In the face of transmission-oriented national curricula, this study explores possibilities for claiming space for imagination, as ‘the most powerful and energetic of learning tools’ (Egan
‘Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives.’ – Rudolf Steiner
Imagine a world in which all human beings are actively engaged in imagining and working towards a better world, with a burning commitment to bringing change. Imagine a world in which each person seeks to understand the bigger picture and how their thoughts and actions are part of constructing global realities. Imagine a world in which actions are taken with consideration of their long-term impact and where everyone embraces their own agency in transforming systems of oppression, exploitation and inequity.
Is such a world possible? What is the role of education in working towards such a world? In what ways is this vision, both in its construction and in its attainment, connected to imagination and literacies?
This study explores the relationships between imagination, literacies and transformative education. Emerging from work of integrating imaginative, Waldorf-inspired approaches into mainstream Kenyan schools, this study explores how imagination can enhance the teaching and learning of government curriculum, while infusing early childhood learning experiences with a transformative orientation. It examines imaginative, Waldorf-inspired approaches in relationship to critical literacies and interrogates the (irreconcilable?) tensions between the convergent thinking demanded by government curriculum and the divergent thinking promoted through imagination and transformative pedagogies. While the focus of this study is on young children in pre-primary and early primary classes, the significance of imagination as a meaning-making faculty and its role in transformative education extend, in modified ways, to literacy learning across the lifespan.
Imagination is central to all learning – particularly any approach to education aspiring to challenge social reproduction and contribute to societal transformation. Imagination extends beyond the production of mental images, to include engagement with human experience and possibilities well beyond the domains of learners’ own experience. As an extraordinary tool of meaning-making and of humanisation of abstract concepts, imagination is an essential part of the learning process, with far-reaching implications for pedagogy, curriculum, agency and identity. Here, we engage with Kieran Egan’s constructs of imagination and its relevance to education, using Egan’s work as a framework through which to approach the discussion of imagination and literacy education. From there, we explore relationships between imagination and transformative education, before turning our attention to some Kenyan schools that have dared to explore imaginative, Waldorf-inspired approaches to education in their teaching and learning of Kenyan government curriculum.
Kieran Egan, in his work
In
Inspired by this rich understanding of children’s wide range of capabilities, Egan has formulated a model of ‘teaching as storytelling’, in which he conceives of lessons and units not as sets of objectives to attain, but rather as ‘good stories to tell in order to engage students’ imaginations and emotions’ (2005:12). Egan demonstrates how we can set up lessons and units like stories, creating a sense of dramatic tension or conflict at the beginning, and using rhythms of expectation and satisfaction for which children have well-developed conceptual abilities to understand (Egan
Beyond being a rich and indispensable tool for learning, imagination is a conduit of identity formation, for divergent thinking and for the envisioning of preferred futures. Imagination plays a central role in the construction of our group affiliations, as discussed in Benedict Anderson’s seminal work
Resisting singular, definitive interpretations of truth, imagination breeds creativity and engagement with diverse possibilities. Freedom of imagination is required to envision alternative realities and potential futures, and courses of action that could produce these futures. Indeed, the possibility of education catalysing transformation depends largely on the lively engagement of imagination. Skourtou et al. (
The Nested Pedagogical Orientations framework views these orientations as nested within each other, rather than as isolated orientations. While the transmission orientation has the narrowest focus, the social constructivist orientation includes transmission while broadening the focus to include experiential learning, higher-order thinking and the co-construction of knowledge. Similarly, the transformative orientation expands upon both transmission and social constructivist orientations to include a critical orientation, an explicit focus on social justice and equity issues and the exercising of agency to intervene to transform reality (Skourtou et al.
Imagination is a potent resource in the furthering of the educational objectives of all these orientations. Most mainstream or government curricula worldwide focus on the transmission of information and skills specified in the curriculum and examinations. Transmission (or banking) approaches contribute to passivity, the veiling of reality (through fragmentation of ‘information’), the suppression of agency and the monopolisation of power (Freire
As Freire (
Whereas banking education anesthetises and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the
This study explores ways of bringing transformative approaches into mainstream schools, using imaginative approaches that support the transmission of information and skills necessary to excel on standardised examinations, while also broadening pedagogical orientations to include co-constructions of knowledge, critical literacies and transformative interventions in reality. Following Freire (
In 2012, four primary schools, all of which use the Kenyan ‘8-4-4’ government curriculum (8 years of primary, 4 years of secondary, and 4 years of university), embarked on a journey of seeking ways of imbuing the government school experiences with imagination. All these schools are located in areas under-resourced by government schools (two in informal settlements or urban ‘slums’ of Nairobi, two in rural Kenya), and all were started independently by community members or local churches concerned with the number of children out of school. These schools came to know each other through their common relationship to a small non-governmental organisation (NGO), for which I worked as an educational advisor and which supports a number of schools and education projects in Kenya. All charge a modest monthly school fee of 300–600 KSH (about $3–6 USD), which includes daily porridge and lunch (for some children the only food they eat in a day), although all these schools waive the fees for families who cannot afford.
