Keynote Speakers
AI, Metaverse and STEAM Education
Professor Yu Shengquan
Professor of School of Education Technology
Director of Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education
Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Virtual and Blended Teaching and Learning
TitleLearning and Practicing in Non-pressure Environment
Professor Maiga Chang
Professor Maiga ChangFull Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems
Athabasca University, Canada
Speaker Bio
Dr. Maiga Chang is Associate Dean, Research & Innovation, and Full Professor at Faculty of Science and Technology, Athabasca University, Canada. Dr. Chang is IEEE Senior Member and has been appointed as an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor on AI and Chatbot for 2023 to 2025. He is also received Distinguished Researcher Award from Asia Pacific Society on Computers in Education (APSCE) in 2022. Dr. Chang is now Vice President (2022~) of International Association of Smart Learning Environments (IASLE), Vice Chair of IEEE Northern Canada Section, and editors-in-chief (2019~) of Journal of Educational Technology & Society (Open Access SSCI in Quartile Q1 with rank 22/756 in Education & Educational Research category by Journal Impact Factor 4.595), editor-in-chief (2014~) of International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (Open Access ESCI in Quartile Q1 with rank 64/756 in Education & Educational Research category by Journal Impact Factor 3.3, SCOPUS, EI), and editor-in-chief (2020~) of Bulletin of Technical Committee on Learning Technology (Open Access ESCI). Dr. Chang has given more than 160 talks and lectures in different events; He also has (co-)authored more than 260 book chapters, journal and international conference papers. He has been an IEEE member since 1996 and also a member of ACM (2001-2017), AAAI (since 2001-2017), INNS (2004-2018), and Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society.
Abstract
Although students always must practice what they have learned and their learning performance and achievement need be assessed when they are taking a course, some students might not be able to show 100% what they know and they can do in a pressure environment like exam, quiz, or speaking aloud in class. Can we have a non-pressure environment(s) to support student's self-pace learning a subject and practice a skill and even being assessed what they have learned and known? What should we plan to incorporate the non-pressure environment(s) to courses for students learning and teachers teaching in virtual/online and/or classroom? I will try to answer these questions with some of VIP Research Group's research outcome, including but not limited to Speaking-based Quests, Visualized Editing Environment (VEE), ChatbotLLM, and MEGA World.
New Humanities Education
Title
Relatoinality and Pedagogy in the Cultural Disciplines
Professor William Straw
Professor William StrawProfessor, Department of Art History and Communication Studies
McGill University, Canada
Speaker Bio
Will Straw is James McGill Emeritus Professor of Urban Media Studies at McGill University in Montreal. He is a past President of the Canadian Communications Association and a recipient of the David Thomson Award for Graduate Teaching and Supervision at McGill University. Dr. Straw is the author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 1950s America (2006) and of the forthcoming Nights in Fairyland: Gossip, blackmail and the many lives of Broadway Brevities (Autumn, 2025). He is the author of over 200 articles on film, media, music and cities, and co-editor of over 20 volumes, including Circulation and the City, Formes Urbaines, Night Studies and the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of the Night Time Economy. Dr. Straw’s current research and public engagement centre on the night-time culture of cities and the ways in which this culture is governed, practiced and represented.
Abstract
My paper will reflect on 40 years of full-time teaching in the areas of Film and Communications Studies. I began teaching committed to developing, in each student, a “critical” attitude to media. I moved in later years to a concern with the ways in which students interact with each other in the collective production of knowledge. This shift was prompted by two realizations. The first is that critical approaches to media are to be found everywhere now – they are built into the structure of so many media or, at the very least, into the protocols and habits by which people use them. The second realization was that I was more and more committed to a “relational” turn in my own pedagogy – one that, like a “relational aesthetics” turn in art, sees its principal purpose as that of shaping the social relations within which texts and cultural works are received.
Values Education, Teacher Conduct and Well-being
Title
Reconceptualizing Teacher Identity in Changing and Challenging Context
Professor Hong Ji
Professor Hong JiProfessor, Department of Educational Psychology
Director, Quality Teacher Educational Advancement and Collaborative Hub (QTEACH)
University of Arizona, US
Speaker Bio
Ji Hong is a Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Arizona in the U.S. She received her B.A. from Seoul National University in South Korea, M.A. from Arizona State University, and Ph.D. from University of Georgia. Her research mainly addresses the training and development of pre-service and in-service teachers, through the lens of teacher identity, motivation, and emotion. Within this broad goal, she specifically investigates marginalized teachers’ work and lives embedded in social-cultural-historical contexts. Her current project examines multiple marginalized teachers’ intersecting social identity negotiation and their connection to teacher identity, agency, and wellbeing. She is a director of Quality Teacher Educational Advancement and Collaborative Hub (QTEACH), and serves as an editorial board member for Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, Journal of Experimental Education, and Contemporary Educational Psychology.
Abstract
Teacher identity has been considered important in understanding teachers’ motivation, wellbeing, effectiveness, and retention. However, despite its significance, existing theories tend to be limited to articulating their identity negotiation in relation to changing and challenging contexts. The current educational landscape is unjust and demanding in that the societal structure and norms disproportionally disadvantage marginalized students and teachers. In addition, neoliberal policies, which prioritize productivity and competitiveness, permeate the educational landscape. These changing and challenging contexts often influence professional community standards and expectations of who teachers should be and what their roles should entail. Thus, it is important to reconceptualize teacher identity by intentionally exploring identity negotiation through teachers’ interpretive lenses, while attending to social-cultural-historical context. In this presentation, I will discuss the theoretical reconceptualization of teacher identity in relation to the multiple identities teachers hold and the complexity of the multilayered contexts in which they work, supported by research findings.
Educational Leadership and Curriculum Development for the Future
Title
Rethinking 21st-Century Competencies and Curriculum Translation: Insights from Bildung-Centred and Subject-Matter Didaktik
Professor Deng Zong
Professor Deng ZongProfessor, Institute of Education - Curriculum
Pedagogy and Assessment
University College London, UK
Speaker Bio
There is a substantial body of literature from Asian researchers discussing the recontextualization of 21st-century competencies into educational goals, implementation plans, and classroom teaching across Asian contexts. However, the underlying assumptions and processes of translating these competencies into the curriculum have received little scrutiny. In this presentation I examine how 21st-century competencies are recontextualised into educational aims and translated into the national curriculum in Singapore. In doing so, I question the competency discourse underpinning the global competency movement and its translation into curricula. Drawing on Bildung-centred Didaktik and subject-matter Didaktik, I propose an alternative, viable approach to conceptualising and translating competencies into curriculum and classroom teaching.
Abstract
Zongyi Deng is a Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the Institute of Education (IOE), University College London. He serves as an executive editor of the Journal of Curriculum Studies (JCS) and has previously held faculty positions at Nanyang Technological University and the University of Hong Kong. His research interests encompass curriculum content and subject matter, curriculum theory, didactics (Didaktik), curriculum policy and reform, as well as comparative and international education.
Professor Deng is a sought-after keynote and plenary speaker at international conferences and has served as an international adviser and consultant for projects and research centres in China, the UK, Canada, Sweden, and Denmark. He is currently a panel member for the Curriculum and Assessment Review in England.