Kieran Egan – författare

"I am very impressed by the practicality of [Egan's] introduction of the use of story-forms in curriculum for young children. His model is fascinating, and its various possibilities in a range of fields makes it worth a good look by many kinds of teachers."—Maxine Greene, Teachers College, Columbia

The ills of education are caused, this text argues, by the fact that we have inherited three major educational ideas, each of which is incompatible with the other two. These mutual incompatibilities, it continues, bring about clashes at every level of the educational process, from curriculum decisions to teaching methods. The text presents an alternative. It concludes with practical proposals for how teaching and curriculum should be changed to reflect this new conception and fit in with how we actually learn.

The ideas upon which public education was founded in the last half of the nineteenth century were wrong. And despite their continued dominance in educational thinking for a century and a half, these ideas are no more right today. So argues one of the most original and highly regarded educational theorists of our time in Getting It Wrong from the Beginning. Kieran Egan explains how we have come to take mistaken concepts about education for granted and why this dooms our attempts at educational reform. Egan traces the nineteenth-century sources of Progressive thinking about education and their persistence even now. He diagnoses the problem with our schools in a radically different way, and likewise prescribes novel alternatives to present educational practice. His book is both persuasive and full of promise—a book that belongs on the must-read list for anyone who cares about the success of our schools.

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 and learning. Egan uses a bright and witty style to move from a brief history of the ways in which imagination has been regarded over the years, through a general discussion of the links between learning and imagination. A selection of sample lesson plans show teachers how they can encourage effective learning through stimulating pupils' imaginations in a variety of curriculum areas, including maths, science, social studies and language work.

This is a philosophical treatment of the conceptual and normative aspects of topics which are currently a matter of policy debate in education. The authors have focussed on such concepts as liberty, autonomy, equality and pluralism, and have provided a philosophical commentary which relates these concepts both to a background of philosophical literature, and to the institutional contexts and policy debates in which they function. The book will be of significance to all policy makers who need to gain an understanding of the values and concepts involved in major policy problems.

This is a philosophical treatment of the conceptual and normative aspects of topics which are currently a matter of policy debate in education. The authors have focussed on such concepts as liberty, autonomy, equality and pluralism, and have provided a philosophical commentary which relates these concepts both to a background of philosophical literature, and to the institutional contexts and policy debates in which they function. The book will be of significance to all policy makers who need to gain an understanding of the values and concepts involved in major policy problems.

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.

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 the accumulation of knowledge.

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.

For many children much of the time their experience in classrooms can be rather dull, and yet the world the school is supposed to initiate children into is full of wonder. This book offers a rich understanding of the nature and roles of wonder in general and provides multiple suggestions for to how to revive wonder in adults (teachers and curriculum makers) and how to keep it alive in children. Its aim is to show that adequate education needs to take seriously the task of evoking wonder about the content of the curriculum and to show how this can routinely be done in everyday classrooms. The authors do not wax flowery; they present strong arguments based on either research or precisely described experience, and demonstrate how this argument can be seen to work itself out in daily practice. The emphasis is not on ways of evoking wonder that might require virtuoso teaching, but rather on how wonder can be evoked about the everyday features of the math or science or social studies curriculum in regular classrooms.

Offering a rich understanding of the nature and roles of wonder in general, this book provides multiple suggestions for how to revive wonder in adults (teachers and curriculum makers) and how to keep wonder alive in children. Its aim is to show that adequate education needs to take seriously the task of evoking wonder about the content of the curriculum and to show how this can routinely be done in everyday classrooms. It presents strong arguments based on either research or precisely described experience for the importance of wonder as a central educational concept, and show how this argument can be seen to work itself out in daily practice.

