BC TEAL 2025 Annual Conference

BC TEAL is proud to present our 2025 Annual Conference: Disruptive Educational Practices: Strategies for Transformation.

Please note that the Friday evening event, the TEAL Charitable Foundation Awards & Fundraiser, requires an additional ticket purchase. Please register here to secure your spot and join us in celebrating the awardees while fundraising for a better cause in TEAL.

Educators shine in times of change to face unexpected challenges. This is when creativity flourishes by combining proven practices with fresh and innovative ideas. These times call for transformation which can be rooted in tradition or experience, or it can arise through unexplored approaches. The synthesis of old and new ideas drives meaningful progress. Join other insightful and creative educators as we flourish within the power of our community.

3:30pm PDT

The "Missing" ELLs in Metro Vancouver's K-12 Schools

Friday May 2, 2025 3:30pm - 4:15pm PDT

TBA

Public data reveals that many BC schools report having “zero” English language learners (ELLs) -- this includes nearly 100 schools in Metro Vancouver, where nearly 50% of residents speak a first language other than English.
These are primarily independent schools; according to the Federation of Independent School Associations of BC, because these schools do not receive "per-student" funding, they may have little incentive to report ELLs to the Ministry. However, there may be additional reasons relating to public perceptions of English Language Learners, and the sometimes stigmatizing and politically contentious issues which arise when certain students are designated as ELLs while others are not.
Public and scholarly discussions of students for whom English is an additional language often focuses on their dissimilarity from native English speakers in terms of English language skills. This has been called a “deficit discourse” (Shapiro, 2014), “deficit model” (Khan, 2020), or “deficit identity” (Marshall, 2009) for those students, with their “lack” of English proficiency being positioned as a problem to be overcome, rather than developing bilingual ability and fluency in another language being embraced as an asset.
In recent years, there have been scholarly discussions of the stigma and harm the “ELL” label can cause (e.g., Linse, 2013; Gunderson, 2020; Flores et al. 2015; Nguyen, 2021; Umansky, 2016). So are BC schools being progressive by refusing to “label” students as ELLs, or are they reinforcing the deficit discourse by positioning “ELL” as an undesirable designation?
This project seeks to understand the source of this puzzling mismatch, and contribute to understanding how students are labelled “ELLs” in schools, the media, and public discourse generally, both by looking at descriptive statistics from schools’ reports of ELLs and looking at selected BC schools' websites to analyze the way ELLs, English language education, and related concepts are represented.

Speakers

Joel Heng Hartse

Senior Lecturer, Simon Fraser University

see other bio

Friday May 2, 2025 3:30pm - 4:15pm PDT
TBA

Research, Research

8:30am PDT

Partnership on University Plagiarism Prevention: Strategies Against Plagiarism and AIgiarism

Saturday May 3, 2025 8:30am - 9:15am PDT

TBA

Plagiarism is “the act of presenting the words, ideas, or images of another as your own” (American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 256). As suggested by Eaton and Christensen Hughes (2022), plagiarism is a growing and complex concern across Canada. Assisted by artificial intelligence (AI), this widespread offence has become more serious, resulting in AIgiarism or AI-generated plagiarism (Tang 2024). One study found that while 27% undergraduate education students have positive attitudes toward plagiarism, 57% have such attitudes toward Aigiarism (Khalaf, 2024). To tackle the situation, universities have developed guidelines, which, however, fail to offer practical strategies to prevent plagiarism and AIgiarism. Hence, teachers feel baffled and yearn for effective strategies. Unfortunately, research in this direction has been limited (Eaton et al, 2023; Hu & Yu, 2023). Indeed, Gustilo et al. (2024) call for “more research on the strategies that can mitigate the threats of AI invasion in the human world” (p. 36). Hence, our research question is: What strategies do teachers adopt to prevent student plagiarism and aigiarism?
The study reports on Partnership on University Plagiarism Prevention, a SSHRC project, which recently conducted one-hour semi-structured individual qualitative English interviews with 69 university instructors in North America and Europe on how the latter teach informational, writing, and referencing skills to undergraduate students. The study uses NVivo 15 to help discover themes in search for teacher strategies to prevent plagiarism and AIgiarism. Preliminary analysis indicates that teachers use a variety of traditional and innovative strategies such as collecting diagnostic student-writing samples, having students sign declarations, assigning reflective journals, designing multi-layered assignments involving peer- and teacher-feedback, recommending student self-detection software, and detecting AI hallucinations by validating citations and references.
Session participants raise questions, exchange views, share experiences, and leave empowered by strategies to prevent plagiarism and AIgiarism.

Speakers

JIM HU

Associate Professor, Thompson Rivers University

Dr. Jim Hu is an Associate Professor at TRU, teaching EAP and TESOL. His research interests include online learning, academic writing, and plagiarism prevention.

Mia Xie

Thompson Rivers University

Mia Xie is an MEd student and research assistant at Thompson Rivers University. Her research interests include intercultural communication and plagiarism prevention.

Saturday May 3, 2025 8:30am - 9:15am PDT
TBA

Research, English for Academic Purposes (EAP)

BC TEAL 2025 Annual Conference

From CA$115.47