Overcoming Inert Ideas: The Power of Design, Agency, and Experience

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: Dewey Poster Session (San Diego)

Abstract

This paper describes a transformative educational design for Senior Years learners in a marginalized and often racialized area of Winnipeg, Canada. A narrative account of the Wayfinders Tech Hub is provided as a means to firstly surface how theory as it pertains to experiential education can be applied to practice, and secondly as it speaks to the transformative potential of connecting learners with caring and passionate mentors. Wayfinders Tech Hub is an after-school programme where Indigenous students living in poverty can engage with university computer science faculty and industry mentors to design video games and apps which speak to the learners’ lived experience.

Authors

• Matt Henderson, Seven Oaks School Division

• Meghan Cook, Seven Oaks School Division