Imaginative Education in Practice: A Conversation with Gianni Hadzigeorgiou

Nicole Marcia: What originally drew you to the ideas of IERG?

 Gianni Hadzigeoriou: I realized from my own experience as a science teacher the importance of engaging students’ imaginations. I had become convinced that through the use of the imagination students could understand certain physics concepts and ideas, but I was initially a bit apprehensive.

In 1980, while studying as an undergraduate at the Department of Physics, at the Aristotelian University in Salonika, Greece, I participated in an experiment at the nuclear physics lab. I suggested to the supervisor (a nuclear physicist, or a physics teacher) that we could teach concepts such as pair production or annihilation – that is, concepts from quantum physics - through story. I also made a comment about teaching those things even to young children who do not have the conceptual framework or the prerequisite knowledge to understand such things. Of course I was not laughed at, but some of my fellow students and the supervisor did frown upon the idea, while some others said that I was talking nonsense. Regardless, deep down inside I knew that we, or at least I, could use story to teach physics.

A few years later in the library of the University of Northern Iowa in the early 1990’s, I came across a little book entitled, Teaching as Story Telling. At first I put it back – but as I was making my way to the corridor, the title of that little book kept ringing in my ears. I checked it out and I read it that same night. Well, I thought, here is someone else who has provided some justification for the idea I had, and he makes serious recommendations for teachers and curriculum planners. Anyway that person – Kieran Egan – made me happy that day in the library. After all, I did not talk nonsense.

NM: Have you experienced any problems associated with Kieran’s model? If so, what were they?

GH: Since the course I am now teaching is entitled “Physical Science in Early Childhood,” I am particularly interested in the Mythic planning framework. My main difficulty is, on the one hand, finding binary opposites and, on the other hand, resolving the conflict that is set up by those opposites. Although for some concepts it is easier to find binary opposites, their final resolution still requires imaginative thinking and perhaps someone with experience in making stories. This I suppose is due to the nature of scientific concepts, at least some scientific concepts. I mean it would be much easier to resolve a conflict between a beautiful princess and an ugly maid than between a “good” form of energy and a “bad” one. The Romantic framework, in which I am also interested, presents me with the difficulty of identifying those heroic qualities that are central to the scientific concept I am teaching. While for some concepts this heroic element is easy to find, for other concepts it is not. As far as Romantic understanding is concerned there is a lot of thinking that I have to do, if I want to apply it according to Kieran’s planning framework. Although wonder is central to studying science, the attempt to evoke it across all, or the majority of the science curriculum, has certainly provided me with a great challenge.

NM: How has this model changed your ideas around teaching? Your daily practice?

GH: Firstly, it has changed my approach to teaching in the sense that I am now employing the use of narrative very often in both my undergraduate classes and my in-service education courses. I always try to find or even make up a story that will capture the audience’s imagination and will convey the meaning of what I am trying to teach. Secondly, I am in search of binary opposites that could be used for the introduction of science concepts to young children. 

NM: Can you provide us with any specific examples of exercises that you employ in your teaching?

GH: In the following examples, I employ the notion of opposites and that of conflict and its final resolution.

a) Hot air that goes up vs. cold air that stays down. I ask students to make a story that dramatizes the conversation between hot air and cold air. Two air molecules are discussing their feelings and experiences. 

b) The water cycle. The story here dramatizes the experiences, feelings and problems of two water drops, one which evaporates and goes up and one that stays still (the conflict between motion and rest). The conflict between the two drops is resolved when the one that does not travel realizes the important job that the other drop does for the good of the planet and decides to follow suit.

I have also employed the notion of opposites although not in an “Eganian” way, that is, without a conflict between binary opposites and its final resolution. For example, in order to teach the concept of a wave (which is the transmission of a disturbance through a medium with a certain velocity, and in which transmission there no transference of matter from one place to another, but only the transference of energy), I made up a story that asked the students to find ways to transmit a message with and without the presence of a material body to move it. I asked the students to imagine that that they had gotten lost in a forest and were concerned about how to let people in the village know that they were in need of help. So they had to send a message by, for example, placing a bottle with a note in it in a creek and letting it float down to the village, using a mirror, setting a fire etc. Then they were asked to find out the main differences between their ideas (in some cases the message requires the presence of a material object in order to be transmitted, as in the case of a bottle, and in some it does not, as in the case of a mirror). Students understood the concept of the wave through a story that provided a shared vicarious experience. The introduction of this concept came as a natural consequence of the plot of a story. Students at least initially made use of their narrative mode of thought.

Click here to link to his IERG bio:  http://ierg.net/people/index.php?bio_id=30