ISLS 2026 Agenda

Thursday, June 18 · 21 sessions

8:00 AM

5 options scroll

Practice Paper · ALP 1100

Co-designing Teaching and Learning Experiences

Practice-oriented papers share co-designed teaching experiences across varied contexts, including wordless books for dual-language kindergarteners, community-building in online undergraduate courses, and board game design with Brownie Scouts. Other talks address climate justice instruction, metacognitive learning strategies, and research-practice partnerships in teacher education.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

6 talks

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.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

6 talks

Long Paper · ALP 2600

Ideology, Culture, and Race in Learning

A long-paper session on how ideology, culture, and race shape learning and teaching, with studies on facilitator sensemaking about social-emotional learning in a refugee program and a justice-centered genetics unit on racial health disparities. Other papers analyze whiteness in science professional development and the epistemic work of a right-wing education podcast.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

4 talks

Symposium · ALP 2nd Floor Rear

Broadening the Boundaries of the Learning Sciences: Reclaiming the Territory of Latin American Contributions to Educational Research

This symposium reimagines the Learning Sciences through Latin American epistemologies, weaving studies of Mapuche weaving mathematics, Uruguayan rural futures, and WhatsApp organizing at the Mexico-US border. Empirical work across Colombia, Ecuador, and beyond puts constructionism, ethnomathematics, and decolonial speculation in dialogue with field theories.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion

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.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

4 talks

10:00 AM

4 options scroll

Short Paper · ALP 1110

Data Literacy and Data Science Education

Papers on data literacy and data science education range from students creating biometric data visualizations to confronting coloniality and Indigenous food sovereignty in data science. Threads include youth conceptions of data, a roleplay-based curriculum embedding epistemological pluralism, and epistemic practices in an online fitness community.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

6 talks

Short Paper · ALP 1120

Argumentation, dialogue, and dialogic engagement

Papers examine argumentation and dialogic engagement, from supporting competent outsiders' source evaluation with the AIR framework to a dual preparation model for dialogic teaching in East Asian classrooms. Other talks offer a typology of social bids in math groupwork and interaction analysis of knowledge construction in multilingual Indian science classrooms.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

4 talks

Hybrid Symposium · ALP 1600

Learning Sciences in the Global South: Dialogue for multiple ways of knowing and doing

This hybrid symposium argues for multiplicity in ways of knowing and doing, drawing on cases from Latin America, Africa, and South Asia where scholars adapt and expand conventional research. The stories foreground tensions and (in)visible privileges in Global South scholarship, with dialogue continuing during and after the conference.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion

Short Paper · ALP 3610

Critical Perspectives in Learning Environments

Short papers bring critical perspectives to learning environments, covering AI-supported personality alignment among pre-service teachers, teachers designing AI-ethics scenarios with LLM tools, and whether critical pedagogy survives algorithmic social-media constraints. Other talks explore service-learning tutoring and equity, and game-based learning in literature classrooms.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

5 talks

2:30 PM

11 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.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion 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.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

5 talks

Symposium · ALP 1300

Scaling Communities of Learners: How Size, Power, and Partnerships Shape Political Learning

A symposium using sociocultural and critical theories of power to examine how community scale shapes political learning for equity and justice. Across four cases ranging from organizational change in graduate education to a youth design-build group, teacher-leaders organizing for integration, and a single teacher-mentor dyad, it traces how transformation is mediated across community sizes.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion

Hybrid Symposium · ALP 1600

Fostering Educational Intimacy: ILSSA Intergenerational Partnerships for Purposeful Community Building

A reflective session from the ILSSA student association exploring what community means and how to support it equitably, using duoethnography and Uttamchandani's concept of educational intimacy. The discussion considers intergenerational partnerships, embracing the political in learning, and building relational continuity across ILSSA's leadership and the communities it represents.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion

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.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

4 talks

Long Paper · ALP 2100

Art and Politics

Four papers exploring how the arts mediate identity, perspective, and political visibility for youth and learners. Threads include perspective-shifting through filmmaking, manga as counterspaces for queer youth, the director's role in ensemble learning, and how video analysis can racialize the visibility of Black learners.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

4 talks

Long Paper · ALP 2500

Motivation, Interest, Identity, and Achievement

Four quantitative papers linking motivation, identity, belonging, and achievement, several at large scale. Topics span equity-oriented pedagogy predicting college success, the attenuation of math identity across the high-school-to-STEM transition, motivation mediating belonging and STEM persistence, and affective-cognitive links in primary students' scientific literacy.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

4 talks

Long Paper · ALP 2600

Epistemic Authority and Agency

Four papers examining how authority and agency are distributed among students, teachers, and AI tools during learning. Threads include authority in elementary science modeling, how students remix AI chatbots into dialogic tools, epistemic agency in student-LLM math problem solving, and analytics-supported reflective assessment for pre-service teachers.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

4 talks

Short Paper · ALP 2700

Integrating Computer Science with Science Education

Six short papers on integrating computer science and computational thinking with science, math, and special education. Threads include an umbrella review of CT-math integration, AI as a creative-computing design partner, computing for special-education contexts, quantum computational thinking, and teachers designing physical-computing and robotics units.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

6 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.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion 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.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion 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.

Equity, Justice & Inclusion in a talk

91 talks