Engaging the imaginations and emotions of students in learning with Professor Kieran Egan

Professor Kieran Egan

Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Canada V5A 1S6, Canada Research Chair in Education

http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan

http://www.ierg.net

http://www.ierg.net/LiD

Dr. Kieran Egan is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, and the founder and director of the Imaginative Education Research Group (IERG). He is the author of about a dozen books, and co-author, editor, or co-editor of a few more. He is author of over one hundred articles. In 1991 he received the Grawemeyer Award in Education. In 1993 he was elected as the first person in Education to the Royal Society of Canada. In 2000 he was elected as a Foreign Associate member of the (U.S.A.) National Academy of Education. In 2001 he was appointed to a Canada Research Chair in Education, and won a Killam Senior Research Scholarship. Various of his books have been translated into more than half a dozen European and Asian languages.

This talk will introduce some of the main principles of Imaginative Education, offering a somewhat new way of thinking about the process of students' education. It focuses on the kinds of "cognitive tools" or learning toolkits students develop as they grow up in society. In schools, and in  most currently dominant psychological theories of development, short-shrift is given to some of the most powerful learning tools students have available to make sense of their world and experience. We tend also to think of the imagination as something of an educational frill-something to try to engage after the hard work of learning has occurred. I will try to show that the imagination is one of the great workhorses of learning, and that we ignore it at the cost of making learning more ineffective than it can be and much schooling more tedious than it need be, for both teachers and learners. Theoretical dimensions will be paired with practical examples to indicate what IE looks like in the everyday classroom.  Also described will be some new programs for engaging students' in "learning in depth" (www.ierg.net/LiD) and through "whole school projects" (www.ierg.net/wsp).

6 for 6.30pm Drinks: Meet and greet arrivals, check off list, tags

6.30pm – 7.30pm Guest Speaker: Keiran Egan

Topic :   Engaging the imaginations and emotions of students in learning

7.30pm: Questions from floor followed by networking and refreshments

8:30pm: Close