Offers a planning guide for English teachers interested in organizing a student tour to the United Kingdom. Includes details for designing the tour, budgeting expenses, recruiting students, arranging transportation and lodging, and preparing students before departure. Presents a timetable summarizing pretrip preparations. (MM)

Explains the negative response of those in authority to early modern English literature which informally educated the population through "false fonde bookes, ballades, and rimes." This negative response, based on both moral and political grounds, came from clerics who saw such books as detrimental to the social structure of society. (BSR)

Provides descriptions of the various types of nature centers with emphasis on how they are funded, managed, and staffed. Includes a listing of the programs offered by nature centers. (ML)

A study examined the characteristics of the learning process when it is facilitated by computer-mediated communication in nonformal learning contexts. In this paper, learning is defined as the transformation of experience through reflection, conceptualization, and action. Such experiential learning often occurs in dialogue with others.…

African countries must provide opportunities outside the formal educational institutions for youths and adults to acquire knowledge and skills for self-improvement. (Editor)

Presents a model based on the Premack Principle which utilizes preferred learning activities to promote the career development of students during free time in the classroom. Free time can be reconceptualized as a medium for extending learning beyond formal instruction. Examples of preferential career activities are described. (Author)

Notes that the new trend in business toward informal learning programs is meeting with success. Suggests alternatives to formalized training and means of implementing these learning techniques. (TA)

Responses from 94 of 230 British senior managers revealed that they are engaged in radical change in company mission, culture, and structure. Their most valuable learning comes from team activities, managing new projects, and networking with customers. Only one-third spent more than five days per year on off-job training; one-third had no off-job…

Two studies investigated science conversations between Mexican-descent parents and children during a visit to a children's museum and at home after a family science workshop. Although more-educated parents gave more explanations about science in the museum, all families engaged in causal conversations, especially at home. (Contains 42 references.)…

Questions why imagination is not brought into mainstream education as a cornerstone of learning and why education frequently makes students incapable of relating to what is alive and meaningful within themselves. Without imagination, it is impossible to experience the infinite qualities of our senses, nor to shape our thoughts and images of these…

A survey of adult learning opportunities in Belfast, Northern Ireland, found an emerging sector of community and voluntary organizations offering programs emphasizing issue-based, action-oriented learning in a democratic participative culture. They offer alternatives to traditional formal providers of liberal adult education. (SK)

Thousands of people from 51 countries created the Earth Charter, which heralds humankind's respectful recognition of life's interdependence and our shared responsibility for the world's well-being. A Vermont group put it in an "Ark of Hope" and walked it through four states to the United Nations. Related art workshops held in Vermont…

Interviews with skilled mine workers in Queensland, Australia, suggest that informal learning in the workplace enables authentic activities, access to experts, and sociocultural environment conductive to the development of expertise. Skilled work means technical competence in a context of sociocultural values. (SK)

A survey of 405 adults and interviews with 19 showed the majority of learning experiences were informal. For learning to be significant, it must personally affect the learner by expanding skills or causing a transformation, and it must be subjectively valued by the learner. (SK)

Any setting can contribute to learning, and learning theories must account for settings, enculturation, and social contributions. Theories of learning in informal or "natural" settings must be quite distinct from existing theories of formal learning. (SK)