Keynote: Prolepsis ’Till Infinity : Designing STEM Futures Through Play, Media, and Imagination

From the LOC: Combining rigorous research and creative production, Kareem Edouard offers an inspiring example of partnerships with impact. By producing media that is widely distributed by channel partners, he brings the values and insights from learning sciences communities into the everyday lives of families. Prolepsis ’Till Infinity calls for an education that recognizes imagination as infrastructure. Dr. Kareem Edouard invites us to rethink how we build STEM spaces that honor culture, creativity, and care as the foundation of learning. His research at the ILLEST Lab challenges systems that reward compliance over curiosity, asking what becomes possible when play, storytelling, and design are treated as serious forms of knowledge, particularly for those most marginalized in STEAM, Black boys. Drawing from his design practices across learning, children’s media, and informal STEAM environments, Dr. Edouard examines how learners develop identity, agency, and understanding through participatory, culturally responsive experiences, highlighting key insights from the learning sciences. For example, in co-design projects with educators and youth, students engage in creative problem-solving and media production, positioning them as knowledge-makers whose ideas actively shape the learning environment. These collaborative partnerships demonstrate how purposeful engagement between educators, researchers, and communities fosters equitable and imaginative learning outcomes. Dr. Edouard envisions an educational future where play, imagination, and community are essential for liberation. This keynote invites us to build toward proleptic, possible, and connected futures already in motion, where creativity and meaning-making shape how we learn, teach, and thrive together. By treating play, imagination, and community as foundational, Dr. Edouard shows how learning and partnership are inseparable in designing educational spaces that cultivate curiosity, empowerment, and cultural relevance. Dr. Kareem Edouard is an Assistant Professor of Learning Technologies at Drexel University’s School of Education and Co-Director of the Informal Learning Linking Engineering, Science and Technology (ILLEST) Lab. His work explores how design, as a cultural, creative, and communal practice, intersects informal STEM education and children’s media to promote meaningful knowledge transfer across learning spaces. He examines how storytelling and co-creation cultivate belonging, purpose, and imagination in environments shaped by inequity. Through initiatives like the Black Male Animation Lab, Dr. Edouard redefines STEM as a space for cultural creation and collective care, empowering Black boys as designers, storytellers, and innovators. He focuses on Black boys because their experiences sharpen the stakes of equity work in STEM: to support those most marginalized by systemic exclusion is to test whether design can truly be liberatory. His liberatory co-design framework examines how collaborative creation transforms educational systems and expands equity and representation. In the Sneaker Lab, design, material science, and cultural expression are explored for their impact on identity and innovation. The GRIND initiative further investigates how sports, data, and technology can foster community-driven STEM engagement. Dr. Edouard integrates his co-liberty design framing vision into children’s STEM media. This approach combines his experience as a former music video and commercial director with his academic research. As Executive Producer of MayNERD’s Wild World of Science (YouTube Kids), Built From Scratch, and Creative Producer of Work It Out Wombats! (PBS KIDS), he uses media as a conduit to share STEM learning and engagement, which remains at the heart of his work with children’s media. https://drexel.edu/soe/faculty-and-staff/faculty/Edouard-Kareem https://www.linkedin.com/in/kareemedouard https://www.olegreensgroup.com/home