Young children’s imagination in science education and education for sustainability

Imagination is defined as the creative ability to form ideas and images without immediate, external sensory input (Egan 1992). It broadens and deepens human experience by seeing familiar objects in a new light (Dewey 1934/1980) and helps to make knowledge applicable in solving problems. Therefore, imagination is fundamental to integrating experience in the learning process and has been treated as an indispensable precondition for helping humanity to tackle multi-complex problems and create innovations (Sandri 2013). Energy systems and advancements in waste management and transportation have, for example, been developed through novel ideas (Editorial board of IJDCI 2013). Education for sustainability requires thinking and acting in ways that will safeguard the future wellbeing of people, species, and our planet (Davis 2010).

Some argue that the breadth of environmental devastation we might face in the future is even beyond our imagination (Blenkinsop and Egan 2009). In these living conditions where increasing biodiversity loss and social and ecological crisis are a reality (Sauvé 2009), there is unquestionably a need for new ideas on how to address these multifarious problems (Churchman 1967; Harvey and Pilgrim 2011). These problems are often unstructured, cross-cut through several structures, and present a range of contradictory options on how to live our lives (Weber and Khademian 2008). This is indeed relevant when particularly addressing sustainability issues (Sandri 2013), due to the fact that they simultaneously address economical, social, and ecological dimensions. Therefore, one of our largest educational challenges is to help younger generations to “cope creatively with the unavoidable uncertainty” (van Eijck and Roth 2013, p. 210).

The following section presents research related to imagination, first treated as an individual capability, then as interwoven in human cooperative processes necessary for sustainability. In addition, research on the so called third space and teachers practicing a listening approach is highlighted.

Some researchers have been troubled with the ontological question of what imagination is and where it is to be located. For example, Kieran Egan (1992) as well as Keiich Takaya (2004) claim that imagination is found in the flexible human mind. Similarly, Egan (2005) argues that the ability to imagine has a significant role when humans are involved in innovation. Other researchers such as Michiel van Eijck and Wolff-Michael Roth (2013) emphasise that through imagination and novelization humans find new ways of acting in the world. Sandri (2013) deepens this discussion in relation to sustainability issues by arguing that the human ability, to envision alternatives, ought to be in focus when learning about sustainability as it helps us in creating innovative solutions to the large-scale challenges we face. Similarly, Kathleen Aikens, Marcia McKenzie, and Philip Vaughter (2016) echo that climate change adaption including socio-economic crisis and the loss of space, requires new imaginative forms of education for sustainability.

A few empirical works have been produced that touch upon imagination particularly within science education. For example, Maria Andrée and Lotta Lager-Nyqvist’s (2013) research found that imagination is a vital dimension of science classroom life. A conclusion drawn is that during student’s joint explorations imagination enriches and broadens the students’ science interests and concerns. Moreover, Chistina Siry and Isabelle Kremer’s (2011) research revealed that young children’s ideas on science phenomena is fairly sophisticated. In their research, the children’s science inquiry is characterized as a non-linear path where new ideas are collaboratively constructed. Siry and Charles Max (2013) cased children’s capabilities as they competently designed and conducted new scientific investigations on solids and liquids by using water and crayons. Their findings revealed that the children sufficiently, through joint actions, conducted science investigations. Another study by Glynne Mackey (2012) on young children’s decision-making touches upon sustainability and exposes various ways in which children act for the environment. In this research, imagination had a significant role in the children’s meaning making. For example, one child was troubled with the fact that Antarctica’s extreme, cold, climate might kill the baby penguins. Through imagination, an innovative, plastic machine was constructed in order to rescue the chicks. Other action-oriented researches on children’s inventiveness coupled to science education were conducted by Britt Jakobson and Per-Olof Wickman (2015). When elementary school children in science class were involved in learning about trees and plants, they participated in an activity on rubbing leaves. One girl made a figurative picture, an imaginative assemblage depicting, for example, houses and butterflies. Common to these studies are that they investigate the various functions of aesthetic expression in children’s meaning making.

Interest in change and novelty has been brought forth when discussing cultural perspectives in science education. In this context, particularly when striving for a more just and inclusive education where marginalised voices are acknowledged, the concept of third space has received attention. Based on a socio-cultural perspective Kris Gutierrez, Betsy Rymes and Joanne Larson (1995) introduce third space (p. 446) in order to highlight the intrinsic interconnectness of culture, learning and language. Drawing from Edward Soja (1996) and Gutierrez’s (2008) theories, Heidi Carlone and Angela Johnson (2012) suggest a transformative “third space” (p. 152), where expanding meaning making takes place. The concept is then explained as a culture/discourse emerging when different funds of knowledge hybridize and “bring new forms of science into existence” (p. 155). In earlier work, third space was suggested as a particular place where two normative patterns interacted and where new creative forms of learning could take place (Guattiérrez, Rhymes and Larson 1995). Thus, third space was related to activities in the classroom where terrains/discourses were regarded as separate but became joined in educational practice. Later, a shift towards a more hybrid third space was elaborated on, where different resourses of knowledge and activities/literacies amalgamate. Within this context, the students mutual exploration enhances their equity in science education (Carlone and Johnson 2012) as it allows them to bring personal desires, interests and concerns into the cooperative practice. In relation to this particular study, aiming at discerning which different experiences children use to imagine solutions for animals’ welfare, both perspectives concerning place and personal desires are of particular interest.

