This is the 206th article of Zhishutang, the article length is 5016 words, and it takes 7-8 minutes to read
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > introduction</h1>
Kieran Egan makes a fascinating and effective review of the important role of imagination in learning. He explains how teachers should use their imagination to make students more passionate about learning, learning more efficiently, and achieving higher test scores. Egan elucidates some important cognitive tools for teachers and outlines the difficulties teachers may encounter in the process of emotionally connecting with and using their own imagination in a teaching environment. Zhishutang recommends Egan's novel and convincing teaching method to all teachers, educational administrators, and all readers who want to improve their learning efficiency and receptivity.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > shorthand</h1>
If teachers can stimulate the imagination of their students, they can learn better and achieve higher test scores.
Students' imagination and emotions work together.
"Imaginative teaching" is necessary, but because it requires teachers to be passionate about the material being taught, teachers find this method difficult to grasp and sometimes off topic.
Teachers must find the "emotional importance" of the subjects taught in order to gain an emotional connection with the student.
The imaginative pedagogy has three main cognitive tools, which are: "linguistic, cultural knowledge and theoretical thinking".
Boredom is the natural enemy of learning.
Storytelling, metaphors, and jokes are useful language tools that stimulate students' imaginations.
Other cultural knowledge tools available include guessing, reading poetry, rhythm, playing games, doing things of interest, and even small talk.
Teachers cannot feel that imagination is not important to the basic curriculum.
Teachers should think of the curriculum as "stories worth telling."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > Zhishutang reading notes</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" > students and imagination</h1>
The best way to encourage students and get them interested in learning is to spark their imagination. Teachers can use a variety of cognitive tools to plan and implement imagination in the daily classroom.
The current teaching goal is to teach students literacy and to learn math and science, and some teachers may fear that if the focus is on using the imagination, they will deviate from this goal. But in reality, imagination is essential for all forms of learning. No matter what subject is taught, stimulating students' imagination will enable them to learn better. This process involves not only the student's ability to imagine, but also their emotions. Imagination and emotion work together deep within. In order for students to grasp knowledge and remember it for a long time, teachers must bring knowledge to life. Imagination perfectly complements "three important multi-objective cognitive tools: language, cultural knowledge and theoretical thinking". If teachers can pay attention to imagination in the preparation and teaching process, then students will be more active in class and will achieve higher scores on standardized tests.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > basic learning</h1>
The main cognitive tools available for basic learning include:
"Storytelling" – Storytelling is the foundation of all oral culture. Give imaginative and emotional meaning to the subject to be taught through stories. Think of the lesson you're teaching as "a good story to tell." When curating this story, consider the following four questions: "What is the emotional content of this story?" "How does this story pique students' curiosity?" "What's the best way to "organize story content" to impress students? How can teachers "convey emotional meaning and thus stimulate students' imaginations"?
"Metaphor" – this cognitive tool allows people to understand a concept in terms of other things. For example, "He got out of trouble through his own efforts (literally translated as he stood up with his boots pulled on, a phrase that uses metaphorical rhetoric). Metaphors are essential to "all human mental activity." Shakespeare was a master of metaphor, so his work still resonates hundreds of years later. Use metaphors more. Have students focus on metaphors and analyze metaphorical comparisons, let them create their own metaphors, or share memorable metaphors they've learned.
"Duality" – Humans, especially children, tend to divide them into two completely opposing aspects in order to better understand things. For example, "good or bad, high or low, hot or cold". Psychologist Bruno Beithan points out that children ensure that everything in their world is in order by dividing things into completely opposite sides. Children's literature shows the role of duality: "Adventures in the Jungle Forest" tells children what is "safe" and what is "fear"; "Cinderella" tells children the opposite of "vanity" and "humility". Wise use of duality allows children to remember the concepts taught by the teacher in the classroom.
"Rhythm, Rhythm and Pattern" – The human brain is particularly fond of the patterns and rhythms of nature, such as the sound of splashing stones and the murmuring of water. For a long time, people used the three cognitive tools of prosody, rhythm, and pattern as an auxiliary means of memory. From the early days of oral culture to the present day, "patterned voices" have been used to convey and teach important ideas. Write some original rhymes with your students that convey information. Have students refine these original rhymes, or let them create some of their own.
