EDST Research Day showcases the rich educational research, practice, and theory developed by the department’s students and faculty. We welcome work in diverse subjects, and in all phases of development, including projects that come out of coursework, research conducted as Research Assistants or Principal Investigators, thesis sections, or papers in progress. Presenters are encouraged to try out ideas to be developed for a forthcoming conference.
Theme: Toxicity in Education
Education may be vital for the development and functioning of human society, but it can also be a site of harm. Toxicity can undermine healthy learning environments for both educators and learners through inequitable policies, excessive competition, biased curricula, or power dynamics that silence or marginalise certain groups. Toxicity may also manifest in burnout culture, punitive disciplinary practices, or interactions that create fear, stress, or exclusion for students or educators. Examining this concept involves questioning how educational systems can perpetuate harm and how these environments might instead promote wellbeing, equity, and meaningful learning. Understanding toxicity helps guide efforts toward creating more supportive, just, and transformative educational spaces.
The theme invites critical reflection on harmful dynamics that shape educational spaces, practices, and relationships. It encourages presenters to explore how toxicity emerges through systemic inequities, policies, power relations, or everyday interactions within schools and universities. By examining these issues, the theme aims to spark meaningful dialogue about the ways educational environments can perpetuate stress, exclusion, or injustice, and how they might instead become more supportive, inclusive, and transformative.
Schedule
17 April 2026 Ponderosa Commons: Oak House,
6445 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
| 0900 – 0930 | Registration & Refreshment | |
| 0930 – 1015 | Land Acknowledgement Opening Remarks – Prof André Mazawi Awards Presentation | |
| 1015 – 1145 | Keynote Presentation Ponderosa Ballroom | |
| 1145 – 1245 | Lunch Ponderosa Ballroom | |
| Session 1 1300 – 1415 | Session 1 (Roundtable) Arts Education in Middle School Room: PCN 1001 | Session 2 (Book launch) Unschooled Futures: Pluriversal Speculations Room: PCN 1002 |
| A Comparative Study on the Purpose of Arts Education in Middle School in Canada, China, and India Through Teachers’ Perspectives Sai Manjari Kaladindi; Stephen Sarmento; Zhuqing Mei | Unschooled Futures: Pluriversal Speculations Dr Petra Mikulan; Dr Nathalie Sinclair; Daniel Gallardo Zamora | |
| Session 2 1430 – 1545 | Session 3 Educational Institutions & Society Room: PCN 1001 | Session 4 Education, Ethics, and Subjectivity Room: PCN 1002 |
| Accidental Trailblazers: The Experiences of Asian Canadian Women Leaders in BC’s K-12 Public Schools Kristen Joo | The “with” of “with consent.” Silas Krabbe | |
| Educational Leadership and Cross-Cultural Challenges in British Columbia Offshore Schools in China Frances Kenston | Education Against Itself? A Bengali Conception of Education and Social Justice Jafar Iqbal | |
| Session 3 1600 – 1715 | Session 5 Doing Education: the Curriculum Room: PCN 1001 | Session 6 AI as an Opportunity/Threat Room: PCN 1002 |
| Cost-Benefit Analysis of Receiving a Post-Secondary Education in Canada Paul Zhao | The Evolution of Educational Subject in AI-Supported Arts Education Zhuqing Mei | |
| Do teachers that claim to be ‘decolonising’ Geography subvert ‘development’ in line with a theory of de-linking? A call for a radical decolonisation of the Geography curriculum Charlotte Milner | AI-Mediated Toxicity in Higher Education: How Intelligent Systems Amplify Harmful Learning Dynamics Sourabh Aggarwal | |
| Through the Lens of EDI: Policy Analysis on AI Use Policy in Education Amy Liang | ||
| The House That UbD Built: the hidden assumptions baked into the dominant curriculum-planning model Devin Ozdogu | ||
| 1730 onwards | Research Day Social Mingle Location: Koerner’s Pub, 1758 West Mall, Vancouver | |
Abstracts
Roundtable Session 1 |
| A Comparative Study on the Purpose of Arts Education in Middle School in Canada, China, and India Through Teachers’ Perspectives Sai Manjari Kaladindi; Stephen Sarmento; Zhuqing Mei Arts education has the ability to contribute to a student’s holistic development and build intangible skills needed for an ever-evolving world. Arts education is unique in that it aims at personal development rather than more traditional academic subjects, as outlined by John Dewey (2005) and Elliot Eisner (2008). Within the context of middle years education, arts education and its purpose are being marginalized across the world’s education systems. To delve deeper into this global phenomenon, we interviewed arts teachers in Canada, China, and India to gain greater insight into the plight of the arts and what could be done to improve the situation within all contexts. Utilizing a phenomenological approach rooted in a qualitative lens, we learned about everyday arts-based programs from teachers. Participants shared their views on the purpose of arts education, connections to policy and implementation, challenges and barriers they face, and what they do to adapt and succeed. Though the three nations differ in their political and educational landscapes, we witness commonalities of marginalization, specifically regarding limited classroom time, resources, and a feeling of subordination in favour of the academic subjects. Arts education is concerned with the education and evolution of the self, in an ever-evolving and polarizing world, the arts ought to have a place as it continues to unite us all to the human experience and emotional connectedness, unlike any other discipline. |
