Background: Social media provides new opportunities for teachers to learn, communicate and develop professional relationships. It has been proved to be a valid and helpful resource for teachers' professional learning purposes. Objectives: While previous studies pursued questions like how participants feel, how to support interaction and why…

Professional development for the further education sector (FE) in England, whether commissioned by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), or the Department for Education (DfE), is typically formal learning. There are usually measurable outcomes, and practitioners are asked to identify changes to their practice. The focus on outcomes means…

The number of formal teacher leadership roles, notably as instructional coaches and Professional Learning Community leaders, continued to increase. Rural school districts needed to improve their ability to create these roles. Additionally, researchers indicated many teachers preferred to avoid working with formal teacher leaders. The purpose of…

The theoretical framework of communities of practice (CoP) is often used for framing research into online communities. However, there is an absence of measures and empirical work that evaluates knowledge-sharing within such communities. This represents a substantial gap in our understanding of informal learning for diverse people and in the case…

This dissertation aimed to expand the current literature's understanding of Indigenous epistemology within contemporary social media environments. The qualitative study used social descriptive analysis from forty TikTok videos and comment threads. The descriptive analysis captured major cultural themes, common informal learning behaviors, and…

There is continuing uncertainty about the nature of teacher professional learning using social networking websites (SNWs) and how using these platforms influences teacher practice. Findings from the authors' small-scale, qualitative study in Australia into English teacher use of one global SNW for professional learning showed participant…

Purpose: This research paper aims to explore how secondary school-aged business owners utilise social media to engage in informal learning. The authors make use of the concept of a self-directed experiential learning cycle to empirically explore adolescents' entrepreneurial learning processes without formal guidance or curriculum.…

Learning in higher education while being at war is the topic of this paper. The investigation on the management of one's own learning processes by students living war conditions has been addressed through a survey that was conducted on a sample of 1,685 students at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in Kiev during February-March 2023,…

The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields limits their development, their career opportunities, and societal progress. This study used social cognitive career theory to explore the relationship between informal STEM learning activities and STEM career intention in female high-school…

Many professionals consider computational thinking an essential skill in the twenty-first century. Furthermore, some studies demonstrate that computer-based networking skills and digital environments can improve computational thinking. A challenging question to be addressed is whether informal learning in a digital context is related to…

Online academic communities are valuable spaces where participants can share information, find and provide support, and even be entertained. Online academic communities refer to hashtag-specific chats or other forms of affinity groups. Although these communities have been researched in the literature, more studies are needed to understand the…

The COVID-19 pandemic requires critical re-evaluation of the way Higher Education can help students maximise their learning to adjust and adapt to a new reality. This requires a holistic approach which extends beyond consideration of student learning in formal settings to understanding the role informal learning can play. Whilst research exists on…

This article explores informal adult education for change in Mexico through the conceptual lens of social movement learning and public pedagogy. It adopts a multiple case design featuring two advocacy networks, two civil society organisations, and two self-help authors. It analyses how they position themselves as change agents addressing issues of…

Purpose: Social networks (SNs) play a significant role as environments supporting teacher professional development. The purpose of this to analyze the motivation and participation roles that Spanish teachers have when participating in SNs for their professional development in three professional stages: preservice teachers, beginning teachers and…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the adaptive experiences of first-year international graduate students at a US university. It aims to understand the challenges they encounter, strategies they adopt with social media to navigate these challenges and tensions that emerge in their social media interactions. Design/methodology/approach: This study…