It Is Better to Imagine Than to Remember

It Is Better to Imagine Than to Remember Creating Schools That Expand the Mind and Nourish the Imagination Frederic Jacobs Professor and Director of the Master’s Program In Curriculum and Instruction School of Education, Teaching and Health American University Washington, DC

Cave Painting at Lascaux, France Circa 15–18,000 B.C

If children dislike school, the way to get them to stop disliking school is to reduce or eliminate the things they dislike. What do we know about what children dislike in schools?

What do children tell us they dislike about school? • Constant repetition which leads to boredom • A lack of relevance to their lives beyond school • An ongoing emphasis on completion, not comprehension

Social Behavior & Control • Cognition & Content • Imagination & Creativity

How Can Schools Excite and Challenge Students?

John Dewey (continued) • Active learning is essential; students must be engaged in the learning process. Traditional education, in which conduct is strictly enforced, automatic drills are used to transfer knowledge and students’ power of judgment and intelligence are impeded, created the wrong kind of experiences to promote learning. They rendered the students callous of ideas and caused students to associate learning with boredom. • Students should understand why they are learning. Instrumentality of learning is paramount in progressive education. Students should not learn in isolation.

Gregory Bateson • Human learning is a continuum of learning, applying, and improving one’s abilities. It is based on three principles: • applying learning to increasingly complex tasks and situations • reflecting on learning to improve future understanding and performance • increasing capacity to move from simple to deutero-learning (Learning II) as illustrated below

Everyone can remember a time when they had an experience similar to this : “When someone fired your imagination or touched a deep chord in you that opened doorways you didn’t know existed.” Peter Senge The schools that most often succeed in accomplishing this are schools that learn

90 per cent of an iceberg is not visible

What are the “five disciplines” that Sengebelieves are necessary to build effective learning organization?Schools That Learn Rely on Five Principles:

Defining the Five Principles Characterizing Schools that LearnSystems Thinking Systems thinking is the ability to comprehend and address the whole, and to examine the interrelationship between the parts and the whole.

Defining the Five Principles Characterizing Schools that LearnSystems Thinking(continued) A key problem in organizations is that activities done in the name of management frequently apply simplistic frameworks to complex systems. Such frameworks tend to focus on the parts rather than the whole, and fail to recognize that organizations are dynamic and changing.

Defining the Five Principles Characterizing Schools that LearnSystems Thinking(continued) We often assume that cause and effect will be relatively “close” to one another. When dealing with problems, we tend to seek the ‘solutions’ that are we can implement immediately. That is, we associate “quick actions” and “successful actions”.

Defining the Five Principles Characterizing Schools that LearnSystems Thinking Organizations are frequently harmed by short-term improvements because many of such improvement result in significant long-term costs. For example, we can cut back on counseling services which will result in immediate cost savings, but can damage the stability of the organization and the people in the organization.

How Do People Learn, Think, Create and Reflect? Brain, Body and Society

Kolb’s Cyclical View of How People Learn Through Experience

In reflective practice, a practitioner analyses experiences in order to learn from them. When experiencing something (reflection-in-action), we are learning, but in the midst of action, it is difficult to put emotions, events, and thoughts together coherently. However, in retelling/rethinking events, we are better able to categorize organize events, emotions and ideas, and link the intended purpose with the actions we carried out. There is a distinction between events experienced and events retold. Therefore, it is important to develop the capacity to remove one’s direct emotional attachment from an action, and view it from a critical vantage point. Taking oneself out of the action involves telling a story as a sequence of events without personal involvement

Dewey’s Definition of Critical Reflection: • theactive,persistentand carefulconsideration ofanybelieforsupposed formofknowledgeinthelightofthegroundsthat supportitandthefurtherconclusionstowhichit tends • How We Think (1933) • Dewey’s description contains two important principles: • ability to analyze present behavior based on one’s beliefs and assumptions, and • capacity to change future behavior based on the learning that results from present behavior.

Another definition Reflective practice…involves thinking about and critically analyzing one's actions with the goal of improving one's professional practice. Engaging in reflective practice requires individuals to assume the perspective of an external observer in order to identify the assumptions and feelings underlying their practice and then to speculate about how these assumptions and feelings affect practice. Susan Imel (1992)

Brookfield (Continued) We teach to change the world. The hope that undergirds our efforts to help students learn is that doing this will help them act towards each other, and to their environment, with compassion, understanding and fairness. But our attempts to increase the amount of love and justice in the world are never simple, never ambiguous. What we think are democratic, respectful ways of treating people can be experienced by them as oppressive and constraining. One of the hardest things teachers learn is that the sincerity of their intentions does not guarantee the purity of their practice. The cultural, psychological and political complexities of learning, and the ways in which power complicates all human relationships (including those between students and teachers) means that teaching can never be innocent.

Brookfield (Continued) Teaching innocently means thinking that we're always understanding exactly what it is that we're doing and what effect we're having. Teaching innocently means assuming that the meanings and significance we place in our actions are the ones that students take from them. Breaking this vicious circle of innocence and blame is one reason why the habit of critical reflection is crucial for teachers' survival. Without a critically reflective stance towards what we do we tend to accept the blame for problems that are not of our own making.

The Task Ahead: Can We Create a Future Where Students Are Motivated and Their Imaginations Are Nourished?

What if, Where we once saw danger, we now see something very different. . .

References Bateson, G. (1972, 2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brookfield, S.D. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Dewey, J. (1933, 1952). How we think: A statement of the relation of reﬂective thinking to the educative process. Boston: DC Heath and Company. Herzberg, F. (1968). One more time: How do you motivate people?Harvard Business Review Kolb, D. A. and Fry, R. (1975) Toward an applied theory of experiential learning in C. Cooper (ed.), Theories of Group Process, London: John Wiley. Schon, D. A. (1983). The reﬂective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Senge,P. (2012). Schools that learn: A fifth disciplinefFieldbook for educators, parents and everyone who cares about education. New York: Crown Publishing.

For More Information, please contact: Frederic Jacobs Professor and Director of the Program in Curriculum and Instruction School of Education, Teaching and Health American University Washington, DC fredj@american.edu 202 885 2124 (office) 202 746 3733 (mobile) 202 885 1187 (fax)

It Is Better to Imagine Than to Remember