All professionals face similar problems based on the nature of their work. For example, teachers, hair stylists, chefs, and physicians might appear to have nothing in common, but they must all get better at completing the tasks they are performing. They must all communicate effectively with others and encounter challenges in their work that they…

Learning and personal development are integral to being a person, and learning and teaching are integral to life as a social being. "Understanding Children's Informal Learning" presents children's informal learning out-of-school and explores how this knowledge can enhance teaching and learning practice in the classroom. The authors focus…

Peace museums play an important role in peace education by offering visitors informal and non-formal education. As sites of remembrance, peace museums are rich pedagogical spaces for experiential learning and reflection. Educating children in the spirit of peace, tolerance and harmony between nations has been central to the work of the Museum of…

In the state of Queensland, volunteers perform much of the work needed to prevent the extinction of threatened species who are native and unique to this continent. Acting from an understanding of interspecies justice, caring people rescue and rehabilitate hundreds of thousands of wild animals every year. Many of these same people conduct informal…

The concept of curriculum as a personal journey is now timely, yet timeless and pertinent as an explanatory basis for understanding learning and development across the lifespan. It addresses a current need to explain adults' learning across working life when achieving individual, occupational, community, and societal goals. Advancing this…

The time children spend indoors with nature-based children's literature is as important as the time they spend outdoors. Children's literature traditionally has been replete with pastoral, animal, and wilderness stories that nurture a sense of wonder and excitement about the world we share. Such literature encourages a high regard for the…

the learning environment has become a focus of research and evolved the sectors of academics inquiry within elementary, secondary and postsecondary research (Barry J. Zimmerman, 2013). The relationship between the environment and learning reflects the combination of system of education, environmental psychology, campus ecology cycle, and…

This is a story of becoming. In this creative non-fiction essay, I share a case study of an informal science program for high school aged youth that took place over 5-weeks one summer in an urban park in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. I conducted observations, interviews, and artifact analysis to explore how youth environmental interest and identity…

The education research community, both within the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and beyond, could and should play a critical role in fundamentally transforming educational institutions and systems. Given its complexity, transformative change in education is best undertaken as a collective endeavor. Yet for researchers to be a…

In "Coaching in Communities," researcher Melissa Mosley Wetzel and her coauthors distill the lessons of an eight-year study into a transformative educator training model, Coaching with CARE (critical and content-focused, appreciative, reflective, and experiential). They demonstrate how effective, contextual teacher training can be a…

Science Recreation Workshops (SRW) are engaging activities intended to create scientific experiences for participants, who play with natural phenomena while they explore, discover, discuss, and learn about them. They take people into a first-hand scientific adventure. SRW's do not demand a lot of resources to develop, that is why SRW's groups can…

There is a growing body of research looking at young people's use of digital technology in informal contexts. However, there is a gap in the literature about how to describe and categorise young people's digital practices in such contexts. This gap is important because in order to be able to understand the differences between young people's…

When students learn, they activate, use, revise, and acquire knowledge. As such, knowledge is a fundamental asset. We advocate for an asset-based approach which capitalizes on students' knowledge through prompts and activities that invite learners to leverage what they already know. Considering knowledge as an asset means that educators must…

This article considers the way that intergenerational familial settings have functioned as counterspaces where deficit narratives are challenged and youth identities are affirmed. These counterspaces support minoritized young people in particular as they learn in socio-spatial and cultural historical contexts, especially during the pandemic. We…

The escalating planetary crises of human-induced climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and declining biodiversity call for urgent actions to be taken at all levels of society and by the global community. The current political strategy for a sustainable future that emphasizes economic and technological progress is insufficient to…