Knowing The Way: Scriptural Imagination and the Acts of the Apostles

In this dissertation, I offer a pedagogical proposal for learning the Christian Scriptures guided by respect for the nature of the reader and the integrity of the biblical text. Christian educators have profitably developed recent theoretical interest in the body’s role in human meaning with regard to worship and praxis methodologies, but the implications of this research for communal study of the biblical text merit further development. I make the case for adopting scriptural imagination as the goal of pedagogically constructed encounters with the Christian Scriptures. The argument proceeds through a series of questions addressing both sides of the text/reader encounter.

Chapter one considers the question “what is the nature of the reader and, subsequently, the shape of the reader’s ways of knowing?” This investigation into recent literature on the body’s involvement in human knowing includes related epistemological shifts with Christian education. On the basis of this survey, imagination emerges as a compelling designator of an incorporative, constructive creaturely capacity that gives rise to a way of being in the world. Teachers of Scripture who intend to participate in Christian formation should account for the imagination’s centrality for all knowing. After briefly situating this proposal within a theological account of creatureliness, I make the initial case for Scriptural imagination as a pedagogical aim.

Imagination as creaturely capacity addresses the first guiding value, but does this proposal also respect the integrity and nature of the biblical text, and specifically of biblical narratives? In response, in chapter two I take up the Acts of the Apostles as a potential test case and exemplar for the dynamics pertinent to the formation of imagination. Drawing on secondary literature on the genre and literary features of Acts, I conclude that Acts coheres with this project’s explicit interest in imagination as a central component of the process of Christian formation in relationship to the Scriptures.

Chapters three and four each take up a pericope from Acts to assess whether the theoretical perspectives developed in prior chapters generate any interpretive payoff. In each of these chapters, a particular story within Acts functions as a test case for readings of biblical narratives guided by a concern for scriptural imagination. Each of these chapters begins with further theoretical development of some element of imaginal formation. Chapter three provides a theoretical account of practices as they relate to imagination, bringing that theory into conversation with Peter’s engagement in hospitality practices with Cornelius in Acts 10:1-11:18. Chapter four discusses the formative power of narratives, with implications for the analysis of Paul’s shipwreck in Acts 27:1-28:16.

In the final chapter, I offer a two-part constructive pedagogical proposal for reading scriptural narratives in Christian communities. First, I suggest adopting resonance above relevance as the goal of pedagogically constructed encounters with the Scriptures. Second, I offer three ways of reading with the body, including the physical, ecclesial, and social bodies that shape all learning. I conclude by identifying the importance of scriptural imagination for Christian formation and witness in the twenty-first century.

In the mouth of the imagination : positioning children as co-researchers and co-artists to create a professional children's theatre production

In recent decades a number of Australian artists and teacher/artists have given serious attention to the creation of performance forms and performance engagement models that respect children’s intelligence, engage with themes of relevance, avoid the cliche´s of children’s theatre whilst connecting both sincerely and playfully with current understandings of the way in which young children develop and engage with the world. Historically a majority of performing arts companies touring Australian schools or companies seeking schools to view a performance in a dedicated performance venue engage with their audiences in what can be called a ‘drop-in drop-out’ model. A six-month practice-led research project (The Tashi Project) which challenged the tenets of the ‘drop-in drop-out’ model has been recently undertaken by Sandra Gattenhof and Mark Radvan in conjunction with early childhood students from three Brisbane primary school classrooms who were positioned as co-researchers and co-artists. The children, researchers and performers worked in a complimentary relationship in both the artistic process and the development of product.

Using the imagination : consumer evoking and thematizing of the fantastic imaginary

This article explores the process by which consumers evoke and thematize the fantastic imaginary when playing a fantasy-based trading card game. Interviews with 15 informants, all players of Magic: The Gathering, serve as data. The result is a new framework that reveals how the fantastic imaginary is evoked and thematized. A typology of thematizing strategies employed by consumers is also presented. Implications are discussed in relation to consumer research, imagination theory, literary theory of the evoked fantastic imaginary, and the imaginary in play.

Visuacy, imagination, and engagement

Australia’s National Review of Visual Education (DEEWR, 2009) asserts the primacy of visual language ability, or ‘visuacy” in problem-solving. This paper reports on a recent university/schools research project with ‘at risk’ middle school students in which visuacy was promoted as a primary medium for obtaining data relating to issues of immediate concern to the students. Using a students-as-researchers approach, the project investigated middle school students’ perspectives on school engagement and disengagement. In this project, novice researchers used a variety of data gathering methods including photography, video interviews and drawn images as well as more traditional verbal methods, such as interviews, and quantitative methods, such as questionnaires. Engaging student imagination was a key focus of the approach taken by the project, acknowledging that student participants may be reluctant to enter dialogue with teachers and researchers on matters to which they have previously had little input. Students who have previously been marginalized and prevented from contributing their voices to educational forums often have difficulty in adjusting to the novelty of collaborative research with adults (Rudduck, 2003) and may be uncertain of their own place in the relationship that defines teacher/student interactions. It is argued that the project’s promotion of visuacy, alongside more traditional literacies and numeracy in education research, helped to overcome these concerns, engaged the imaginations of the student researchers, and provided a medium for the expression of the voices of marginalised young people.

Young people, imagination and re-engagement in the middle years

This article reports on the first stage of a study that uses Young People as Researchers methodology to investigate the phenomenon of middle-year student disengagement. The study obtains student perspectives on the meanings of engagement and disengagement using a variety of innovative research methods. The first stage of the study focused on a two-day workshop giving students and teachers an overview of the project and providing training and experience in conducting research in their schools. The process employed by the study provides spaces and resources for critical thinking and encourages imaginative responses to the real life problems confronting the students and their peers and affecting their educational engagement. This article describes ways in which engagement is viewed both theoretically and through the empirical work of the student researchers, and how various applications of ‘disciplined imagination’ connect with methods of investigating and understanding engagement.

