Gillian Judson
Gillian Judson is the thinker most responsible for carrying Egan's framework into the AI era. As co-director of the Imaginative Education Research Group and author of the Walking Curriculum and multiple books on imaginative education, she has translated Egan's theoretical framework into practical pedagogy while explicitly connecting his cognitive-tools framework to the emerging literature on 'robot-proof' education. Her 2019 argument — that imagination in Egan's specific developmental sense is the capacity machines cannot replicate and education must cultivate — reframed Egan's life work as the framework the AI moment most urgently needs.
In the AI Story
Judson's work spans practical pedagogy and theoretical extension of Egan's framework. The Walking Curriculum (2018) integrates place-based learning with Egan's cognitive tools, demonstrating how walking attentively through one's own environment can develop each kind of understanding. Her book Engaging Imagination in Online Learning (2020) addresses how digital tools can support rather than undermine imaginative education.
Her 2019 intervention on robot-proof education made explicit what Egan's framework implied: when machines can master facts and knowledge, the distinctive purpose of human education shifts to developing the cognitive tools that make humans uniquely human. She argued that imagination in Egan's developmental sense — not the vague inspirational concept but the specific cognitive capacities of each kind of understanding — is precisely the capacity machines cannot replicate.
Judson has continued this work after Egan's 2022 death, becoming the principal interpreter and extender of his framework. Her engagement with AI in education has been characteristically Eganian: rejecting both the technophobic ban and the technophilic embrace, insisting that the question is pedagogical rather than technological, and treating AI as a tool that can serve or undermine development depending entirely on the educational intention guiding its use.
Origin
Judson completed her doctoral work at Simon Fraser University under Egan's supervision and joined the Imaginative Education Research Group as his primary collaborator.
She currently serves as co-director of IERG and continues to publish and speak internationally on imaginative education and its application to contemporary educational challenges.
Key Ideas
Robot-proof education. The explicit connection between Egan's framework and the capacities AI cannot replicate.
The Walking Curriculum. Place-based pedagogy that develops cognitive tools through embodied engagement with local environment.
Extending Egan's framework. Continuing the theoretical development of imaginative education after her mentor's death.
AI as pedagogical question. Following Egan's insistence that technology problems are fundamentally pedagogical problems.
Practical translation. Converting Egan's theoretical framework into classroom practice accessible to teachers without specialized training.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- Gillian Judson, A Walking Curriculum (2018)
- Gillian Judson, Engaging Imagination in Online Learning (2020)
- Gillian Judson and Kieran Egan, The Learning Mind (2015)
- Gillian Judson, 'Imaginative Education in the Age of AI' (various essays)