Call for papers

You're invited to submit a proposal for the STEM Education Conference 2021

The focus of the conference is STEM and entrepreneurship education in schools, including:

the nature of STEM as an area and focus
entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking within a STEM-related context
innovations in schools (in-service)
research informing STEM and entrepreneurship in schools
resources and programs designed to enhance STEM and entrepreneurship education.

Submission guidelines

You are invited to submit proposals for papers and workshops. Interaction and exchange between participants will be encouraged within paper presentations and workshops.

Paper presentations

The purpose of the paper presentations is to report on research, theoretical ideas, or school initiatives that have some evaluation of their impact.

Paper presentations will be allocated 20 minutes, which comprises of 15 minutes for the oral paper presentation and five minutes for questions and discussion.

Workshops

Workshops are intended to be hands-on and interactive, and should show the application of research outcomes, teaching initiatives, teaching resources or tools, collaborative teaching strategies, or good practice.

Presenters should prepare a 55-minute session that will enable participants to interact with each other, get involved in activities, and go away with learnings that can be applied to STEM and/or entrepreneurial education. For example, the workshop might include creative interactive approaches such as brainstorming, role paly, voting on statements, simulations, experiments or constructions, or how-to guides.

All submissions should be aligned with at least one of the conference themes below, and should indicate which of the learning areas are relevant.

Conference themes

Conceptualising STEM and STEM policy
Teaching approaches, strategies, activities, or resources relating to STEM subjects and/or entrepreneurship
Curriculum development
Learning and assessment
Research that relates to STEM and/or entrepreneurship in schools
Teacher education
Industry links and partnerships

Learning areas

Mathematics
Science
Design and technology
Digital technology
Integrated STEM
Entrepreneurship education
Work studies

Submissions can include reference to subject-specific approaches (for example, science or mathematics), and/or interdisciplinary approaches (for example, integrated subjects or activities). The emphasis is on schools: STEM education or entrepreneurship within a STEM-related context.

Submissions close on Friday 20 August 2021
Reviews completed and presenters notified by Friday 27 August 2021
Full conference program available Friday 17 September 2021
Participants can submit multiple proposals.

All submissions will be peer-reviewed. If accepted, your proposal will be programmed to maximise delegate interest.

Preparing your proposal

Proposals for papers and workshops are welcome. All proposals should be in the form of a 400-word proposal.

Proposals will be reviewed by two reviewers, and will be assessed according to:

relevance to conference aims
value to the expected audience (early childhood and school representatives, and in-service teacher education).

Proposals for research paper presentations should include research/theoretical context, significance, research aim or question, methodology/argument, findings/results/conclusions.

Proposals for workshops should include theoretical positioning (for example, the link to STEM education), aims, audience, structure and requirements.

Learn more about how to construct a proposal (DOC, 38.6KB)

Submitting your proposal

Submissions are accepted until Friday 20 August 2021

All proposals should be submitted via the conference submissions portal. Only these proposals will be accepted and reviewed. Proposals submitted in hard copy will not be accepted.

Submissions require the following information:

Author information for each author including name, affiliation (e.g. school, university, company), email address
Type of presentation e.g. paper, workshop
Theme: nominate up to two conference themes
Learning area(s): nominate any appropriate
Title of presentation
Key words: three to five words or phrases
A 400-word proposal

Important points to note

At least one of the presenters will need to be registered for the conference. Presentations of authors who fail to pay and register to attend by Friday 10 September 2021 may be withdrawn from the program at the discretion of the committee.

PowerPoint presentations will be collected and placed into a conference Google Drive folder as PDF documents, accessible to all conference delegates. If there are elements of your presentation under copyright, or there is data that you do not wish to be made public in this way, please provide Deakin IT support with an amended PowerPoint file at the conference. Your registration will include a consent form that asks for your permission to publish your PowerPoint presentation in this way.

Equipment

Presentation rooms will have a lectern, PC laptop with PowerPoint installed, and a data projector. We suggest you bring your PowerPoint presentation on a USB drive. For other hardware and software needs please bring your own laptop.

Conference Proceedings

Peer-reviewed conference proceedings will be prepared and published on the conference website, with an intended publication date of Friday 2 July 2022. All presenting authors are invited to submit a paper for review.

The conference proceedings will include the keynote presentations and papers from the invited presentations, oral paper presentations, posters and workshops.

The following format must be used for submissions:

Keynote presentations template (DOC, 1.2MB): 12-page paper
General presentations template (DOC, 1.2MB): 3–6 page paper
Workshop template (DOC, 1.2MB): 2–3 page case study or description

Those wishing to have their paper included in the proceedings should send their submissions to l.hobbs@deakin.edu.au by Friday 15 April 2022 (accepting now).

Submitted papers will be reviewed by two reviewers.