Session 2 (Book launch) Unschooled Futures: Pluriversal Speculations |
Join the launch of Unschooled Futures: Pluriversal Speculations! This edited volume by Dr. Petra Mikulan and Dr. Nathalie Sinclair includes two chapters authored by EDST students. The session will feature a conversation with Dr. Mikulan and Daniel Gallardo, an EDST PhD student contributor, along with special guests from the volume. Unschooled Futures stages a series of radical provocations that seek to reorient the very conditions under which learning becomes thinkable. Refusing the redemptive pull of schooling as a salvageable public good, the collection foregrounds the necessity of undisciplining education, dislodging it from its colonial grammars, disciplinary enclosures, and anthropocentric imaginaries. In dialogue, the speakers will reflect on the process of contributing to and editing the volume, while engaging broader questions about toxicity in education, considering how harm is embedded within educational structures themselves, and how speculative and experimental practices might open possibilities for more just and unschooled futures.  |
Paper Session 3 |
| Accidental Trailblazers: The Experiences of Asian Canadian Women Leaders in BC’s K-12 Public Schools Kristen Joo British Columbia (BC) is home to Canada’s second-largest Asian population (Statistics Canada, 2024), yet Asian Canadian (AsCan) women remain consistently underrepresented in BC’s K-12 principal and vice-principal roles (Wang, 2022). Further, there is limited academic literature specific to AsCans, and particularly AsCan women, in school leadership. Thus, this study aims to gain a better understanding of the challenges AsCan women face when pursuing, and while holding, leadership roles along with the factors that contribute to their sense of respect and belonging. This paper presents preliminary findings from my master’s thesis project that draws from Asian Critical Theory (Museus & Iftikar, 2014) and is centered on the stories of AsCan women leaders in BC’s K-12 public school system. The findings will expand our understanding of the distinct barriers faced by AsCan women and how they overcome these challenges. They will also highlight the organizational systems and supports that could increase the presence of AsCan women in leadership roles and help ensure they thrive throughout their leadership careers. These insights can inform school districts, policymakers, and post-secondary institutions as they revisit policies, mentorship programs, and leadership development programs to promote a more equitable leadership landscape. |
| Educational Leadership and Cross-Cultural Challenges in British Columbia Offshore Schools in China Frances Kenston British Columbia certifies more than forty offshore schools globally, most located in China, where the B.C. curriculum is delivered under provincial inspection and certification requirements. These schools operate at the intersection of Canadian educational standards and Chinese cultural, political, and regulatory expectations. Educational leaders in these contexts must navigate competing accountability systems, differing pedagogical traditions, and complex stakeholder demands. This study explores how leaders in B.C.-certified offshore schools in China experience and respond to cross-cultural challenges in their daily work. Drawing on the Social Identity Approach, an Intersectional Leadership Identity framework, and a critical policy and coloniality lens, the research conceptualizes leadership as identity-based and shaped by transnational institutional conditions. Using a narrative case study design across 4–6 schools, the study will draw on interviews, policy documents, and observations to examine how leaders interpret cross-cultural tensions and enact ethical decision-making. The research contributes to scholarship on internationalized K–12 education and offers implications for culturally responsive leadership, policy development, and leadership preparation in transnational schooling contexts. |
Paper Session 4 |
| The “with” of “with consent.” Silas Krabbe This paper argues the concept of consent as developed by Leanne Betasamoke Simpson is relevant to educational practice and pedagogy. The paper makes this argument by introducing Leanne Betasamoke Simpson as a person that offers incisive critiques of education, schooling, and educational structures. It then argues she is relevant to think with because of her contributions to thinking in a specific time, place, and context, the uptake of which requires a “withness” of thought and consideration of eco-sociality that is apt for our eco-social moment in Canada. Her concept of consent is then considered as being a conceptual offering to educators, one that eschews individualist and western-legal developments of the concept of consent. Her offering of the concept, instead, is one that skirts state-based legal frameworks and autonomous individuals and is therefore more pliable to non-formal educational situations. |
