This paper describes an informal component that we added to an online formal language learning environment in order to help the learners reach relevant Internet pages they can freely use to complement their learning activity. Thanks to this facility, each lesson is enriched, at run time, with a number of links automatically retrieved from social…

The purpose of this study was to examine perceived career barriers of women in entry-level and mid-level positions who were formally and informally mentored. Research studies have found that mentoring can yield positive outcomes; however, there is limited research on how mentoring style impacts career advancement. The primary research questions…

Many governors have launched initiatives to raise student proficiency in math and science and encourage youth to pursue careers in STEM fields (i.e., science, technology, engineering, and math). Individuals with strong STEM skills play vital roles in technological innovation and economic growth and are rewarded with more secure jobs and higher…

In her book "Informal Learning and the School: A new classroom pedagogy" Lucy Green notes: "The issues ... centre around the importance of listening to young people's voices and taking their values and their culture seriously" (Green, 2008, p. 185). It can be argued that for young people, "their culture" is frequently…

The sociotechnical context for learning and education is dynamic and makes great demands on those trying to seize the opportunities presented by emerging technologies. The goal of this paper is to explore certain theories for our plans and actions in technology-enabled learning. Although presented as a successor to previous learning theories,…

The release of free resources by the education sector has led to reconsideration of how the open approach implied by Open Educational Resources (OER) impacts on the educator and the learner. However this work has tended to consider the replication of standard campus based approaches and the characteristics of content that will encourage other…

The embedding of informal practices in music education in school relates to significant issues concerning students' engagement, participation, inclusion and the role of the teacher. This article addresses these issues by presenting and discussing current music education in compulsory comprehensive schooling in Sweden. It does so by drawing upon…

Environmental learning, or how individuals make sense and meaning about nature, the environment, ecology, and environmental issues, is best understood as lifelong, life-wide, and life-deep (Banks and others, 2007). Lifelong learning refers to acquisition of skills, competencies, attitudes, and knowledge over time; life-wide is learning across…

This paper examines the nature and significance of learning by experience during work, both paid and unpaid. Data about the relationship between costs, especially labour costs, and output have come to be interpreted as evidence of learning by experience, but these grouped data are unable to explain the nature and process of individual experience…

The main objective of the paper is to present an outline for an approach studying young people as learners across contexts, presented here as a "learning lives approach". For youth, the two most time-consuming aspects of their daily lives are schooling and media use. In research, we tend to study these as two separate worlds. The challenge is to…

This study analyzes informal learning, drawing on video recordings of staff-child interaction in a pediatric unit. It is shown that even very young patients engage in intent community participation, carefully noting fine variations in examination and treatment practices. They orient to everyday routines in successively more complex ways, gradually…

The idea of digital game-based learning (DGBL) is that students (or players) learn something by playing a computer or video game and that an educator can employ digital games to assist and boost both formal and informal learning. There is game software that is not specifically produced for educational use but which is nonetheless regularly…

Students in a graduate geometry class used items such as paper, ribbon, plastic spheres, cardboard tubes, and markers to carry out investigations in spherical geometry. The hands-on activities helped students develop a new appreciation of geometry as a study of shape and space; however, the difficulty of subduing wayward elastics and drawing lines…

This article traces the development of moral education (ME) in Botswana from pre-colonial times to the present day. It shows how during this time ME has undergone three distinct phases of development, each emphasising a particular ideology. In pre-colonial times ME was offered as part of indigenous education in the home and community, both…

This study profiles and compares international social contexts for teacher workplace informal learning from the teachers' perspectives. Set in elementary schools in the U.S. and Lithuania, the study illustrates how teachers make sense of and engage in professional learning within their historical, political and administrative contexts. A…