Background: This study explored science teachers' participation in a professional development partnership with informal science institutions (ISIs) designed for urban middle school science teachers, known as the "Urban Advantage Science Initiative." The teacher training involved a whole school focused approach, providing teaching…

The third sector represents a vast and heterogeneous universe that has a key role in society from both the social and civil points of view. It also represents an informal learning context where competence and knowledge are acquired, often in a tacit and indirect way. This research focuses on the key competences of the third sector professionals…

Graduate education advances students' competencies and skills to prepare them as professionals and should provide various learning experiences to support their development as socially responsible professionals who meet role expectations. Learning experiences that support the development of students' professionalism are discussed in the research,…

English learners in EFL contexts where grammar-based instruction is still dominant often lack opportunities to use the target language both within and outside the classroom. In 2010, we initiated a club-based approach to facilitate students' learning beyond the classroom. It focused on meaningful communication, authentic tasks, student agency,…

Research shows most teachers teach as they were taught. However, distance educators lack a model or benchmark for online teaching because many of them have not taken online courses as students. Indeed, many studies on teaching online point to the importance of training for online instructors. Few studies go into specifics about exactly what that…

The American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) was founded in 1982 as the result of a merger between the National Association for Public and Continuing Adult Education (NAPCAE) and the Adult Education Association (AEA). This prestigious association is dedicated to the belief that lifelong learning contributes to human…

This article reflects on how some values, interests, and particularities of 2.0 culture enter on higher and postgraduate education institutions. Through the identification of the features of 2.0, this document visualizes some of the resistances, obstacles, possibilities, and opportunities detected in these institutions, many of them focusing on…

Two research studies sponsored by the Centre for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS) investigated the programmes informal science institutions (ISIs) currently provide to support K-12 science education, particularly in the area of teacher professional development (PD). The first study was a large-scale survey with 475 ISIs responding about the…

This paper reports on the approaches undertaken to support the development of teachers' uses of interactive whiteboards in the Primary Schools Whiteboard Expansion project. Mixed methods were used to identify practices and staff perceptions about the extent and impact of professional development through surveys (initially from 528 schools),…

As new technologies promise to be an enduring feature of the landscape of teachers' work, we consider how teachers implicitly bring stories forward into their classroom explorations with new media as a part of their "informal learning". By "stories" is meant specific classroom texts as well as preferred teacher practices with those texts. 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…

A survey of informal learning among 318 teachers and HRD professionals was conducted. Analysis of the data found that teachers rely to a greater extent on interactive informal learning activities while HRD professionals rely to a greater extent on independent learning activities. Data analysis also found that six environmental factors inhibit…

To provide meaningful science experiences for students, educators need quality science experiences themselves from which to draw. Informal learning contexts, such as museums, are well positioned to provide educators with these professional development experiences. We investigated the impact museum-created professional development experiences had…

This document contains the proceedings of a 1999 conference on adult, continuing, and community education held in St. Louis, Missouri. The following 39 papers are included: "Program Effectiveness Evaluation: Recertification and Job Upgrading for Adult Refugees" (Non-Native Speakers of English) (Adelman); "Rethinking the Linkages between Higher and…

These proceedings contain 102 papers, 32 roundtables, and 5 symposia. Among the papers are "Weathered by Their Experiences" (Aiken); "Politics of Knowledge and Theory Construction in Adult Education (AE)" (Alfred); "Self-Directed Learning as a Political Act" (Andruske); "All Things Bold and Beautiful" (Armstrong); "Violence Against Women" (Baird);…