NCTCA 2022

Both before and after Canada's official policy of multiculturalism, Alberta’s social studies program sought to consider the entanglement of individual, national, and cultural identities, and yet the emotionality of learning multiple perspectives has remains unaddressed. If social studies as a discipline is to truly meet the social goals of multiculturalism and plurality, then educators need to consider conscious and unconscious emotional defences that can prevent meaningful engagements with different worldviews. To this end, insights from existential, experimental psychology can be applied to social studies in Alberta (and elsewhere) to anticipate and mitigate both homogenizing metanarratives and emotional defences, and thus invite students to engage with difference without seeing it as a problem to resolve.

Virtually experience Alberta today, Alberta’s past and possible future with www.albertatomorrow.ca. You’ll get FREE access to a: • Time Travelling Simulator to 1910 and 2050. • GIS modelling technology to change the landscape. • Climate Change Module to explore 3 different climate scenarios. • 360 Virtual Tours of Alberta’s 6 ecoregions with detailed “hotspots”. • Curriculum linked lesson plans for grades 4-12 for Social Studies, Science, Biology, CTS. • Challenges, Quests and more!

Join Melissa McQueen, Rebeka Plots and Dr. Cathryn Van Kessel from the University of Alberta as they delve into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and how it offers up many themes that apply to the High School Social Studies curriculum. In this session, we will dive into WandaVision and the many layers that it applies to Nationalism and Ideology, allowing us a way to make connections between pop culture and the Program of Studies.