Within engineering education, informal, out-of-school making experiences and parent-child interactions within home environments are both considered as a promising context for the development of engineering discourse and practices. However, less is known about how parents support children's engagement in engineering learning, particularly when they…

The animated children's television show, "Doc McStuffins," may serve as an out-of-school multicultural STEM education platform for its young television audience. The lead character, as well as the supporting cast of toy characters, represents a variety of racial, ethnic, and cultural identities while modeling medicine and healthcare…

We explore how experienced informal educators worked towards equitable and consequential opportunities for learning in informal STEM settings through pedagogical practice. Drawing from a justice-centered social practice stance we argue that pedagogical practice that promotes social transformation towards more just futures must confront and respond…

The paper presents ideas and initiatives from two ongoing Erasmus+ projects funded by the European Commission. Both projects use e-Learning as an enabler for communicating interesting and important learning contents that are believed to increase and improve employability prospects for the targeted groups of learners. The WINnovators project…

Rural youth may have a distinct vantage point on STEM issues in their community, and if STEM interest is developed at a young age, the likelihood of solving these in adulthood may occur. Therefore, a place-conscious informal STEM program was developed to be delivered to youth ages eight to twelve in rural communities. Qualitative methods,…

Inquiry-based out-of-school STEM learning environments, such as offerings from science centers, museums, and out-of-school laboratories, serve as an enrichment to classroom education in many countries. As there is an increasing number of such STEM learning environments in Germany and some other countries and a growing body of research worldwide,…

Critical reflective practice is a foundation of socially just pedagogy. This paper focuses on the informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths) learning sector, where there is an acute shortage of support for critical reflective practice despite long-standing, entrenched issues of inequity. We analyse how practitioners used a new…

This article describes the process for creating an evidence-based professional learning (PL) competency framework for people working in the informal science learning field. The project reviewed PL literature, models, and frameworks. Applying what we found to a field which lacks any unified career pathways, we determined a career stage approach…

Computing fields are foundational to most STEM disciplines and the only STEM discipline to show a consistent decline in women's representation since 1990, making it an important field for STEM educators to study. The explanation for the underrepresentation of women and girls in computing is twofold: a sense that they do not fit within the…

This paper is a reflection on Bobby Habig, Preeti Gupta, and Jennifer Adams' article "Disrupting deficit narratives in informal science education: Applying community cultural wealth theory to youth learning and engagement" (EJ1307485). The article examines the significance of community cultural capital and the need for informal STEM…

This research aimed to better understand the interaction between positioning and STEM identity authoring as intergenerational teams collaborated to complete community conservation projects, following a two-day conservation and geospatial technology workshop. Scientists and science educators supported these learners as they developed the focus,…

"Parkopolis," the life-sized board game, was designed to promote conversation and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. We investigated whether this exhibit also prompted questioning. Caregivers' and children's STEM-related question-asking was compared between Parkopolis (i.e., experimental group) and a…

Background: Developing pre-service educators' content and pedagogical knowledge is critical for providing high-quality instruction in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Specifically, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has been identified as one of the most critically needed research areas within engineering…

Purpose: This study examines the perspectives of undergraduate science and technology students in Thailand regarding the influence of various role models on their entrepreneurial skills. Design/methodology/approach: This study employed the single case study research method. Purposive sampling was used to select the participants. The sample…

Due to the sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the comparison of online versus traditional face-to-face (FTF) environments has now come under review. The research of online informal learning spaces for K-12 education in particular is underdeveloped and requires more investigation. The purpose for this paper is to report an analysis of the…