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Introduction: Artwork

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Introduction to the Fall 2025 Issue

Rosa Bruno-Jofré

Introduction to the Thematic Section on STEM Education

Nenad Radakovic
This introduction frames the thematic section on STEM education by questioning what becomes visible and invisible when learning is organized through disciplinary lenses. Drawing on the author’s experiences as a mathematics educator and on place-based pedagogical examples, it situates STEM education within broader social, ecological, and ethical contexts. The introduction outlines the contributions of the articles in the section, which engage Deweyan democratic traditions, decolonial and Indigenous perspectives, embodied and outdoor pedagogies, and speculative futures. Collectively, the section advances a vision of STEM education that is transdisciplinary, community-oriented, and responsive to historical, cultural, and environmental relations.

Experiencing STEM at the Lab School: Situated Histories and Enacted Pedagogies

Susan Jagger and Peter Pericles Trifonas
This paper examines how the historical, theoretical, and lived commitments of John Dewey’s progressive education are enacted in contemporary STEM learning at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Placing STEM within the sociopolitical and environmental transformations of late nineteenth-century Chicago, we link Dewey’s philosophies to the engineering and civic challenges that shaped the city. Drawing on classroom observations, teacher conversations, and composite vignettes, we show how STEM learning in a grade one class foregrounds student-driven inquiry in community and place. Three themes characterize these experiences: experience and exploration through ongoing encounters with Wooded Island; problem solving and place via collaborative design challenges connected to Chicago’s built environment; and ethics and relationships as students consider their responsibilities toward more-than-human community members. The authors argue that these practices exemplify a transdisciplinary STEM that is historically grounded, ecologically situated, and democratically oriented. As Chicago again undertakes place-making with the Obama Presidential Center, Deweyan principles continue to offer a living curriculum that invites young learners to make meaning, act together, and imagine more just and sustainable futures.

Whose Knowledge Counts? Decolonial and Anticolonial Reckonings in STEM Education

Kenneth Gyamerah
Globally, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is widely framed as essential to innovation, economic growth, and social progress. These framings, however, often overlook STEM’s long-standing connections to colonialism, empire, and the exclusion of certain forms of knowledge. Decolonial and anticolonial perspectives are used to examine the assumptions about knowledge and reality that shape STEM education. While STEM education has played an important role in scientific and technological development, it has also reinforced hierarchies that marginalize Black, Indigenous, and other non-Western scientific traditions. These hierarchies persist through curriculum design, ideas about ability, language dominance, and universalist practices that treat Euro-Western science as neutral and authoritative. Bringing decoloniality and anticoloniality into conversation makes visible how STEM education has helped sustain exclusionary knowledge systems and colonial ways of knowing. Four recurring myths are identified that continue to structure STEM education and limit possibilities for meaningful change. Rethinking STEM education along these lines is necessary to support epistemic justice and to open space for more plural, relational, and equitable futures.

Embodied Outdoors Arts-Based Approaches to Mathematical Understanding

Susan Gerofsky
School mathematics instruction remains shaped by pedagogical traditions rooted in nineteenth-century industrial models that privilege static, indoor, and calculation-focused learning. Alternative possibilities for mathematical understanding emerge through embodied, arts-based, and outdoor pedagogies that engage movement, sensory experience, and the living world. Drawing on more than a decade of pedagogical design experiments with educators, preservice teachers, and students, mathematics learning is examined in campus gardens, forests, beaches, and other outdoor environments. Mathematical ideas are developed through bodily movement, artistic practice, and multisensory engagement with land, materials, and seasonal cycles, alongside more familiar forms of mathematical representation. These pedagogical experiments suggest that learning mathematics in and with the more-than-human world can deepen conceptual understanding, foster collaboration, and reconnect mathematics with its historical and ecological roots. Rather than displacing indoor classrooms or paper-and-pencil work, a more balanced mathematics curriculum is advanced—one that integrates embodied and outdoor approaches as complementary ways of knowing across STEM/STEAM education.

