Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: January 28th, 2025 by Qiaochu Xu
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Malihe Manzouri, from Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
Date: January 28th, 2025
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

At the SyMETRI meeting on January 28, 2025, Malihe Manzouri leads SyMETRI members through a series of exercises designed to reveal the challenges immigrant students encounter in math classrooms. Using Farsi-style numerals, questions written in an unfamiliar language, and problems that common translation tools struggle to interpret, participants gain firsthand insight into the linguistic barriers that can affect students’ mathematical understanding.

These activities allow teachers to step into the shoes of immigrant students, helping them recognize the importance of inclusive instructional strategies. The workshop offers insights for supporting multilingual learners, ensuring that all students—regardless of their language background—can engage meaningfully with mathematics. SyMETRI members leave with a deeper understanding of how language barriers and mathematical number writing systems create additional challenges for immigrant students, particularly as they navigate solving math problems in a new language and educational setting.

Bio

Malihe Manzouri is an educator and researcher passionate about mathematics education. She holds a master’s degree in mathematics education from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the National University of Malaysia. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at UBC, focusing on the mathematical learning experiences of immigrant students in Canada.

With extensive teaching and mentoring experience in diverse educational settings—including universities, schools, and her own academic consulting company, Coherent Consulting Corp.—Malihe strives to create inclusive and equitable learning opportunities for students. Her unique academic journey, transitioning from engineering to education, allows her to bridge technical and social perspectives in her research and teaching.

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: January 14th, 2025 by Qiaochu Xu
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Julian Marcado, from Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
Date: January 14th, 2025
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

On Jan 14^th, Julian Marcado shared insights from his capstone project titled “Exploring the Potential of Garden-Based Teaching for Mathematics Education: The Case of One High School Educator in British Columbia.” Julian’s research focused on Garden-Based Learning (GBL), a pedagogical approach that integrated hands-on, experiential activities in garden settings to enhance mathematics education. His study revealed how GBL fostered greater student engagement, motivation, and comprehension of mathematical concepts while also addressing the challenges educators faced in integrating these methods within the standard curriculum.

Julian’s study employed a qualitative case study design, focusing on a single high school mathematics teacher utilizing GBL. It followed a flexible and emergent approach, emphasizing collaboration and consultation with the teacher throughout the process. This design aimed to provide rich, descriptive insights for educators and researchers, offering practical implications for implementing GBL in mathematics education. Through this case study, Julian demonstrated the potential of GBL to enrich teaching practices and inspire further exploration into innovative pedagogical methods.

Following Julian’s presentation, members of the SyMETRI group engaged in a thoughtful discussion, posing questions about various aspects of maintaining a school garden. They asked whether students planted and harvested edible vegetables and fruits and how these activities were incorporated into the curriculum. The group also delved into how the teacher linked garden-based learning with mathematical concepts, seeking clarity on the strategies used to connect practical gardening activities with abstract mathematics. Furthermore, the conversation brought attention to the challenges teachers face in sustaining such programs and the opportunities these gardens present for communities to create valuable, sustainable, and educational spaces.

Bio

Julian is an MEd student in Mathematics Education at UBC’s Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy. With a background in History and Mathematics and five years of high school teaching experience, he recently completed a capstone project focusing on garden-based learning. His research interests lie in exploring how school gardens can provide innovative opportunities for teaching mathematics in engaging and dynamic ways.

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: December 10th, 2024 by Dr. Cynthia Nicol
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Dr. Kshamta Hunter, Faculty of Education and manager of Transformative Learning & Student Engagement at the University of British Columbia
Date: December 10th, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

Dr. Kshamta introduced us to her research and activities on the Climate-Kind Pedagogy project, a project supported by a UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund grant. The project involves faculty and students from across Canada and Australia to meet and talk about how to re-introduce kindness in academia in the midst of a poly-crisis world and climate emergencies.

Right from the beginning Dr. Kshamta had us contributing our own thoughts and experiences to the presentation. She asked “How are you integrating climate education in your learning and teaching?” Her questions required that we “stand-up” to move from the sidelines of listening, toward sharing ideas and actions with each other. This is what conversations about climate emergencies should do – move us to act.

Kindness, emphasized Dr. Kshamta, is not about being nice. Kindness is about making space for critical engagement with others, respectfully challenging our own and others’ ideas, within a supportive space. A Climate-Kind Pedagogy can be described as a humanizing pedagogy with foundational values, a transformative learning theory, and reflexive pedagogy.

