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  • It’s great stuff! I was exposed to it through the article in Educational Leadership and I am now reading the book. It makes so much sense! Thank you for your great work! Dave Bell (Texas)

    When I started to use IE several years ago now, that I tried it out in a few lessons here and there, was amazed at the success and then began to look for other areas and subjects in which I could use the Lesson Planning Frameworks and other aspects of the theory. Pamela Hagen.

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    All the knowledge in the curriculum is a product of someone’s hopes, fears, passions, or ingenuity. If we want students to learn that knowledge in a manner that will make it meaningful and memorable, then we need to bring it to life for them in the context of those hopes, fears, passions, or ingenuity. The great agent that will allow us to achieve this routinely in everyday classrooms is the imagination.


    This website introduces new theories, principles, and practical techniques for making education more effective. Because engaging students' imaginations in learning, and teachers' imaginations in teaching, is crucial to making knowledge in the curriculum vivid and meaningful, we call this new approach Imaginative Education (IE). We show that the imagination is one of the great workhorses of learning, and how it can be used for all ages and skill levels.


    The work of The Imaginative Education Research Group is dedicated to showing how learners’ imaginations can be routinely engaged in everyday classrooms. Unfortunately so much of the content of the curriculum is routinely taught as though its natural habitat is a textbook rather than the fears, hopes, and passions of real people that students too commonly find it dull and lifeless, and un-engaging. We believe the ideas, materials, and practices on this website can show how to bring the curriculum to life.



    To watch a brief introductory video, click here.

    You can watch a 1-hour long, extensive introduction to Imaginative Education and its foundational ideas by clicking here.

    To watch a 30-minute video about Corbett Charter School, which uses IE ideas, click here.

    To visit Kieran Egan's Home Page and see publications foundational to our work, click here.

    This website is devoted to taking this new conception of education towards everyday practice in schools and other educational institutions, and also developing and improving it in the process.



    The Refinery Leadership Partners: "Leadership Voices" with Kieran Egan.



    IERG NEWS

    • New Brief Guide to Imaginative Literacy
      Take a look at the Brief Guide to our new “Imaginative Literacy Program.” It has been designed and compiled by Petra Mikulan, a Ph.D. student and research assistant with the IERG. The program is showing how general IERG principles can be applied to literacy teaching and learning. This program is intended to describe, and provide resources for putting into routine practice in everyday classrooms, a new approach to teaching literacy. It is firstly designed for students in order that they may learn literacy in a more satisfying, effective, and meaningful way. It is also designed to help teachers engage students’ imaginations in the processes and details of fluently mastering literacy.

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    • New Associate Director
      Sheri Dunton is the Assistant Director and co-founder of Corbett Charter School in Corbett, Oregon. She is first and always an exemplary practitioner of Imaginative Education and teaches full-time in a primary classroom. Outside the classroom, Sheri is a strong advocate for IE, most recently at the National Charter School Conference in Minneapolis.

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    • New Advisory Board member
      Bob Dunton is the Director and co-founder of Corbett Charter School in Corbett, Oregon, USA. He has worked in public education as a teacher and administrator for 24 years. Bob's teaching experience includes eight years working in villages up and and down the Alaska Peninsula and his administrative experience spans 12 years as superintendent of two Oregon school districts.

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    • Wonder-full Education
      Annabella Cant, Associate Director of IERG and Ph.D. candidate at Simon Fraser University, is the instigator and one of the co-editors of a new book of essays by IERG associates to be published in 2013 by Routledge. The book show that adequate education needs to take seriously the task of evoking wonder about the content of the curriculum. One reviewer wrote: This book is revolutionary in the best sense of that word.” William E. Doll, Jr.

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    • Kieran Egan’s visit to Australia and New Zealand
      Kieran Egan spent two weeks touring and talking at institutions around Melbourne and Sydney, then addressed a conference of the Independent Schools of New Zealand (and also took a Lord of the Rings tour, which was great fun). He spoke at La Trobe, Monash, Notre Dame, and Macquarie Universities, and spent a week in residence at, and in discussions with the staff, of Shore School, Sydney. He spoke mostly about the possibilities of Imaginative Education, and encouraged the development of further Australian sites for the Learning in Depth program.

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    • The Imaginative Education Research Group was founded by Kieran Egan. His vision has inspired thousands of teachers all over the world to reflect upon their daily practices and embrace this new approach to effective education. Kieran Egan and his team of researchers are striving to change education on a global scale.