Fall 2005 Seminars

Education Graduate Student Association and IERG Presents....

Date:    Thursday, September 22nd , 2005
Time:    4:30 - 6:00 pm
Place:    Education Room 8651 (Burnaby Campus, SFU)

Presenter: Kieran Egan ( Professor, Faculty of Education, SFU)

Kieran Egan was born in Clonmel, Ireland in 1942. Earning a BA (history) at the University of London in 1966, he went on to serve as a Research fellow at the Institute for Comparative Studies in Kingston-upon-Thames.   He began his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education at Stanford University while working concurrently as a consultant to the I.B.M. Corp. He completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1972 and was subsequently hired at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, where he is a full Professor and Canada Research Chair in Education.

Title: Evolution, hunter-gatherers, and today's primary classroom .

Abstract:      This talk will explore how human evolution and the development of our distant ancestors are both of importance to understanding how best to educate children today. We tend to forget our bodies and the earliest intellectual tools humans developed when it comes to teaching and learning in everyday classrooms today. This talk will try to show why we should attend more to our bodies and to our evolutionary development for understanding modern education.

Presenter: Geoff Madoc-Jones (Assistant professor, Faculty of Education, SFU)

Geoff grew up in Wales; came to Canada in 1968 and taught both elementary and secondary Language Arts from 1969 to 1985. Since 1985 he has worked in the Faculty of Education as a teacher educator as well as a program developer in Graduate Programs.   During this time he also completed his MA and Ph.D. in the area of philosophy and language arts education. His research interests include hermeneutics, teaching poetry and the history of literacy.

Title: Imagination + genre transposition:   Liminal Performances in the Secondary Language Arts Classroom .

Abstract:      The paper investigates the possibilities for the development of the imagination by structuring language arts student activities around shifting texts and performances from within one literary or rhetorical genre to another. Initially textual examples are used to highlight the mediational role of audience and register and then students are instructed to play with the creative possibilities of such transpositioning in their own creative writing and performing.

Presenter: Keiichi Takaya (Post doctoral fellow, IERG, Faculty of Education, SFU)

Keiichi Takaya received his Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University in 2004 and is currently serving as a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Imaginative Education Research Group. His research interest is in the philosophical and historical foundations of education. He is currently working on collecting and analyzing theoretical resources for those who are interested in the connection between imagination and education.

Title: How to develop students' imaginative capacities

Abstract:      In this presentation, I will make a somewhat counter-intuitive argument on the way we may take imagination seriously in our educational practice; I will argue that an imaginative education -- the kind of education that not only engages students' imaginations but also contributes to the achievement   of some crucial educational values -- is likely to be done by intensive study of specific details, rather than by so-called "imaginative"   activities   that are fun but lack rigor and content.

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