Improving imagination skills in order to assist abstractive learning

As a TAFE teacher for now over 15 years I noticed that many of my students had difficulty with abstract concepts. It was this difficulty with abstraction that I believed was affecting their learning in negative ways. The result was a project that would use positive interventions to counter this apparent learning problem. The result is this paper that emanates from a major research project that explores the use of imagination in learning with 18 students of a full time diploma course at a large TAFE in country NSW during 2010. The purpose of the study was to significantly improve student learning in the highly abstract domain of electricity. A narrative methodological approach was used, guided by regular self-reflective interviews. The findings of the research indicate that being metacognitive about the use of imagination does improve student learning outcomes that assist with abstractive learning. This investigation is a paradigm pioneer, standing on the edge of scientific rationalism and steps out into the substantially ignored world of imagination.

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