About Us

CRYSTAL Atlantique builds on the unique challenges and conditions that face students, teachers, and all concerned members of the scientific and technological communities in Atlantic Canada. In collaboration with the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Departments of Education, our CRYSTAL will bring together an English and Francophone research team consisting of educators, scientists, experts in related disciplines, and community organizations. That team will study and promote science/technology and mathematics within schools and local communities, and initiate a sustained dialogue about their contribution to regional well-being and their role in responsible citizenship.

Atlantic Canada is an ideal region for a CRYSTAL focussing on the culture of science, technology, and mathematics and mechanisms for developing it's potential. Atlantic Canadians possess a distinct regional culture with centres of strong English, Francophone, and First Nations identity and a sensitivity to encouraging science and mathematics teaching in the context of minority language and cultural settings. Provincial governments view technological innovation as a mechanism to overcome the region's history of economic underdevelopment and the out-migration of talent. This policy commitment is displayed at many levels, from inter-provincial efforts to enhance communications infrastructure to the strong support by the region's departments of Education. Further enhancing the region's status as a natural laboratory for this CRYSTAL is the fact that all four provinces share a common science and mathematics curriculum framework.

CRYSTAL Atlantique is a collaboration of school, community, and university-based educators and researchers. We have identified eleven initial research projects studying the effects of/interaction of informal education on the culture of science, mathematics, and technology.

Subsections

• Management structure
• Research Focus
• Theme
• Working Groups