From 'sympathetic' to 'dialogic' imagination : cultural study in the foreign language classroom

This chapter reports on a critical literacy approach to developing intercultural competence in an EFL/ESL classroom: an approach which uses a form of 'connective analysis' between linguacultures leading to productive exploration of the interstices between cultures.

Is the world their oyster? The global imagination of pre-service teachers

This paper reports on a qualitative interview study with eleven pre-service primary teachers in Queensland about their career plans exploring whether and how a global imagination motivates this next generation of teachers. The study is framed within sociological theory of globalisation, with regard to the growing possibilities for international mobility for work purposes, and the new life circumstances which make this imaginable. Teaching as a profession has changed and teachers are no longer as entangled with specific systems or geographical locations anymore. International recruitment campaigns are shown to pursue these pre-service teachers during their university preparation. The analysis of the interview data reveals the kind of impact these possibilities make on how pre-service teachers imagine their career, and what other considerations enhance or limit their global imagination. The findings are used to reflect on the highly localised governance of pre-service teacher preparation and the limited state-bound imaginaries to which these pre-service teachers are unnecessarily confined in their preparation.

Imagination

Imagination is a capacity of internal visualization, concept creation and manipulation not directly dependent upon sensation. Imagination is associated with a range of phenomena: mental imagery, fancy, inventiveness, insight, counterfactual reasoning, pretence, simulation and conceivability.

Drawing on imagination : primary students' ideal learning environments

Research has established a close relationship between learning environments and learning outcomes (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Victoria, 2008; Woolner, Hall, Higgins, McCaughey & Wall, 2007) yet little is known about how students in Australian schools imagine the ways that their learning environments could be improved to enhance their engagement with the processes and content of education and children are rarely consulted on the issue of school design (Rudduck & Flutter, 2004). Currently, school and classroom designers give attention to operational matters of efficiency and economy, so that architecture for children’s education is largely conceived in terms of adult and professional needs (Halpin, 2007). This results in the construction of educational spaces that impose traditional teaching and learning methods, reducing the possibilities of imaginative pedagogical relationships. Education authorities may encourage new, student-centred pedagogical styles, such as collaborative learning, team-teaching and peer tutoring, but the spaces where such innovations are occurring do not always provide the features necessary to implement these styles. Heeding the views of children could result in the creation of spaces where more imaginative pedagogical relationships and student-centred pedagogical styles can be implemented. In this article, a research project conducted with children in nine Queensland primary schools to investigate their ideas of the ideal ‘school’ is discussed. Overwhelmingly, the students’ work emphasised that learning should be fun and that learning environments should be eco-friendly places where their imaginations can be engaged and where they learn from and in touch with reality. The children’s imagined schools echo ideas that have been promoted over many decades by progressive educators such as John Dewey (1897, in Provenzo, 2006) (“experiential learning”), AS Neill (in Cassebaum, 2003) (Summerhill school) and Ivan Illich (1970) (“deschooling”), with a vast majority of students suggesting that, wherever possible, learning should take place away from classrooms and in environments that support direct, hands-on learning.

Inciting the social imagination to realising the dream : An unfolding story of reform in a low-socioeconomic school

This paper presentation addresses design-based research that became a catalyst for social change among a disadvantaged school community. The aim of the longitudinal research was to protoype an evidence-based model for whole school digital and print literacy pedagogy renewal among students from low socioeconomic, Indigenous, and migrant backgrounds. Applying Anthony Gidden’s principle of the “duality of structure”, the paper presentation interprets how the collective agency of researchers and the school community began to transform the structural properties of the institution in a two-way dynamism, so that the structural properties of the school were not outside of individual action, but were implicated in its reproduction and transformation.

Imagination for re-engagement from the margins of education

For marginalised secondary school students, mainstream education may no longer appear to be an inviting place. While proposed solutions to problems of disengagement and marginalisation appear to concentrate on finding ways to coerce students back to mainstream education through, for example, ‘learning or earning’ legislation, this article suggests that more effective solutions may be found by engaging with the students in the margins that they occupy. Following discussion of key influences on student disengagement and a theory of imaginations, a ‘students-as-researchers’ (SaR) model of working with young people is discussed to demonstrate that, through the scaffolded application of active imagination, it is possible for such students to identify and create their own connections to the mainstream. The SaR model is illustrated through reference to groups of disaffected high school students who participated in an action research project to investigate apparent low aspiration for tertiary education among their peers at schools serving low-income communities in Queensland, Australia.

Review : "A criminological imagination : essays on justice, punishment and discourse by Part Carlen"

There are four contributors to this review symposium. David Brown's review focuses on the questions of abolitionism that cut across much of Carlen's scholarship on punishment and prisons. Kerry Carrington's review attempts to articulate Pat Carlen's contributions to feminism, critque and crimnology, a selection of which is republished in the third scetion 'A criminological imgination'. Kelly Hannah-Moffat's review provides a succint but broad ranging analysis of Carlen's contributions to knowledge, politics and penal reform. Jo Phoenix takes Carlen's contributions to women, crim and scoial control as her main source of inspiration from this large body of work to review.

Analysing children’s drawings : applied imagination

This article centres on a research project in which freehand drawings provided a richly creative and colourful data source of children’s imagined, ideal learning environments. Issues concerning the analysis of the visual data are discussed, in particular how imaginative content was analysed and how the analytical process was dependent on an accompanying, secondary data source comprising brief, explanatory written texts.