Conceptualising difference is a key task for inclusive pedagogy, and vital to the politics of inclusion. My purpose in this paper is to consider the place that imagination has in helping us to conceptualise difference, and to argue that imagination has a key part to play in inclusive pedagogy. To do this I draw closely on the work of Maxine Greene…

Children's toys provide a rich arena for investigating conceptual flexibility, because they often can be understood as possessing an individual identity at multiple levels of abstraction. For example, many dolls (e.g., Winnie-the-Pooh) and action figures (e.g., Batman) can be construed either as characters from a fictional world or as physical…

Our work is inspired by the book "Imagining Numbers (particularly the square root of minus fifteen)," by Harvard University mathematics professor Barry Mazur ("Imagining numbers (particularly the square root of minus fifteen)," Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2003). The work of Mazur led us to question whether the features and steps of…

Understanding imagination as both a cognitive and affective endeavor is crucial in order for educators to promote creative and imaginative thinking in informal and formal learning environments. It is the primary aim of this paper to develop the theoretical discussion of Vygotsky's writings on young children's imaginative abilities launched by…

Children enter school brimming with imagination. They're masters of make believe and visualization, honed through five years of play. For the next decade, this essential cognitive faculty is benignly neglected by the institution called school. By comparison, the faculty of reason is explicitly and assiduously cultivated, reflecting the West's…

Based on the testimony of others, children learn about a variety of figures that they never meet. We ask when and how they are able to differentiate between the historical figures that they learn about (e.g., Abraham Lincoln) and fantasy characters (e.g., Harry Potter). Experiment 1 showed that both younger (3- and 4-year-olds) and older children…

The goal of this paper is to explore qualities of mathematical imagination in light of a classroom episode. It is based on the analysis of a classroom interaction in a high school Algebra class. We examine a sequence of nine utterances enacted by one of the students whom we call Carlene. Through these utterances Carlene illustrates, in our view,…

Parents and child specialists are o?ften concerned about the role imaginary companions play in children's lives. Recent research shows that the creation of an imaginary companion is a common and healthy type of pretend play. There are many di?fferent kinds of imaginary companions, including those based on various types of props as well those that…

Mother-child play of maltreating and nonmaltreating families was analyzed when infants were 12 months old (Time 1), and 2 years old (Time 2), as a context to examine children's developing cognitive and social skills. At Time 1, infants from abusing families demonstrated less independent and more imitative behavior during play than did infants from…

The following article describes the Asperger syndrome (AS), an autism spectrum disorder, including an explanation of the main difficulties involved, especially with regard to social interaction, communication and imagination. In addition, specific examples help provide a more concrete understanding of the topic. Based on the principal explanatory…

This article describes an emerging theoretical framework for examining relationships between learning dispositions and learning architecture. Three domains of learning dispositions--resilience, reciprocity and imagination--are discussed in relation to the structures and processes of early childhood education settings and new entrant classrooms.…

This paper continues to explore the relationship between the imagination and learning. It has been claimed by Maxine Greene, amongst others, that imagination is the most important of the cognitive capacities for learning; the reason being that "it permits us to give credence to alternative realities". However little work has been done on what…

Impairments of pretend play are a diagnostic characteristic of autism. This has been interpreted in terms of a generative impairment. Specifically, children with autism are unable to generate the ideas for pretend play despite an intact underlying ability to understand pretence. The notion of a performance deficit affecting production only has, in…

For over a century, drawing from observation, at least at the introductory level, has been integral to many secondary and most post-secondary art school programs in Europe and North America. Its place in such programs is understood to develop an ability to see and interpret on a flat surface the real, three-dimensional world; this skill, in turn,…

The aim of this research is to understand how sixth grade students use their imagination skills in the historical thinking process and, by doing so, how they construct the past. In this respect, first, an exhibition/museum was visited in the context of social studies during history lessons in a primary school in Kadikoy district in Istanbul. Then,…