What is Imagination?
In the dispositions cards, we say that mental playfulness is the key to imagination. It is the inclination and ability to play with ideas in your head, which helps you formulate and explore new ideas in the test-bed of your own mind.
It is important to know what to look for with dispositions. Being able to recognise them is the essential first step towards noticing and responding to them.
Imaginative learners.
I am about to give you an example of what the Imagination disposition can look like in a classroom. The example is taken from a Year 11 English classroom and was first published in an article I wrote for SET Journal in 2018 called ‘Play: a secondary concern‘.
In the example, two of descriptors of what Imaginative learners look like are very strongly present. Imaginative learners:
- Come up with creative ideas and possibilities.
- Are inventive, experimental and ingenious risk-takers.
I think it’s worth noting that the active participation Imagination fosters is a key aspect of a classroom becoming a democratic space.
An example what Imagination can look like in a classroom.
During term 2 we had a written-word focus, where the learning was oriented around reading and writing. Essentially, students were playing with language, in terms of comprehension and expression.
As the term progressed, a student got sidetracked by labyrinths, sparked by the fact some characters in a novel she read were trapped by the suffering they were experiencing — a labyrinth of suffering, this student called it. She understood the epiphany the characters have at the end — forgiveness is the way out of suffering — but she didn’t understand why it was the way out.
She decided to visualise this, starting with constructing labyrinths out of play-dough, then drawing them and sharing them with other students.
The labyrinth was just like a game almost but it kinda showed when T___ couldn’t get out it was because she was trying to force her way out, I could see it in her eyes …
Then it started to make sense to me … you can’t go through the wall, you have to turn around and forgive your mistakes. I got that idea from the labyrinth. (Student)
Making sense of this example of Imagination
What’s interesting to me as I read this example is how inventiveness helped this student take control of her learning, and that sense of control fostered a sense of bravery to approach the text in a creative and unique way.
Note, too, how it’s not just the Imagination disposition at work here. We can see Persistence and Collaboration too. This is a key point about dispositional learning: they don’t tend to work in isolation. Yes, there may be a dominant one creating a distinctive ‘tone’ to the learning, but there are generally one or two others working in harmony with it.
Think about how stretching these dispositions is allowing this learner to get a feel for what it’s like to be a contributing part of a community — in this case, the community of the classroom. The cultivation of this feeling helps them to understand what a democratic space is like, why it is valuable, and ways in which it can be grown. Hers is a contribution based on power but on offering and being vulnerable — she is stuck, and draws on the people in the room to find her way through.
Responding, so we can help this student stretch their Imagination ‘muscle’
One of the tips we offer on our dispositions cards to stretch Imagination is the inclusion of multi-sensory experiences. In this example, the resources in the room allowed for this to occur: the accessibility of play-dough, paper, pencils, other ‘leaders’ and the freedom to make use of them clearly helped her to engage, sustain and grow her imagination.
Her use of these resources and the agency she showed could make a good context for a learning story. Learning stories are a key way that all dispositions can be nurtured.
A couple of the questions that are on the Imagination card could be asked as part of a reflection activity, with slight variations to reflect this particular moment:
- Where else could you make use of that understanding about forgiveness?
- What would happen if the characters did not have that epiphany about forgiveness?
So, we can see that the tweaks are not huge. The environment has done a lot of work here. Being intentional in the kinds of questions that could be asked is just a refinement of what teachers do all day. And while the addition of the learning story as a way to make this learning visible to the learner is something uncommon, it is a tool that can be slowly developed and integrated into one’s practice.
Keen to elicit dispositions in your learners?
Our ‘Magnificent Seven’ Positive Learning Dispositions cards can help.
Big thanks to Guy Claxton and Becky Carlzon: key collaborators in the development of these cards and framework.
Democracy Begins In The Classroom 