Leyton Schnellert is the ICER Cluster Leader for Pedagogy and Participation and an associate Professor, Faculty of Education at UBC Vancouver. Dr. Schnellert researches teacher learning, practice, and collaboration. In particular he attends to how teacher professional development relates to student diversity, inclusive education, self- and co-regulation, and literacy instruction. His research grapples with the challenge of designing and facilitating teacher professional development that bridges theory and practice so as to achieve valued outcomes for students.

Margaret Macintyre Latta is a former classroom teacher at the elementary, junior high, and high school levels, who returned to graduate studies compelled by John Dewey’s (1938) assertion that within aesthetic experience is a learning approach and direction. The aesthetic is understood as attention to the creating process, primary to the arts, permeating all learning—thus adapting, changing, building, and making meaning. Her scholarship addresses the integral role of aesthetic considerations such as attentiveness to participatory thinking, emotional commitment, felt freedom, dialogue and interaction, and speculation within the acts of teaching and learning. She terms these neglected epistemological assumptions, elemental to learners and learning. She believes the aesthetic merits serious consideration as a pragmatic and philosophical necessity missing in much schooling. Aesthetic teaching/learning contexts call for rethinking and revaluing what is educationally important. She is committed to the primacy of teachers in the lives of their students and the long-term impact on the future, contributing to the scholarship regarding school curriculum, teacher education, and professional development reform initiatives.

Kim Ondrik is presently the head learner and co-creator of Mill Bay Nature School, an innovative school of School District 79. The school is in its second year and is inspired by the embodied ideas of the Coast Salish People, Reggio Emilia, Dr. Gord Neufeld, and proponents of ‘risky play’ and democracy. In this place, the natural world is perceived as a provocative learning space of change, diversity, and challenge. Mill Bay Nature School is a place of natural learning – from the inside of the child outwards, from the inside of the adult outwards – from core competencies to curricular competencies to content. Mill Bay Nature School takes collaboration seriously – wide awake of how dedicated teachers ‘scraping up against reality’ as they interrogate their assumptions and transform – in the service of young people, their families and the greater community – create enormous tension, calling forth great humility and holding the potential of one example of systemic transformation.

Murray Sasges was born and raised in Vernon B.C. along with nine siblings. He owned and operated a Gravel Quarry before taking up teaching at the age of 40. His second year of teaching was at an international school in Shenzhen, China. Always having a keen interest in community engagement he brought this passion to his teaching. He co-created a 5-month full-time Global Ed program for grade 11’s based on sustainability and social justice issues which included a 3-week field study in Nicaragua. More recently he co-founded with Kim Ondrik an innovative school within School District #22 called the Academy of Inquiry and Adventure Okanagan (aiao.ca) which is grounded in the new B.C. curriculum and the core competencies from grades 7-12. He loves to fix up old bicycles and is currently restoring an old farm to honor its productive and cultural heritage.

Lisa Nielson is an artist and filmmaker living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is interested in work that has historical reference, social relevance & where possible, comedic sensibilities. She is a founding member of Vancouver's Iris Film Collective, which promotes the creation and sharing of analog film - single channel, expanded, sculptural and installation. She is also the producer/mentor of a community based project close to her heart called Our World which supports First Nations youth to create film and video about topics important to them.

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Pedagogy, adolescents, education