Enacting Climate-kind Pedagogy involves attention to values. “How can we bring values into the classroom?” asks Dr. Kshamta, and “How can you enact these in your classroom?” We discussed values such as justice, trust, honesty, and resilience.

An activity Dr. Kshamta shared involved inviting students (or teachers) to individually write down 3-4 values that are important to them for working on a project. Then students work in pairs to decide on the top 3 values they agree on as a pair, then they work in a small group and decide on the top 3 values agreed upon as a group. The process involves discussion, negotiation, and awareness. It involves individuals and groups in co-creating values to guide their work with each other in kind and relational ways.

Making space for these difficult conversations around the climate emergency is crucial and Dr. Kshamta give us valuable insights on how we might do this ourselves and with our students, colleagues, and families in kind and respectful ways.

Recommended resources:
https://climatelearning.ca/
https://climateemergency.ubc.ca/

Bio

Dr. Kshamta Hunter is an instructor in the Faculty of Education and the manager of Transformative Learning & Student Engagement at the University of British Columbia. Her research aims to design responsive and relevant integrative curriculum and pedagogical approaches for the 21st century, through a values-based and justice-informed lens. She is a member of first External Advisory Committee for Canada’s 2030 Agenda and recipient of the 2023 President’s Service Award for Excellence.

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: November 26th, 2024 by Stephanie La France
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Diana Royea from Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia
Date: November 26th, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

Today, Diana Royea did a mock presentation for her doctoral defence. She explained that her research was inspired by noticing that many teachers (PSTs) were finding their programs and coursework theory heavy with few opportunities to plan math lessons. She wanted to support teachers in connecting theory and practice in mathematics.

Diana used Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenology as a methodology to explore the experiences of PSTs. She enhanced her understanding of students’ experiences by combining Activity Theory and Professional Theorizing to complement the phenomenological study. These were her research questions:

• What are PST’s lived experiences of participating in learning study as part of their learning to teach math coursework?
  • Themes from Q1: PST understanding of learning study; PST experience Studenting; PST collaboration
• How do PST elementary math teachers understand and use variation theory to inform their pedagogical decisions while collaboratively planning learning situations?
  • Themes from Q2: understanding theory in relation to practice, developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)

Through her presentation, Diana discussed how she used Learning Study as a collaborative action research model. Learning Study uses a theory of learning to inform pedagogical decision making and student learning, and Diana decided on Variation Theory – a learning theory that she clarified in the questioning period as a theory of learning stating that students’ conceptual understanding gains sophistication through small variations. She used the example of mathematics where if students are developing a deeper understanding of the equal sign, the format of the equations they are engaging with would be varied.

Thirty-eight student teachers participated in the Learning study which involved labs; however, only 7 individual students and 2 groups of 5-6 students participated in the research as participants. Diana showcased how her project and the learning study enabled students to have a more meaningful connection with theory—such a meaningful finding for supporting PSTs in their journey to developing praxis! Additionally, Diana’s study is only the 3^rd study in Canada to focus on Learning Study and teacher education! Thanks Diana!

Here are some slides from Diana’s presentation:

Bio

Diana Royea is a doctoral student in EDCP and is preparing to defend her dissertation on December 3, 2024. Her committee includes Dr. Cynthia Nicol (supervisor), and committee members Dr. Ann Anderson, Dr. Tony Clarke and the late Dr. Carl Leggo.

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: November 12th, 2024 by Stephanie La France
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Ariane Faria dos Santos from Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia
Date: November 12, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

At the SyMETRI meeting on November 12th, 2024, Ariane Faria dos Santos shared about her experience writing comprehensive exams, and specifically, her thought process on finding, analysing, and managing literature. In her presentation, she covered the following platforms:

• Covidence platform and its many functions particularly for systematic review.
• Mendeley – for tracking sources and their characteristics
• NVivo – for coding papers for themes in the literature

She also shared her thoughts on how to approach literature reviews and reading literature. For example:

• How to decide on a kind of literature review: scope vs systematic. Systematic uses a methodological approach that is replicable by others and formulaic and is intended to capture the state of established fields; scoping literature reviews are intended for emergent topics and takes an explorative approach that covers broader connections.
• How to choose databases: ERIC, Education Source, Academic Search Complete, and Scopus are databases that would capture educational literature.
• How to narrow down research focus for the paper and main question guiding the literature review : think deeply about what exactly it is you want to synthesize and how it supports the topic that you are reviewing the literature for.
• How to choose search terms for the library database: this is trial and error, but you can refine your search terms as you go and repeat the searches. Look to see what terms the literature you are interested in is using have in their abstracts, titles, and search terms.
• How to do a Boolean search in the UBC library: see your friendly librarian!

