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  • What people are saying about Imaginative Education

    It’s great stuff! I was exposed to it through the article in Educational Leadership and I am now reading the book. It makes so much sense! Thank you for your great work! Dave Bell (Texas)

    When I started to use IE several years ago now, that I tried it out in a few lessons here and there, was amazed at the success and then began to look for other areas and subjects in which I could use the Lesson Planning Frameworks and other aspects of the theory. Pamela Hagen.

    I am just back home after a great pro-day and still reeling from all that I learned from your workshop. Pamela Walker (Victoria, B.C.)

    I've been having a great deal of success with IE in the classroom. I taught grade 5 last year using IE-based concepts and had a GREAT year. I'm teaching kindergarten this year and using the concepts again - so far so fabulous! Mary Mulleady, (Teacher, Surrey.)

  • You are here: Home

    This website introduces new theories, principles, and practical techniques for making education more effective. Because engaging students' imaginations in learning, and teachers' imaginations in teaching, is crucial to making knowledge in the curriculum vivid and meaningful, we call this new approach Imaginative Education (IE). The work of The Imaginative Education Research Group is dedicated to showing how this can be done routinely in everyday classrooms and at home. Unfortunately so much of the content of the curriculum is routinely taught as though its natural habitat is a textbook rather than the fears, hopes, and passions of real people that students too commonly find it dull and lifeless, and un-engaging. We believe the ideas, materials, and practices on this website can show how to bring the curriculum to life.

    To watch a brief introductory video, click here.

    To watch a 30-minute video about Corbett Charter School, which uses IE ideas, click here.

    To watch a 4-minute promo video about Corbett school, click here.

    CURRENT NEWS FROM IERG

  • With deep regret we note the death of Milton Wong.
    Dr. Wong had honoured IERG by agreeing to become a member of our Advisory Board, and he met with us a number of times, giving us valuable advice and inspiration. He had been consistently supportive of the IERG during the time he was Chancellor of Simon Fraser University.

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  • LiD in Action
    Shannon Shields, a school principal, has written an interesting account of the Learning in Depth program in her school.

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  • Workshops, Workshops
    The picture to the left is of Gimli, Manitoba, where Gillian Judson and Kieran Egan delivered two and a half days of talks and workshops to the school superintendents of the province in late Nov. 2011. This event was one of a series that has been continuing year by year in provinces, states, countries, and, it sometimes seems, planets across the galaxy.

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  • Learning in Depth: A simple innovation that can transform schooling
    (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London, Ontario: Althouse Press) is now available. It will also soon be available in Vietnamese from : Ho Chi Min City: Hoa Sen University Press. Dr. Lee Shulman, President Emeritus of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching said of the book: "This is a fascinating, provocative, utterly visionary and courageously speculative imagining of an educational future that is simultaneously elite and egalitarian, deeply intellectual yet utterly connected to passion and identity."

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  • Charter School astonishing success!
    Corbett Charter School was ranked #3 in the Nation among American public high schools by The Washington Post in May of 2011. This is an absolutely astonishing achievement for a public school in the US. Corbett practices IE in an exemplary fashion.

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  • First, we take Romania!
    During the summer of 2011, Annabella and Joeri Cant delivered a large number of over-subscribed workshops to teachers all over Romania. What started as a plan to teach a few workshops to a few groups who had expressed interest in Imaginative Education quickly got out of hand.

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  • IERG and Lady Ga-Ga
    The British Guardian Weekly recently published an article about teenagers’ emotional engagements with pop stars like Lady Ga-Ga and what it can tell us about how their emotions might be engaged in the contents of the curriculum. Throughout, the author references Kieran Egan’s work on “Romantic Understanding.”

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  • LiD in Tehran
    The Learning in depth project continues to spread around the galaxy ...

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  • Mark your calendars!
    British Columbia Teacher Professional Development Day October 21, 2011. The Imaginative Education Research Group will highlight some of the features of its work that have proven very successful in engaging students’ imaginations in learning, (and teachers’ imaginations in teaching). The results have led to greater satisfaction for students and teachers and much improved test scores across the board.

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  • Imaginative Education in Romania
    IE continues to expand in Romania, as in a number of other eastern European countries. Annabella Cant has delivered workshops in many places in Romania to thousands of teachers, and, in addition to the book to the left, she has written about implementing IE in regular classrooms.

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  • IERG makes more connections in Europe and Asia
    During the first week of November 2010, workshops on Imaginative Education and Learning in Depth were presented in England and Hungary. Workshops and discussions were held with the Kestrel Education group in England, and the Vineyard Foundation and the International Step-by-Step Association in Hungary.

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  • A New Approach to Ecological Education
    Gillian Judson’s new book, A New Approach to Ecological Education: Engaging Students' Imaginations in Their World, has just been published by Peter Lang, New York. Gillian is a director of the IERG and is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University. The book offers a major critique of current ecological education programs, and offers an imaginative alternative.

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  • Congratulations to Corbett School
    Corbett School, long associated with IERG, has just been named by Newsweek Magazine as #5 among 27,000 public schools across the U.S. This is Corbett's 3rd consecutive year in the top 100, and 2nd year in the top ten. This is an amazing achievement, as demonstrated by the fact that no other Oregon school has ever made the top 300. Outstanding!

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  • LiD goes viral!
    The Learning in Depth program experienced its first implementations in two B.C. classrooms beginning in Sept. 2008, with approx. 30 students beginning portfolios. Now there are more than 2,000 students building LiD portfolios in schools across Canada and around the world.

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  • Gervais school goes IE
    From May 12th. to 14th. 2010, Gillian Judson and Kieran Egan led workshops with the staff of Gervais school in Oregon. The school is aiming to transform into an IE school over the next few years.

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  • About CREATE - Creativity Research in Education AT Exeter
    This research cluster was formed in 2007, and provides a flexible space in which researchers engaged in creativity in education research and development activity can explore and develop shared interests. See: http://education.exeter.ac.uk/projects.php?id=92. Anna Craft, who has presented at IERG conferences and is an associate of IERG has been active in the development and continuation of CREATE.

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  • Imaginative Education Training Courses
    This summer, instead of our usual conference, IERG will offer short training courses for people interested in learning more about Imaginative Education and how to put it into practice, on 27th (p.m. only), 28th & 29th JUNE , and also our Learning in Depth program 30th JUNE. These short courses will be taught by Kieran Egan, Gillian Judson, Kym Stewart, and Melanie Young.

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