Although located in different communities, these schools share similar challenges. Because of the high demand for a limited number of schools, class sizes tend to be large, particularly in the urban schools, which often have 50–80 children in each of the pre-primary classes. As the ‘8-4-4’ system is characterised by high-stakes examinations, virtually all teaching and learning is oriented towards preparation for the examinations, beginning with ‘baby class’ for the 3-year olds. The combination of large class sizes and the orientation towards examinations results in a lot of what could be characterised as rote learning involving much chanting (of numbers, letters, syllables, body parts, etc.) and emphasis on the mechanics of reading and writing, as the exclusive form of assessment is the monthly written examinations. The medium of instruction is English, a second or third language for the children, who speak their ethnic languages and/or the national language, Swahili, at home. While all teachers make extensive use of familiar languages, particularly Swahili, in their classes, all written language is in English, meaning children’s initial literacy instruction is in a language with which they have minimal oral familiarity. Apart from the daily ‘outdoor activity’ period and break time, the children spend the full day seated in crowded desks, with limited kinesthetic engagement or attention to physical development beyond that which relates to the mechanics of writing.
This description is meant to give a sense of the contextual realities in which the schools function and is not meant as an indictment of anything or anyone. Many of the teachers have extraordinary creativity, resilience and commitment to their pupils. Because of the hegemony of examinations in the ‘8-4-4’ system, children ‘must’ be given daily written homework and monthly examinations from their first days of baby class, and schools proposing to do otherwise risk having parents remove their children in favour of more ‘academically oriented’ schools.
The Kenyan Ministry of Education Early Childhood Development and Education Syllabus aligns completely with the
Eager to explore ways of bringing more life, imagination and holistic engagement to the potentially dry government ECD curriculum, these four primary schools, in collaboration with their partner NGO, developed a partnership with the Nairobi Waldorf School, to seek ways of learning from each other and mediating between Waldorf-inspired approaches and the government curriculum. There is significant alignment between Waldorf approaches and Egan’s frameworks for imaginative education, transformative orientations and Freire’s construction of education as the practice of freedom (Freire
Waldorf education begins with a commitment to the development of whole human beings, understanding the deep interconnectedness of intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual development. Founded by Rudolf Steiner in the aftermath of World War One, the Waldorf education movement seeks to support the development of intentional, compassionate, conscientious human beings, who are mindful of our interconnected roles in working towards a more humane, just world. Waldorf education emerges from an understanding of human beings as willing, feeling and thinking beings, whose learning and growth as individuals depend on the balanced and integrated development of all three. While all deep, meaningful learning depends on the cohesive engagement of the will (through doing; physical involvement), feeling (involving sympathy; human connection) and thinking (cognitive aspects; reason), the relative dominance of these three learning faculties (which are also forms of consciousness) shifts throughout childhood development, with the will being dominant throughout the first seven years of life. The will can be characterised as the power to achieve one’s goals, and its effective development, particularly through freedom of movement and active physical engagement in early childhood, can result in strong character and work ethic later in life (Edmunds
The Waldorf curriculum emerges from a deep understanding of child development and seeks to support the particular developmental tasks (physical, emotional and intellectual) children face at any given stage. Children aged 3–5, for example, are developing a keen interest in the world, supported to a large extent by freedom of movement and must be supported to follow and deepen their curiosity through the encouragement of their sometimes endless asking of questions (Van Alphen & Van Alphen
Young children develop language abilities at an exceptionally rapid rate through imitation of people in their environment and through actively doing or speaking language (i.e., largely through the will) (Van Alphen
In addition to rich experiences of stories, oral language development is supported through the recitation and internalisation of imagination-rich poems and verses, accompanied by meaningful gestures. Action songs and singing games also assist oral language development, while developing co-ordination, strengthening the will and nurturing a reverence for the beauty and active qualities of language. Waldorf advocates for the use of home language(s) as the media of instruction, but where this is not possible, developing strong oral foundations in the medium of instruction through meaningful exposure to and use of language is even more important. No matter what the medium of instruction, the use of multiple different languages in early childhood and beyond helps to develop flexibility of thinking, joy in diverse forms of expression and comfort with the unfamiliar. All experiences of language, whatever the language(s) may be, must be infused with life, meaning and beauty, such that children sense the intrinsic value of language and literacy learning, and their joy and inquisitiveness propels their learning forward.
