CAPTURE THE IMAGINATION
What does this mean?
To capture the imagination is to teach in ways that develop our students’ capacity for imagination; both as an end in itself and to facilitate other forms of learning. To 'capture' the imagination, then, is at once to awaken and release the imagination of students.
Imagination is often defined as the capacity to form mental images and ideas. More broadly, it can be understood as a capacity for sense-making that enables us to interpret the world and construct meaning from our experiences. Imagination affects, and is in turn affected by, memory, perception and emotion.
The ability to think about what is possible (and not merely what is actual or immediately present to our senses) is a key feature of the imagination. As such, the imagination plays an important role in problem solving and creative thinking more generally.
Our capacity for empathy is arguably a form of moral imagination that involves imagining what others’ experience is like and how they might feel and think. Through empathy, our awareness of others is increased and this can give rise to greater concern for others and an enlarged sense of moral community.
As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other and learn something about ourselves.
Martha Nussbaum
Why is this important?
IMAGINATION:
- Promotes understanding between people and helps students to empathise with others
- Develops students' capacity for sense-making and making meaning from their experiences.
- Plays a crucial role in idea generation and therefore promotes creativity and innovation.
- Excites interest in learning.
- Develops aesthetic sensibility.
- Aids memory and supports the process of knowledge retrieval.
- Helps students to see connections between ideas and make links between areas of learning.
- Supports divergent thinking and problem solving.
Without imagination we should be lost; for only with its help can we interpret our experience, and thus make use of it in understanding what and where we are, and what we need to do.
Mary Warnock
How can this be applied in practice?
USE STORIES TO ORGANISE LESSON CONTENT
Use stories to organise lesson content (this could include elements of biography, personal narratives and life stories). Situate learning within a narrative structure that engages students emotionally. Use narrative structures to both ground and enliven abstract concepts and ideas.
ENCOURAGE METAPHORICAL THINKING IN CLASS
Encourage students to think metaphorically and to create new associations between ideas. Use metaphors to exemplify ideas and deepen students’ understanding of curricular content.
USE THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS TO EXPLORE IDEAS
Conduct thought experiments that require students to consider imagined scenarios in order to think through possible consequences of courses of action. Plan learning scenarios that incorporate elements of role play, improvisation and simulation.
DEVELOP STUDENTS' CAPACITY FOR EMPATHY
Design tasks that develop students’ capacity for empathy and encourage them to imagine others’ worlds (including, where appropriate, the ‘worlds’ of non-human others, for example animals).
CONSIDER THINGS FROM MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
Plan learning that requires students to engage imaginatively with different perspectives and viewpoints.
Encourage students to ‘inhabit’ these perspectives rather than treating them merely ‘intellectually.’
ATTEND TO THE AFFECTIVE DIMENSION OF LEARNING
Develop learning materials that evoke an emotional response in students. Plan for this affective dimension of learning to promote student engagement with lesson content and facilitate the process of sense making.
ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO PICTURE INFORMATION
Guide students imaginatively by encouraging them to envisage subject matter in a physical or geographical context. Use language and imagery to ‘transport’ students to these places. At a more basic level, use dual coding to enhance the ways students encode, retain and recall information.
PLAN LEARNING THAT ENGAGES STUDENTS SENSES
Promote sensory ‘cross-talk’ by engaging students’ senses in ways that make their learning of curricular content more memorable.
TEACH STUDENTS TO VISUALISE GOALS
Teach students to visualise their goals as part of reflection on their learning.
Learning is stimulated by a sense of future possibility and by a sense of what might be.
Maxine Greene
