The Curricula Imaginarium: Thinking and Feeling/Power and Poverty in the Classroom

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: The Roles of Cognition and Emotion in Literacy Praxis

Abstract

This paper first asks the question, what is the imagination? I situate the imagination as the entanglement between thinking and feeling, both within the mind, and in the body of the world at large. I isolate two dynamics of the imagination –flexibility and currency – that constitute its form. I then suggest a methodology of affect as a way to approach the imagination in early childhood classrooms. In this paper I aim to center imaginative processes in the classroom as a unit of study and a problem of practice. This focus allows us to gain new insights into the construction of agency, power, and poverty in classrooms, and also ideas for new imagination based educational practices.

Author

• John B. Porco, University of Wisconsin - Madison