book is imaginative, engaging, wise, and practical. A terrific resource for teachers at every level."
—Nel Noddings, author, Happiness and Education and Lee Jacks Professor of Education Emerita, Stanford University

"Kieran Egan's work on imagination and learning has addressed our needs as teachers to foster more creative thinking within our classrooms. Tapping into this creative energy has added a whole new level of fascination, not to mention fulfillment, to our 'middle years' teaching. We encourage all educators to use the book to put this unbelievable theory into practice in the near future!"
—Anne-Marie Dooner, Peter Obendoerfer, Nicole Marie Kerbrat, and Principal Verland Hicks, middle school educators, Ecole Leila North Community School, Winnipeg, Manitoba

About this edition

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0470928484
• ISBN 13: 9780470928486
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272