Young children’s voices are still not well represented in research on environmental education and education for sustainability (Stevenson, Brody, Dillon and Wals 2013). Furthermore, children’s different anticipation and interests are sometimes elusive and difficult to discover as it requires complete presence and attention of the teacher or researcher (Dahlberg and Moss 2005). Because children’s communication often reaches beyond verbal utterances, it also challenges our sensibility for listening to languages other than verbal (Dahlberg, Moss and Pence 2007). Open and careful listening involves questioning the status quo and an engagement with the not-yet known (Davies 2011). However, where ethics are interlaced with listening, critical questions are raised about which voices should be privileged (Vecchi 2010). Greene (1995) emphasizes that the grown-up generation has a responsibility to include the “new comers’ voices” (p. 56). With such support, children can reach beyond conventional ways of dealing with the world. However, there is a danger involved if one is too comfortable with the dominant voices (Vecchi 2010). As the concerns and ideas of the disregarded ones are at risk of being overshadowed, the educational challenge is to make space for all children to become “agents for change” (Bigger and Webb 2010, p. 1).

As indicated through this literature review, enhancing the process of imagination in the realms of science and sustainability education is obviously of importance. Nevertheless, the contributions on this area of research are still quite few, and mainly rhetorical. This particular study will scrutinize how children’s voices are accentuated within the cooperative act of imagination (expressed as utterances and visible in their drawings), which in turn, paves the way for them to be heard. Hence, this article strives to empirically investigate how imagination as an unscripted process emerges and impacts a given situation. It begins to answer the question of how the children jointly invent new ways of protecting something they cherish in their environment. When we specifically examine the fabrication of how new lines of ideas come into existence, we try to speak of this in accordance with John Dewey’s writings on imagination (1934/1980).

In this study, we have taken Dewey’s (1938/1997) framework of experience into consideration. According to this, experiences are continuously transformed through all human encounters within the world. Thus, in new situations that involve action both the subject/individual and the object/world are transformed. When Dewey and Bentley (1949/1991) delineates experience they employ the term transaction, in order to analytically focus the entire event or process (Lundegård and Wickman 2012). Several researchers have developed research methods based on this transactional approach (e.g., Öhman and Öhman 2013) as it makes it possible to avoid looking for already preconceived definitions, such as individuals with certain mental states, for example, as fixed imaginative properties interacting (Dewey and Bentley 1949/1991). In contexts where transactions are investigated, the analytical distinctions are instead made from the research purpose (Biesta and Burbules 2003). In order to pay attention to the ongoing transactions, this study utilizes a Practical Epistemological Analysis (PEA) (Wickman and Östman 2002), which is developed from a pragmatic framework built on Dewey (1925/1958) and Wittgenstein’s (1969) philosophical investigations. PEA is a well-established analytical tool with a carefully developed nomenclature (e.g., Rudsberg and Öhman 2010) used specifically to describe meaning making and learning as on-going changes in human conduct. This study relates to this framework as it specifically analyses how new relations become established as they connect aspects/content from various experiences within children’s communication, i.e. how their familiar experiences from everyday life become related and blended into innovative inventions to secure the life for animals they care about. Moreover, while children create meaning and participate in an activity toward a purpose there is always anticipation involved (Dewey 1938/1997), which can be registered in their positive or negative aesthetic judgments and also expressed by, for example, laughter and other outbursts (Jakobson and Wickman 2008)—all visible in their dialogues (Caiman and Lundegård 2014). By thoroughly scrutinizing how diverse experiences emerge, dissolve and become blended, this article strives to empirically investigate the process of imagination in accordance with Dewey’s articulations. Following preschool children’s explorative work by highlighting anticipation expressed in positive or negative aesthetic judgments through three illustrative examples makes this possible.

Previous research has broadly put forward areas of content and conditions related to imagination. Here we probe into the entire process of imagination and visualize what blends that come into existence. Inspired by Dewey’s pragmatic framework on imagination, the specific aim of this study is to empirically scrutinize how the processes that the children are involved in emerge and develop when investigating sustainability and survival of animals. Following a small group of children in an informal activity makes this possible.