"Jokes and humor" – "When is the door not the door?" "When the door is half open." (The "semi-open" English is ajar, which is synonymous with a jar.) While this joke works better when spoken orally, it at least shows that telling a joke makes the language more vivid. Humor is a very useful tool for teachers because the classroom is an "environment for verbal communication." Jokes that are homophonic like the above focus on the language itself, and at the same time have educational value and can make students happy. Primary and secondary school students who pay more attention to language itself can enhance their "metacognitive awareness", which can promote their intellectual development.
"Mental imagery" – words can create mental imagery, although not entirely accurate: the brain has an infinite imagination. For example, the brain can "imagine an image of a taste." If communication evokes memories, the more images can be built in the reader's mind. To apply this idea to the lesson preparation process, it is necessary to know that the more distinctive and bizarre the image, the longer it remains in the student's memory. When teaching students concepts, add vivid imagery so that students can remember these concepts more firmly.
"Gossip" – "gossip" is derived from the word godsibb, meaning "a man who has a connection with God," similar to godparent. Anthropologists believe that small talk is the early stage in which language begins to develop. Small talk is a casual way of telling a story, and it's probably the oldest cognitive tool used verbally. Students often make small talk together or gossip about each other. So, teachers talk about the lives of mathematicians, scientists, explorers, and writers so that students can get involved.
"Games" – Educators know that playing games can stimulate students' interest in learning and liberate students' minds. Children are able to have fun in the game by playing roles and following carefully crafted rules. So, take advantage of the educational implications of the game. Children can be allowed to play creative, competitive games that need to be explored on their own, or they can play board games or guessing games. Any lesson can be adapted into a game so that students can take on roles and play as they are deeply involved in learning.
"Guessing" - Cracking puzzles can help students learn knowledge and improve comprehension. Puzzles enable students to understand that no matter how knowledgeable they think they are, they can still learn more. This motivates students to constantly discover new things.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="31" > "cultural knowledge"</h1>
Small children can sometimes be unrealistic. They have imaginary friends who feel that Santa Claus is real and live in the world of their own fantasies. When children reach the age of seven or eight, they enter the stage of learning cultural knowledge. The main cognitive tools for learning cultural knowledge include:
"Realism" – The fairy tale "Jack and the Magic Bean" is very meaningful to small children, because they do not question whether magic beans really exist in the world, nor do they doubt how giants can live in heaven. As children grow older, they begin to want to read or see logical stories or movies— like Star Wars. This stems from their growing sense of realism and connection to reality. Children give up fantasies when they grow up. As children's cultural knowledge increases, educators must use the synergy of the logic of reality and the illusion to stimulate students' imagination.
"Extreme Experiences and Limits of Reality" – As reality replaces the fantasy world in children's minds, the boundaries of nature can also stimulate children's interests in the same way as the world itself. This explains why kids are fascinated by the Guinness Book of World Records and the quirky reports in it. Like "Who can pull the heaviest thing with their teeth?" Such questions can let children know that "moderate scale" exists. Focus on the limits and unusual content that exist in the subject, so as to control your child's interest in various extreme situations in reality.
"Connect with heroes" – When children reach the age of 10 to 11, they are subject to the countless rules and regulations made for them by their parents, schools and communities, including "car timetables, teachers' requirements, school rules, parental orders, dress codes, and so on." There are some heroic figures that seem to be able to break the shackles of people, and agree that these heroic images can help children cope with the rules that limit them. The qualities of people embodied in heroes inspire young people more than the heroes themselves. Find ways to make every element of each subject a "hero" in your child's mind.
"Wonder" – many of nature's landscapes – "mountain views, golden sunsets, great waterfalls, vast spaces" – can inspire a sense of wonder. This sense of wonder is triggered by nature, and it can push people to explore knowledge. As Yeats wrote, "Everything we see is a blessing." The phrase "I want to know..." is the starting point for all scientific exploration. If you can show some wonderful things in the classroom and explore these wonderful things with students, then you can make good use of the power of surprise.
