This highly original collection presents speculative fiction as fiction-based research to re-imagine education in the future. Given the particular convergence of economic and governmental pressures in educational institutions today, schools represent imaginative sites especially well-suited to interrogation through an SF lens. The relevance for education of the exploration and interrogation of themes related to technology, human nature, and social organization is evident; yet the speculative fiction approach is unique in its harnessing of creative capacities to envision alternatives. The contributions in this collection are generated from educational experience and research, drawing on scholarship in curriculum studies and teacher education and on the authors' experiences and imaginations as teachers, teacher educators, educational scholars, and human beings.

Why are educators and their profession the focus of so much film and theatre? Diane Conrad and Monica Prendergast bring together scholars and practitioners in education, examining dramatic portrayals of teachers and teaching to answer this very question. Films such as Freedom Writers, Bad Teacher and School of Rock, to name a few, intentionally or inadvertently comment on education and influence the opinions and, ultimately, the experiences of anyone who has taught or been taught. The chapters gathered in this collection critique the Hollywood 'good teacher' repertoire, delve into satiric parodies and alternative representations and explore issues through analyses of independent and popular films and plays from around the world. By examining teacher-student relationships, institutional cultures, societal influences and much more, Teachers and Teaching on Stage and on Screen addresses these media's varied fascinations with the educator like no collection before it.

"Creating Together" explores an emerging approach to research that combines arts practices and scholarship in participatory, community-based, and collaborative contexts in Canada across multiple disciplines. Looking at a variety of art forms, from photography and mural painting to performance art and poetry, the contributors explore how the process of creating together generates and disseminates collective knowledge.

The artistic processes and works in an arts-based approach to scholarship make use of aesthetic, experiential, embodied, and emotional ways of knowing and creating knowledge in addition to traditional intellectual ways. The anthology also addresses the growing trend in arts-based research that takes a participatory, community-based, or collaborative focus, and encourages scholars to work together, with other professionals, and with community groups to explore questions, create knowledge, and express shared understandings. The collection highlights three forms of research: participatory arts-based research that engages participants in all stages of the inquiry and aims to produce practical knowing to benefit the community; community-based arts research that has community/public space at the heart of practice; and collaborative arts approaches involving multi-levelled, multi-layered, and interdisciplinary collaboration from diverse perspectives.

To illustrate how such innovative work is being accomplished in Canada, the collection includes examples from British Columbia to Newfoundland and across disciplines, including the fine arts, education, the health sciences, and social work.

"Fables of Psyche" is dedicated to readers who believe journeys are important and are willing to take fantasy tours into self and beyond. Travel to far away places with Realia, Dea, Lexus, the Visionaries, Thinkerthoughts and with your own imagination. The style of writing is a hearty blend of prose, poetry, haibun, and imaginary words. A reading experience of pure literary license for your enjoyment.

This reflective practice case study completed for my master's degree involved creating and delivering a unit for inner-city high school students integrating drama and media literacy/production with a focus on advertising. It used socially critical or issues- based drama to examine the relationship between youth and media advertising, to draw out and question their meanings/understandings, towards finding appropriate ways of teaching media studies. Analysis of students' responses to the work and the media messages they created saw these young people as sophisticated readers of advertisements who made meanings that spoke to their needs, desires and life experiences. The study forced a re-evaluation of the critical perspective brought to the teaching, which led to a more pluralistic stance that allowed the intersection of public and private realms of knowing and the acknowledgement of students' desiring identities. In representing the research data the study took an alternative arts-based approach by depicting significant teaching/learning moments through scripted scenes.