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…

Nearly every student today is coming into informal education programs with some form of trauma. This is especially true as we examine the long-lasting impacts of climate change, the pandemic, and identity-based prejudice on children. In response, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has undertaken a transformative journey in its education programs. This…

University of Central Oklahoma's Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR) leverages the LMS to assess coursework and co-curricular, informal learning experiences beyond an A-F grade. Students build their STLR Snapshot to show growth in five core employability soft-skill areas and display them in a streamlined way to back up their resume.

If an objective of public higher education is to engage with a diversity of communities, then coursework should be less insulated within classrooms. This work describes and analyzes a university course design that supports undergraduate students to experience learning as relational and transformational via Site Visits within various communities.…

There is a well-established area of work in mathematics education focusing on mathematics for social justice. Much of the work, however, is concerned with "individual" students' understanding the world symbolically -- as evident in the notions of reading and writing the world using mathematics -- while failing to address a transformative…

The evolution to a just, Low Carbon and Circular Economy could be accelerated if additional education and training professionals embraced the practical implications of terms such as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) or for Sustainability (ES). Therefore, this study identified the numerous elements of Environmental and Sustainability…

Computer-mediated communications, in particular listservs, can be powerful tools for creating social change--namely, shifting our food system to a more healthy, just, and localised model. They do this by creating the conditions--collaborations, interaction, self-reflection, and personal empowerment--that cultivate distributed leadership. In this…

Academics and campus planners alike have realized that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to planning effective formal and informal learning spaces. What is clear is moving the student experience from one that is transactional to transformational requires adhering to grounded best practices in teaching, learning, and campus planning,…

During the winter of 2011-2012, Weardale, England, was the setting for an ambitious informal adult education project. In this rural area in the northeast part of the country, the local arts collective, Jack Drum Arts, established a community play project entitled "The Bonny Moorhen." This dramatic undertaking aimed to retell the story of…

This volume has explored embodied knowing in formal and informal education, including the university classroom, the workplace, the health professions, and the community. Educators considered the role of intuition, theater, dance, yoga, and outdoor education activities as forms of embodied learning. While the contexts of education were different,…

This article looks at the ways in which people learn informally through artistic expression such as dance, drama, poetry, music, literature, film, and all of the visual arts and how people access this learning through their emotions. The author begins with a look at the limitations of relying primarily on technical-rational learning processes.…

As our understanding of learning focuses on the whole person rather than individual aspects of learning, so the process of learning is beginning to be studied from a wide variety of perspectives and disciplines. This handbook presents a comprehensive overview of the contemporary research into learning: it brings together a diverse range of…

During a kayaking expedition in 1983, the author was sucked into an underwater tunnel in Mexico's Rio Urique. He miraculously emerged unharmed, but this near-death experience awakened in him a primal awareness that had been coddled to sleep by his so-called civilized perceptions. He gained intuitive insights from this awakening that enabled him to…