Kieran Egan on "the ability to think about the possible"




Rob Hopkins show

Summary: If you spend any time reading about the connection between education and the imagination, one name comes up repeatedly.  Kieran Egan has been writing about how to make education more imaginative since the 1980s, and has written many books on the subject.  Born in Ireland, he studied in London before moving to the US and then Canada where, as he puts it, “I got a job at Simon Fraser University in Canada, which has been the only job I’ve ever had”.  In recent years he has worked closely with Gillian Judson who we also spoke to in a previous post through the Imaginative Education Research Group.  He is now retired, and in case you’re wondering, the sound of running water in the background of this recording is not an indicator that Kieran was speaking to us from his bathtub, rather that he keeps a fishtank next to his desk.