Belonging and the Charter of Transdisciplinarity in International STEM Research

Robyn Ruttenberg-Rozen, Pamela M. Leggett-Robinson, Xoliswa Majola, Zwelinzima Ndevu, Nichole L. Powell, Sabryna Sullivan, Surendra Thakur and Gregory Wilson
This paper examines the lived realities of conducting a purposefully transdisciplinary, equity-focused international STEM research project during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the Charter of Transdisciplinarity as an analytic lens, we explore how our team navigated visa delays, shifting political contexts, administrative turnover, and digital inequities while supporting marginalized undergraduate women in STEM. Through reflective prompts and critical event analysis, we show how belonging—understood as an active, ongoing practice—enabled us to move beyond disciplinary boundaries and confront entrenched forms of marginalization in STEM and academia. Technology simultaneously connected and divided us, requiring continual renegotiation of community membership. Dialogues around artificial intelligence served as key moments of transcultural exchange and vulnerability. We argue that transdisciplinarity is a human and relational endeavor that must be intentionally cultivated. Within STEM, it emerges not from the acronym itself but from practices that center humanity, resist othering, and foster collective flourishing.

Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism are Democracy: STEM Possibilities for (Re)Humanizing Pedagogy in Education

Tiffany Harris
How can STEM education benefit from a paradigm shift, beyond economic growth and citizenship development, towards alternative perspectives for problem-solving to combat anthropogenic dilemmas? This conceptual essay investigates why we should incorporate Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism into STEM education to expand possibilities for more humanizing pedagogy and praxis. I argue STEM innovation has been at the forefront of enacting democracy in the United States. First, I provide a critical examination of STEM, during the colonial era and Early Republic period, by reframing goals of U.S. democracy as being closely aligned with technological innovation. The entry point is late 20th century and early 21st century educational reform and then shifts to scrutinize land extraction tactics and the institution of schooling during the 18th and 19th centuries. Next, I concentrate on how 20th century societal STEM trends influence curriculum as well as normalized beliefs about STEM fields. Lastly, I advocate for Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism as nuanced extensions of art-integration into STEM. By centering Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism in 21st century STEM education and research, we can better actualize U.S. democratic ideals oriented toward valuing whole persons, especially concerning the Anthropocene.

Part I: Artwork

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Augmented Reality in Thyroid Pathology Training: Evaluating Gamified Technology for Digital Educational Spaces

Se Jung Kim, Ibrahim Yucel, Cynthia Grabski and Kathleen Marollo
The increasing accessibility of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies offers significant potential for high-fidelity educational simulations. However, current immersive learning tools often lack realistic haptic feedback, which is crucial for developing appreciative understanding in fields like nursing. When attempting gamification, there is a temptation to apply novel technology without deeply considering how the haptic and interactive design meets the learning goals of the instruction. This project addresses the gap in tactile simulation for nurse practitioner education, specifically focusing on thyroid and lymph node palpation. The proposed solution aims to enhance psychomotor skills, diagnostic reasoning, and self-efficacy by providing accessible, realistic tactile experiences outside traditional lab settings.

Part II: Artwork

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La fausse dichotomie entre théorie et pratique en éducation : réflexions critiques de l’utilité de la théorie pour la pratique en éducation inspirées par bell hooks et Paulo Freire

Roberta Soares and Tya Collins
Research in education discusses theory as something to be put into practice, but the theories learned during teacher formation tend to be regarded by teachers and teacher candidates as having little or no relevance to their professional reality. From a critical perspective, we propose in this article some reflections on the usefulness of theory for educational practice, drawing on the fundamental ideas of critical education theorists bell hooks and Paulo Freire.

Intégration des approches pédagogiques autochtones dans l'enseignement de la philosophie occidentale : une interrogation critique face à l'appel de décoloniser nos pratiques d'enseignement universitaire

Antoine Cantin-Brault and Laura Carol Sims
Calls to decolonize postsecondary education invite reflection on how disciplines grounded in Western intellectual traditions might engage Indigenous pedagogical approaches with care and responsibility. In considering the integration of Indigenous pedagogies into the teaching of Western philosophy at the university level, we are confronted with questions of practice, reflexivity, and humility, particularly given philosophy’s long-standing emphasis on rationality, Logos, and abstraction. Through a narrative and reflective orientation, Western philosophy is situated within its historical and conceptual context, while attention is given to the ways these commitments have supported critical inquiry as well as contributed to exclusion. Drawing on examples from philosophy teaching in a francophone minority context in Canada, we examine pedagogical practices that emphasize relationality, dialogue, embodied learning, engagement with place, and multiple ways of knowing. Rather than seeking to decolonize Western philosophy as a disciplinary tradition, emphasis is placed on the decolonization of pedagogical practices through openness to other epistemologies, critical self-examination, and sustained relational engagement. Such an approach is offered as a meaningful pathway toward reconciliation and more inclusive philosophy education.

