Simon Fraser University’s Education PPS (Preservice Professional Studies) Program, is excited to Host the WestCAST (Western Canadian Association for Student Teaching) conference in Burnaby, British Columbia in February 2025. We are looking forward to inviting teacher candidates, faculty, staff, practitioners, and presenters from the western provinces to join us on Canada’s beautiful western coast for a scheduled three- day conference on February 18th, 19th, and 20th, 2025. We hope to provide a welcoming and positive experience for all our conference attendees.
Meet the speakers
Dr. Gillian Judson
Cultivate Imagination to Increase Engagement: Tools For Your Practice
Engagement. While this term is constantly used in education, it is rarely examined in depth. Digging into this topic, I will aim to show how engagement involves emotion and imagination. It thrives where feeling and possibility intersect. Interestingly, imagination is another term that is often used and rarely examined in education. And yet, all learners have active imaginative lives. Words cause images to arise in their minds. They identify patterns in the world around them. They have a sense of musicality. These different forms of imaginative engagement are not insignificant; they are ways of thinking that help all human beings learn. They are tools of engagement. Learn how you can routinely employ these same forms of engagement—these “cognitive tools”— to cultivate your students’ imaginations and increase engagement in your teaching. This is the power of Imaginative Education.
Learn more at imaginED: www.educationthatinspires.ca and on the Cultivate Imagination: Leading Toward a Just Future project website: www.cultivateimagination.ca
About the speaker:
Dr. Gillian Judson is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. She gratefully works on unceded traditional Indigenous territories, including those of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Kwantlen, Qayqayt and Tsawwassen Nations. She researches the role of imagination in educational leadership, with a specific focus on leadership for social and ecological justice. She also investigates imaginative and ecological teaching practices (PreK through post-secondary) with expertise in a pedagogy called Imaginative Education. Her latest books are entitled Cultivating Imagination in Leadership: Transforming Schools and Communities (Judson & Dougherty, Eds., Teachers College Press, 2023), Imagination and the Engaged Learner: Cognitive Tools for the Classroom. (Egan & Judson, 2016), Engaging Imagination in Ecological Education: Practical Strategies for Teaching (Judson, 2015), and A Walking Curriculum (Judson, 2018/2019).
Dr. Sara Davidson
Strengthening Relationships through Stories
Stories have the power to entertain, educate, and heal (Moses, 2004). In this presentation, Sara will share how she has learned about Indigenous pedagogies, teaching Indigenous education, and building and strengthening relationships through stories. She will also invite audience members to reflect on and reconsider the ways that Indigenous stories and storytelling are brought into classrooms and teaching practices.
About the speaker:
Dr. Sara Florence Davidson (sgaan jaadgu san glans) is a Haida/Settler Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on Indigenous literacies, pedagogies, storytelling, and research methodologies. With her father, Robert Davidson, she is the co-author of Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning through Ceremony and the Sk’ad’a Stories, a picture book series which is based on family stories and highlights Indigenous pedagogies and intergenerational learning.