Professional Inquiry Project Report

Ashley Machacek
https://unboundedminds.weebly.com/
For my Professional Inquiry Project (PIP) I sought to respond to the question how can
imagination be cultivated in the classroom to increase students’ capacity for independent
thinking?
My project had a research component as well as a classroom component where we
participated in various stories, writing projects, and activities with the theme of imagination in
language arts class. To dive into this question, I started with some simple research. I began with
teacher blogs and websites written from the perspective of people passionate about and interested
in incorporating imagination into the classroom. This gave me an overarching picture and some
good ideas for how to engage students’ imaginations in the classroom. Something I learned from
this research was using the language of imagination with intentionality. It is important that
students recognize how imagination involves using their mind’s eye. Incorporating terms such as
visualization was a suggestion to help them understand what it means to imagine. I also
discovered the idea of gap-fill storytelling where individual group members are each given a
photo to look at (with related pictures or from the same picture book). They then come together
and describe their photos, then write a story that connects them all. I did not try this but am
looking forward to trying this strategy in the future. I also got a sense of the recognizable
benefits of promoting the use of imagination in the classroom. Some of these benefits include
increasing empathy in students, strengthening self-regulation, engagement, flexible thinking, and
fostering inventiveness and willingness to reflect on new possibilities.
From here I began looking into more scholarly articles and research from professionals to
give me greater insight into what imagination is, why it is valuable, and what strategies there are
for engaging students’ imaginations in the classroom. As part of my research, I read a book
called An Imaginative Approach to Teaching by Kieran Egan, one of the most prominent
philosophers focused on imagination and education. Here is where I learned about some of the
cognitive tools that should be considered in working to cultivate imagination in the classroom.
This was significant because going into this project my conception was that one of the main
opportunities to cultivate imagination would be through stories, particularly in language arts
class. I didn’t associate imagination with science or math courses. From this book, however, I
learned that developing and promoting imagination can be done in all classes by focusing on
certain cognitive tools that help with imagination. One of the main ways to do this is by turning a
unit into an unfolding story. Egan (2005, p. 235) stated, “instead of thinking of lessons or units
as sets of objectives to attain, it is possible to think of them as good stories to tell in order to
engage students' imaginations and emotions.” The cognitive tools that can be focused on include
using metaphors, humour, play, mystery, story, rhyme, rhythm and pattern, mental imagery, and
binary opposites. These are for the early elementary level of understanding (mythic
understanding), but there are more cognitive tools that can additionally be considered at older
grade levels as well. These cognitive tools can be integrated into any topic or subject area. Egan
also offered frameworks and features to list when planning with a focus on incorporating
imagination, which I will find helpful in my future planning.
As I researched, I found ways to integrate some of the cognitive tools suggested into the
classroom. For example, I discovered and shared poems rich in mental imagery for the students
to listen to and talk about. I also found and created more rhymes and patterned chants to use
throughout the day. I also looked for literature that was imaginatively engaging to bring various
stories into the classroom that would get them thinking about possibilities, impossibilities, and
“what ifs.” We also went through a thematic unit on imagination. I used a variety of websites to
help me find books that would ignite imagination. I engaged the students with imagination in
many different senses as we went through this unit. We looked at impossible stories such as
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, engaged with stories that required them to imagine from a
different point of view other than their own such as The Day the Crayons Quit and Hey, Little
Ant. We also read stories that exemplified characters using their imagination such as Where the
Wild Things Are and The Adventures of Beekle the Unimaginary Friend. Imagination in the sense
of inventiveness and imagining new possibilities was also considered. The story The Most
Magnificent Thing was one of the key picture books for this aspect. This unit had students
looking at a variety of unique stories that allowed their experiences to be indirectly expanded and
therefore their imaginations to have more content to build ideas upon. They engaged in lots of
creative brainstorming and writing throughout this unit.
Finally, I created a website that compiled my key research with examples of some of the
things that we did in the classroom, and resources that could be helpful for anyone seeking to
engage students’ imaginations in their classroom. Reflecting on my inquiry project I think to
improve, I would have narrowed it down. Particularly with my language arts unit, imagination
gave me a lot (perhaps too many) directions to go. In a lot of ways, I tried to touch on all these
different aspects of imagination as outlined above and it took away from the opportunity to just
dive more deeply into impossible stories or a more specific theme under the umbrella of
imagination. I also found that the imagination theme that I brought into the classroom was just
one way of cultivating imagination in the classroom that cannot easily be extended to other
contexts (without specifically engaging in units on imagination). With more time and having
done more research before planning, I would have found ways to follow the frameworks
suggested by Kieran Egan and brought imagination into other classes as well. In math class for
example, I could have incorporated mental imagery and turned my math concepts into stories.
But overall, I feel that I learned a lot and am happy with the results. The kids really enjoyed a lot
of the stories and activities that were brought into the class. They did begin to show more
openness to coming up with creative and fun ideas and allowing their imagination to be
unleashed, though it was a short amount of time to really see them grow substantially in this
way. I trust that the unique and imaginative stories sparked a desire in them to allow themselves
to consider new possibilities as well as grow in empathy. I am excited to continue applying the
things I learned through this project into my future planning. It was very cool for me to discover
all the different ways that imagination can be cultivated, particularly through cognitive tools
which I would not have recognized as being significant to imagination before this project.
References
Egan, K. (2005). An Imaginative Approach to Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Retrieved from https://www.amazon.ca/Imaginative-Approach-Teaching-Kieran-Egan-
ebook/dp/B001GPOSZG/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=