Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: November 11th, 2025 by Qiaochu Xu
Date: November 11th, 2025
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

Welcome to a new semester with SyMETRI! As we step into the new semester, we continue to build a space where STEM graduate students and faculty can gather, share research, and think together about questions in science, technology, and mathematics education. This year’s meetings will be facilitated by Qiaochu, now in her fourth year with SyMETRI as a PhD student in mathematics education, and Lindsay, a PhD candidate in science education and former secondary language arts teacher recently joining and facilitating the SyMETRI meetings, with Dr. Cynthia Nicol, a professor from mathematics education as host.

Our first gathering of the semester took place online in November, where a small but lively group joined through Zoom. The meeting began with an activity called My Life in Numbers, where each person offered a number that captured a small part of their story. Some numbers were humorous—cups of coffee needed to function—while others reflected the rhythms of graduate school: the length of the daily commute, the tally of courses completed, or the count of ongoing research projects. As numbers turned into anecdotes, the conversation opened warmly and set a collaborative tone.

The discussion soon shifted toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With the website open on the shared screen, participants reflected on how these global aims intersect with their own work and how SyMETRI, as a community, might explore sustainability throughout the year. The questions quickly moved beyond policy and into lived experience—how we teach, how we design research, and how we participate in our local communities.

Two guiding questions shaped the conversation:

1. What drivers of change make progress toward sustainable development more or less possible?

2. What role can Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education play in making the world better, both locally and globally?

Participants described systemic challenges: political cycles that shift priorities, funding structures that push sustainability aside, commercial narratives that frame progress through profit, and consumer habits that quietly accumulate waste. Yet alongside these concerns were moments of possibility. One member shared how a simple measurement activity in a Grade 7 mathematics class opened conversations about resource use and waste. Another spoke about teaching science alongside social issues, helping students see sustainability not as an abstract concept, but as part of family life, community identity, and everyday choices.

The meeting concluded with collective brainstorming around what actions SyMETRI might take as a community this year. Ideas included clothing or food donation drives, campus waste-reduction efforts, and other opportunities to strengthen community ties within the Faculty of Education.

Here are some slides from this discussion:

Background Image: Unsupervised by Refik Anadol

Image Credit: United Nations_Sustainable Development Goals

Here are some resources:

• State of the SDGs in Canada – Halfway to 2030

• Learn about Right to Repair

• FABCYCLE is a collection service of textile waste.

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: April 8th, 2025 by Qiaochu Xu
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Dr. Elizabeth Saville, from Okanagan School of Education, University of British Columbia Okanagan
Date: April 8th, 2025
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

At the SyMETRI meeting on April 8th, 2025, Dr. Elizabeth Saville shared key insights from her dissertation research, which explored how secondary students make sense of their experiences in STEM classrooms in ways that support the construction of STEM identities. Employing a qualitative portraiture methodology, her study foregrounds students’ voices by capturing richly detailed narratives from a diverse cohort of 57 participants. These portraits illuminate how classroom cultures can enable or constrain identity development in STEM, particularly for students from historically marginalized backgrounds.

Grounded in the understanding that STEM identities are multidimensional and intersectional, and shaped within socially and culturally situated classroom spaces, this research highlights how dominant norms and systemic inequities influence students’ sense-making practices. Dr. Saville emphasized the crucial role of educators as agents of change, capable of cultivating classroom cultures that more equitably support students in constructing and sustaining meaningful STEM identities.

Through focus group data, the study identified three distinct forms of meaningful engagement that foster STEM identity development:

1. Personal Engagement – connections to individual interests, values, and lived experiences;
2. Social Engagement – opportunities for collaboration, peer recognition, and community-building;
3. Curricular Engagement – pedagogical practices and learning experiences that affirm diverse ways of knowing and doing in STEM.

These thematic findings extend current understandings of STEM identity by linking them to experiential learning pedagogies and emphasizing the importance of caring, inclusive, and collaborative classroom communities. The study offers a conceptual framework that educators can draw upon to support equity-oriented teaching and learning practices. While grounded in the unique contexts of the research sites, the insights presented are broadly relevant and provide practical guidance for educators seeking to create more equitable STEM classroom cultures and decolonize practices and discourses in STEM education.

