Informal learning organizations such as museums, zoos, aquaria, gardens, and community-based organizations are often positioned as having programming that fill a void that may exist in the lives of youth participants. Often these institutions do not recognize the assets that youth gain from their own homes and communities and bring to bear in…

STEM integration has become a popular concept not only in the context of education practices but also as a way of learning. The integration of the STEM domains is evident in students' learning experiences when engaging in STEM activities. However, there is a lack of instruments for evaluating students' levels of self-efficacy in these activities.…

"Prototyping Puppets" combines craft and performance in a puppet making STEM workshop for informal learning. We report on its final evaluation in two events (n=10 and n=13) to show how the design addressed black boxing of technology through a craft-centric approach and successfully engaged different student populations through an…

Background: Recent studies shows lack of knowledge concerning health literacy relatively microorganism/disease and the correct use of antibiotics. These facts lead to the spreading of resistant strains bacteria. Aims: The overarching goals of this study were a) to promote health literacy predominantly in respect to microorganism/disease, diseases…

This article examined digital learning engagement as the out-of-school learning component that reflects informally emerging socio-digital participation. The gap hypothesis proposes that students who prefer learning with digital technologies outside of school are less engaged in traditional school. This hypothesis was approached from the framework…

We used community partnerships to develop an integrated science-learning program focused on two groups of learners -- university and middle school (MS) students -- to increase students' interest and confidence in science as well as motivation to pursue science. Key program elements include a university course for undergraduate and graduate…

"You Live in a Watershed" is a state park exhibit about watersheds. We conducted a two-pronged assessment of learning and attitudes. Study 1 employed a pretest-intervention-posttest design with 30 children visiting the exhibit on a fieldtrip. We found significant increases in knowledge and attitudes. Study 2 was a quasi-experimental…

Connecting the public to concepts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an essential for technological advancement and inspiring future scientists, impacting both the communicator and the audience's understanding of scientific topics. Without proper communication of scientific knowledge, acceptance and implementation of…

Earthquake preparedness is a critical part of developing a sustainable community concerning reducing vulnerability to earthquakes. This study focuses on reducing children's vulnerability, particularly through a school safety program, to increase their physical and emotional preparedness for children against earthquakes. A comparative case study is…

The aim of this research was to investigate whether there was a predictive effect of the frequency of laboratory use of students, their academic success and attending various opportunities to learn science outside the classroom on the fifth and sixth grade students' scientific process skills performance (SPSP). Also, it was investigated whether…

Previous studies on students' conceptions of learning science (COLS) have focused primarily on formal environments. In these studies, students' COLS were positively associated with their approaches to and outcomes for science learning. However, little research has been conducted to explore students' conceptions of learning science in informal…

The objective of this study was to identify the various types of student councils based on their areas of interest. The study population included 100 school principals or deputy principals, in junior high schools or high schools, who filled in questionnaires to map student councils. The analysis yielded 89 student-council profiles, with two…

Teacher collaboration is often assumed to support school's ongoing improvement, but it is unclear how formal learning opportunities in teacher workgroups shape informal ones. In this mixed methods study, we examined 77 teacher collaborative meetings from 24 schools representing 116 teacher pairs. We coupled qualitative analysis of the learning…

This study aims to extend the learning advantages of game-based learning from formal education to informal learning, and to develop a role-playing game (RPG) to help students familiarize themselves with a new school. Several game elements and principles were considered during the design stage, and the tasks were embedded into a macro-context to…

Purpose: It is vital in today's society that teachers are proactively involved in educational change. Given that proactive motivation is a critical driver of proactivity, this study aims to investigate how teachers' formal and informal workplace-learning experiences were connected with their proactive motivations to implement educational change.…