Language and literacy development are also propelled through physical movement in the Waldorf approach. In contrast to the Kenyan ECD Syllabus, which emphasises the importance of fine motor skill development specifically for the mechanics of writing (Ministry of Education, Republic of Kenya
Overall, Waldorf approaches to language and literacy development reflect a conceptualisation of literacy that extends beyond cognitive processes to acknowledge the centrality of the imagination, the body and emotions in the construction and representation of knowledge. Waldorf pedagogies reflect an image of a child as a capable, multidimensional being, with a rich imaginative life and profound capacity for understanding through their interconnected faculties of the will, feeling and thinking. Waldorf constructions of childhood, like those of Egan, point to the gross inadequacies of cognitive-dominant approaches to early childhood education. Waldorf expands on Egan’s understanding of the complementarity of affect and cognition to offer models of education that embrace the interconnectedness of the physical and spiritual, as well as the emotional and intellectual, in the development of children and indeed of all human beings.
The partnership between the Nairobi Waldorf School and these four 8-4-4 schools began with informal visits of some of the 8-4-4 teachers to Waldorf Kindergarten classes. No number of workshops, books or discussion groups could have opened up teachers’ imaginations to alternatives for early childhood education as effectively as a few hours’ exposure to the dramatically different paradigms underlying a Waldorf Kindergarten. It was amazing for me, as a resource person facilitating this partnership, to walk with these teachers as they began to process this radically different concept of education. ‘If they don’t do exams, how do they know when to promote the children to the next class?’ ‘How do they learn without desks, chalkboards, and notebooks?’ ‘If they spend all day playing, listening to stories, drawing and painting, what time do they learn?’ These were among the questions teachers asked upon initial exposure to Waldorf learning environments.
These classroom visits were magical seeds which sprouted ever-expanding
We also held several Saturday workshops, facilitated by Waldorf teachers, which brought together teachers from all four of the 8-4-4 schools and offered opportunities for rich experiential learning, discussions and visioning. Among the full-day workshops was one on
Throughout all these processes, change was documented through teachers’ written reflections, written documentation of teachers’ discussion groups and classroom observations over more than two years. The resulting data show teachers’ broadening understanding of what counts as knowledge and learning, changes in teacher–child relationships and teachers’ questioning of their practice and exploring possibilities for interrupting the status quo.
Transformations in teaching and learning in the ECD classrooms were gradual, often stuttering, but transformational nonetheless. Teachers’ broadening conceptualisations of knowledge and learning were manifested in a decreasing reliance on writing and reading as the main sites of instruction and assessment and an increasing focus on oral language development, particularly through stories, verses, songs and poems. In many classes, songs and verses went from being energisers or offering a break from seat-learning to being integrated centrally into the learning of the curriculum. In a written reflection, one teacher expressed surprise at how much learning could take place without reading or writing, and this discovery was reflected in her classroom in increased movement, less time spent in desks, the introduction of materials such as beanbags and homemade shakers and the very frequent use of action songs and verses. Previously spending hours every day distributing, collecting and correcting notebooks for simple writing exercises (a chaotic process in which some children spent only a few minutes on the intended writing task), an increased focus on oral language development decreased some of the need for the endless notebook process, while also engaging children’s hearts and bodies in a joyful learning process which energised rather than exhausted children. These practices reflected an expanding conceptualisation of literacy beyond a mechanical, cognitive process towards one which accounts for the role of the body, the imagination and emotions in the construction and representation of knowledge.
Another teacher’s reflections articulated a growing determination to ‘involve learners from head to toes…every day for holistic growth and coordination, e.g. through songs’. A primary teacher, previously extremely focused on academic learning oriented towards examination, stated: ‘How wonderful it is to involve a child’s heart, head and limbs in his/her growth and learning’. Along with these expanding understandings of what constitutes literacy and learning came a sense of urgency to challenge society’s narrow expectations of school learning as reading and writing, and speaking English. One teacher echoed the comments of several other teachers and school administrators when she wrote, ‘We must sensitise parents on the kinds of knowledge and skills which must be taught to young children’. In a context where pre-primary examinations are not mandated by the Ministry of Education, these attitude shifts could result in the creative development of alternative pre-primary assessment models at these schools in the future.
