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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.

    CURRENT NEWS FROM IERG

  • 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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  • A new book about IE:
    Engaging Imaginations and Developing Creativity in Education Edited by Kieran Egan and Krystina Madej. The book contains a series of papers about various aspects of IE, both theoretical and practical.

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  • Sean Blenkinsop leads a $1,000,000 project
    "Aligning Education and Sustainability in Maple Ridge, BC: A Study of Place-Based Ecological Schooling".

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  • APPLY NOW: Fall 2010 Master of Education (MEd) Degree Program
    Imaginative Education - Vancouver, Application Deadline: April 15th, 2010

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  • Additional Director of IERG
    Gillian Judson has joined the IERG Directorial team, with Sean Blenkinsop, Kieran Egan, and Mark Fettes. Gillian completed her Ph.D. at SFU in 2009. She worked as a Research Assistant to IERG during much of her degree program, and has been a post-doctoral fellow with IERG since Jan. 2009. She continues to make significant contributions of both a theoretical and practical nature to our work.

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  • Learning in Depth book coming soon
    "Learning in Depth: A simple innovation that can transform schooling" is to be published sometime in the summer of 2010 by University of Chicago Press. The LiD idea, is catching on in many countries, including Canada, the U.S., Japan, Australia, England, Romania, and maybe others. Currently more than 1,000 children are building LiD portfolios, a number than may well double come Sept. 2010.

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  • Report on ADHD project
    IERG has been involved in a significant project in Romania concerned in part with how IE ideas can be useful for children with ADHD. The project was designed, coordinated and implemented by Nadia Tarnoveanu, Stefan Popenici and Ciprian Fartusnic. They have now produced a report on the project (in English) which will be of interest to anyone concerned with this area of educational difficulty.

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  • First IE Charter School opened Sept. 2009.
    The first Charter school based on Imaginative Education principles has opened in the Corbett school district in Portland, Oregon. Corbett is a small school district that currently has an Elementary, Middle, and High schools on a single site. Teachers and administrators in the district have been associated with IERG for a number of years.

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  • Japanese text that describes IE
    We are pleased to announce the publication of Prof. Kiyotaka Miyazaki’s new book, "Children's leaning, teachers' learning: Saito Kihaku and Vygotskian education." A number of the chapters are derived from papers that Prof. Miyazaki first presented at the IERG conferences during the past five or six years, where he has been a regular presenter, bringing Japanese ideas, especially those of Saito Kihaku, to our attention. His work has proven valuable for us, as we hope his introducing Vygotskian and IE ideas to Japan will also be fruitful.

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  • Learning in Depth on CBC Radio
    Linda Holmes, a teacher in Langley, B.C. and a graduate of the IERG M.Ed. program, has been implementing the LiD program in her classroom. The experiment was the subject of a report on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. National News on Friday11th. Sept. 2009.

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  • IE in China continued
    We are delighted to announce the publication of Dr. Qingyu Pan’s new book about Imaginative Education. The book is titled IMAGINATIVE TEACHING; its first printing is 5,000 copies. This comes close on the heels of Dr. Pan’s recent article in the Chinese journal Educational Research, which also describes IE and what it offers to Chinese education.

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  • Learning in Depth Resource materials
    The Learning in Depth project continues to gather interest and increasing numbers wanting to implement the program. More programs are planned to begin in Sept. 2009, and others plan to use the Fall semester for January 2010 implementation or the academic year to prepare for full implementation in Sept. 2010. In response we have prepared a DVD of Resource materials to help any teacher or administrator wanting to become involved in the implementation process.

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  • IERG Workshops
    We have been giving workshops throughout the summer, in England, Singapore, the US, and nearer to home. The picture to the left shows activities at a one-day workshop at Crofton House school in Vancouver, using the Resource materials described below. We have been introducing the general principles of Imaginative Education and also the Learning in Depth project.

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