Tracing the origin of Rudolf Steiner’s & Julia Smith pedagogy of imagination

How Steiner brought to bear the role of the imagination in reconciling ideological polarities on its function in an educational setting cannot be fully understood without examining the outlook on life from whence it sprang ‐ nor without touching upon historical developments in Western education and the extraordinary life and background of Rudolf Steiner himself. This paper uses historical, biographical and autobiographical commentary to develop an interpretation of the origin of Steiner’s notion of imaginative teaching.