Congratulations to The Walking Curriculum!

The Walking Curriculum has just been named one of the world’s most inspiring innovations in K12 education. 

The global education ecosystem has seen remarkable disruption in education this year. We have also seen an encouraging willingness among educators, parents, and students to embrace new ways of teaching and learning. During this pivotal moment in the history of education, internationally renowned education nonprofit HundrED has just released its fourth Global Collection at its first completely virtual online HundrED Innovation Summit. The Walking Curriculum was one of the innovations recognized in the report.

HundrED’s annual Global Collection highlights 100 of the most impactful innovations in K12 education from around the world to anyone for free. The goal is to inspire a movement by helping pedagogically sound, ambitious innovations spread and adapt to multiple contexts across the world. To make this year’s Global Collection, a shortlist of innovations was reviewed by 150 Academy Members consisting of academics, educators, innovators, funders, and leaders from over 50 countries. In total, there were 3404 reviews by the Academy based on their impact and scalability that were then evaluated by HundrED’s Research Team to make the final selection.

The Walking Curriculum (official website) was chosen due to its unique approach and its potential to create a sustainable impact in education. The Walking Curriculum is readily useable for teachers K12. The activities can be easily adapted and used in all contexts—limited additional time and/or resources are required. It reflects principles and practices of Imaginative Ecological Education as it offers walking activities that engage student imagination and cultivate emotional connection with place. The Walking Curriculum offers practical strategies and examples, but, more profoundly, it encourages teachers to have a new outlook on their teaching. It is empowering teachers to #getoutside (physically outside and, figuratively, “outside” by rethinking how they engage their students). It invites teachers to grow beyond the book within an online community of K12 imaginative ecological educators.

Congratulations to The Walking Curriculum and Dr. Gillian Judson on this amazing achievement!

Interested in Reading More?

Click here to see HundrED’s innovation overview of The Walking Curriculum.

HundrED, in partnership with The LEGO Foundation, has also released a Spotlight Report on Creativity to help answer the question: how can we effectively nurture creativity in education? Click here to read more about the top 100 most impactful innovations HundrED has selected.

What is HundrED?

A Finland-based nonprofit, HundrED discovers, researches, and shares inspiring innovations in K12 education. Their goal is to help improve education and foster a movement through encouraging impactful and scalable innovations to spread, mindful of context, across the world. HundrED Spotlights create unique opportunities for both educational professionals and independent organizers of the Spotlight to gain a thorough insight into the education innovations taking place in either a specific area of education, like literacy or sustainability or within a certain geographic location, for example, India or London. For each Spotlight, we select the brightest education innovations, which then undergo a thorough study by our Research Team and an expert Advisory Board. HundrED Spotlights are organized with partner organizations, who help from their area of expertise.

Imagination Matters (Ebulletin Oct 2020)

Learn about CIRCE’s events and adventures since February 2020 and see what events are upcoming. There are many ways to learn and participate with CIRCE–please join our community of imagination accomplices! To read the newest Ebulletin click here.

Ebulletin Contents

  • Welcome Message (from Dr. Mark Fettes, Executive Director, CIRCE)
  • Upcoming Events
  • A few of CIRCE’s Events & Adventures (February 2020 – October 2020)
  • CIRCE’s Academic Council
  • CIRCE International
  • Learning in Depth
  • Learn More & Participate
  • Support CIRCE

International Call For Chapter Proposals: Imagination’s Role in Educational Leadership

Submit your 250-word proposal today! (Deadline November 30. 2020)

We invite imagination, leadership, and social justice scholars at various stages of their careers and from all parts of the world to submit case studies, empirical studies, and conceptual scholarship representing diverse and interdisciplinary cultural perspectives. We seek empirical and conceptual research that points to the influence of imagination on institutional culture, pedagogy, and learning, and, centrally, on community development and social justice. This may include, for example, how imagination enables leaders to understand themselves and others, to communicate in meaningful ways, to generate new ideas, to cultivate cultures in which imagination may thrive, to challenge dominant social imaginaries, and to create new and just ways of thinking, being, and doing.

Contributions might explore:

  • conceptualizations of imagination in a range of leadership practices and contexts;
  • conceptualizations of leadership, both formal and informal, and what is made possible in imaginative approaches to educational leadership (from Kindergarten through Post-secondary);
  • imagination’s role in policy creation and implementation;
  • current challenges in leadership and imaginative approaches to addressing these challenges;
  • how imagination in leadership can promote equity and social justice within the school and beyond.

Get all the details here by clicking the link: Call for Chapter Proposals Imagination in Leadership

Call For Leadership Stories

Our schools are FULL of leaders. Share YOUR story of how imagination has fuelled your leadership practices! And SHARE this invitation! Call for stories HERE on imaginED. 

New Magazine from LifeWide Education: The Work of Imagination

CIRCE’s partner LifeWide Education has just published a magazine featuring a fantastic range of articles on the Work of Imagination.

Edited by Norman Jackson and Douglas Cole

Get it here.

NEW imaginED Community Voices Page

Advocates for imagination in education often find themselves justifying why it is important for all learners. Because imagination is so often misunderstood, people simply do not understand its impact and value.

We decided to ask our community of imagination accomplices to explain the why of imagination. With posts from over 90 writers (so far) reflecting differing backgrounds, interests, and experiences, we at imaginED have a wealth of information about the power of imagination.

We are pleased to announce the NEW Why Imagination? page on imaginED. This new page features our writers’ answers to the following three questions:

  • How does imagination fuel learning?
  • What does the ignited imagination look/sound/feel like in education?
  • How can we nurture (sustain) imagination in ourselves? In others?

We look forward to seeing how both this page and our community at imaginED will continue to grow!

Imagination Champions Learning Series

From face-to-face to online: we did it!

The 2019-2020 CIRCE Imagination Champions Professional Learning Series concluded last night! We kicked off the session with a personal message for our Imagination Champions from Dr. Rob Hopkins, author of From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future we Want.

Then, six of our CIRCE mentors and a representative from PowerPlay shared examples of how they engage imagination and use Imaginative Education in their classrooms.

Great resources from a great community!

Special thanks to Cecily Heras for coordinating the series, Dr. Gillian Judson for teaching and facilitating the workshops, and to Envision Financial for sponsoring the series!

 

Imagination Matters (Ebulletin Feb 2020)

Learn about CIRCE’s events and adventures since September 2019 and see what events are upcoming. There are many ways to learn and participate with CIRCE–please join our community of imagination accomplices!

Ebulletin Contents

  • Welcome Message (from Dr. Gillian Judson, Executive Director, CIRCE)
  • Upcoming Events
  • A few of CIRCE’s Events & Adventures (September 2019-February 2020)
  • Hear from Recent MEd Imaginative Education Graduates
  • CIRCE’s Academic Council
  • CIRCE International (September 2019-February 2020)
  • Learning in Depth
  • Study With CIRCE: Graduate Programs at SFU
  • Learn More & Participate
  • Support CIRCE

Read it here on imaginED.

Participate! Dialogue Series on IMAGINATION (2020)

The Possible’s Slow Fuse is a scholarly dialogue series organized by the Centre for Imagination in Research, Culture & Education (CIRCE) and the Research Hub of the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University.

Our 2019 series was a big hit and we are thrilled to introduce the 2020 line-up.

Our 2020 series offers four stimulating discussions about the nature and role of imagination in research and education, facilitated by scholars from diverse fields in education – Indigeneity, arts, performative inquiry, Place-conscious education, mathematics, and aesthetics.

Join us! Bring your ideas and questions, and share and celebrate learning and discovery together.

Click here for session information and registration. (It’s FREE).