Children's Creative Inquiry in STEM

Karen Murcia (PhD) is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. Dr Murcia has an established track record of research related to STEM education that has a particular focus on scientific literacy, digital technologies in education and children's creativity. She has worked extensively in school-based research, with strong industry links and partnerships. She uses action research principles and design experiment methods to support teachers as classroom based researchers. She works primarily with qualitative methods and specialises in video ethnography and multimodal data analysis. Karen is a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child and an Independent Director on the Board of Scitech Discovery Centre, Perth, Western AustraliaCoral Campbell is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Deakin University. She has contributed significantly to the fields of science, science teaching and science/STEM educational research over three careers. Coral's sustained focus on science/STEM education, teacher professional learning and students' learning in science is reflected in her research around developing greater understandings of how teachers and students learn and ways to enhance this learning. Mathilda Joubert is Director of Excellence and Innovation at Sheridan College, Perth where she lectures in both the Education and Business Faculties. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of Western Australia, studying the assessment of children's creative thinking skills. Mathilda is a true cross-disciplinarian with bachelors, honours and/or masters degrees (in music, languages, arts education, cognitive neuropsychology and business) and experience teaching at primary, secondary and tertiary level. She serves on the Western Australian Executive of the Australian Council for Educational Leadership, is an accredited School Improvement Advisor for the Australian Council for Educational Research, a Director of Geelong Baptist College and a reviewer for the International Journal of Educational Research and the Thinking Skills and Creativity Journal. Sinead Wilson is a Research Assistant and PhD student at Curtin University. In 2016, she graduated with a Masters of Education in through the University of Auckland and is passionate about educational projects and the research skills necessary to make them happen. Sinead has experience in working within a longitudinal research study called Growing Up in New Zealand where she worked as a research assistant for three years. From 2018- 2019 Sinead continued her work with Growing Up in New Zealand but from overseas in Mauritius, where she also volunteered her time at a local school. Sinead's main area of interest is within the domain of children's education and psychology, and her chosen field for her doctorate is to investigate children's online experiences. Specifically, she will investigate how the online safety of children is managed in family, care and educational settings; and what constitutes positive interactions in online environments. This research will commence February 2020.