ISLS 2026 Agenda

Thursday, June 18 · 13 sessions

8:00 AM

3 options scroll

Short Paper · ALP 1110

Co-design, creative methods art-based approaches

Six papers explore co-design and creative methods, from tangible classroom models and arts-based climate storytelling to liberatory computational making with Black boys and trust-building in design-based research teams. Threads include reconceptualizing imagination as social practice and using network analysis to improve co-designed online graduate courses.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

6 talks

Hybrid Symposium · ALP 1600

Evaluating and assessing learning in AI-embedded environments: perspectives across learning scientists

A hybrid poster symposium of eight studies framing evaluation of AI-supported learning as a relational, ethical practice rather than a matter of technical accuracy. Across classrooms, tutoring, and teacher coaching, researchers use discourse analytics, video analysis, and practical measures to examine AI's effects on collaboration, belonging, and cognition through human-centered, equity-oriented design.

Co-Design & Participatory Design

Long Paper · ALP 3610

Environmental Learning and Sustainability

Four papers address environmental learning and sustainability, including relational trust in community-engaged environmental justice partnerships and a comparative case of youth reducing food waste in schools. Threads also cover a transition-design workshop on sustainable futures and co-design routines centering community knowledge in the Indian Himalayas.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

4 talks

10:00 AM

3 options scroll

Long Paper · ALP 1700

Epistemic Cognition

Long papers on epistemic cognition examine how learners coordinate knowledge and evaluate sources, including physics students' math-concept integration and high schoolers' epistemic vigilance toward everyday science. Additional talks cover epistemic navigation in a unit on Traditional Chinese Medicine and how laypeople resolve expert disagreement.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

4 talks

Symposium · ALP 2300

Co-design as Transformative Pedagogical Spaces: what zooming out teaches us about learning to co-design together

This symposium gathers researchers and practitioners across participatory design, youth participatory action research, and research-practice partnerships to challenge how co-design is treated as brief, isolated activity. By zooming out temporally and analytically, the papers reveal co-design as relational, political, and ethical practice honed over longer timescales.

Co-Design & Participatory Design

Long Paper · ALP 2600

Dialogic Conversation and Pre-Service Teachers

Long papers focus on pre-service teachers and dialogic conversation, including science teachers rehearsing questioning with AI-based and VR classroom simulators. Other talks examine an AI-feedback co-design intervention for math tutors' productive talk and learning-analytics-supported reflective assessment for knowledge building.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

4 talks

2:30 PM

6 options scroll

Short Paper · ALP 1110

AI tools, interactions, and design

Six short papers on designing AI tools and understanding human-AI interaction in learning. Topics include AI's effect on the writing process, hybrid-intelligence and human-in-the-loop systems, four years of AI formative assessment and fairness, conversation-based assessment with AI agents, and new interfaces for AI-supported writing.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

6 talks

Short Paper · ALP 1120

Embodied Learning

Five short papers on how bodies, movement, and representations mediate learning across science and mathematics. Topics include walking curricula reconnecting students with nature, transnational youth and climate justice, multimodal methods for analyzing embodied geometry, domain-inherent metaphors, and diagrams that bridge real and mathematical worlds.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

5 talks

Long Paper · ALP 1700

Teacher Transformation

Four papers on how teachers become agents of transformation through partnerships, mentoring, and boundary crossing. Cases include a composite counterstory of teacher change, science educators reconciling personal beliefs with official scripts, cohort-based research-practice partnerships, and high-coupling encounters bridging maritime and education communities.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

4 talks

Long Paper · ALP 2300

AI and Ethics

Four papers on teaching and studying AI ethics across age groups and methods. Approaches include a literature review of AI ethics in ISLS proceedings, tabletop and scenario-based games for fostering multidimensional and ethical thinking, and laddering methodology for surfacing young children's values in design.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

4 talks

Long Paper · ALP 3610

Computer Science Education

Four papers on how programming environments and AI are reshaping computer science education. Topics include balancing usability and expressiveness in block-based modeling, Parsons puzzles paired with self-explanation, teachers' shifting conceptions of AI/ML and algorithmic justice, and norms around when copying code is acceptable.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

4 talks

Short Paper · Barclay

Co-Design, Community-based education, sociocultural learning

Six short papers examine co-design and community-engaged education across undergraduate science, minority-owned small businesses, and intergenerational environmental-justice programs. Threads include enacting solidarity in community partnerships, collaborative data co-analysis, and culturally sustaining pedagogy through game redesign.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

6 talks

4:15 PM

1 option

Poster · Outdoors

ICLS Posters - Thursday Poster Session (In-Person)

An in-person poster session covering wide-ranging learning sciences research, including science and engineering teacher reasoning, AI in classrooms, and equity-oriented design in research-practice partnerships. Topics span heritage-language and algebra apps, urban gardens as educational technology, cognitive presence in MOOCs, and community-engaged research experiences.

Co-Design & Participatory Design in a talk

91 talks