Beyond Disimagination: Critical Imagination as Framework for Liberatory Childhood Education

• In Event: Cultivating Change through Critical Imagination and Collective Liberation in Childhood

Abstract

This presentation challenges educational approaches that function as "disimagination machines" (Torres-Olave et al., 2025) by positioning children's critical imagination as a framework for liberatory education. Drawing from multiple theoretical perspectives including critical childhood studies and transformative agency theory, the presentation explores how children across diverse contexts use imagination to contest educational practices that constrain their possibilities for envisioning and enacting change. The study documents how children's imaginative practices—often dismissed as "disruptive" or "off-task" in educational settings—actually represent sophisticated forms of transformative agency that challenge inherited approaches to childhood education. Through analysis of children's creative expression, resistance practices, and world-building activities across multiple educational environments, the presentation demonstrates how imagination serves as a tool for both individual agency and collective transformation that nurtures rather than negates collective joy.

Author

• Betzabe Torres Olave, University of Leeds