Here are some slides from Ariane’s presentation:

We were happy to have Ariane join us and give some insight into how to approach various types of literature reviews and choose the platforms that will work for us!

Bio

Ariane Faria dos Santos is a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy. Her research interests include curriculum implementation and teaching practices to improve learning opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds. She is particularly interested in understanding how to better connect both micro (classroom/school) and macro (policymaker) stakeholders to design and implement more equitable curriculum policies.

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: October 29th, 2024 by Stephanie La France
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Tony Domina from Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia
Date: October 29th, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

At the SyMETRI meeting on October 29^th, 2024, Tony Domina shared about his recently completed Capstone project on Project Based Learning (PBL) in/through STEM education. Tony interviewed various STEM subject teachers to find out about their experiences with and perspectives on PBL in hopes to gain insight into how we might support future practice and refine ideas for projects at his school. He engaged with thematic analysis coming to three major themes. The first theme in his research indicated that teachers felt STEM PBL developed key skills like critical thinking and collaboration through group work, and that the open-ended nature of the projects fostered creativity. The second theme showed that, for these projects to be considered successful, there must be scaffolding of engagement for students, a balance between theory and practice, and that projects align with global issues of relevance. Finally, in his analysis, the third theme that emerged was around challenges and sustaining practice of PBL. He noted that there were three factors: lack of time and resources, simplifying complex problems, and building and sustaining partnerships with community.

In considering the future of PBL in STEM education, Tony suggests interdepartmental collaboration (and even beyond) through various online platforms like Google Classroom (as an example). He considers various avenues for how to get communities of practice going and sustained within his school and across his district.  He notes that a stronger community of practice would lead to better alignment between assessment and instruction through the projects (rather than as a separate enrichment activity). This would enable students to progress through the project while teachers could more efficiently support their trajectory through curriculum. He emphasized that this collaboration would help students learn concepts in the curriculum and get excited about learning by sharing their great ideas with the community.  In fact, John Larmer talks about PBL to motivate students because students start connecting projects with real life challenges and helps them feel like they are making a difference; the project becomes more authentic, and so the activity associated with the project becomes more authentic.

Here are some slides from Tony’s presentation:

We are excited to see what future projects Tony takes up as it relates to his research interests like connecting with a broader community, engaging with longitudinal studies on STEM-based projects fitting the PBL frameworks, and studies that include student feedback. Tony is also excited by the potential for mixed methods studies and the use of quantitative data to complement qualitative. He feels that future studies are critical to support teachers sense of self-efficacy in implementing PBL in meaningful and authentic ways that promote student-centered decision making. “A lot of teachers do amazing things, it’s just that we so often do it individually, so I want to encourage more collaboration to share ideas.” We couldn’t agree more, Tony!

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: June 24th, 2024 by Qiaochu Xu
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Shahidul Islam from Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia
Date: June 24th, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

At the SyMETRI meeting on June 24th, 2024, Shahidul Islam shared with us about his master’s research which endeavoured to contextualize gaps in our understanding of Professional Learning Communities’ (PLCs) unique features. His study focuses on secondary science teachers in British Columbia and Bangladesh, examining key PLC features, their impact on Knowledge for teaching (K4T) growth, challenges faced by teachers, and how PLCs help address these challenges.

His study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-method design, starting with a survey of 100 participants (50 per region) through purposive sampling, followed by semi-structured interviews with 10 participants (5 per region) using convenience sampling. Data analysis included descriptive statistics for quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative insights.

Shahidul shared varying degrees of responses to the salient PLC features in both regions. Bangladeshi teachers emphasize features like student focus, shared goals, reflective practices, fostering belonging, sharing resources, continuous improvement, open communication, and data-informed decision-making more than their counterparts in BC. However, British Columbian educators value collaborative problem-solving and mutual respect comparatively more than Bangladeshi educators. The biggest discrepancy is in distributed leadership skills, which are less valued in BC compared to BD. Both regions benefit from PLCs’ resource sharing, new teaching strategies, understanding of student needs, technology integration, self-reflection, and staying updated on educational trends for K4T growth.

