This book discusses the kind of imaginative thinking which is going on all the time without producing the masterpieces of art and culture. The author brings together the body of educational theory, psychological theory and some general opinions about imagination, to provide an account of everyday imagining for educationalists, psychologists, teachers and parents.

In this revolutionary book, a renowned computer scientist explains the importance of teaching children the basics of computing and how it can prepare them to succeed in the ever-evolving tech world. Computers have completely changed the way we teach children. We have Mindstorms to thank for that. In this book, pioneering computer scientist Seymour Papert uses the invention of LOGO, the first child-friendly programming language, to make the case for the value of teaching children with computers. Papert argues that children are more than capable of mastering computers, and that teaching computational processes like de-bugging in the classroom can change the way we learn everything else. He also shows that schools saturated with technology can actually improve socialization and interaction among students and between students and teachers. Technology changes every day, but the basic ways that computers can help us learn remain. For thousands of teachers and parents who have sought creative ways to help children learn with computers, Mindstorms is their bible.

The word fundamentalism usually conjures up images of religions and their most zealous followers. Much less often the word appears in connection with political economy. The phrase “free market” gives the connotation that capitalism is freedom. Neoliberalism is the rise of global free-market fundamentalism. It reaches into nearly every aspect of our daily lives as it seeks to dominate and eliminate the last vestiges of public domains through wanton privatization and deregulation. It degrades all that is public. The good news is that a global community of resistance continues to struggle against neoliberal oppression. Formal and informal education entities contribute to these struggles, offering visions and strategies for creating a better future. The purpose of this volume is twofold. Several contributors will highlight how the neoliberal agenda is impacting educational policy formation, teaching and learning, and relationships between K-12 schools and communities. Other contributors will highlight how the global community has gradually become conscious of the ideological doctrine and how it is responsible for human suffering and misery. The volume is needed because the growing body of educational research linked to exploring the impact of neoliberalism on schools and society fails to provide conceptual or historical understanding of this ideology. It is also an important scholarly intervention because it provides insights as to why educators, scholars, and other global citizens have challenged the intrusion of market forces over life inside K-12 schools. Teacher educators, schoolteachers, and anyone who yearns to understand what is behind the debilitating trend of commercial forces subverting humanizing educational projects would benefit from this volume. Activists, educators, youth, and scholars who seek strategies and visions for building democratic schools and a society would consider this volume essential reading.

When originally published this was the first book to offer a collective history of all the arts – Art, Drama, Dance, Music, Literature and Film – in the curriculum. It also offers a coherent framework for the teaching of arts which is in line with the best current trends since the Gulbenkian Report of 1982. It insists that the arts, seen together should be an essential part of the national curriculum.

Through the lenses of cultural-historical theory, this book helps readers find out how early childhood science education became established as a field of inquiry.

The Question of what ‘aesthetic education’ is, or might be, is often a source of incomprehension. This book opens up discussion of a complex, difficult, but highly important topic, and offers an introductory survey of the whole area. In examining the relationship of the concept of the aesthetic to that of art, it challenges the persistent linking by many educationists of ‘aesthetic’ with ‘creative’ and the consequent neglect of critical reflection and appreciation.

Inspired by papers developed for the 6th International Conference on Imagination and Education: Imaginative Practice, Imaginative Inquiry (Canberra, Australia, 2008), this book connects a cross-section of educators, researchers and administrators in a dialogue and exploration of imaginative and creative ways of teaching, learning and conducting educational inquiry. Imagination is a concept that spans traditional disciplinary and professional boundaries. The authors in this book acknowledge diverse theoretical and practical allegiances, but they concur that imagination will play an essential role in the building of new foundations for education in the 21st century. From our conception of human development through our ways of educating teachers to the teaching of mathematics, they argue for the centrality of imagination in the realization of human potential, and for its relevance to the most urgent problems confronting our world. Introduced by a wide-ranging literature review and extensively referenced, this volume makes an important contribution to a rapidly expanding field.