Stories, Games, Language, Imagination

This chapter begins with a story of failed learning to make the point that teaching and learning always depend on the life experiences of all involved. That establishes the personal as central to academic development. The Loathly Lady motif in raucous medieval Irish and English tales is used as a case study showing the method of using stories to influence. Imagination, metaphor and the body’s role in conceptualisation are discussed in defence of the book’s approach to academic development as premised on the personal rather than on the institutional. Indigenous privileging of social aspects of research, Kaupapa Māori and metaphoric world view build a case for the role of imagination. Game philosophy adds weight to academic self-fashioning, and the semiotics of language becomes a metaphor for building academic identity.