UAlbany School of Education Students and Faculty Share Research at ISLS International Conference

Albany, NY (September 26, 2025) — This summer, students and faculty from the School of Education’s Department of Educational Theory and Practice (ETAP) represented UAlbany at the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) annual meeting. The theme of this year’s meeting in Helsinki, Finland from June 10-13, was "Educating for world-making: Envisioning and enacting sustainable solutions to global crises."

Students and faculty presented papers across both conference streams—the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) and the International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The work represented two vibrant research labs in the department—one led by Dr. Jianwei Zhang, the Tech-Augmented Co-Creativity Lab (TACCL), and one led by Dr. Haesol Bae, the Critical AI Learning Lab (CALL). In total, UAlbany presented eight pieces of research, seven in which the first author was an ETAP PhD student or candidate. The annual meeting is selective with an acceptance rate of around 30%.

Lei Ding, a second-year PhD student, had their research shortlisted for the Best Student Paper Award in the CSCL stream. The paper was co-authored by Zhang and his research team and is titled, Cultivate a Research Mindset: How Do High School Students Understand and Approach Authentic Research?

This conference also marked the conclusion of Zhang’s role as co-editor for the Journal of the Learning Sciences (JLS), a flagship journal of ISLS. Zhang was named a Fellow of ISLS in 2023.

You can read about the work presented by department students and faculty in the proceedings of the 2025 ISLS annual meeting.