This mixed-methods grounded theory study investigates the development of engineering identity cultivated through engagement in informal learning experiences. In addition, the retention of engineering students and academic performance are investigated for connections to these learning environments. This is the beginning of work to identify best…

Student hackathons are a type of demographic-specific event that are aimed at college students. Students may attend hackathons because they provide an opportunity for informal learning, networking, and building products for social change Hackathons are usually designed to give their participants opportunities to learn or expand their technical…

Estimates of "Street Youth" (SY) (those who live/work on the streets) show 150 million around the world, with approximately 50,000 in Kenya alone as of 2018. Challenges these youth face remain a significant barrier to national governments achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) targets, as formal schools limit access…

The purpose of this constructivist grounded theory study was to explore the lifewide learning experiences of "high potential" individuals that were able to reach career success and have a sense of fulfillment in early adulthood (23-39). At a time where the need for productivity is commonplace in the arena of human resources, a movement…

The Out of School Learning landscape continues to be an emerging ecosystem of learning, particularly for the adolescent population. While the focus for elementary school-aged youth has often been on after-school programming offering safety, supervision, and homework help, research has indicated that this approach is not equally successful for the…

Informal science education occurs in many settings, often without an explicit goal of teaching or learning science. Sometimes scientific content and practices are opportunistically encountered through daily activities. Such is the case with fish consumption advisories, which inform people who eat fish about their potential exposure to harmful…

The field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) has observed how interest-driven extramural English (EE), an outside-of-classroom engagement with English (Sundqvist, 2009), can facilitate language development. Research supports the potential EE has when brought into formal English language teaching (ELT) settings; However,…

Facebook studio groups/pages are commonly used by applied music faculty to communicate with current students, recruit new students, share students' activities, and promote faculty members' professional performances and academic endeavors. However, the blurred lines between academic, professional performance, and social activities in the field have…

Since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, significant research has been conducted regarding the risks which firefighters take while working in their profession and the consequences of ill-health which they can experience. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the reasons why firefighters do not wear appropriate respiratory…

As an informal learning context, science museums offer opportunities for visitors to engage in shared meaning-making as they interpret the concepts and phenomena presented in exhibits. As visitors engage in social meaning-making, they may provide support by scaffolding others' learning. Scaffolding describes support that is tailored to learners'…

This dissertation is motivated by a need in the higher education learning sciences field to understand the cultural, social, and emotional processes of student learning and development in advancing equity for students from first-generation, low-income, and marginalized backgrounds. To address this need, I develop and examine a sociocultural…

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the dance makerspace, a learning environment designed to support STEM engagement through making and embodied experience for a group of African American youth dancers. It looks at how participants in a 4-week summer camp program at an urban creative arts center-turned-makerspace, constructed embodied…

Data-rich activities provide an opportunity to develop core competencies in both science and mathematics identified in curricular standards. Perhaps even more importantly work with data puts learners in the position to use data to ask and answer questions, a potentially empowering capability. Research on work with data has focused on cognitive…

Middle school (G5-8) students' cognitive engagement, motivation, and future aspirations in science were quantified within informal contexts (week-long summer camps) with self-reported measures of cognitive strategies, self-regulation, value, self-efficacy, and future aspirations over the course of two phases (N = 152, N =140). The participating…

This dissertation is about videogames. It is also about teaching, and the ways videogame design represents good teaching. However, this dissertation is not about videogames alone. It makes broad claims about teaching in- and out-of-schools in the 21st Century. Over the last few decades many scholars have been impressed by the rich forms of…