Reviews research on learning among visitors to museums and other interpretive sites. Discusses central and peripheral information processing, need for cognition, intrinsic motivation, visual memory, and metacognition. Describes an evaluation model for exhibits and programs that incorporates visitor learning. (SAS)

Reflects on four years of teaching a course called Principle of Major Teachers for pre-service elementary school teachers. Identifies and describes the discord between their formal mathematical knowledge and their informal language used in the context of elementary number theory. Presents encouraging results from a code-switching experiment.…

A soliloquy on how to foster lasting, meaningful connections with nature considers facts, morality, problem solving of real environmental issues, and new high-tech tools, and rejects them all. Most environmentalists attribute their commitment to nature to having spent time outdoors in a keenly remembered wild place during youth. Spending time in…

Suggests using the informal experiences students have through extracurricular activities such as music lessons to design a curriculum related to sound that encourages active student participation and learning. (DDR)

A survey of 447 visitors to a Kansas zoo examined adult visitors' motivations for themselves and companions. In another survey, 118 zoo educators nationwide predicted visitor responses. Educators' predictions were fairly good for visitors' educational and recreational motives for attendance, less accurate for their social orientation, and poor…

A survey of 782 older adults participating in "active outdoor" Elderhostel programs found the following important motivations for participating: being in a natural environment, being physically active, learning about outdoor skills and the environment, and being with people with similar interests. Recommendations are offered for program…

Condemns the removal of evolution from subjects to be tested in Kansas at the state level. Outlines strategies being used by creationists to confound contemporary science, the breadth of creationist/fundamentalist attacks on modern science, and educators' and politicians' responses to creationist attacks. Reviews the role of museums in providing…

A Spanish nutrition education program was taught to low-income Hispanic men and women in an informal program of English as a second language. Barriers were related to the dynamics of working with volunteer organizations, participant characteristics, and the pilot program's goals. Fitting nutrition instruction into program goals, dealing with low…

This paper traces the evolution of a theory of learning in nature in order to explain how people learn in natural settings. The intellectual roots of the theory in informal learning, cognition, affective development, experiential and meaningful learning are described and the synthesis into a comprehensive theory of learning in nature are…

The field trip is probably one of the most common out-of-classroom learning experiences students encounter. Teachers provide these experiences for a variety of reasons including motivation, exposure, and even as a reward, especially after weeks of standardized testing. Although teachers may report that a primary reason for including the field trip…

This paper discusses the evaluation of an informal science education project, The Birdhouse Network (TBN) of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. The Elaboration Likelihood Model and the theory of Experiential Education were used as frameworks to analyse the impact of TBN on participants' attitudes toward science and the environment, on their…

Though much has been written about children learning science in informal settings such as science centres, surprisingly little attention has been paid to organisations such as The Scout Association and Girl Guiding UK which also, as part of a broader programme, provide science experiences for children and young people. A few years ago, prompted by…

Rhythm is arguably the most important component of music. In all musics of all cultures, past and present, rhythm is central to musical experience and understanding. Given the enormous diversity of rhythm, perhaps it is no surprise that there is a wide range of opinion about how to teach it. It seems that every approach to music education…

The question "When am I educated?" had a fairly simple answer in the modern era. The "minimum" requirement was a degree from one of the "recognised" universities of the world, and the degree initiated the individual into the different "official" canons of knowledge. The majority of those canons were Western in origin and represented Education…

Most people think of the teaching and learning of music as taking place in formal, institutional contexts like schools and universities. This study looks at the transmission of music teaching and learning that takes place in a more informal, musical environment, namely at a "popular music festival." In particular, it discusses the OM…