On the other hand, Bangladeshi teachers face more challenges, such as lack of technology access, student readiness, pedagogical inertia, blending technology, designing assessments, and lack of support, while BC teachers moderately agree on these. Technical issues, limited knowledge, evolving technology, and lack of confidence are almost equally addressed in both regions. PLC participation helps overcome these challenges through networking, collaboration, technical assistance, affordable tech solutions, resource sharing, confidence building, and tailored instruction, enhancing teaching practices and embracing evolving pedagogies. By leveraging the benefits of PLCs, educators can enhance teaching practices, meet the needs of diverse learners, and embrace the rapidly evolving technology-enhanced pedagogies.

Here are some slides from his presentation:

Shahidul provided valuable insights from his research, highlighting key features of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), their challenges, and how these vary between teachers in Bangladesh and British Columbia. His contributions shed light on potential strategies for designing and implementing effective PLCs for teachers moving forward. During the SyMETRI meetings, members engaged in thorough discussions about the data collection process, the recruitment of participants, and the methods of data analysis. The discussions also addressed strategies for overcoming the challenge of recruiting sufficient candidates for surveys. Further discussions focused on the best approaches to inviting participants for interviews, ensuring a diverse and representative sample that would enrich the research findings. These dialogues are instrumental in ensuring the robustness and reliability of our data collection and analysis processes.

Bio

Shahidul Islam is a MA student in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy here at UBC. Shahidul just defended his thesis June 13th. Congratulations Shahidul!

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: June 10th, 2024 by Stéphanie La France
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Judith Koeller from Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Waterloo
Date: June 10th, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

At the SyMETRI meeting on June 10th, 2024, Judith Koeller shared about her work at The Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC). The CEMC has had many conversations with teachers who are Indigenous, and teachers who teach in Indigenous communities about how the CEMC could support the calls of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Judith emphasised the importance of language noting that it is a vital part of culture, and that colonialism has and continues to contribute to language suppression. Similarly, math has an impact and a role to play which raises many issues and implications for Truth and Reconciliation in math education.

In planning for, designing and sharing the Problems with Purpose series, the CEMC wanted to focus on contextualizing mathematics problems in a way that highlighted our collective responsibility and aligned with the TRC Calls to Action. This meant collaborating with teachers and educators who identify as Indigenous to create two volumes of math problems. One theme that emerges and reemerges is that math lacks context much of the time and that a focus of math on the lived experience and day to day life from which math emerges. Through the process, the CEMC commissioned IndigiQueer Anishinaabe artist Bangishimo (they/them) to take photos from which math problems would be developed including a photo of Bird Safe Glass. Additionally, Dr. Ed Doolittle from First Nations University provided inspiration for a math problem centred around the Cree language.

In discussion about the presentation, Judith shared that a good math problem is open-ended with low floor-high ceiling, aligns with curriculum, includes accessible wording and includes information in both pictorial/diagrammatic and text form. She shared that one of the challenges is that as soon as you get a rich context the problem text often becomes too wordy. Additionally, writing and creating problems that honour Indigenous knowledges and avoids appropriation involves an ongoing process of learning, tweaking, and reflecting. The CEMC hopes to continue developing math problems for Grade 3-12 and lead enrichment and curriculum work in collaboration with volunteers. After this wonderful session about creating purposeful math problems, we are left inspired to contemplate: How do we create a meaningful story/hook in a problem? Why do/should we care about meaningful context in math problems? What is the emotional and lived connection that we might bring into the learning and doing of math?

Here are some photos of Judith’s presentation:

For more information, see the following resources:

CEMC Problems with Purpose website: https://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/resources/problems-with-purpose.php

IndigiQueer Artist Bangishimo’s website: https://www.bangishimo.ca

Video of Dr. Doolittle’s talk that inspired a math problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ-ctdoj_mM

Bio

Judith Koeller has been on faculty at Waterloo since 2003, before which she worked in the high tech industry for seven years. Along with teaching in the Math undergrad and Masters for Mathematics Teaching programs, she conducts workshops in Mathematics for high school students and teachers, across Canada and internationally. She is particularly interested in how math can make a difference in the world, and the implications of Math for peace.