July 7th to 9th, 2008
Delta Vancouver Airport Hotel, Richmond BC

Conference overview:
www.imaginativeeducation.org/conferences/institute/overview

SFU education grad students who have been invited to present
Kym Stewart

Kathryn Ricketts

Gillian Judson

Linda Holmes

Mark Weiler (entry in 3rd Annual Research Symposium)

Shu-Hwa Wu (entry in 3rd Annual Research Symposium)

Invited speakers
Kieran Egan
Learning in Depth: Knowledge and the Imagination
A dual criterion commonly mentioned when people try to define what it means
to be educated is that such a person must, among other things, have a
significant breadth and depth of knowledge; they must be aware of a wide
array of the forms of knowledge humans have created, and they must know
something in considerable specificity. I want to make a case, perhaps
paradoxically, that fulfilling the depth of knowledge part of the criterion
is important for the development of the imagination. And I want to make what
might seem a slightly eccentric proposal for how we might do this best in
schools.

Linda Kaser
Imaginative Education and Educational Change
Educational change is a long-term, multi-level process. Imaginative
education has begun to address many of these levels, from theory to
practice, and has the potential to become a long-term force for
transformation. Based on experience at many levels of the school system
(teaching, administration, teacher development, policy setting), and on the
growing literature on educational change, I will outline some of the
priorities that IE researchers and practitioners should focus on in the next
few years.

International Guest Speaker from Rhodes University, Greece
Giannis Hadzigeorgiou
Reclaiming The Value Of Wonder In Science Education
It is well known that the cognitive tradition of science education has been
criticized. However, while the importance of the affective dimension of
science education has been recognized, it has received less attention than
has the cognitive dimension. Wonder, as an intellectual attitude or state of
mind, has received much less attention, most likely due to a
misunderstanding or a misinterpretation of its nature. Wonder, however, is
related not simply to the affective domain of learning but to the fact that
it can be a prerequisite for learning as well as a source of curiosity.
Wonder, as a state of mind that signals the limits of one's present
understanding even of usual, everyday phenomena, or as a feeling of
astonishment accompanied by an awareness that one's knowledge is erroneous
or incomplete (and not simply as a feeling of surprise and bewilderment), is
crucial to learning science since it can lead to conceptual change. This
presentation explores the nature of wonder and the possibilities for
designing "wonder-full" activities, that is, activities that foster a sense
of wonder.

Find out more about our 1st Summer Institute on Imaginative Education and
our 3rd Imaginative Education Research Symposium – July 7-10, 2008. Go to
www.imaginativeeducation.org/conferences

“Imagination .. Is Reason in her most exalted mood”

W. Wordsworth, The Prelude, Bk. XIV, line 192