Keynote Speakers

Shannon Leddy (Métis) is a Vancouver based teacher and writer whose practice focuses on decolonizing education and Indigenous education within teacher education. She holds degrees in Art History and Anthropology from the University of Saskatchewan, an MA in Art History, and a BEd from the University of British Columbia. Her PhD research at Simon Fraser University focused on inviting pre-service teachers into dialogue with contemporary Indigenous art as a mechanism of decolonizing education and in order to help them become adept at delivering Indigenous education without reproducing colonial stereotypes. During her time as a public school teacher with the Vancouver School Board, Shannon worked at several high schools as a teacher of Art, Social Studies and English.  She is currently an Assistant Professor (Teaching) in Indigenous Education at the University of British Columbia.

This presentation will take place in the summer time in Vancouver. We will expect to see some flowering plants. The roots of a plant anchor the plant to the ground and keep it steady. The stem carries water and other nutrients to different parts of the plant. It also provides support to keep the plant standing. The leaves and flowers provide beauty, growth and colour to the plant.

In this presentation, Professor Douglas McDougall will use the metaphor of a plant to discuss where we started with STEM (the roots), and the characteristics of successful STEM activities and emerging research findings (the stem). It is the STEM activities and the possible educational and employment opportunities that provide the variation of the present (the flowers). Finally, he will explore the possible directions we can go in the future (the seed).

To explore the stem of STEM, Prof. McDougall will summarize some of the research that has helped us identify the benefits of STEM and to keep the field moving forward. But the beauty of many plants can be seen from the flower. There are many ways to create collaborative, dynamic and interactive lessons in elementary and secondary schools. Douglas will discuss the principles of STEM-focused lessons to help teachers and researchers to create a STEM-infused classroom (and a bouquet of beautiful and colourful flowers).

Finally, we should always be asking the question “What kind of flower do you plan to have with your STEM?

Students arrive at university with little idea of what science is really about, and even less conception of why mathematics is important and helpful. Yet, many of them aspire to be MDs, or biologists, and to solve the important problems of humanity. How do we teach them not only to appreciate scientific ways of thinking but also to see the interconnections between the sciences, the power of mathematics, and the ways science, math, and medicine can illuminate one another? In my talk, I will describe an effort to use first-year calculus to introduce students to some of these notions, though at a basic and accessible level. I will discuss the curriculum and open resources that were developed locally, and showcase some of the case-studies. I conclude with some of the challenges faced by educators, and others by students and speculate on how to address these in future efforts.

Today’s youth are the biggest asset for our world’s positive development. Instilling passionate connections to future professions especially during high school right through college, university or craft education, is the foundation of youth’s professional development. High school teachers are therefore, together with the parents, the ‘General Practitioners’ (or gatekeepers) for what education a high school student will need for any future profession. One of the biggest challenges in high school education is to balance state required knowledge and skill transfer, with the youth’s own desires and interests in learning, exploring and thriving. When it comes to design education, it is therefore important that high school teachers’ oral training and syllabus creation includes a link between STEM and Art subjects. STEM should act as an education driver for other subjects, but STEM teachers need to integrate art in their teaching. The awareness of traditional academic subjects such as law, medicine and engineering is not a broad enough palette to entice the youth to be inspired to be the next generation of thinkers, developers and leaders. STEM Syllabuses should include not so well-known subjects like landscape architecture and graphic design and promote the value of an additional craft education such as carpentry, tailoring, plumbing etc. to widen youth’s exposure to professional choices. In fact, teacher training and syllabuses should place priority on niche subjects. STEM subjects should be related to and combined with ART. Often isolated high school art education alone cannot manage this task but integrating the complex interconnected processes of STEM with art education could. This lecture will present examples of how STEM subjects could be integrated with the art and design disciplines of landscape architecture, environmental design or urban design. For example, youth could be applying math exercises in context of the environment to calculate how much rainwater is accumulated by different roof sizes and shapes in relation to the changing climate. This could ignite awareness in the environment, encourage respect for the usefulness of math and introduce the interdependence of design and math in calculating the quantity of water accumulated on different roof shapes. With Google being the biggest library of the world, accessible peer reviewed online research can stimulate and support syllabus content and assignments. The increasingly more complex and researched world provides many opportunities for high school educators to stimulate STEM and Art and can provide the nurturing ground for our future thinkers, craftsman and leaders of the world.

Environmental and sustainability science is frequently thought to be a relatively new discipline. Indigenous peoples, however, hold ancient and highly developed ideas of environmental and sustainability science which have significant applicability in understanding and addressing current challenges faced by all of humanity. This presentation/paper will explore concepts of environmental and sustainability science from an Anishinabe theoretical perspective. Anishinaabe worldviews, philosophies, principles and values will be described as they form the foundation for Anishinabe science. I will draw upon my own professional and personal experience in this area as an educator and practitioner to compare and contrast Indigenous and non-Indigenous paradigms of science and explore processes for mediating between two different intellectual traditions. As an Anishinaabe scholar, it has been an important goal of my professional life to seek models for how different knowledge systems can come together to address mutual environmental challenges.

Drawing on a rich palette of examples from her research spanning PreK-12 as well as the field more broadly, Dr. Grover will share a suite of pedagogical strategies for meaningful integration of computing and disciplinary learning in PreK-12 CS and STEM classrooms. She will share findings, takeaways, broad frameworks, as well as challenges, to aid the process of changing the story for research and practice.