Kieran Egan

Romantic understanding : the development of rationality and imagination, ages 8-15

Romanticism, romantic understanding, and education the transition to literacy reality and its limits associating with the transcendent human and inhuman knowledge rebellion, ideals and boredom the romantic imagination and philosophic ending cultural recapitulation - some comments on theory a romantic curriculum romantic teaching.

Education and psychology : Plato, Piaget and scientific psychology

Introduction. 1 Education and Psychology: A Sense of Differences. 2 Platos Developmental Theory. 3 Piagets Developmental Theory. 4 Educationally Useful Theories. 5 Psychology and Education. Conclusion. Notex. Index.

Metaphors in Collision: Objectives, Assembly Lines, and Stories

ABSTRACTProminent in teacher preparation programs and in “methods” courses in departments and faculties of education are planning procedures derived from the “Tyler rationale.” A key part of these procedures involves beginning the planning process by stating objectives. These procedures, and particularly planning- by-objectives, have been much criticized. A difficulty with the criticisms has been their ineffectiveness at engaging the metaphorical basis of such planning procedures, identified with industrial processes such as the assembly line. A second difficulty has been that the critics offer no alternative planning procedures. This article reviews and restates objections to the dominant objectives-based procedures and offers an alternative procedure based on the story form.

John Dewey and the Social Studies Curriculum

Abstract The purpose of this article is to discuss three ideas which seem to have had a profound influence in making the social studies curriculum what it is: the belief that one must begin all teaching and learning from the childs everyday experience, the distinction between natural and formal education, and the distinction between socializing and educating. The best-known exposition of these ideas can be found in the writings of John Dewey, particularly Education and Democracy; the author focuses on those parts of Deweys overall thesis which provide some fundamental ideas on which the present social studies curriculum stands, with the intention of showing the frailty of those foundations.

Education's Three Old Ideas, and a Better Idea.

Somethingnew, irritatingandinexplicablehappenedtomost of thecitizens of Europe in the sixteenth century. Prices for staples like food and clothing begantorise. Theaveragecitizenblamedclothessellers for greedilyraising their prices. The clothes sellers protested that they were no more greedy than usual, and that the problem was due to the greed of the cloth merchants who were demanding more for their cloth. The merchants blamed the weavers, whoblamed the wool merchants, whoblamed the sheep farmers. Thesheepfarmers protestedtheirblamelessnessandsaidtheyhad toraise their prices tobe able to aA ord the increasingly expensive clothes. So who was to blame? Someone was clearly ripping oA the good citizenry, but no group seemed obviously richer, nor without the alibi that they were just responding to rising costs themselves. Where was the mysterious source of this irritant? Despite the polemics, ® nger-pointing, moral attitudinizing and even earnest inquiries, it was not until near the end of the century that Jean Bodin (1530± 1596), the French political philosopher, worked out that none of the usually blamed suspects was responsible. Rather, the price-rise was caused by the use in the royal mints of Europe of the gold and silver plundered from Central and South America. An increase in the money supply caused what is now called

Values and imagination in teaching: With a special focus on social studies

Both local and global issues are typically dealt with in the Social Studies curriculum, or in curriculum areas with other names but similar intents. In the literature about Social Studies the imagination has played little role, and consequently it hardly appears in texts designed to help teachers plan and implement Social Studies lessons. What is true of Social Studies is also largely reflected in general texts concerning planning teaching. Clearly many theorists and practitioners are concerned to engage students’ imaginations in learning, even though they use terms other than ‘imagination’ in doing so. This article suggests that a more explicit attention to imagination can make our efforts to engage students in learning more effective. We provide, first, a working definition of imagination, then show how students’ imaginations can be characterized in terms of the ‘cognitive toolkits’ they bring to learning. We look at such ‘cognitive tools’ as stories, images, humor, binary oppositions, a sense of mystery and how these can be used to engage students’ imaginations in learning Social Studies and other content from kindergarten to about grade four. We then consider ‘cognitive tools’ commonly deployed by students from about grade four to grade nine, including a sense of reality, the extremes of experience and limits of reality, and associating with the heroic. We also provide examples of how using such tools could influence planning and teaching Social Studies topics.

