As Michèle Le Doeuff pointed out in her classic feminist work, The Philosophical Imaginary, images function in philosophical writing to enact certain political and theoretical possibilities and limitations. She draws our attention to the relationship between images and concepts throughout the history of philosophy, and philosophy’s forgetting and occlusion of its own imaginaries. We wonder with Le Doeuff about the image that philosophy gives to itself of what it is to do philosophy. So too we wonder about the images that orient and inflect both educational practice and research. What images do educational researchers give to themselves of education, the practice of education and of research in education? This issue examines the ways in which diverse educational imaginaries operate. It thinks from and with recent feminist work in both philosophy and education.