This essay offers a rationale for deploying ecofeminist science fiction stories as object-oriented thought experiments in science and environmental education, with particular reference to developments in genetics and evolutionary biology, and their implications for human (and more-than-human) reproduction and kinship in the period following the…

Cognitive load theory's incorporation of evolutionary perspectives has generated several instructional designs based on movement, including the tracing effect, occurring when learners benefit from explicit instructions to trace out specific elements of lesson materials with the index finger. Historical descriptions of children's tracing behaviours…

Academic underachievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds is an ongoing problem for Australian schooling. Schools serving these communities face profound challenges in meeting their students' educational needs. "Creative and Embodied" approaches draw on pedagogical practices inherent in Health and Physical Education and the…

The role of reading in educating a future writer is discussed through the study of memoirs by writers including Janet Frame, James Baldwin, and Eudora Welty. The memoirs show reading books to have been a transformative way of melding forms of experience. The following features of childhood reading are examined: (1) the role of the physical book,…

The twenty-first century is often described as an age of uncertainty and ambiguity with unprecedented challenges. Those with a creative mind-set however might call this millennium an age of wonder. New technologies and digital media are facilitating imagination and inventiveness. How are we innovating education? Are schools and classroom fostering…

These two pieces represent a new approach to the presentation of ABER [arts-based educational research] inquiry projects. They are part ABER writing and presentation mixed with more conventionally scholarly voiced writing. "Trois Chaises" is all at once a theoretical examination of ABER practice, a presentation of one ABER practitioner's…

Memory serves critical functions in everyday life but is also prone to error. This article examines adaptive constructive processes, which play a functional role in memory and cognition but can also produce distortions, errors, and illusions. The article describes several types of memory errors that are produced by adaptive constructive processes…

This article draws on Hannah Arendt's analysis of authority in education, along with her insights into the workings of the imagination and the thinking process, to argue that participation in education should be conceived as an invitation to become towards the world. The potential of this invitation, the article argues, is located in the…

Imagination is rarely acknowledged as one of the main workhorses of learning. Unfortunately, disregarding the imagination has some clearly negative pedagogical impacts: Learning is more ineffective than it should be and much schooling is more tedious than it need be. In this paper, we outline a somewhat new way of thinking about the process of…

Executive functions enable children to pay attention, follow instructions, apply what they have learned, have those "aha!" moments in which they grasp how multiple facts interrelate, think of creative solutions, obey social norms such as waiting their turn and not butting in line or jumping out of their seat, mentally construct a plan,…

Presents a short biography of one of the winners of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology (2012). Thomas L. Griffiths won the award for bringing mathematical precision to the deepest questions in human learning, reasoning, and concept formation. In his pioneering work,…

In environmental and ecological education, a rich literature builds on the premise that place, the local natural context in which one lives, can be an emotionally engaging context for learning and the source of life-long concern for nature. A theory of imaginative education can help uncover new tools and strategies for place-based educators.…

For play researchers, no one looms larger than Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky viewed play, particularly pretend play, as a critical part of childhood, allowing a child to stand "a head taller than himself." His biggest theoretical contribution may have been the Zone of Proximal Development: the idea that children are capable of a range of achievement…

The role of the imagination in adult thinking is to go beyond reality and to express generalised laws. The researcher's job is to specify the cultural tools that preschool children use in the development of their imagination. Previous research has identified two main stages in the development of imagination up until the age of six, a third stage…

This article discusses the impact of the damaged object on the development and functioning of psychic life with particular reference to the sense of reality. The damaged object is of pivotal significance in Klein's and Winnicott's models of psychic development and experience in early infancy. A key dimension of the development and functioning of…