We Begin as Poets

Spencer’s (1969) principles derive from thinking of children’s minds largely in terms of literacy-induced capacities, and forgetting that before they are literate, and also after they are literate, they also have the capacities of orality. The central fact of our minds from an educational point of view is not their biological nature, and all that follows for conceptions of development, but their cultural nature. We begin as poets, using the techniques that language allows us to make sense of our world. The basics of our cultural lives are the arts. It is through deployment of those tools and skills that are central to early language development—story, metaphor, rhyme and rhythm, binary structuring and mediation, image formation from words, affective abstraction, and so on—that we lay down the true basics of education.

Forward to the 19th Century

Educational writing commonly announces new approaches that lay claim to conforming with childrens natural learning and development. Almost invariably such approaches repeat principles that were given a modern form in the 1850s in the writings of Herbert Spencer. His great but unacknowledged influence has discouraged recognition that humans are odd creatures whose natural forms of learning and development are buried under layers of cultural acquisitions. Understanding education requires a richer understanding of our cultural tools. Technical expertise in the tasks of education is wasted unless one understands the cultural tools that shape the proper purposes of educational activity.

Elliot Eisner's Imagination and Learning

Barone, T. (2001). Touching eternity: The enduring outcomes of teaching. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Barone, T., & Eisner, E. W. (2011). Arts based research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Breault, D. A., & Breault, R. (Eds.) (2005). Experiencing John Dewey. Indianapolis, IN: Kappa Delta Pi. Dewey, J. (1929). Sources of a science of education. New York, NY: Liveright. Dewey, J. (1934a). A common faith. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dewey, J. (1934b). Art as experience. New York, NY: Penguin. Eisner, E. W. (1972). Educating artistic vision. New York & London: Macmillan. Eisner, E. W. (1979/1985/1994/2002). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of educational programs. New York, NY: Macmillan. Eisner, E. W. (1982/1994). Cognition and curriculum. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Eisner, E. W. (1991a). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. New York, NY: Macmillan. Eisner, E. W. (1991b). What the arts taught me about education. In G. Willis & W. H. Schubert (Eds.), Reflections from the heart of educational inquiry: Understanding curriculum and teaching through the arts (pp. 34–48). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Eisner, E. W. (2005). The role of intelligence in the creation of art. In D. A. Breault & R. Breault (Eds.), Experiencing John Dewey (pp. 106–108). Indianapolis, IN: Kappa Delta Pi. Eisner, E. W. (2009). Growing up urban. In E. C. Short & L. J. Waks (Eds.), Leaders in curriculum studies: Intellectual self-portraits (pp. 67–75). Rotterdam: Sense. Short, E. C., & Waks, L. J. (Eds.) (2009). Leaders in curriculum studies: Intellectual self-portraits. Rotterdam: Sense. Uhrmacher, P. B., & Matthews, J. (2005). Intricate palette: Working the ideas of Elliot Eisner. Columbus, OH: Pearson.

How to Ask Questions that Promote High-Level Thinking.

Asking questions is one of the commonest teaching techniques. The most educationally valuable kinds of questions are those requiring students to extend knowledge, deepen understanding, or achieve new insights in the process of composing a response. They challenge and motivate students to make inferences they might otherwise have missed, to analyze concepts they might have accepted simplistically, to synthesize ideas they might never have seen connections between, to render judgments of value leading to wiser decisions, etc. When such questions-commonly classed as divergent-are well posed, they help realize some ideals advocated under the label discovery learning. The enormous teaching power of well-posed questions we generally recognize, and what research exists indicates they contribute significantly to student achievement. Unfortunately, though, most of the literature on question-asking tends to describe and classify, usually concluding with exhortation rather than practical techniques. Over half a century of evidence of the much greater educational value of divergent (or analysis, synthesis, and evaluative) questions over convergent (or knowledge, comprehension, and application) questions, and exhortations to improve the quality and kind of questions asked has led to no significant shift from a persistent, enormous preponderance of factual recall questions.2 This suggests the not-surprising conclusion that recognition and detailed classification of a problem coupled with exhortation, is insufficient to solve it. Perhaps the main reason such slight progress has occurred, despite a constant literature telling teachers to ask different kinds of questions, is that engaging the higher-level intellectual processes by questioning is a lot more difficult than realized by many persons doing the telling. Also, of course, the typical way we organize classes militates against exploiting the potential of divergent questioning. Recent research has suggested that in discourse with a class some