| Education Against Itself? A Bengali Conception of Education and Social Justice Jafar Iqbal Why do garment workers who produce clothes for global brands—garments that keep us warm in winter and stylish in summer—continue to face worsening labor conditions despite more than a decade of worker education programs? If education is widely assumed to advance social justice, this persistence of precarity raises a deeper theoretical question: what conception of education is at work when education fails to generate the consciousness needed to challenge domination? This paper uses that contradiction to introduce a Bengali conception of education as an alternative framework for thinking about education, power, and social justice within transnational labor regimes. Dominant approaches frame workers’ education as technical capacity building, assuming that knowledge automatically produces empowerment. Drawing on Bengali scholars, this paper understands education as historically grounded praxis in which struggles to claim language, land, and labor are central, while epistemologies of education emerge through resistance to colonialism, capitalism, nationalism, and imperial power. Rather than treating education as a neutral instrument, this tradition understands education as a socially emancipatory project of consciousness formation shaped by lateral pedagogical relations, socially governed independent institutions, and a globally connected outlook. Based on primary texts, educational traditions, and reflexive theoretical engagement, the paper demonstrates how Bengali conceptions of education expand contemporary debates on decolonial, emancipatory, and social justice education. |
Paper Session 5 |
| Cost-Benefit Analysis of Receiving a Post-Secondary Education in Canada Paul Zhao Some high school graduates do not pursue any post-secondary education. Post-secondary education is essential for professional employment in most scenarios. This study examined whether pursuing post-secondary education is financially worthwhile and whether a university or trade school education is a more profitable investment. By using the data collected through the census from Statistics Canada, this study creates age-earnings profiles for six different education levels, conducts cost-benefit analyses, calculates the internal rate of return (IRR), return on investment (ROI) and annualized return on investment (annualized ROI) to compare university education and trade school education for both domestic and international students in Canada. This research finds that both attending university and trade school is financially worth it for both domestic and international students, and that a university education is a more profitable investment than a trade school education. The findings suggest that attending university is the most beneficial personal educational option, and the benefits significantly outweigh the costs over a person’s lifetime. |
| Do teachers that claim to be ‘decolonising’ Geography subvert ‘development’ in line with a theory of de-linking? A call for a radical decolonisation of the Geography curriculum Charlotte Milner ‘Development’ is a fundamentally colonial concept that remains at the core of the Geography secondary curriculum in England. Applying a transformative theoretical lens of ‘de-linking’, development can be understood as the rhetoric of modernity which both obscures and legitimates the racializing logics of coloniality (Mignolo, 2007). If teachers and curriculum developers are to ‘decolonize’ the Geography curriculum, development must be radically reconceptualized in the classroom as an active tool of coloniality. Existing literature on ‘decolonizing’ development in the Geography curriculum fails to grapple with the concept in transformative ways, and efforts made in the classroom are broadly unknown. With a self-proclaimed ‘Decolonizing Geography Collective’ emerging among the teacher workforce in the UK since 2020, research is needed to identify whether these efforts align with a transformative and radical approach that repurposes the Geography curriculum for revealing and confronting coloniality. This presentation explores this theoretical framing of development before outlining a proposed research project that seeks to examine whether teachers who claim to be ‘decolonising’ Geography are aligned with this necessarily transformative framing of ‘development’. |
| The House That UbD Built: the hidden assumptions baked into the dominant curriculum-planning model Devin Ozdogu Understanding by Design (UbD) (Wiggins & McTighe) remains one of the most widely used curriculum planning models in North American teacher education. Yet, the model carries several underexamined assumptions: it emerged from elite secondary schooling contexts, begins with externally defined standards often tied to flawed accountability systems and educational policy, and struggles to meaningfully incorporate contemporary equity- and justice-oriented approaches to education. This talk presents UbD as a problematic default, leaving teacher education programs caught between reproducing its logic or leaving novices without clear alternatives. |
