Awards
Award Recipients 2023-2024
Canadian Learning Sciences Master Thesis Award for Excellence
Sophia Thraya
University of Calgary
Sophia Thraya is a first-year PhD student in Educational Research, specializing in Learning Sciences at the University of Calgary under the supervision of Dr. Miwa Takeuchi. As a researcher and educator, with specialized training working with historically marginalized learner populations, she has continuously been drawn to the transdisciplinary understandings of learning, equity and justice-oriented design approaches and pedagogical innovations that seek to deepen learning—central to the field of Learning Sciences. Her ongoing and future research interests are situated in linguistic design for equity and justice, leveraging lived and non-dominant knowledges in disciplinary spaces, with a specific focus on experiences of refugee children within learning spaces. Her experiences as a racialized multilingual student and certified teacher in Alberta have fueled her commitment to this work.
Canadian Learning Sciences Doctoral Dissertation Award
Dr.Dylan Paré
Penn State College
Dylan Paré (they/them) is an Assistant Professor at the Penn State College of Education. They have completed PhD in the Learning Sciences at the University of Calgary, Werklund School of Education. They are the Founder and Director of the Queer Code Collective https://www.queercode.org), an award-winning studio that designs, develops, and researches new models of code and coding with queer and trans experiences at the forefront. Dylan co-designs virtual reality and interactive computer-based learning environments for learning about complex systems, socio-political issues, and design justice. Their primary research project reimagines computational literacies by interweaving storytelling with scholarship on complexity studies, embodied learning, and queer and trans phenomenology. Dylan’s work builds upon their previous undergraduate and graduate work in Gender and Sexuality Studies and their work as a community organizer-educator, a workplace consultant for gender and sexual diversity, and a post-secondary student services program coordinator in gender and sexual diversity, sexual health, and relationship education.
Award Recipients 2021-2022
Here you will find information about winners of recent awards for the year 2021-2022.
Canadian Learning Sciences Graduate Student Leadership and Research Award
Stephanie Hladik
Dr. Stephanie Hladik (she/her) conducts qualitative and design-based research into STEM education in a variety of settings including K-12 schools, post-secondary institutions, museums, library makerspaces, and after-school technology clubs. This work may include co-designing and implementing new educational activities with educators and learners, investigating the complexity of educators’ interactions with learners, and uncovering how STEM identity can be developed across space and time. She is particularly interested in critical research that challenges historical and existing inequities in STEM education. Stephanie is currently an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Engineering Professional Practice and Engineering Education, Price Faculty of Engineering, University of Manitoba.
Canadian Learning Sciences Graduate Student Engagement Award
Paula Waatainen
Dr. Paula Waatainen graduated from the University of Calgary with her Ed D in May, 2022. Her doctoral research was a design-based research study entitled
Designing an Authentic Assessment of Elementary Citizenship Competency Through Real-World Democratic Deliberation. Paula is a professor in the Faculty of Education at
Vancouver Island University. She teaches Social Studies Methods, chairs her faculty Assessment Literacy committee, and is supervising her first two M Ed students. She was awarded a 2022 VIU Engage Grant to continue her dissertation DBR study with second cycle of design, collaborating this time with a grade 12 teacher. She began knowledge mobilization from her research in the summer, designing a course on designing authentic assessments of competency, which she taught as an adjunct professor at UBC Okanagan's Summer Institute of Education. She's looking forward to attending conferences in the next year and getting some writing done (while keeping an eye on her mischievous Labrador Retriever puppy, Stella.