Looking Back and Looking Forward: a Historical Perspective on Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education in Canada Through a Personal Lens

This year (2020), when the Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education (CJSMTE) is turning 20, I am completing my 40th year in the field of science, mathematics, and technology education, initially teaching the school subjects and later conducting research from a learning sciences perspective. As I am looking back, it appears to me that despite all of our community’s work and despite the collective efforts to innovate science, mathematics, and technology education (SMTE), many classrooms still are organized around the stand-and-deliver format as they had been 40 years ago. I account here how my own experiences in the classroom have contributed to the development of one line of my work on transforming classrooms; this work has been published almost exclusively in CJMSTE. I then outline some developments that I would pursue if I were to be in the field longer and that I deem important to be investigated by younger generations of SMTE researchers in Canada and beyond.