Before PhD: Shifted from engineering to STEM Education & project-based learning
After completing my master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, I joined Teach For China (TFC) for a two-year fellowship as a volunteer teacher. I expected to return to cognitive neuroscience afterward, but the fellowship reshaped my trajectory and ignited my passion for education.
Before TFC, I thought that a good school meant access to facilities such as a library, advanced teaching equipment, sports gear, and music instruments. Teaching in a rural community in Yunnan changed that view. I realized that there were rich resources in the community that can be learning assets. I learned about community assets through interactions with the local community in various ways. On weekends, sometimes I was invited to meals with families in the town where my teaching school is located. Or I purchased cooking ingredients and cooked Inner Mongolian dishes for them. Other times, I hiked with students through the mountains to visit their homes, listening as they identified local plants and wildlife, told stories about old trees and houses, and described their cultural festivals. I also joined community events and learned about local farming, factories, and traditions. Around that time, I learned about project-based learning (PBL). With other fellows, we piloted a school-wide, semester-long PBL program as an extracurricular so we wouldn’t disrupt the core curriculum. It was amazing to see how students, including low-scoring students, were greatly engaged, investigated the science of nearby hot springs, compared environmental impacts of traditional and new crops, examined health issues related to a paper-printing factory, and conducted an oral-history project with elders. Seeing PBL’s power, especially when it is locally relevant and personally meaningful, convinced me to deepen my expertise.
After the fellowship, I joined an international school in Hangzhou that had run on PBL for more than a decade. Collaborating across disciplines, we co-designed and implemented four PBL units each year. When I later returned to Beijing to seek new opportunities with youth, STEM education was becoming a national priority. To me, PBL and STEM education share the same core as both support interdisciplinary learning, critical thinking, and skill development. When the Soong Ching Ling Foundation established a new science, technology, and culture center and sought someone to lead the STEM education unit in its Youth Innovation Center, I seized the opportunity. I built STEM programs grounded in PBL, encouraging interdisciplinary learning and real-world problem solving.
I then brought my expertise in PBL and STEM education to help Petrosains, a science center in Malaysia, to upgrade their STEM education program. I developed a framework and supported the educators in modifying their projects to enhance STEM learning outcomes. I also worked with the leadership team and developed a master plan for establishing STEM learning spaces and programs across Malaysia. Before and after this consulting work, I had opportunities to conduct STEM learning and teaching workshops with teachers and students in various countries. I then contributed my further enhanced expertise in PBL and STEM education, as well as international experiences, to establishing a middle school program with two colleagues in San Francisco. In collaboration with a colleague from a social sciences background, we collaboratively designed four STEM+social sciences PBL units for the first year of the middle school. Drawing on the lessons from implementing the projects, we modified our overall planning for the PBL program.
These professional experiences in diverse educational contexts inspired my passion for expansive learning across school and out-of-school contexts that encourage interdisciplinary learning and real-world problem solving. Hoping to gain insights and toolkits for designing learning ecosystems that support such learning, I started my PhD program in Learning Sciences.