In this book, award-winning educator Kieran Egan shows how we can transform the experience of K-12 students and help them become more knowledgeable and more creative in their thinking. At the core of this transformative process is imagination which can become the heart of effective learning if it is tied to education's central tasks. An Imaginative Approach to Teaching is a groundbreaking book that offers an understanding of how students' imaginations work in learning and shows how the acquisition of cognitive tools drives students' educational development. This approach is unique in that it engages both the imagination and emotions. The author clearly demonstrates how knowledge comes to life in students' minds if it is introduced in the context of human hopes, fears, and passions. To facilitate this new educational approach, the book includes a wide variety of effective teaching tools - such as story, rhythm, play, opposition, agency, and meta-narrative understanding - that value and build upon the way children understand their experiences. Most important, Egan provides frameworks for lesson planning and more than a dozen sample lessons to show how teachers can use these tools to awaken intelligence and imagination in the classroom.

This book addresses the current 'literacy crisis' alleged in professional journals and the popular press. Literacy is at once a contentious social and educational issue, a continuing concern of parents and teachers, and the focal point of a range of disciplinary inquiries. Literacy, Society, and Schooling draws together especially commissioned essays on the nature, history, and pedagogy of literacy by social historians, philosophers, literary scholars, linguists, educators, and psychologists. The editors have attempted to convey, in an accessible format, the range and diversity of the scholarly debate about literacy-theory, research, and practice. Students, teachers, and researchers will find Literacy, Society, and Schooling an invaluable resource.

In this new and practical contribution to the importance of imagination in learning, Kieran Egan and his colleagues demonstrate how individual contributions to a coherent large-scale project can produce enormous results of great educational value. Helping all participants to feel pride for more than just their own individual work, such Whole School Projects (WSPs) encourage appreciation for the abilities of others and enable everyone involved to recognize that all kinds of learning styles, intelligences, and ability levels play an important part in constructing the whole. Most important, WSPs invigorate student engagement and build community within a school. The authors describes a program for engaging a whole school in a particular project over a three-year period and outline the educational principles and benefits. Providing examples of schools successfully using WSPs, they examine the detailed practices needed to get such a project up and running in a typical school. While the Whole School Project is distinct from the regular curriculum, it can help achieve many of the year’s curriculum objectives in mathematics, literacy, science and technology, social studies, art, and history. Finally, teachers can choose to incorporate their curriculum aims into the project study, even when those aims include meeting externally mandated achievement standards.

In this new and practical contribution to the importance of imagination in learning, Kieran Egan and his colleagues demonstrate how individual contributions to a coherent large-scale project can produce enormous results of great educational value. Helping all participants to feel pride for more than just their own individual work, such Whole School Projects (WSPs) encourage appreciation for the abilities of others and enable everyone involved to recognize that all kinds of learning styles, intelligences, and ability levels play an important part in constructing the whole. Most important, WSPs invigorate student engagement and build community within a school. The authors describes a program for engaging a whole school in a particular project over a three-year period and outline the educational principles and benefits. Providing examples of schools successfully using WSPs, they examine the detailed practices needed to get such a project up and running in a typical school. While the Whole School Project is distinct from the regular curriculum, it can help achieve many of the year’s curriculum objectives in mathematics, literacy, science and technology, social studies, art, and history. Finally, teachers can choose to incorporate their curriculum aims into the project study, even when those aims include meeting externally mandated achievement standards.

Students’ imaginations are often considered as something that might be engaged after the hard work of learning has been done. Countering such beliefs, Egan and Judson show that the imagination—one of the great workhorses of learning—can be used to make all learning and all teaching more effective.Through techniques that any teacher can learn and easily apply in any classroom, they demonstrate how and why imagination can be used across the curriculum and grade levels to make teaching and learning more interesting, engaging, and pleasurable for all. Teachers who use these techniques will discover the emotions, images, stories, metaphors, sense of wonder, heroic narratives, and other cognitive tools that can bring life and energy to their classroom. This practical handbook will help teachers learn how to use these enlivening techniques in their daily practice to stimulate students’ intellectual activity and growth.

