Within the past decade, escape rooms have aroused great social and educational interest. Their potential for intra- and extracurricular learning ranges from the promotion of methodical and communicative competencies to problem-solving and teamwork strategies. As a nonformal learning environment, the youth leisure sector is suitable for the…

As part of the special issue on Teacher Learning and Organizational Contexts, this paper explores the collective organizational sensemaking processes of middle school science teachers engaged in a design-based research project focused on supporting science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) identity and interest development of middle…

The purpose of this study was to create a third space between a teacher educator and an undergraduate student to explore teaching experiences while in high school within non-formal education (NFE) programs in which we participated. We developed a series of five prompts that we responded to individually, meeting via Zoom to discuss our experiences…

Purpose: Many studies point out that a complication in the professional training is connected with the division of education into the formal and non-formal part. There is a need to integrate these two components to achieve a greater learning effect. The aim of the study is to find out whether students perceive non-formal education as important and…

This study explored the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) attitudes and self-efficacy of secondary students identifying as Black South African, multi-racial or Afrikaans South African, or Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe nationals who participated in a non-formal STEM education camp programme. Using Bandura's social cognitive…

Non-formal learning settings like out-of-school labs provide students with insights into authentic learning situations. For example, in physics, students are engaged in experimenting as an authentic method. However, increasing the authenticity in experimentation can lead to overwhelming demands and hinder concept development and does not even need…

Throughout the world, schools are visited by students with different native languages. Therefore, the linguistic competencies of the students are diverse. Dealing with this diversity is a great challenge for teachers in general, including in science subjects. To face this challenge, all institutions involved in education should adapt their…

FabLabs and makerspaces offer unprecedented opportunities for digital empowerment, especially for children and adolescents. However, reviews on making with regard to empowerment are lacking. We identified n = 180 publications on digital making with children and adolescents and, after categorizing them regarding formal criteria and formality of…

This study analysed secondary school teachers' self-reported learning during their participation in a long-term, non-formal scientific activity in the form of a crystal-growing contest. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to explore in-service teachers' experiences and describe the different types of learning that they report they have…

Students' out-of-school science participation has been identified as a factor that supports adaptive science outcomes. Researchers have largely investigated students' out-of-school science participation in terms of structured science activities (e.g., attending a science camp), with far less consideration of how students' involvement in…

This study used a constant comparative qualitative research method to explore formal and informal learning strategies teachers use to develop professionally and the impact these learning strategies have on their professional practices. Participants were selected through snowball sampling, consisting of 20 teachers from five high schools in Taiwan.…

This article describes how I, an American music teacher educator, visited the classrooms of eight Musical Futures Champion Teachers in the United Kingdom and observed their teaching with a focus on informal music learning and nonformal teaching. Musical Futures, a professional development organization in the UK, is the original organization that…

This article discusses factors affecting youth's critical thinking competency, using a dataset of 1182 observations from 30 secondary schools in rural and urban areas of Vietnam. Structural Equation Model (SEM) was constructed to analyse the overall impact of sociodemographic, within-school and out-of-school factors on critical thinking capacity…

The 3Ds Career Planning Program is a sequential learning activity consisting of three stages: Diagnosing (8 activities), Designing (9 activities), and Doing (2 activities). These stages help students determine their future careers by exploring themselves and the world of careers, creating paths to desired jobs, and putting their plans into action.…

Despite increasing demand in distance education, relatively little is known about the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as basic skill levels of adult distance education participants at the national level in the US. This study analyzed the US data from the 2012/2014 and 2017 Program for International Assessment of Adult…