About my work

Governments around the world are calling for the formation of more scientists and innovators. How can teachers do that?

In many classrooms, science is still taught mainly as the gathering of content and competencies. In some others, science is being reframed as a positive experience: a space for belonging.

Science is complex, uncertain, and public. While science competencies and identities form two crucial and complementary dimensions for STEM learning, they don’t fully capture yet what scientists actually do. For example, when casually evaluating practicing scientists, we rarely ask how much they know, or how they see themselves. We ask about their research. We ask about their science.

Epistemic output, such as the product generated from research and development, forms a third complementary dimension of scientist formation. Teaching how students can achieve this is the key focus of my work.

I study how STEM research becomes teachable, not just assignable, and how schools, teachers, and policy can support scientist formation from the earliest stages. This collective project, alongside STEM competencies and science identity development, is what I call a scientist education. Not every student has to be a scientist, but if this is a global perspective within STEM education, we at least need to understand how to do it effectively for the subset of pre-scientist learners.

As part of this work, I study what happens in disciplinary scientific spaces such as laboratories and research groups to build a pedagogical model that works across the board, with a specific interest on pre-graduate education. While I am concerned in scientist formation at a systems level, my personal area of STEM inquiry lies in the computational sciences.

In pursuing these questions, I attempt to avoid the common trap of deficit framing, such as in classifying students by creativity or content knowledge. Instead, I envision a scientist education where students are considered not with what they have or don’t have, but with what they could contribute regardless. Every scientist is a person with a story, and putting learners first through intentional teaching forms the guiding perspective of my methodology. I aim to understand how we can assist students transition from being outsiders to insiders, or from knowledge learners to knowledge generators, within the scientific enterprise.

Since 2021, I’ve been working to strengthen the foundations for scientist education in the Philippines

In a system where conducting authentic student research is institutionalized but complicated by a lack of teacher preparation, I’ve led a range of initiatives designed to make student STEM research accessible, supported, and institutionally legible in the Philippines:

• I founded and am leading a national, youth-led mentoring network to support high school researchers across the country.
• I co-develop and host science teacher professional development focused on authentic scientific inquiry and pedagogical reasoning in those experiences.
• I founded and lead a national community-of-practice of STEM research teachers to establish community learning and collaboration.

This work has since grown into a broader research program with theoretical, empirical, and practice-based perspectives. I am currently leading a grant-funded professional development initiative for STEM teachers, where we design and facilitate workshops that address how science teachers can serve as major partners in scientist formation.

I also contribute to global efforts on AI in education

I champion the youth voice in AI in education, particularly where it intersects with grassroots participation, transformation and protection.

As co-chair for AI, Digital Learning & Digital Transformation for UNESCO’s SDG4 Youth & Student Network, I work with global young leaders to explore how AI tools reshape what counts as learning, labor, and humanity in education. Beyond scientist formation, my work in this space aims to center young people’s agency and voice in our shared development of an AI future.

At the core of all of this is a long-term project:

• Student focus: Develop a clear pedagogy and model for authentic STEM research experiences, to allow more backgrounds of learners to succeed
• Teacher focus: Position and prepare teachers as active epistemic agents in STEM, to make the formation of scientists legible as an educational program
• System focus: Make scientist education stable, teachable, and just within science education research, allowing a common language for collaboration between schoolteachers, scientists, and governments

If you’re working on similar questions, or are curious about what this kind of work can look like in context, I’d be happy to connect.