Mathematising Social Issues to Imagine a Different World

Can mathematics be used to imagine alternative approaches to problematic social issues? Dr. Sean Chorney propose that mathematising aspects of our social world can help us not only identify hidden problems, but also formulate alternative conceptions of their causes and possible solutions. This talk will report on my study of teaching high school mathematics classes on the topic of gerrymandering, as a demonstration of how mathematics can raise awareness and imagination.

Dr. Sean Chorney

September 30, 2020 | 1:30-3:00 p.m.
Watch Dr. Chorney's Presentation Online

The Vital Role of Indigenous Imagination in Transformative Reconciliation

Central to transformative reconciliation and Indigenous resurgence is a revaluation of Indigenous knowledge traditions in Canadian society, and especially in our education systems. This impels us to ask: How do Indigenous knowledge holders hold knowledge? And how is that process embodied and enacted within Indigenous education? Images play a key role in the participatory pedagogies through which Indigenous knowledge systems grow and flourish, especially as they inform and guide the work of making or poesis. Artists are a vital part of those systems, because the images with which they work, and which they give concrete form, are packed with knowledge. Reconciliation and resurgence can thus be seen as profoundly imaginative and artistic educational processes whose reach extends to our most everyday interactions and material realities.

“Imagination has a place because imagination IS a place, and because everything is connected to everything else, the encounter with imagination is a living communication within a sentient landscape." (Dan Longboat & Joe Sheridan)

“Images are compressed complexities” (David Hunt). 

"All the objects used in everyday life, including the simplest and most ordinary ones, are, so to speak, crystallized imagination.” (Lev Vygotsky)

Dr. Vicki Kelly

March 4, 2020 | 1:30-3:00 p.m.
EDB 7610, Education Building
SFU Burnaby Campus

Reimagining Research as Performance

Dr. Fels is a Profession in Arts Education in the Faculty of Education, SFU. Her research focuses on performative inquiry, arts for social change, arts as learning, performative writing, and arts-based research. 

Saliha Bava, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at Mercy College, New York, USA. Dr. Bava is a researcher of play and relational processes. She researches how individuals improvise with each other within educational, training, or work contexts.

They are currently co-investigators in a research project that explores how community is created through shared experiences of creative play, improvisation, and collaboration.

Dr. Lynn Fels & Saliha Bava

February 6, 2020 | 1:30-3:00 p.m.
Room 5080, SFU Surrey Campus

In collaboration with the Education Graduate Student Association, all participants are invited to an online social check-in chat with other fellow graduate students.  Get to know your EGSA, other grads, and let's avoid isolation and make a connection!