Imagination in learning Electrical Physics

The results and implications of this study are directly applicable to teaching and learning electricity and may, potentially, be extended into any highly abstract domain. During the study, ten imagination categories were developed along with associated imaginative skills activities to encourage imagination. This imagination produced a language that assisted with complex abstraction. Activities to develop these imaginative skills have focused on particular electrical concept areas. The imagination activities encourage the creation and re-creation of mental models, thereby helping students with appropriate conceptions and to overcome or re-work misconceptions. These focused activities can now be used without further modification in the teaching and learning of electrical physics. Further implications are that the teaching of electrical physics needs to move away from the predominant and largely empiricist worldview to a more holistic one. This can be achieved by training electrical teachers to understand that there are many ways of knowing something, imagination being one. A wider implication is that the principles behind the imagination activities approach will be applicable to many abstract domains “ possibly all. This study is a paradigm pioneer, standing on the edge of the scientific rationalism represented in electrical physics and stepping out into the substantially ignored world of imagination.