"Collecting and Hobbies" – Few educators pay attention to students' "hobbies and collections." Students' intellectual commitment to their interests and collections is unmatched by any other activity. However, most educators do not take advantage of the enthusiasm that students put into their hobbies. But in Imaginative Classroom, teachers can take advantage of students' interest in collecting and have them add names of different things to classroom posters about teaching topics. For example, students can collect information about the largest birds, the most beautiful birds, the most exotic birds, endangered birds, and so on.
"Defiance and Idealism" – All students will try to understand the adult roles they will assume in the future. They will be resistant to these characters because they feel that many of the bad things in the world are done by adults. Most students ideally want to act like adults, but in reality they are not. Teachers can take advantage of this motivation of students by discussing with students conventions that prevent them from maintaining their ideal goals, and the lives of those who succeed in defeating them.
"Changing the environment" – boredom is the natural enemy of learning. If the teacher always tells the student something that they are already familiar with, then the student will start to get bored. Getting the lectures as motivating as possible is an uphill struggle. The "immutable nature of the classroom" can quickly lose interest in the most motivated and eager students. If you want to breathe new life into the content of the classroom, you can change the context of the teacher's teaching. For example, when teaching science, the teacher can play Marie Curie and then introduce her pioneering research from Marie Curie's perspective.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="40" > "theoretical thinking"</h1>
By the time students reach their teens, their thinking becomes more complex and they think about analytical problems from a theoretical perspective. Use the following key cognitive tools to develop students' theoretical thinking skills:
"Abstract Realism" – As students age, their ability to grasp abstract concepts increases. The use of "theoretical language" in classroom discussions helps students improve their ability to grasp abstract concepts. For example, a dictionary with etymology can give you an idea of the evolution of important—and teachable—words and concepts. For example, the word "society" originated from the Latin word "socius." Consider going further with the word "companion," which literally means "the one who shares bread." This allows you to bring the whole class to life with one word.
"Sense of involvement" – Older students come to realize that they are no longer passive observers of the world, they are active participants, able to bring about change, move things forward, and see themselves as "part of the course of history." Urging students to participate in educational activities can help them strengthen their "sense of involvement." Involve students in elections, interviews with the elderly, and exchanges with politicians on important issues. Teachers can also have students write letters to "historical figures" as part of a teaching activity.
"Grasping the general and the unusual" – Abstract thinking is based on a mature perspective that can be general and then special, and see any event as part of "a process, a system, a whole". Older students think abstractly, not as irrelevant, independent events, but as elements of the general process. For example, Columbus's discovery of the Americas was only part of a larger narrative context involving "royal investment" and "the character of European culture," both good and bad. When teaching historical events to students, it is necessary to tell the historical events in a larger historical process.
"The Search for Authority and Truth" – Abstract thinking involves a rational exploration of knowledge. Young people are skeptical of the established truth, even the most inconspicuous of facts. They must independently determine the correctness of these concepts. As students learn more and more, their evaluation of things and the decisions they make after evaluation will become more and more nuanced. Students who know how to think abstractly need materials that satisfy their rapidly growing intellectual curiosity and rising intellectual level.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="46" > the imagination of teachers</h1>
Focusing on imagination in teaching is very challenging for many educators. If teachers want to mobilize students' emotions, they need to find the trigger point of students' emotions in each teaching content. This step has confused some teachers.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="64" > "All knowledge is about man, it is the product of human hope, fear, and enthusiasm." The most basic way to bring knowledge to life is to use the emotions that gave birth to knowledge in the first place. ”</h1>
In a seminar on "Imaginative Pedagogy," a teacher asked, "Are you saying that if fractions or punctuation don't excite me, then I can't effectively teach that knowledge to students?" "Of course not. Teachers must be passionate about the subject they teach, while also guiding students to have the same enthusiasm for the subject. Otherwise, the teaching materials will be "meaningless".
Discover and use the "emotional importance" of the topic being taught, which is the core meaning of the topic. If this is done, there will be motivation in the teaching process and will motivate students to learn better and more.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="51" > author profile</h1>
Educational philosopher Kieran Egan is the director of the Imaginative Pedagogy Research Group, which supports the concept of imaginative pedagogy.
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