Reflects on four years of teaching a course called Principle of Major Teachers for pre-service elementary school teachers. Identifies and describes the discord between their formal mathematical knowledge and their informal language used in the context of elementary number theory. Presents encouraging results from a code-switching experiment.…

Rhythm is arguably the most important component of music. In all musics of all cultures, past and present, rhythm is central to musical experience and understanding. Given the enormous diversity of rhythm, perhaps it is no surprise that there is a wide range of opinion about how to teach it. It seems that every approach to music education…

Caring for patients with progressive illness who need symptomatic and palliative care involves professionals as well as non-professionals. Within the variety of settings that may exist around a patient, education will be constantly needed. A limited systematic review was therefore conducted in order to highlight factors that influence informal…

Aims to acquire better understanding of how informal learning experiences may interface with classroom science instruction by investigating one aspect of science learning, that of scientific reasoning ability. Investigates possible differences in students' scientific reasoning abilities relative to their informal learning environments, classroom…

Tests the use of modeling and wait-time as guided-tour procedures and their use by docents as a strategy for increasing visitor questions. Modeling and wait-time seemed clearly important in encouraging visitors to begin to ask questions. Visitors asked an average of seven times more questions than had been asked on pre-experimental tours. (PVD)

Most research in music education has so far dealt with music training in institutional settings, such as schools, and is accordingly based, either implicitly or explicitly, on the assumption that musical learning results from a sequenced, methodical exposure to music teaching within a formal setting. However, in order to realise and understand the…

Increasingly the different ways in which learning can be conceptualised alongside debates within the field of HRD regarding its nature and purpose, potentially lead to confusion regarding how learning is to be assessed in the workplace. This paper identifies some of the complexities associated with assessing learning in today's workplace and…

This study examined characteristic attributes of non-formal education and the non-formal pedagogy directing its teaching and learning processes. Data were collected on organizational and pedagogical characteristics in several out-of-school organizations (youth movements, youth organizations, community centers, bypass educational systems, local…

This article presents a teaching experiment on the relationship between informal out-of-school and formal in-school mathematics, and the ways each can inform the other in the development of abstract mathematical knowledge. This study concerns the understanding of some aspects of the multiplicative structure of decimal numbers. It involved a series…

This ethnographic study is an investigation of the environment that students create when making music that is meaningful to them. The initial purpose of the study was to describe a developing "rock group", and the factors that contributed to its creation. The significance of the study may be in the discovery of ways to "counter mechanisms of…

This paper shares findings from a recent study that engaged a group of Kenyan teachers in a review and development of interpretive materials through a participatory action research framework. It focuses on critical contextual reviews of interpretive materials in non-formal organisations and development of similar materials in schools with…

Many school literacy practices ignore adolescents' new digitally mediated subjectivity as it has been shaped by the new media age. Youth possess often unappreciated repertories of practice which allow them to use their imagination and creativity to combine print, visual and digital modes in combinations that can be applied to new educational,…

Describes and interprets the cultural context in which authority and knowledge are conveyed in Tanzanian schools, focusing on the ways that "formal" classroom lessons reinforce and/or contradict "informal" lessons learned outside school. Compares East African ideas about knowledge and authority with those prominent in some…

This paper outlines the establishment and running of an after-school Computer Clubhouse, describing aspects of the leadership, mentoring and learning activities undertaken there. Research data has been collected from examination of documents associated with the Clubhouse, interviews with its founders, Director, session leaders and mentors, and…

A very important part of the learning process occurs during early childhood, before preschool and the first few grades. Teachers need to understand the characteristics of this early learning, and ask if they can be extended to later education. While the author's concern here is with computers, the results of such a study might also tell teachers…