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The Eclipse of Imagination Within Educational ‘Official’ Framework and Why It Should be Returned to Educational Discourse: A Deweyan Perspective

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Abstract

In recent decades, the shift towards the “learnification” of educational discourse has de facto reframed educational purposes and schooling practice, thus reframing what students should know, strive for, and, in a sense, be. In this paper, given the efforts to disrupt the dominance of learning discourse, I seek to engage regarding a specific concern, namely, the progressive removal of imagination within educational official framework. Indeed, imagination has virtually disappeared from the documents, publications, web pages and recommendations of major educational agencies and institutions worldwide, with important and potentially damaging consequences for schooling, teaching and learning. Employing a Deweyan perspective, I argue that imagination plays a crucial role in the creation of pivotal educational features and phenomena, such as knowledge, inquiry, choice and deliberation, critical agency, meaning creation, and, importantly, the openness of possibilities. Therefore, the eclipse of imagination becomes, at the very same time, the eclipse of education; nurturing imagination is about nurturing education.

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Notes

  1. For a detailed analysis of the sentence “[t]he engagement of the imagination is the only thing that makes any activity more than mechanical” and the relation between imagination and judgment, refer to Rømer (2012, p. 141).

  2. Even recognizing what might initially appear to be ‘basic’ elements of our environment and culture—for instance, the differences between a smile and a smirk or between a computer and a television—requires, at an early age, a learning process composed of continuous cultural interactions and trial and error.

  3. For a thoughtful analysis of leaping as related to education see Ramaekers and Vlieghe (2014).

  4. A suitable example is PISA’s questionnaire, especially the part concerning questions about students’ families (OECD 2012).

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  1. Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Viale Ellittico 31, 81100, Caserta, Italy

    Vasco d’Agnese

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d’Agnese, V. The Eclipse of Imagination Within Educational ‘Official’ Framework and Why It Should be Returned to Educational Discourse: A Deweyan Perspective. Stud Philos Educ 36, 443–462 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9511-x

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