Transformative Agency in Early Learning: Children's Critical Imagination Across Educational Contexts

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

Abstract

This presentation explores how children demonstrate transformative agency through critical imagination across diverse educational contexts. Building on Torres-Olave et al.'s (2025) framework of transformative agency and recent research on collective imagination in learning (Fleer et al., 2023), the study examines how children naturally engage in "reading the world to identify injustices," "imagining untested feasibilities," and "writing the world anew." It demonstrates how children's collaborative imaginative practices enable them to challenge educational approaches that act as "disimagination machines" while developing critical consciousness about social issues. Through analysis of children's responses to environmental, social, and educational challenges across multiple learning environments, the presentation demonstrates how imagination functions as both a learning tool and a form of transformative agency. The presentation will uncover how children's collective imaginative practices contest inherited educational approaches that limit possibilities for change while generating new visions for more just and joyful learning experiences.

Author

• Marilyn Fleer, Monash University