A Personal Journey from a Condensed-Matter Theorist to an Education Researcher and Practitioner: Lessons Learned

Trained as a condensed-matter theorist at UBC under Mona Berciu, over the past five years I have become increasingly involved in education research and practice. In fact, I've become quite an active leader in developing and promoting Meaningful Learning towards Advanced Knowledge Generators for Cultivating Creators (ML4C). In this talk, I will share the key ideas and concepts of ML4C, which are summarized in the next paragraph. I hope that in the future, some of the courses at UBC will also be taught in this way, and that the whole curriculum—even the entire program—can be redesigned according to the core ideas of ML4C. Besides the ideas and concepts, you may also see how they were developed starting from personal learning and research experiences. In fact, this process itself is an example of how advanced knowledge generators help create knowledge, although this time on teaching and learning. ML4C provides answers to the following questions: -What to teach: Advanced Knowledge Generators (AKG), such as the ways of thinking and the methods of analysis of a discipline. -How to teach: By experiencing knowledge creation. -Why teach them in this way: One needs advanced knowledge generators to be a creator, and one masters advanced knowledge generators better by experiencing them in use. -Meaningful: For me, being a teacher who can help others become creators is satisfying, while being a teacher who feeds factual, procedural, or even conceptual knowledge to students is not.