ISLS 2026 Agenda

Wednesday, June 17 · 15 sessions

8:00 AM

6 options scroll

Short Paper · ALP 1100

Maker educations

These maker-education papers examine identity, literacy, and collaboration across making contexts, including crafting and engineering identities, collaborative lore-building between marginalized girls, and computational literacies in an agricultural class. Additional talks probe what multimodal AI sees versus facilitator expertise, reflection quality and self-efficacy, and sustainable 3D clay printing.

STEM Education in a talk

6 talks

Short Paper · ALP 1120

AI tools, Teacher Learning

Short papers map how teachers learn to use and reason about AI, from archetypes in designing multi-agent instructional workflows to STEM educators' confidence and knowledge of AI. Others weigh teachers' hopes and concerns about AI image generation and analyze instructor attitudes toward cheating with AI.

STEM Education in a talk

4 talks

Long Paper · ALP 1700

Culturally Responsive Design

These papers show how culturally responsive and sustaining design supports learning and identity, from leveraging students' cultural resources in university physics to a robotic Punjabi Dhol for embodied music learning. Further talks examine Diné digital storytelling and relational, culturally sustaining computing with Tibetan diaspora girls.

STEM Education in a talk

4 talks

Short Paper · ALP 2200

Collaborative Learning Processes

Five short papers analyze how collaborative learning unfolds, using methods like Epistemic Network Analysis to model collaborative initiative in STEM simulations and multimodal interactions across jigsaw tasks. Topics range from combining intelligent tutors with concept maps and teachable agents to GenAI-supported interdisciplinary teams and age differences in older-adult learners.

STEM Education in a talk

5 talks

Short Paper · ALP 2500

Socio-Emotional & Group Dynamics

Five short papers examine the emotional and social side of collaboration, from team functioning and leadership in pediatric medical simulations to regulating epistemic emotions in higher- versus lower-performing CSCL groups. Other talks cover teacher learning on WhatsApp, a fifth-grade SEL digital curriculum, and boundary-crossing STEM competencies in global informal programs.

STEM Education in a talk

5 talks

Long Paper · ALP 3600

Embodied Mathematics and Science

These talks investigate how the body supports learning in mathematics and science, examining gesture and materiality in mechanistic explanations and how children's gestures reveal their conceptions of fractions. Other work pairs coordination class theory with fNIRS neuroimaging and aligns visual-first, embodied pedagogies to teach abstract statistical models.

STEM Education in a talk

4 talks

10:00 AM

5 options scroll

Practice Paper · ALP 1100

Collaborative Design Structures in Researcher and Practitioner Partnerships

Six practice papers describe how researchers and practitioners co-design educational programs, including a university laboratory school for equitable computing and a community partnership developing urban-agriculture curriculum. Cases also span co-designed embodied games for computational thinking, technology-education pathways, and designing edTech with schools rather than for them.

STEM Education in a talk

6 talks

Short Paper · ALP 1110

Place and land-based learning and education across various modalities

Six short papers explore place- and land-based learning across modalities, including spatial typologies for active-learning classrooms and syncretic game designs interweaving virtual and natural worlds. Others address youth climate storytelling, multispecies discomfort in a STEAM program, identity play through creek science, and scientific practice in an archaeological apprenticeship.

STEM Education in a talk

6 talks

Short Paper · ALP 1120

Assessment in STEM education

Six short papers tackle STEM assessment, from evaluating the MathByExample worked-example intervention to object detection for analyzing students' drawn scientific models. Topics include NGSS-aligned assessments of first graders' reasoning, conversation-based assessment with AI agents, STEAM integration measures, and fine-grained scoring in chemistry.

STEM Education in a talk

6 talks

Long Paper · ALP 2600

Out-of-school Experiential Learning

Four long papers investigate experiential learning beyond the classroom, including learner pathway analysis for STEM persistence across in- and out-of-school settings and nature-based learning motivation for students with learning differences. Additional work studies prior-knowledge use in outdoor learning and self-regulated learner profiles in flipped project-based courses.

STEM Education in a talk

4 talks

Short Paper · ALP 2700

Design based research and instructional design to support learning

Six short papers report design-based research and instructional design work, including comic cons for scientific literacy and redesigning a graduate program toward learning design. Additional talks cover game-based planning for disability transition services, teacher agency in co-design, hybrid conference history, and boundary tools bridging home and classroom.

STEM Education in a talk

6 talks

4:15 PM

4 options scroll

Demo & Interactive · ALP 1700

Demo & Interactive Session

A demo session showcasing interactive prototypes, with a strong emphasis on generative-AI tools for self-regulated learning, AI literacy, and coaching, alongside immersive technologies such as olfactory VR and mixed-reality simulations. Other demos cover block-based quantum computing, Jupyter notebooks for K-12 educators, music and topological analytics tools.

STEM Education in a talk

22 talks

Poster · Online

ICLS Virtual Posters - Virtual Poster Session

A virtual poster session covering a wide range of learning-sciences topics, including making and aesthetics, computational thinking and creative coding, and culturally responsive STEAM across international contexts. Studies also examine generative-AI policies and student-LLM reasoning, field trips, and physics teacher professional development.

STEM Education in a talk

70 talks

Poster · Outdoors

ICLS Posters - Wednesday Poster Session (In-Person)

An in-person poster session spanning equity-oriented learning across STEM, computing, and the arts, with threads on multilingual and culturally responsive teaching, integrated STEM+C and AI literacy, and teacher learning in makerspaces and curricular customization. Settings range from family garden activities and afterschool math to climate-change pedagogy and preservice teacher preparation.

STEM Education in a talk

93 talks

Poster · Outdoors

CSCL Posters - Wednesday Poster Session (In-Person)

In-person CSCL poster session dominated by generative AI in collaborative learning, from teacher-in-the-loop essay scoring and AI lesson-planning to constrained GenAI for deeper learning and agency. Other posters cover multimodal and NLP methods for assessing collaboration, conversational agents in shared reading, and AI tools in arts learning.

STEM Education in a talk

39 talks