Educational Imagination

This article is a philosophical exploration of imagination and its role as a quality in education and educational relationships, viewed from a forgotten perspective in Swedish philosophy and educational theory [Pedagogik]. A perspective, once described by John Landqvist (1935) as a “revolt of imagination” (p.81). The aim of this article is to retrieve this perspective and reengage it in relation to contemporary perspectives on imagination in education. What is important in this perspective is the acknowledgment that imagination must be seen as an important driving force in educational relationships, or what, from the influence of German, could be described as the Einbildungskraft in Bildung. The perspective also highlighted how imagination is important in the everyday practice of teaching, and how it could help solve educational issues. However, imagination can also be a threat to education when it leads to reverie, egoistic desires, and superstition. From that thought, an important distinction was made about what is educational or not about imagination in education. Educational imagination is a personal contact, interest, and engagement, which makes a student able to look further than their experience can with the support of the subject matter. It is also a specific way of sharing the subject matter between the teacher and student. Educational imagination, as an ability to imagine with the subject matter, is what a teacher should use teaching to aim at according to this perspective. However, this is only possible through the teacher’s own imagination, both in relation to the subject matter and to the students. Educational imagination is about building a subject-specific communality, a shared sense that is simultaneously open to different visions and perspectives.