Exploring the Imagination on Staff Development Day: A Reflection on the Importance of Imagination in the Lives of Children
By Emma Vallarino, Head Teacher and Manager of the Kordestani Family Program for Parents and Educators
Imagination is often thought of as wistful and carefree, the stuff of daydreams or child’s play or perhaps as a necessary precursor to creativity. What is often not known about the imagination is that it underpins much of our thinking and learning.
This was the focus of the first half of Bing Nursery School’s staff development day on October 9, 2023. Emma Vallarino, manager of the Kordestani Family Program for Parents and Educators, and Adrienne Lomangino, Bing head teacher and pedagogical specialist, hosted the morning session with the nursery school staff. The content from the morning was drawn from a three-day session Lomangino and Vallarino hosted for early childhood educators in July 2023 as part of the Bing Educator Summer Session.
The morning began with an icebreaker exercise to immerse the staff in an “imagination mindset.” The session was called “Remember When…” and prompted the staff to approach one another and start a conversation based on a pretend memory. “Remember when we…” were the opening lines of each conversation, with staff members weaving elaborate and creative pretend memories. One group had a run-in with pirates and saved the day by creating sails out of old petticoats. One teacher used the same pretend memory with different individuals to see how the story changed each time. This activity sparked many laughs and fostered an openness to play with ideas and other people. Its ultimate goal? To unlock an imagination mindset.
Lomangino and Vallarino then engaged the staff in a creative activity to elicit similes and metaphors for children’s imaginations. Using small booklets, called zines, teachers were prompted to conceive of children’s imaginations in their own metaphorical way. Teachers described children’s imaginations “like a garden,” “as plentiful as the celestial sky,” and “like a rainbow reflecting through falling rain.” These similes opened our imaginations to new ways of seeing the power of children’s imaginations. The next step was to work to create metaphors for a child’s imagination, and the staff’s responses included “the ocean: life, depth, vastness,” “books with endless pages,” “a Crayola box of 120 colors,” and “a bird’s flight.” These powerful images allowed us to consider the beauty, bounty, and importance of children’s imaginations while grounding us in our appreciation for our work as early childhood educators that nurtures this precious gift.
The exercise was followed by Lomangino and Vallarino’s presentation, “The Imagination Continuum: How Imagination Is the Heart of Thinking.” It explored the imagination in depth, with a focus on the work of Lev Vygotsky, a prominent Russian psychologist who wrote, “Imagination is not just an idle mental amusement, not merely an activity without consequence in reality, but rather a function essential to life.”
From recognizing the imagination as a basic human competence to delving into how it develops, Lomangino and Vallarino drew on research from archeological data and neuroscience to explain the intricacies of the imagination. They used many classroom examples to share how imagination impacts our lives in many ways, from how we make sense of the world to how we think creatively beyond the bounds of this world. This idea is from Ann Pendleton-Jullian and John Seely-Brown, researchers who see not one “imagination” but many imaginations that exist on a continuum and work in different ways. On the most basic level, our imagination helps us to perceive the world through what Pendleton-Jullian and Seely-Brown call “mediating frames.” The imagination fills in the gaps around what we see based on our personal experiences and culture.
Lomangino shared the example of a puzzle in the Bing classroom that was designed to be a pear. Once, as she was putting away the pieces, a child glanced at the puzzle from a sideways angle and announced, “It’s an eagle.” From this standpoint, the imagination helps to make sense of the world. Along with perception, the imagination underpins reasoning and speculation in this sense-making way. At the other end of the spectrum is free play imagination. This generative, novelty-filled, and associative kind of thinking is closer to what most people think of as the imagination. It lives not on the sense-making but rather the “sense-breaking” side of the imagination continuum, according to Pendleton-Jullian and Seely-Brown, and includes experimental imagination and speculative imagination. These varied aspects of our imagination ground our thinking processes, and give young children ample opportunity to play, bolstering their imagination and supporting future learning.
Lomangino and Vallarino wrapped up the session by inviting the group to map their classroom’s “imagination hot spots”—those particular areas of the classroom that seem to spark children’s imaginations. Once the maps were drawn, the group was asked what makes an area of the classroom a hot spot. What about the environment stimulates the imagination—and which kind of imagination? Where in the classroom might there be room to encourage more imagination?
By placing imagination at the center of the staff development day, Lomangino and Vallarino brought a depth and understanding to a topic that is often overlooked. Imagination is a powerful mental process that underpins children’s thinking processes and learning, and it should be supported, prioritized, and celebrated in the classroom.