Appel de proposition - en francais (adobe PDF)

Announcing the 1st Summer Institute on Imaginative Education: Achieving Educational Goals with Imagination
July 7th through 10th, 2008 at the Delta Vancouver Airport Hotel, in Richmond BC, Canada

Themes of the Institute

What will help students understand and retain more of what they learn in school? How can teachers shape the classroom experience to include children from all backgrounds? How can socially relevant topics such as media education, environmental sustainability, diversity and citizenship be woven into the core curriculum? Can assessment be used to help students learn and teachers teach, in addition to meeting accountability goals?

These are some of the central concerns of teachers, school, and districts across B.C. and further afield. They are also key themes in the work of SFU's Centre for Imaginative Education. Rather than treating imagination as an interesting but unnecessary add-on, the CIE has been pursuing the idea that it may be essential to helping educators achieve their goals. A growing, worldwide community of researchers and practioners agrees.

This founding Summer Institute on Imaginative Education will focus on educational practices that come to the fore once one takes the imagination seriously as a major learning tool. We invite educators and scholars, and those who are both, to collaborate, discover, explore, discuss, investigate, interact, and thereby contribute to building a richer and more effective conception of what schools and other educational institutions can be.

With a unique combination of original research, expert speakers, and specialized sessions, this event will provide participants with a comprehensive grounding in key concepts and tools of imaginative education.

Call for Proposals:

The thematic question for the Institute is, "How can a focus on imagination help teachers, schools and districts achieve their educational goals?" This question will be addressed in the workshops that make up the program on July 7 and 8, but will also guide the conference sessions on July 9 and 10. We invite researchers, teacher-practitioners, graduate students, administrators and policy makers to send us their proposals for contributions to these latter sessions. The expectation is that proposals will address the thematic question in ways that build on, or respond to, the work of SFU's Centre for Imaginative Education (www.ierg.net).

Proposals for Conference Sessions (Wednesday, July 9)

We are inviting 250-word abstract proposals, to be submitted via the online submission system between December 4th, 2007 and April 28th, 2008. Proposals are blind, peer reviewed during the first two weeks of May 2008 and will be judged on clarity, quality, content, originality, and relevance to imaginative education. Due to the limited number of sessions available, the adjudication will be substantially more rigorous than that which occurs in our International Conferences on Imaginative Education. Those proposals that are accepted by the Review Committee will be scheduled in a series of panel sessions based on emerging themes. All panel sessions will take place on Wednesday July 9th, 2008. Approved proposals will be invited to provide a non-refereed submission to the online proceedings.

Proposals for Research Papers (Thursday, July 10)

For those doing research around themes of imaginative education and who are interested in the possibility of a fully refereed paper publication, we invite 5000-word papers submitted for blind peer review to our 3rd Annual Research Symposium on Imaginative Education via the online submission system found here.

Please note that we will not consider sessions that promote commercial products and/or services.


For more information on the Imaginative Education Research Group:
http://www.ierg.net