Citizenship Education and Exclusion: An Analysis of Authorized History Textbooks and Children’s Books in Ontario, 1866-1950

Philip Roy
Since 1866, the Ontario Department of Education has facilitated the teaching of citizenship education through its authorization of history textbooks. Using a critical discourse analysis framework constructed from the theories and analyses of five prominent scholars: Reinhart Koselleck, Edward Said, Quentin Skinner, Ken Osborne and Ian McKay, this paper explores how a principle of exclusion was pivotal in supporting an Anglocentric nationalist agenda in the historical narratives of the texts. History textbooks are examined for evidence of the exclusion of women, Indigenous peoples, immigrants, people of colour, and the working class. This exploration is compared with an examination of children’s books written during the same period. The aim of the comparison is to identify possible alternative citizenship ideals that emerge in fictional narratives as compared with authorized historical narratives, a comparison that, as yet, has not been done before.

The Hand to the Sword Like the Mind to the Word: Learning Embodied Knowledge from Late Medieval Fight Books

Hélène Leblanc
Embodied knowledge is a rising concept in many fields of knowledge, and it is crucial to the field of educational sciences. This article aims to contribute to its historicization by examining the case of fight books. It takes its starting point in the coincidence suggested by Pamela Smith, between today’s notion of embodied knowledge and the pre-modern notion of art. While Smith focused on the productive arts, it is important to recognize that the pre-modern notion of art encompasses a broad spectrum, beyond craft. As such it includes fencing and the arts of combat. The article will take as case studies the three oldest known European fight books: The Liber de Arte Dimicatoria (Leeds, Royal Armouries, MS I.33); Fiore de’i Liberi’s Fior di Battaglia, and the manuscript Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Cod. Hs. 3227a. The following question will guide the inquiry: What are the specific means by which Late medieval fencing, as embodied knowledge, is communicated through books?

Mapping the Research in Environmental and Sustainability Education in Teacher Education in Canada

Alysse Kennedy, Hilary Inwood and Carine Villemagne
This article examines the evolving landscape of environmental and sustainability education in teacher education (ESE-TE) in Canada through a scoping review of 198 peer-reviewed studies published between 2005 and 2020. Situated within broader international efforts to reorient education toward sustainability, the review maps the theoretical, methodological, and linguistic contours of ESE-TE scholarship across the country. Findings reveal a field characterized predominantly by qualitative research, strong representation from Ontario-based scholars, and limited contributions in French and from northern regions. The increasing integration of Indigenous education and land-based learning signals a promising yet complex engagement with decolonizing approaches to sustainability. However, significant gaps persist in the inclusion of diverse epistemologies, methodological breadth, and Indigenous-led scholarship. By tracing these developments, this study contributes to ongoing conversations about how Canadian faculties of education might mobilize research and collaboration to address the climate crisis and advance the transformative aims of sustainability education.

Gimnástica del Bello Sexo [Gymnastics for the Fairer Sex]: A Vanguard Approach to Female Physical and Moral Education in Hispanic America (1827)

Gabriela Huidobro and Daniel Briones
This article examines Gimnástica del Bello Sexo o Ensayos sobre la Educación Física de las Jóvenes (London, 1827), an early manual on women’s physical and moral education in Hispanic America. Framed within Enlightenment and early republican thought, the work negotiates traditional gender ideals with emerging liberal ideas about female education. Through moderate and playful activities—such as walking, swinging, and singing—it promotes physical exercise as both moral training and a health practice. The analysis shows how the text reinforced feminine virtues of grace, beauty, and modesty while subtly opening space for women’s participation in educational and civic life. Gimnástica del Bello Sexo thus stands as a pioneering source in the history of female physical education in Hispanic America, anticipating later institutional developments and reflecting the cultural redefinition of femininity during a time of political and social transformation.

Part III: Artwork

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Transdisciplinarity and the Dangers and Opportunities of STEM Education: An Interview with Dr. Pratim Sengupta

Nenad Radakovic