Imaginative Science Education ― The Central Role of Imagination in Science Education

This book provides an overview of the role of imagination in science education and also outlines some imaginative approaches to science teaching and learning. It proposes a justification of the imagination in the context of science and science education and provides an in-depth excursion into the ideas forming the theoretical framework behind imaginative approaches. The volume also offers some practical ideas for the classroom. Imaginative approaches to teaching science are not simply creative/innovative approaches that have the potential to motivate student learning; they are approaches based on recent developments in the epistemology of science, which stress the personal element of science, which can be best described as imaginative and aesthetic, and which, according to the evidence cited in this volume, can provide teachers with first-hand experience that science can really be an exciting subject and not “a world that is beyond many students’ grasp”.