Empowering Educators, Parents and Caregivers

Educators, parents, and caregivers play a critical role in sparking youth interest in STEM. However, supporting this learning journey isn’t always easy.

Actua provides practical resources, engaging activities, and relevant skills to empower educators, parents and caregivers. We help youth build the confidence, skills, and curiosity in STEM needed to pursue higher education and succeed in our rapidly evolving workforce.

Parents and Caregiver Support  –   Educator Professional Learning

Parent and Caregiver Support

As parents, we all have our own memories of STEM education. Positive or negative, these memories can make us feel anxious about helping our own children with STEM. But, there are so many fun and creative ways we can engage our kids in STEM and build critical skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration and experimentation. Actua provides parents and caregivers a broad range of practical resources and interactive activities you can do with kids at home to further their STEM learning outside the classroom.

Browse our parents resources and STEM activities for the home:

Learning Hub

Educator Professional Learning

Actua's National Educator Professional Learning Program

Canadian teachers recognize that STEM skills and knowledge are important to students’ future education, careers and citizenship. Yet,  despite the increasing demand for STEM skills, many educators across Canada do not feel adequately trained to teach topics like coding, data science, or emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. Actua’s survey on Canadian Teachers’ Readiness for STEM Education revealed:

  • 9 in 10 teachers believe that STEM skills and knowledge are important to students’ future education, careers and being an informed citizen, and say that it is important for teachers to develop these skills among their students.
  • 94 percent of teachers agree there is room to improve their own STEM and digital skills.
  • Teachers want more STEM and digital skills professional development, but face barriers – including limited opportunities, lack of time, and cost.

Actua’s Educator Professional Learning Program

Actua provides professional learning opportunities for educators, K–12 pre-service and classroom teachers, administrators and postsecondary faculty members.

Our program offers flexible, accessible ways for teachers across the country to strengthen their STEM teaching practice. Through workshops, conference sessions, online training and coaching, Actua equips educators with the tools and confidence to deliver engaging STEM learning that makes a lasting impact on students. These professional learning opportunities are designed to help educators:

  • Strengthen their teaching practice and improve student outcomes through research-informed strategies that are practical and adaptable across grade levels.
  • Engage learners through hands-on, experiential STEM learning that fosters curiosity, creativity, and collaboration.
  • Deepen their understanding of equitable and inclusive pedagogies, including Indigenous land-based education, culturally relevant and responsive teaching, gender-inclusive practices, and more.
  • Increase their confidence using educational technology to enhance student engagement and enrich learning across subjects.
  • Build practical skills in coding, robotics, digital citizenship, cybersecurity, engineering design and makerspace learning.
  • Prepare students to thrive in an AI-powered world with access to training, resources, and classroom-ready lesson plans that support teaching core AI concepts and integrating AI meaningfully into everyday learning.

Addressing AI Readiness

When it comes specifically to AI readiness, Actua’s survey on how Canadian educators, youth and parents are using and thinking about artificial intelligence, revealed that: 

  • Less than half say they are confident in their ability to teach effective and responsible AI use to their students.
  • However, they are eager to learn, with 78% saying there is room for them to improve their skills to use and teach AI.

Learn more about the perspectives of educators, youth and their parents on how young Canadians are learning about and using AI in our national AI-Ready survey.

Ready for AI? Report

Access

In response to these findings, Actua offers professional development and resources to support educators in teaching AI literacy, available at actua.ca/aiready.

Consult all Actua resources for educators:

Learning Hub

If you would like to learn more about how Actua can support professional development in your community, please contact us:

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