Paper Session 6 |
| The Evolution of Educational Subject in AI-Supported Arts Education Zhuqing Mei AI has increasingly supported the educational environment: teachers incorporating AI into instruction and assessment, while students consider using AI for creative work or completing assignments. Instead of teacher-centered or student-centered learning in the pre-AI age, AI-supported learning is now quickly developing and popularizing. It is pressing to question how the educational subject is transformed, reconstructed, and repositioned. Drawing on Dewey’s theory of art as experience and Biesta’s concept of subjectification, this paper conceptualizes the educational subject in art education as emerging through the relationship among educators, learners, techniques, and institutional structures. And it explores the evolving subject under the AI-supported environment. Rather than evaluating AI techniques, this paper emphasizes the practice of creation, artistic experience, interaction, and feedback under the AI-supported learning environment. The paper examines the tension between the efficiency-oriented AI-supported educational environment and the slow-forming interactions between the arts and life, people themselves, and the whole community. Furthermore, it argues that the AI-supported art education reconstructs the subject in several ways: from authorship towards human to AI-collaboration; from human-human dialogue to human-machine dialogue, from individual judgement to AI-reliance judgement, from experience-centered learning to AI-interrupted learning. By reflecting on the Canadian and Chinese contexts, the paper investigates how the evolution of educational subjects is complexly shaped by history, policy, traditional education, and institutional structures. It concludes by drawing attention to the educational subject and highlights the importance of maintaining human-centered art education alongside the development of AI. |
| AI-Mediated Toxicity in Higher Education: How Intelligent Systems Amplify Harmful Learning Dynamics Sourabh Aggarwal Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming integrated into higher education rapidly through systems that generate text, assist problem-solving, and mediate students’ access to knowledge. While these technologies promise efficiency and expanded learning opportunities, they may also introduce new forms of toxicity within educational environments. This presentation examines the concept of AI-mediated toxicity, referring to harmful learning dynamics that arise when intelligent systems reshape power relations, learning expectations, and knowledge practices in the classroom. Building on emerging debates in educational technology and AI governance, the presentation explores how algorithmic systems may amplify existing institutional pressures such as performance culture, surveillance, and unequal access to digital tools. In AI-assisted learning environments, students may experience new forms of stress, dependency, and epistemic uncertainty as algorithmic outputs begin to influence what counts as legitimate knowledge and academic performance. These dynamics may intensify inequities between learners with differing levels of technological access and AI literacy while also reshaping the pedagogical relationship between educators and students. By framing toxicity as a systemic condition shaped by technological infrastructures, this work contributes to conversations about how educational institutions can design more reflective, equitable, and humane approaches to AI-integrated learning environments. |
| Through the Lens of EDI: Policy Analysis on AI Use Policy in Education Amy Liang AI is rapidly transforming K – 12 education, offering potential benefits such as personalized learning and increased efficiency, while also raising concerns related to bias, privacy, access, and the erosion of human-centred pedagogy. In BC, the Ministry of Education and Child Care provides provincial guidance through Considerations for Using AI Tools in K–12 Schools, emphasizing teacher-led, human-centred decision-making. However, responsibility for implementation rests with individual school districts. Early evidence suggests uneven policy development across districts, creating an unmet need for coherent, equity-driven governance at a time when AI adoption is accelerating. This study examines how equity, diversity, and inclusion principles are articulated and enacted within emerging AI policies in BC’s K – 12 education system. The objective is to assess how provincial guidance on AI use is being translated into district-level policies in ways that uphold BC’s legal and ethical commitments to EDI, and to identify risks of fragmentation that may undermine equitable educational opportunities. |
Further Information & Questions
Want to present but not sure how to prepare? Your SSLs are here and would love to sit with you to discuss your proposal ideas and helping you prepare!
Contact us at: edst.ssl@ubc.ca for any questions, comments, or assistance.
We will continue updating details on the conference website: https://edst.educ.ubc.ca/researchday/.
Stay tuned.
We look forward to your contributions towards making the Research Day one of the most significant events of the department.