The introduction of imaginative, Waldorf-inspired pedagogies shifted teacher–pupil relationships in ways which affirmed the agency of the children by offering greater freedom and by being less prescriptive. Several teachers began welcoming free drawing or scribbling, rather than only joining the dots and colouring in the lines. Some teachers began building singing and clapping into their daily routines to signal transitions in lessons and expectations for behaviour, rather than yelling instructions like ‘Keep quiet!’ and ‘Sit down!’ One teacher wrote that he was bringing more ‘movement into class where the child is the centre of everything, while the teacher is to guide and facilitate materials and songs. The teacher is to be creative and to be a role model’.
Many of the teachers found opportunities to push restrictive desks out of the way, or to move children outside, in order to spend more time in active movement, such as circle time. Stories entered into many classes, including stories told in the familiar language of Swahili, for maximum engagement with imagination and emotions, which are very difficult to access in an unfamiliar language. Particularly when told in a circle, stories became participatory, with children collectively transforming into various characters to perform the actions taking place in the story. Often, the same story was told multiple times, including in English once the story became familiar, and the repetition offered opportunities for greater participation of the children. The repetition and increasing sense of ownership of the stories also allowed the children to internalise the stories (including vocabulary and repetitive phrases), which then quite naturally re-emerged in their creative play time and drawings, including in creative re-versionings of the familiar stories.
Because these are still 8-4-4 schools and the syllabus still had to be covered, teachers worked on developing stories which emerged from the thematic areas of the syllabus. Although the syllabus is full of simple, everyday things, when infused with imagination ordinary things like household utensils can take on extraordinary meaning. For example, spoons, forks and knives can be playing happily together, when they encounter a challenge they must overcome. They work together, using their respective virtues, to overcome the challenge. A story like this engages the imagination, brings out human qualities, while also bringing out the essence of ‘spoon’, ‘fork’ and ‘knife’ by exploring creative possibilities for their unconventional uses, in a way quite impossible when we just teach, ‘This is a spoon, we use it for eating
These practices also signal teachers’ questioning of reproductive models of education and represent bold interventions towards changing the educational status quo. Increased time spent in circles rather than teacher-fronted classrooms, the introduction of storytelling, and the creation of space for activities which are not directly examinable represent challenges to traditional classroom power relations and rigid standardisation of learning. Additionally, the unapologetic use of Swahili in storytelling and other activities is a move towards engaging learners’ imaginations in a medium which allows them greater flexibility of thinking and increased power to make interventions. While also using English in these activities, particularly once children’s confidence has already been built, and in a few cases also claiming space for songs or other contributions in the children’s mother tongues, this more multilingual approach supported engagement with options of ways of conceiving of and naming the world, while also opening up space for identity affirmation and negotiation.
One teacher stated her need to ‘fully understand the development of children’. Many of the teachers, in their thinking and practice, demonstrated a move beyond ‘trivia-style’ education (Egan
In general, the transformations documented in these classrooms represent a broadening understanding of what can constitute knowledge and learning, shifts in traditional top-down teacher–pupil relations and an unsettling of the educational status quo.
The imaginative, Waldorf-inspired approaches to literacy interrogated in this study are particularly conducive to the development of critical literacies in young children. Imagination resists singular, definitive interpretations of truth, and imaginative approaches create space for each learner to negotiate their own interpretations, in ways which defy closure or conformity. By creating space for each learner to experience and interact with living content, imagination necessarily opens doors to engagement with possibilities, divergent thinking and diversity.
In
Freire (
The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them. (p. 73)
Most standardised national curricula (and examinations) lead to the fragmentation of knowledge, leading to ahistorical and apolitical (and a-human) collections of facts and skills ‘which they do not perceive as interacting constituent elements of the whole’ (Freire
Comber and Nichols (
Observations of children in Waldorf-inspired classrooms align with Comber’s (
Janks states that, ‘Different ways of reading and writing the world in a range of modalities are a central resource for changing consciousness’ (Janks
While this study has explored possibilities for transformation in mainstream schools using government curriculum, the transformations in the four schools involved in this particular initiative are far from ‘complete’ or free from challenges. Ongoing significant challenges to the integration of imaginative, Waldorf-inspired approaches include parental objections and misunderstandings, rigid assessment models, large class sizes and the unfamiliar medium of instruction (English). Moving forward, there is an urgent need for greater engagement of parents, and for continued movement towards more fluid classrooms, still greater emphasis on oral language development and increasing space for multilingualism. In addition, there is a critical need to imagine alternative assessment models which encompass holistic child development and pay heed to children’s multimodal communicative and expressive abilities, for the sake of understanding and supporting children’s development and
That said, these 8-4-4 schools still have the responsibility to effectively teach the government ECD syllabus. A key argument of this study is that imagination, as ‘the most powerful and energetic of learning tools’ (Egan
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.