Review: Pedagogies of the Imagination by Leonard

Pedagogies of the Imagination: Mythopoetic Curriculum in Educational Practice

by Timothy Leonard a review

 Engaging collection that will challenge assumptions and diffuse boundaries,

This collection of essays explores mythopoetic dimensions of pedagogy from various perspectives. While each contributor has his or her own individual understanding of mythopoetic, Patricia Holland and Noreen Garman provide a broad theoretical foundation for the collection--essentially they construct the mythopoetic as both critical and interpretive (two 'paradigms' in the field of educational research that are often understood as distinct-the critical dimension as normative, the interpretive as interested in meaning). The message: the mythopoetic domain is not only a land of imagination where nothing is *real*, but in fact is political in its very being and requires reflexive, continuous self-questioning. Imagination is political. This implies a radical ethics, one in which we become responsible for our envisioning of the world.

I personally enjoyed the first half of the collection ("Mythopoesis and Curriculum Theorizing") but found myself glossing over the second part ("Mythopoesis in Educational Practice", save a few articles, for example Mary Doll's "Capacity and Currere"). While the first part often offers profound interpretations and inter-disciplinary connections, the second part is more descriptive of actual classroom practices and overall has the very 'social sciency' feel to it, and not a rigorous one at that (categorizing things in stages and steps, writing them in bulleted lists, quoting long passages of 'lived experience' accounts, quoting secondary sources who quote primary sources, using language like 'representation' when talking about art, and so on).

Overall, however, the message of the work is solid and powerful. Even the chapters I did not enjoy so much I found challenged some of my held assumptions, and for that I highly recommend this collection. As Leonard and Willis write in the conclusion, perhaps this work will help teachers or others who already practice or experience within this dimension to articulate their experiences, and to come forth and tell their stories--to make themselves known. Or perhaps this work will help us better understand how we live in the myth of Western science, and how we may otherwise envision our worlds. It's worth your time (though based on this first edition's price, I would find it in a library).