First Cohort of Masters of Education in Imagination & Education celebrates their success!

December 2004

Congratulations to the first cohort of graduating Master of Education students in Imagination and Education!!

The group finished their coursework, and each student presented a portfolio of work at a meeting in Whistler, B.C. in early December, 2004. Their portfolios were inspiring, and immensely varied. Congratulations, too , to Dr. Geoffrey Madoc-Jones who was the sponsor for this cohort.

Click on the picture to the left to see the photo in a larger version.

The Guide to Imaginative Education

We have recently completed 'A Guide to Imaginative Education'. It comes in six parts. First, an overview titled "What is imaginative education?" Second, a description of sets of cognitive tools that students use in learning and a discussion of how each might be deployed in the everyday classroom. Third, some planning frameworks we have developed to help teachers apply the principles of imaginative education in planning and teaching lessons and units. Fourth, a set of examples of using the frameworks in various curriculum areas, including history, math., science, social studies, and language arts. Five, alternative frameworks, with further examples. Six, material for photocopying, including the various planning frameworks. The publication is around 150 pages, and represents our best current attempt to provide for teachers a guide to using imaginative practices to engage students' imaginations in regular classroom learning.

To receive a copy of this practical publication, please visit our store.

Imaginative education in action

One of our hopes for this website is that it will provide many examples of imaginative education in practice, so that teachers and others can see what the ideas mean when it comes to planning and teaching lessons and units on any topic in the curriculum. At the moment we have just begun to give examples of how one can move from the principles of engaging students’ imaginations at different ages, to frameworks to help plan teaching, to examples of these frameworks at use for different age levels in various curriculum areas. Currently we have only about a dozen examples mounted, in math, science, history, language arts, law, and literacy. We hope to add to these consistently from now on, so keep coming back. Even better: Why don’t you try the principles and frameworks for your own teaching, and send us units or lessons that you have planned and taught. We plan also to begin soon mounting videos to give further examples of imaginative education in practice

Article by IERG Associate - Sen Campbell

December 2004

Reconnecting mind and world: Enacting a (new) way of life

A common assumption in teaching mathematical modelling applications is that mind and world are ontologically distinct. This dualist view gives rise to an explanatory gap as to how these two realms connect. An alternatve view where mind and world are ontologically identical is explored here.......

Click here for a PDF version.

Alumni Magazine's article on LUCID

November 2004

You can read an account of our cooperative five year project with First Nations communities using imaginative education ideas by clicking here. The project is headed by Mark Fettes and involves a number of IERG members and teachers and administrators among Haida, Sto:lo, and Tsimshian communities in HiadaGwaii, Chilliwak, and Prince Rupert. Our aim is to make the educational experience of the largely First Nations students more meaningful, imaginatively engaging, and successful.

The latest issue of our newsletter is available

Winter 2004

The second issue of Imagine!, the IERG's newsletter, is now available on-line and in print.
To view a downloadable PDF copy, click  here.

The file is 2.3MB, and could take a few minutes to download with slower modems and  Internet connections.  We will send printed copies to those who have requested them. If you would like to be added to this group, please  visit the Contact Us page , and use the form in the "JoinUs" section to get in touch with us.

In this issue there are articles about middle school age students' imaginations, a description of applying imaginative education principles in a classroom, including interviews with students, uses of stories in teaching,  an essay on the ecological roots of imaginative education, reflections on imagination and education, and a report on our first International conference on Imagination and Education. Contributors include Stephen Campbell, Isabelle Eaton, Kieran Egan, Mark Fettes, Stan Garrod, Nicole Marcia, and Susan Perrow. There is also another "Imagination challenge"--this time about how to teach an enduring understanding of the proper use of the apostrophe in English.

Imagine That

October 2004

Many people associate imagination with something like fantasizing, says Keiichi Takaya, who recently completed his doctoral thesis on imagination in education.

But for Takaya, imagination is a combination of various mental capacities such as curiosity and content knowledge.

In his thesis, Takaya examines how a number of educational theorists conceptualize imagination, then presents his own idea of how it should be connected with education. Teaching basic knowledge and skills are fundamental to creating imaginative students, he says, though it is equally important to engage students' curiosity.

Takaya was born and raised in Tokyo, where he studied kendo (samurai swordsmanship) from childhood. "Probably my theory of education is influenced by my experience in kendo as well as western philosophy of education in which I specialize," he says. He noticed that people do not complain about doing repetitive drills in kendo or in other sports and the arts the way they do in school.

He suspects that it is easier for students to visualize the outcome of sports and the arts compared to more abstract subjects.

Therefore he suggests that teachers and curriculum planners stimulate students' curiosity by ensuring they understand the relevance of what they are studying.

Though Takaya expected to devote himself entirely to his thesis when he came to Canada, he ended up teaching kendo as well, starting a kendo program at SFU. He also found himself involved in helping his thesis advisor create a Japanese garden outside the faculty of education. "I knew nothing about gardening or anything like that," he says, "but somehow I learned how to build a Japanese garden from my Irish-Canadian supervisor."

Now that he has his doctorate, Takaya's ideal job would combine research and classroom teaching in some way. "Eventually," he says, "I want to go back to Japan because Japanese education is my primary concern."

New Book By IERG Associate!

September 2004

Dr. Thomas William Nielsen of the School of Education and Community Studies, University of Canberra, Australia, has just let us know that he has a new book that has been published! It is called "Rudolf Steiner's Pedagogy of Imagination. A Case Study of Holistic Education"

To find out more, here is a Flyer (in Adobe PDF) with more information. In addition, if you are interested, you can order the book from here.

