Young people learn most readily when their imaginations are engaged and teachers teach most successfully when they are able to see their subject matter from their pupils' point of view. It is, however, difficult to define imagination in practice and even more difficult to make full use of its potential. In this original and stimulating book, Kieran Egan, winner of the prestigous Grawemeyer Award for Education in 1991, discusses what imagination really means for children and young people in the middle years and what its place should be in the midst of the normal demands of classroom teaching...

This is a philosophical treatment of the conceptual & normative aspects of topics which are currently a matter of policy debate in education. The author focus on such concepts as liberty, autonomy, equality and pluralism, & provide a philosophical commentary.

Beginning with descriptions of the ways in which children make sense of their experience and the world, such as fantasy, stories and games, Egan constructs his argument that constituting this foundational layer are sets of cultural sense-making capacities, reflected in oral cultures throughout the world. Egan sees education as the acquisition of these sets of sense-making capacities, available in our culture, and his goal is to conceptualize primary education in a way that over comes the dichotomy between progressivisim and traditionalism, attending both the needs of the individual child and...

This book describes four 'layers' or stages of education - Mythic, Romantic, Philosophic and Ironic and shows how children at each stage most effectively learn, and how they can be helped towards educational maturity. While drawing on a wide range of philosophical and psychological literature, this new theory is primarily constructed from close observation of children in their common and intense imaginative engagements, and in everyday educational practice.