Gillian Judson

I am an educator, researcher, and parent. In my role as a Faculty of Education member at Simon Fraser University (SFU), I teach mostly about an imagination-focused approach to teaching called Imaginative Education (IE) and the specific ways to engage imagination in learning all aspects of the curriculum. We often forget that all meaningful and memorable learning involves the imagination. My current research explores imagination and ecological or place-based education. I began with the question, How can we develop students’ ecological understanding as part of their everyday education? It has developed into an approach called Imaginative Ecological Education, or IEE. IEE is about engaging the body and emotion in place-based and imagination-focused teaching. All ages, all topics, all contexts. I am also a parent of two girls. As a parent, I want to maintain and enrich their sense of wonder and engagement in a world that is mindbogglingly cool. I believe worms never get boring and birdsong is never ordinary. I believe mathematical, scientific, and historical concepts are best learned within the contexts of the hopes, fears, and passions of those who developed them. I believe the semi-colon, colon, exclamation mark, and interrobang are unsung heroes and deserve our utmost respect. Most of all, I believe teaching is story-telling. The curriculum offers us many opportunities to experience this wonder-full world. P.S. If mindbogglingly isn’t a word, it should be.