Students’ imaginations are often considered as something that might be engaged after the hard work of learning has been done. Countering such beliefs, Egan and Judson show that the imagination—one of the great workhorses of learning—can be used to make all learning and all teaching more effective.Through techniques that any teacher can learn and easily apply in any classroom, they demonstrate how and why imagination can be used across the curriculum and grade levels to make teaching and learning more interesting, engaging, and pleasurable for all. Teachers who use these techniques will discover the emotions, images, stories, metaphors, sense of wonder, heroic narratives, and other cognitive tools that can bring life and energy to their classroom. This practical handbook will help teachers learn how to use these enlivening techniques in their daily practice to stimulate students’ intellectual activity and growth.

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 the accumulation of knowledge.

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 and learning. Egan uses a bright and witty style to move from a brief history of the ways in which imagination has been regarded over the years, through a general discussion of the links between learning and imagination. A selection of sample lesson plans show teachers how they can encourage effective learning through stimulating pupils' imaginations in a variety of curriculum areas, including maths, science, social studies and language work.

"A fascinating piece of writing, presenting ideas that are fresh and exciting." -Katherine Taddie Kelly, Literacy Coach and Reading Interventionist Waco Independent School District, TX   "Focuses on enhancing students′ metalinguistic awareness and not just their intuitive use of words, fostering the development of higher mental functions." -Elena Bodrova, Senior Researcher McREL Bring out the fun in fundamentals of literacy! For teachers charged with the great responsibility of helping students achieve basic literacy, delivering instruction in stimulating and engaging ways is not an ideal-it′s a necessity. Recognizing this, award-winning author and educator Kieran Egan puts the fun in fundamentals of literacy by helping teachers stir students′ imagination and emotions. In Teaching Literacy, Egan rejects the notion that familiar ideas and experiences are the best vehicles for effective instruction. Instead, he champions a new approach that focuses on teaching core literacy skills using concepts ranging from fascinating to exotic to magnificent to weird. By framing the elements of literacy in the unforgettable, students more readily internalize and retain material, not only preparing them for tests, but also instilling a lifelong love of reading and writing. This innovative resource supplies answers to the question, "But how do I do it?" by offering:Tried-and-true activities from practicing classroom teachers "Teachers, Try It Out" features with instructional challenges (and an appendix of possible responses) for everyday classroom practice Step-by-step planning frameworks for designing and delivering engaging literacy instructionCombining playfulness with practicality and creativity with common sense, Egan′s strategies apply to beginning readers at any age, bringing about authentic, enjoyable learning experiences.

"A fascinating piece of writing, presenting ideas that are fresh and exciting." -Katherine Taddie Kelly, Literacy Coach and Reading Interventionist Waco Independent School District, TX   "Focuses on enhancing students' metalinguistic awareness and not just their intuitive use of words, fostering the development of higher mental functions." -Elena Bodrova, Senior Researcher McREL Bring out the fun in fundamentals of literacy! For teachers charged with the great responsibility of helping students achieve basic literacy, delivering instruction in stimulating and engaging ways is not an ideal-it's a necessity. Recognizing this, award-winning author and educator Kieran Egan puts the fun in fundamentals of literacy by helping teachers stir students' imagination and emotions. In Teaching Literacy, Egan rejects the notion that familiar ideas and experiences are the best vehicles for effective instruction. Instead, he champions a new approach that focuses on teaching core literacy skills using concepts ranging from fascinating to exotic to magnificent to weird. By framing the elements of literacy in the unforgettable, students more readily internalize and retain material, not only preparing them for tests, but also instilling a lifelong love of reading and writing. This innovative resource supplies answers to the question, "But how do I do it?" by offering:

Tried-and-true activities from practicing classroom teachers "Teachers, Try It Out" features with instructional challenges (and an appendix of possible responses) for everyday classroom practice Step-by-step planning frameworks for designing and delivering engaging literacy instruction

Combining playfulness with practicality and creativity with common sense, Egan's strategies apply to beginning readers at any age, bringing about authentic, enjoyable learning experiences.