Research questions:

In this qualitative research, based on the pragmatic, action oriented approach, pre-school children’s imaginational explorations in a science-related context are in focus. These explorations, aligned with (Guattiérrez, Rhymes and Larson 1995) elaboration on third space, takes place “in between” a formal inquiry-based activity and lunchtime, an imagined space of possibility where children are in charge. We make use of data from a larger study (Caiman and Lundegård 2015). This study represents a network between several suburban preschools that are employing a 2-year project where teachers are striving to create opportunities for children to make cooperative explorations and construct their own problems and questions concerning biodiversity. During this project, the teachers continuously reflect on children’s meaning–making in regard to the diverse species they encounter. An on-going discussion among the teachers concerns the value of protecting biodiversity, which is one aim of an education toward sustainability (Gaston and Spicer 2013).

The pre-school was visited on nine occasions during 6 weeks. The empirical material from this selected pre-school consists of 9.5 h of videotape and their accompanying transcripts. The pre-school is located in a large suburb of Sweden, and the children participating in the study are between 4 and 5 years old. The classroom consisted of 20 children and three teachers (two pre-school teachers and an assistant). The data collected consists of photos, children’s drawings, pedagogical documentations, and field notes. No personally sensitive data has been collected and the overall purpose and research questions did not exceed the limit of the children’s personal integrity. The children, the art workshop/studio teacher (Vecchi 2010), and the teachers at this site had been exploring organisms and creating different ecological systems throughout the project. Following the video-taping, specific moments were located in the data wherein the children jointly invented a problem, lived through a process of imagination, and produced innovative blends such as, a frog-pram.

The specific video material was first viewed as a whole in order to find sequences and critical incidents. Then we continued by discerning those moments with a defined beginning and ending (Flanagan 1954). Third, a selection was made through a careful reviewing, first separately by each author and then jointly deciding what to use when elaborating on the overall purpose. These sequences, presented as vignettes, are transcribed in detail. They are not selected as representative for the project as a whole, but occurred only twice. Thus, they are dealt with as unique, illustrative example of imagination as an outcome and a process. To achieve a richer description and to get a more thorough and detailed analysis in those particular moments, we have also included the children’s drawings. In the fourth and final stage, we analysed how the children through communication established new relations to their drawings and each other’s utterances. In this way, various experiences from everyday life was blended into resourceful creations designed to protect animals.

In this section, various research vignettes and accompanying drawings will be presented and discussed to answer the research questions. Accordingly, the vignettes identified how children’s previous experiences were re-actualized and blended so that something new came into existence. In the analysis, we paid specific attention to when the children anticipated and brought enthusiasm to the situation, as well as to the problem that they created and reconstructed during the process. In this study, the purpose was to investigate children struggling with a problem of their own concern.

In the first example, the children showed the researcher an imaginative outcome (the final artwork), a representation of how they solved a problem concerning animal’s hunting skills. The presented blends were established by a few comments and accented by details in the children’s drawings.

In the second example, “A process of imagination”, we instead approached imagination as an on-going activity and traced how the children made use of different combinations of experiences. The foremost interest was to explore how the process of imagination developed and took shape within practice. Similar to the first example, we highlighted the relations that became established in the process and how those relations contributed to a blending that supported their environmental concern. Therefore, we paid close attention to how the purpose grew and became reconstructed throughout the process.

The first example, “A snapshot of imagination”, is created within a science-related activity at the pre-school. The children comment upon the new blends (outcome) in the collage (Fig. 1). The three animals are imaginative blends that have been invented in order to better the animals’ hunting skills. The children’s drawing revealed that they have utilized different every day life experiences such as glueing and hunting with arrows (research question 1) but the situated, communicative process, in which the children construe various relations, still remain unobservable.

In the second example, imagination becomes visible when addressing it in situ. While the children lived through the entire event, three new and unusual solutions (outcomes) to the problem with the dangerous and busy road were invented. Carts (for the frogs), a tunnel (for small animals) and a pool trampoline (that both small and bigger animals could use) have been transformed into blended existence (research question 2). In this process, the children make use of and transform earlier experiences. Sometimes an immediate experience has an obvious reference, for example, a television program of frogs that a child refers to, sometimes it is much more difficult to trace the origin of a particular experience. However, a diverse range of experiences with frogs, ants, a fox, an elk, and different, specialised trampolines and particular carts gain meaning as the imagination progresses (research question 1). These experiences became valued resources as they nursed and fertilized the process even further. Moreover, and continuously, the children’s rich experiences are transformed into unique, unconventional images. Instead of viewing imagination as a generic ability/competence the imaginational process is something that comes into existence through the on-going transaction.