Here are some slides from her presentation:

Following the presentation, SyMETRI members engaged in a lively and thoughtful discussion around the nature of STEM identities—how they are perceived, shaped, and supported within classroom contexts. SyMETRI members reflected on how their own practices promote STEM identity development and raised important questions about disciplinary boundaries within STEM. In particular, they asked Dr. Saville how students distinguish between different components of their STEM identities, such as math versus science or physics-based identities, and how these distinctions emerge in students’ narratives. This exchange opened up further dialogue about the role of subject-specific cultures and pedagogies in shaping how students come to see themselves within the broader landscape of STEM.

Bio:

Elizabeth Saville is a teacher educator and educational consultant with over 25 years of experience in STEM education at the K-12 and post-secondary levels. A recent PhD graduate from the University of British Columbia Okanagan, her research is focused on transforming classrooms to foster equity in STEM education. She also works to support educators in building critical AI literacy skills and understanding informed and responsible implementation of Generative AI in educational spaces.

On February 28, SyMETRI hosted an in-person gathering at Scarfe 1211 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., bringing together faculty members and graduate students for an evening of meaningful connection, research exploration, and community-building in a welcoming and informal setting.

The event began with a lively icebreaker designed to spark conversations and foster connections. Each participant wrote three key words on a sticky note—one representing a personal interest or hobby, another reflecting their research focus, and a third sharing a fun fact about themselves. The notes were then randomly drawn, and attendees engaged in discussions, introductions, and friendly guessing to figure out who wrote each note. The activity created an energetic and interactive atmosphere, encouraging members to learn more about one another in a fun and engaging way.

Following the icebreaker, we shared a meal over pizza, providing a relaxed opportunity for deeper conversations and new friendships to form. In the second half of the meeting, participants contributed thought-provoking questions related to research, academic studies, and future career paths in STEM education. These questions were placed in a box, drawn at random, and read aloud, prompting insightful discussions where members shared their perspectives, experiences, and ideas. The exchange was both stimulating and collaborative, reinforcing SyMETRI’s commitment to fostering a supportive and intellectually enriching environment.

It was a joy to meet in person, exchange ideas, and build connections within our academic community. We look forward to future gatherings that continue to inspire meaningful dialogue, collaboration, and shared learning!

Presenter/Guest Speaker: Dr. Dawn Wiseman from the School of Education at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada and Dr. Lisa Lunney Borden from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia
Date: October 17th, 2022
Host: Dr Cynthia Nicol

In the SyMETRI meeting on Oct 17, 2022,

During the meeting, Dr. Dawn Wiseman shared how Indigenous and Western ways of knowing, being, and doing circulate together in STEAM teaching and learning. She also introduced how she involved in the creating of locally relevant STEAM education, unlearning colonialism, and building her role and responsibility of educator in terms of connecting between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and communities. She walked SyMETRI members through her lived experience by looking at how interactions and interrelationships between policy, practitioners, and practices.

SyMETRI members asked some critical questions of Lisa such as how might we understand the nature of Indigenous knowledge? What are the sources? And what are some ways we as teachers could bring that knowledge into our teaching?Lisa discussed how many Indigenous languages are verb-based rather than English which is more noun-based. She presented her research on decolonizing mathematics education through culturally based practices and experiences that are rooted in Indigenous languages and knowledge systems.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Dawn Wiseman 

Dawn Wiseman is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Bishop’s University in Ktinékétolékouac (Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada). She has engaged in thinking about STEAM with young people and educators for over three decades, most often alongside Indigenous people, peoples, and communities in what is currently Canada. Her research exams how Western and Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing, might circulate together in STEAM education, student-directed STEAM inquiry, the distinctiveness of Canadian science education research, and the possibilities of teaching and learning within the context of human-driven climate change. She teaches courses in science and research methods, interdisciplinary teaching and learning, and teaching and learning in uncertain times.

Dr. Lisa Lunney Borden

Lisa Lunney Borden is a Professor of mathematics education at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada and holds the John Jerome Paul Chair for Equity in Mathematics Education. Having taught 7-12 mathematics in a Mi’kmaw community, she credits her students and the community for helping her to think differently about mathematics teaching and learning. She is committed to research and outreach that focuses on decolonizing mathematics education through culturally based practices and experiences that are rooted in Indigenous languages and knowledge systems. Lisa teaches courses in mathematics education and Indigenous education. Lisa has helped to create the Show Me Your Math program that inspired thousands of Mi’kmaw youth to share the mathematical reasoning inherent in their own community contexts, and an outreach program called Connecting Math to Our Lives and Communities that brings similar ideas to Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian youth as an afterschool program.