ISLS 2026 Agenda

Tuesday, June 16 · 8 sessions

2:00 PM

1 option

Arts Gallery & Performance

Arts Gallery & Performance - Static Installations All Week

A week-long static gallery of arts-based installations exploring learning through the body, culture, materials, and emerging technology. Works span trans body politics and abolitionist imaginaries, immersive VR/AR and digital reading, and craft-based math via crochet, paper, and youth creative computing with community data art.

Informal, Community & Out-of-School Learning in a talk

30 talks

2:30 PM

5 options scroll

Symposium · ALP 1300

Learning With and Against Place Towards Spatial Justice

A symposium on how learners conceptualize and engage with places, highlighting the gap between learning with a place versus about it and complicating notions of places as good or bad. Cases range from shifting ideas of a "developed" place to children resisting visions of their school as policed and communities resisting simplified representations.

Informal, Community & Out-of-School Learning

Long Paper · ALP 2600

Communities and Contexts

Long papers examining learning across communities and contexts, from high schoolers cultivating future-oriented identities to digital accountability in new-teacher mentoring dialogue. Additional work probes youth authority in environmental engineering curriculum co-design and reconceptualizes psychometrics to treat context as intrinsic to learning.

Informal, Community & Out-of-School Learning in a talk

4 talks

Short Paper · ALP 2700

Arts, Expressions, Identity

Short papers exploring how the arts support identity work, wellness, and disciplinary learning, from artmaking with youth and non-judgmental art pedagogy to reconstructing disabled identities in undergraduate courses. Other talks link art-making to computational thinking, integrate arts with science teaching, and examine trans* body politics in sport.

Informal, Community & Out-of-School Learning in a talk

6 talks

Symposium · ALP 2nd Floor Rear

Mentorship Approaches for Establishing Communities of Practice in Constructionist Learning Spaces

A structured poster symposium on how mentorship, often peer and near-peer, supports communities of practice within constructionist learning spaces where learners create artifacts together. Drawing on diverse implementations and contexts, it considers what mentorship means, the forms it takes, and its benefits.

Informal, Community & Out-of-School Learning

Long Paper · ALP 3610

Dialogue and Collaboration

Papers on dialogue and collaboration across varied settings, including relational attunement in making, medical students shifting from cooperation to true collaboration, and parents revoicing to guide children's computational thinking. Further talks examine how language shapes access to tools and how productive confusion unfolds during VR collaboration.

Informal, Community & Out-of-School Learning in a talk

5 talks

4:30 PM

2 options scroll

Long Paper · ALP 2200

Activity System Structures and Shifts

Using activity theory and CHAT, these papers trace how learning systems shift and are structured across out-of-school STEM, district AI capacity-building, classroom makerspaces, and medical simulation. Threads include brokering family engagement, peer networks for K-12 AI, student-driven sociocultural change, and epistemic justice in standardized-patient training.

Informal, Community & Out-of-School Learning in a talk

4 talks

Arts Gallery & Performance · ALP 3700

#1281: Let It Go & Lost and Found in Chi-Town: Short One-Person Productions

A practice-based arts performance and research presentation on how interdisciplinary arts facilitate trauma recovery and self-agency among incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth. Drawing on two decades of practitioner-researcher work, it uses solo dramatic interpretations, songs, and podcasts to amplify marginalized voices and spark dialogue on mass incarceration and racial equity.

Informal, Community & Out-of-School Learning