Achieving Educational Goals with Imagination

The thematic question for the Institute is: "How can a focus on imagination help teachers, schools and districts achieve their educational goals?"

In a climate focused on measuring educational goals, education seems driven by many questions: How can 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 Canada and around the world.

They are also key themes in the work of the Imaginative Education Research Group of the Centre for Imaginative Education at Simon Fraser University.

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. The Center for Imaginative Education is committed to encouraging educational practices that come to the fore once one takes the imagination seriously as a major learning tool. With a unique combination of original research, expert speakers, and specialized sessions, the Institute will provide participants with diverse opportunities and perspectives to focus on Imaginative Education.

The first day of this institute will feature key themes of Imaginative Education and discipline specific opportunities centered around our theme: Achieving Educational Goals with Imagination. This theme will guide the conference style track sessions, workshops and the research symposium panels that form the sessions of this 3rd Annual Research Symposium on July 9.

We invite researchers, teacher-practitioners, graduate students, administrators and policy makers to submit papers for the research symposium sessions before the deadline. To be considered for the symposium, the submitted papers must be between 3000 and 5000 words and be submitted using the online submission form. Please see Call for Papers section for details (side bar on the right).

The expectation is that all papers will address the theme of the conference in ways that build on, or respond to, the work of SFU's Centre for Imaginative Education as described at the website of Imaginative Education Research Group at http://www.ierg.net.