Board gaming is a popular activity, growing despite all the pressures of digitalization. People are gathering to play socially. Besides this ludic movement, modern board games can be used directly or adapted to achieve other goals beyond entertainment, approaching serious game methods as a modding exercise. This paper describes a process where a…

Social media has been recognized as a promising online communication environment that supports self-directed informal learning activities outside educational institutions. Development of metacognition is necessary for self-directed learning. Nevertheless, most studies have focused on the use of social media for formal learning. To fill this gap,…

Latinxs have a long history of participation in basketball, yet links to education scholarship are for the most part non-existent. In a context of ongoing subtractive policies around curriculum, teaching, toxic immigration policies and other sociopolitical realities, Latinxs have long used "hoops" as a space for identity formation,…

Despite communities of practice (COPs) literature asserting the importance of attending to power dynamics within these learning contexts, research has largely ignored the process of racialization within COPs and, in particular, the role anti-racist pedagogies play within these spaces. In response, I present findings from an instrumental case study…

Over the last decade or so, the rate of growth of academic publications involving discussion of 'citizen science' and 'community science', and similar variants, has risen exponentially. These fluid terms, with no fixed definition, cover a continuum of public participation within a range of scientific activities. It is, therefore, apposite and…

We investigated what students learnt about biodiversity, a broad and multi-dimensional concept, challenging to understand, following a visit to a nature reserve. Acknowledging the individual nature of informal learning, we explore Personal Meaning Maps (PMMs) coupled with semi-structured interviews to investigate learning among 13 scouts aged…

In prior research, museum attendance has been shown to positively impact educational outcomes for children, teens, and adults, yet little has been documented about who is attending and how often. This paper is the first to provide comprehensive descriptive and regression analyses to explore museum attendance among youth (5 to 18 year-olds) in the…

Although programming is often learned through formal instruction or self-paced tutorials, informal learning, for example, through publicly available online documentation, is also a significant resource for skill development among novices. However, many novices struggle to extract useful information from documentation. This work aims to answer two…

While formal, digital-technology-based professional development for higher education faculty has been extensively studied, informal and incidental learning (IIL) within this area remain underexplored. Integrating the Broaden-and-Build Theory with the Informal and Incidental Learning framework, this study examines how positive emotions influence…

Background: Social media provides new opportunities for teachers to learn, communicate and develop professional relationships. It has been proved to be a valid and helpful resource for teachers' professional learning purposes. Objectives: While previous studies pursued questions like how participants feel, how to support interaction and why…

This report investigates whether higher education systems across Europe recognise and validate learning outcomes from non-formal and informal learning. Specifically, the report looks at whether non-formal and informal learning can enable alternative access to higher education; the extent to which non-formal and informal learning can contribute to…

This paper examines the use of informal training for workers, by Australian companies and other organisations. Using survey data, it reports the prevalence of informal training and also the utilisation of different types of informal training. Differences are found by employer size, particularly for the different types. By examining qualitative…

In the face of growing social-ecological challenges, multiple forms of expertise must be brought to bear in environmental problem-solving. As such, community-based science has been touted as a potential way to "democratize" scientific knowledge production, allowing for multiple sources of expertise to be harnessed and for learning across…

In 2021, data on Internet usage for those aged 75 years and older in Ireland indicated that almost half of this cohort (46%) had never accessed the Internet. This study examines the role of informal peer learning in the digital lives of older adults in Ireland. A mixed methods case study methodology was employed. Data were collected from 100…

Science museums are key locations for informal education. They also enable research that explores how families structure their activities and conversations and how these contribute to learning experiences. The aim of this exploratory study, using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, was to analyse the process of family interactions during…