This paper examines some personal and interpersonal issues concerning group work and informal learning in the music classroom. It analyses data from a recent research project, which adopted and adapted the informal music learning practices of popular musicians, for use in the classroom. The discussion focuses on three aspects of the project.…

Reform-minded teachers encounter formidable challenges, especially in the difficult conditions of typical urban settings. Maintaining an online web log (or "blog") has been suggested as a powerful tool to support their practice and continuing professional development. To further articulate how and why blogs can provide teachers with unique…

The internet presents many potential opportunities for people to learn for both formal and informal purposes. However, not everyone is able to make the most of the internet for learning. This paper utilises quantitative nationally representative survey data of internet use in Britain in order to explore the digital divide in relation to learning…

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),…

The purpose of this ethnographic case study was to discover the manner in which two Irish musicians, Loretto Reid and Brian Taheny, taught/and or transmitted traditional music at the Celtic College Summer School in Goderich, Ontario. Two central questions, each followed by several sub-questions, served to focus the study: "How did you learn…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the paid and unpaid work time and learning activities of a small longitudinal sample (n=286) of continuously employed Canadians over the 1998-2004 period. Design/methodology/approach: A sub-sample of those who responded to two national surveys carried out in 1998 and 2004 and who were continuously…

This article describes a study that examined the lifelong learning of information systems academics in relation to their normal work. It begins by considering the concept of lifelong learning, its relationship to real-life learning and that lifelong learning should encompass the whole spectrum of formal, non-formal and informal learning. Most…

In 1973, the evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen of the University of Chicago devised what he called the "Red Queen Effect" to describe the growth and development of species. It stipulated that an evolutionary system must continue to develop just to maintain its fitness relative to others evolving in its environment. The literary reference is…

This paper describes the Science in the City seminar, an innovative approach to in-service and preservice science teacher development that bridges formal and informal science learning contexts. Drawing upon the tenets of design and evaluation research, the study focuses on the teachers' presentations of evidence of student learning from trips they…

In this article, we explore how two informal educational contexts--an aquarium and an after-school science program--enabled disenfranchised learners to adopt an identity as insiders to the world of science. We tell the stories of four youth, relating what doing science meant to them and how they positioned themselves in relation to science. We…

The pervasive income-related achievement gap among children has been partially explained by parental investments. Wealthier parents provide more cognitively enriched environments (e.g., books, informal learning opportunities such as music lessons) and converse more with their children relative to low-income parents. However parental investment…

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…

This paper reports a study of student knowledge of percent at the elementary, middle, and secondary levels. The study concentrated on three areas: (1) an analysis of the percent concept, its symbols, and procedures; (2) the child's naturally constructed base of informal knowledge of the percent concept; and (3) what formal knowledge develops in…

Some 1750 sketch maps drawn in response to three sets of instructions by residents of, and commuters to, Staten Island and 138 extended interviews with residents suggest that informal learning is largely independent of formal learning. Cognitive maps which individuals form are practical instruments frequently bearing no resemblance to commercial…

Education is about learning. But it is not always about teaching. Nor is it always held in formal educational settings. Here we present an example from Mua Island in Torres Strait, where cultural knowledge was recently communicated and passed down to the younger generation through community participation rather than through formal educational…