This report was requested by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA), Office of Education in July 2009 to evaluate the Informal Education Program. The goals of the evaluation were twofold: (1) to gain insight into its investment in informal education; and (2) to clarify existing distinctions between its informal education…

Informal science education (ISE) experiences can provide powerful opportunities for people with disabilities to experience and learn about science. When designed to be inclusive, such experiences can lead people with disabilities to feel competent and empowered as science learners, generate excitement and enthusiasm for science, and be equitable…

This article reports findings on visitors' preferences for content presentation of a future global warming and climate change exhibit. The study was conducted with two groups: one from the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, and the other at the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio. The…

This paper reports on a pilot study in which children aged 7-12 (N = 68) had an opportunity to study in a novel formal and informal learning setting. The learning activities were extended from the classroom to the playful learning environment (PLE), an innovative playground enriched by technological tools. Curriculum-based learning was intertwined…

Learners within academic library settings use information resources toward specific ends--learner-constructed research and writing projects that offer new perspectives on particular topics. Such projects may take the form of individual research papers and/or class presentations, literature reviews, theses, e-portfolios, web pages, or…

Informal learning is becoming a standard format in companies' training and development (T&D) activities. It requires a specific learning competence comprising cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational dimensions. In the present study, it was investigated whether learning-competence variables predict success in informal learning. Given the…

This paper has investigated the distinctive features of the English Corner at Renmin University of China. The popularity of the English Corner at RUC is firstly attributed to its physical advantage: the location of the university ensuring convenient transportation; the location of the English Corner easy to be found; and the timing on Friday…

This study of science education in the Boy Scouts of America focused on males with Boy Scout experience. The mixed-methods study topics included: merit badge standards compared with National Science Education Standards, Scout responses to open-ended survey questions, the learning styles of Scouts, a quantitative assessment of science content…

Science and technology are embedded in every aspect of modern life. This executive summary describes how Public Engagement with Science (PES), in the context of informal science education (ISE), can provide opportunities for public awareness of and participation in science and technology. PES is an approach that has developed in the last 10 years…

The read/write web, or Web 2.0, offers ways for users to personalise their online existence, and to develop their own critical identities though their control of a range of tools. Exerting control enables those users to forge new contexts, profiles and content through which to represent themselves, based upon the user-centred, participative,…

Over 20 years of research into the use of cross-curricular drama in secondary science has indicated that this medium enables learning of affective, cognitive and procedural knowledge. To date, academic research has tended to frame successful drama pedagogy as resulting from a Drama-in-Education approach, incorporating extended role plays and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore in detail how teachers' perceptions of workplace conditions for learning are related to their informal workplace learning activities and learning outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: From a sample of 32 teachers, a purposeful sampling technique of maximal variation was used to select two cases…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present what the study of the experiences of beginning teachers and their informal learning says about the process of learning to teach, and to discuss the main emerging themes in relation to a wider literature. Design/methodology/approach: The design of the paper is essentially ethnographic and building of…

Fundamentalists and modernists seem, at times, to work in contrapuntal interdependency. While the fundamentalist's rhetoric markets its image as celebrating the renewal of an authentic past identity in modernity, modernists state the need for and possibility of adapting a cherished past to modern assumptions. Yet, it seems as if it is the…

In this article, the potentials of advanced technologies for learning in science exhibitions are outlined. For this purpose, we conceptualize science exhibitions as "dynamic information space for knowledge building" which includes three pathways of knowledge communication. This article centers on the second pathway, that is, knowledge…