If you would like to know more about Thomas, click here to read his bio

Re-design of key elements of Imaginative Education

August 2004

The most recent outcome of our sustained research and work on how to help teachers take Imaginative Education into the classrooms is here! New 3 page parallel frameworks and lesson units are now available for down load by clicking here!

If you would like more background information and more extensive support for using the frameworks, read about the Guide to Imaginative Education.

2nd International Conference on Imagination and Education

July 14-17 2004

Our keynote speaker, Dr. Nel Noddings, Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University wowed the audience, as did our invited speakers: Drs. Kieran Egan, Roland Case, Natalia Gajdamaschko,Chris Ormell and Stefan Popenic, and Ms. Miranda Amstrong.

Some of our initial feedback include the following comments:

If you are interested in receiving a CD of the video proceedings and/or the written proceedings be sure to email us at ierg-2004@sfu.ca or mail or fax this form to us

Our fax and address can be found here.

To read some of the proceedings click here

awesome conference. . . .  I feel that every cell in my embodied brain has been transformed by these last few days. Thanks to you and your colleagues at IERG for creating such a remarkable environment for all of us who attended.

The Arts, Culture and Education Institute at SFU

July 2004

Dr. Sharon Bailin, one of our local associates and a member of the Faculty of Education at SFU, and her colleagues will be hosting the Arts, Culture and Education Institute from July 12-23, 2004, at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver (BC).

This two-week, event will offer participants the opportunity to engage in an intensive exploration of the interaction between the Arts and Culture and will bring together scholars, educators, artists, administrators and students to exchange ideas and share practices in connection with the arts as a form of cultural expression. The discussion will focus on how culture(s) shapes artistic expression, how the arts interact with and affect culture(s) and what the implications are for arts education when we look at it through the lens of culture.
By integrating academic presentations, arts workshops, performances, demonstrations and exhibitions, the Institute will act as a lively focus for discussion, debate, arts activities and awareness.
Visit the Institute website at www.educ.sfu.ca/acei for more information and updates or contact Loree Lawrence, the conference administrator at lolaw@telus.net.

Congratulations!

May 2004

Monika Hilder, one of the IERG's consistent associates, has just been awarded the dean of graduate studies convocation medal for her Ph.D. thesis entitled: Educating the Moral Imagination: The Fantasy Literature of George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, and Madeleine L'Engle. You can read more about Monika's work by clicking here.

You may be interested in the proposals we have recently submitted:

• INE CURA (approx. $1,000,000)

This proposal is to work with a number of aboriginal schools in order to use our frameworks and imaginative approaches to improve students' learning. The program would run for five years. Letter of intent submitted fall 2002. We have now, March 2003, been invited to submit a full proposal.

• Canadian Foundation for Innovation & B.C. Knowledge Development Fund (approx. $320,000)

We heard in 2002 that we had been granted the CFI part of this proposal, and in February 2003, we heard that we had received the BCKDF matching funds. These grants have enabled us to upgrade the equipment in our research lab, and will assist us in supporting research efforts on imaginative education off campus.
Thanks to these two grants, the IERG officially opened its renovated research and administrative headquarters in December 2003. Our offices are located in the Faculty of Education, at Simon Fraser University.

Imaginative teaching could strengthen aboriginal learning

January 07, 2004

"We're really in uncharted territory," says Simon Fraser University researcher Mark Fettes, who is developing an education program to help B.C. aboriginals attain greater academic, social and economic success. Fettes, an assistant professor of education and a member of the Imaginative Education Research Group (IERG) at SFU, is applying an innovative teaching approach to classrooms with large numbers of aboriginal students.

Conceived by IERG's founder, SFU education professor Kieran Egan, the theory predicts that students learn best when teaching strategies and subject matter appeal to their ability to imagine rather than memorize. Egan has developed a framework that uses progressively advanced teaching strategies to support students' cognitive development through imaginative stimulation. Studies show that just 42 percent of 18-year-old B.C. aboriginals students complete high school, compared to 79 percent of their non-aboriginal counterparts.

An expert on linguistic ecology, Fettes studies how language and culture influence the way people imagine, and how imagination is implicated in learning, relationship-building and community identification. He attributes the lackluster results of conventional learning strategies in an aboriginal setting to their tacit assumption of students' identity within the politically and economically dominant culture.

Fettes is the lead investigator on Building Culturally Inclusive Schools Through Imaginative Education. Three other SFU professors, including Egan, will work with him, as well as with graduate students and First Nations and school district leaders in Chilliwack, Prince Rupert and the Queen Charlotte Islands. Their project's groundbreaking nature has attracted nearly $1 million in funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's (SSHRC) Community-University Research Alliances program.

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(electronic photo available)

Websites:
Imaginative Education Research Group
www.ierg.net/
Mark Fettes bio
Kieran Egan bio
Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council
www.sshrc.ca/web/whatsnew/press_releases/2003/ine_cura_sfu_e.asp

The Irish Challenge

January. 2004

Our dauntless director recently gave a one-day workshop on adult literacy in the west of Ireland. The aim was to show how the practices of imaginative education could help adults improve their literacy skills. After presenting some of the cognitive tools and showing how the planning frameworks (see the Teaching and Curriculum navigator to the left) could be used, the literacy teachers were invited to work in small groups using one of the frameworks to plan a lesson on a topic of their choosing. Towards the end of the day, one of the teachers said that she had a problem getting her students to learn the differences in spelling between “there”, “their”, and “they’re.” Daunted, jet-lagged, and brain-dead, our director said he would work on it and post one way to do it on our website. So here it is. We will be adding further examples of using the frameworks in the Teaching section. If you have used one or other of the frameworks, please send us descriptions of your lessons and units so that we can add them to our slowly growing set.