Pedagogies of the Imagination: Mythopoetic Curriculum in Educational Practice / Edition 1

by Timothy Leonard, Peter Willis

Overview

I have long admired the mythopoetic tradition in curriculum studies. That admiration followed from my experience as a high-school teacher of English in a wealthy suburb of New York City at the end of the 1960s. A “dream” job—I taught four classes of 15–20 students during a nine-period day—in a “dream” suburb (where I could afford to reside only by taking a room in a retired teacher’s house), many of these often Ivy-League-bound students had everything but meaningful lives. This middle-class, Midwestern young teacher was flabbergasted. In one sense, my academic life has been devoted to understanding that searing experience. Matters of meaning seemed paramount in the curriculum field to which Paul Klohr introduced me at Ohio State. Klohr assigned me the work of curriculum theorists such as James B. Macdonald. Like Timothy Leonard (who also studied with Klohr at Ohio State) and Peter Willis, Macdonald (1995) understood that school reform was part of a broader cultural and political crisis in which meaning is but one casualty. In the mythopoetic tradition in curriculum studies, scholars labor to understand this crisis and the conditions for the reconstruction of me- ing in our time, in our schools.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402082818
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	06/04/2008
Edition description:	2008
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

Table of Contents

Mythopoesis and Curriculum Theorizing.- Watching with Two Eyes: The Place of the Mythopoetic in Curriculum Inquiry.- The Shadow of Hope: Reconciliation and Imaginal Pedagogies.- Myth in the Practice of Reason: The Production of Education and Productive Confusion.- Care of the Self: Mythopoetic Dimensions of Professional Preparation and Development.- Imagination and Mythopoesis in the Science Curriculum.- The Mythopoetic Body: Learning Through Creativity.- Autobiography and Poetry.- The Resilience of Soul.- Mythopoesis in Educational Practice.- Imaginal Transformation and Schooling.- Idealism and Materialism in the Culture of Teacher Education: The Mythopoetic Significance of Things.- Spiritual Grounding and Adult Education.- Ignatian Spirituality as Mythopoesis.- Mythopoetic Spaces in the (Trans)formation of Counselors and Therapists.- Critical Pedagogy and the Mythopoetic: A Case Study from Adelaide’s Northern Urban Fringe.- Capacity and Currere.- Thinking, Feeling, and Willing: How Waldorf Schools Provide a Creative Pedagogy That Nurtures and Develops Imagination.- Getting a Feel for the Work: Mythopoetic Pedagogy for Adult Educators Through Phenomenological Evocation.- Conclusion: The Mythopoetic Challenge.