The imagination has a very special place in Catholicism. We live with mystery and we value the interior life.

We speak of the Catholic Imagination which is stimulated by and reflected in the world of stories, symbols, rituals and behaviours through which we express our values and beliefs.

In their commitment to holistic education, our Catholic schools see the imagination as something to be celebrated and nurtured.

Certain subjects provide a ready context for this work: art, music and literature are examples. But education of the imagination is a task shared by all disciplines and all those aspects of school life which welcome fresh, creative and original ideas; these take the learner into deeper realms of meaning.

Today, this is especially the case with ICT which provides so many creative opportunities for stimulating learning, communication and collaboration. Here the imagination can help produce a new generation of truly transforming pedagogies.

If we are to fire the imagination of our students, we must first enkindle our own.

This begins when we allow the imagination to roam into the realm of what yet might be. It can lead to new paradigms and to an appreciation of richness and diversity of educational practices.

Our educational imagination is fed by the images and metaphors we commonly use to describe schooling, education and learning. Words and their associations have a profound impact on our understanding of our work and, ultimately, how we carry it out.

Do we perceive ‘school’, for instance, as a factory, or shop, or business? Or is it more of a community? Or even, perhaps, a family?

Is ‘education’ a commodity which is sold to customers for their personal use? Or is it a process involving all kinds of meaningful connections, personal relationships and social responsibilities?

And what about ‘learning’? Is this, primarily, the accumulation of facts and the mastery of skills? Or is it much more associated with the construction of personal meaning out of experience?

The words, images and paradigms we use in constructing our own meaning of our experiences as educators are basic tools of our educational imagination.

This imagination is a pre-requisite of transformation and an essential part of our shared narrative.