Imagination, Inquiry, and Voice

Abstract

AbstractWe describe the ways in which the teachers and administrators at the Maxine Greene High School for Imaginative Inquiry (MGHS), an urban public high school named for the philosopher Maxine Greene, are working to embody Greene’s and Dewey’s notion of imagination in the context of a practice called “imaginative inquiry.” Greene considered the role of the imagination in education as a call to action, for once one can imagine a better world, one is compelled to act. Following on and extending Dewey’s work, Greene defined her philosophy of aesthetic education as signifying “an initiation into new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, moving… the nurture of a special kind of reflectiveness and expressiveness, a reaching out for meanings, a learning to learn” (2001, p. 7). Imaginative inquiry, the vehicle for enacting an aesthetic education curriculum, is a practice that is fueled by curiosity by which the imagination interacts with the world to bring about multiple possible meanings and ways of understanding. We reflect upon the process, which we work on in collaboration with the teachers at MGHS, to make the work of imaginative inquiry accessible to all students, and to provide resources to support the work of imaginative inquiry and aesthetic education in high schools.