Skills 4 Kids (S4K) Cafes is a program of intergenerational community skill-sharing events that offers a form of professional learning for early childhood educators to connect with SDG 4 Quality Education. The S4K model is an alternative 'side by side' approach to supporting educators to develop their pedagogical practice in the community, while…

In this position paper, we explore the potential of social networks for teacher professional development. Networking is a crucial skill in professional careers, supporting the individual's personal and professional learning. Collective teacher interactions online can facilitate collaborative professional development and support collective…

Many undergraduate and graduate physics students participate in some form of public engagement throughout the course of their studies, often through groups supported by physics departments and universities. These informal teaching and learning programs can offer unique opportunities for both participants and facilitators to interact in a way that…

No undergraduate or postgraduate programmes currently exist for the professional education of informal educators. The authors outline the development of previous programmes and consider the emergence of informal education as a discrete concept. The article then highlights some key failings in the professional education of informal educators and…

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a wide range of challenges for school leaders that they now (rapidly) have to address. Consequently, they also turn to informal learning networks, in order to share and collect information and reach out to their communities. In this context, the current study investigates the underlying networks structures among…

The purpose of this convergent mixed method study was to determine whether or not there is a difference in the perceived and actual financial literacy scores of millennials. Exploring the following research questions and hypotheses helped to expand knowledge around actual financial literacy and several other characteristics, including perceived…

In Computer-assisted language learning (CALL), the relationship between learner background and classroom-based digital language learning has been widely studied; however, little attention has been directed to informal digital learning of English (IDLE), a crucial subdomain of inquiry of CALL. Building on our prior IDLE study, this explanatory…

The promotion of the English language continues to be instrumental in helping China to engage with the world, but it has caused identity anxiety and cultural uncertainty among language learners. In this paper, we analyze data from a favorite-character-presentation task and an oral survey conducted with 82 preschool children in Shanghai. We found…

The past and current situation in Greece regarding the refugee crisis has created educators' need to apply new educational strategies to address refugee students, such as the use of translanguaging, linguistic landscape and schoolscape as pedagogical tools. That is why the present study attempts to reveal the degree of educators' employment of…

Since independence, Timor-Leste has taken initiatives to improve adult literacy and successive governments, international NGOs and donor agencies have been involved in literacy programmes. This paper explores the non-formal literacy programmes with a particular focus on the Second Chance Education Project (SCEP), an accelerated learning model that…

This retrospective emergent design qualitative evaluation study documents the development of a unique model for community engagement and engaged scholarship in higher education. The primary novel aspect of the model is participatory involvement of both the target audience for the program and representatives of various stakeholder groups who…

This article explores the informal and formal learning experiences of 20 activist-musicians. Multiple activist-musicians utilized the informal learning strategies Green identifies. More than half of the participants, however, bemoaned the lack of more formal music education. They noted that they valued informal musical learning practices and also…

This post-inquiry paper looks to the intimate matter of young children and their worlds outside of school. With new materialism, water and art as philosophical muse, a new kind of 'sustaining nature' for environmental education emerges, problematizing 'sustainability' as an aim. We gathered and exchanged short videos and field notes (iPhone…

The informal learning environment of the Museum of Science Fiction's "Escape Velocity" event offers an integration of science and science fiction in a variety of activities, talks, events, exhibits, and panels to further attendees' interest. This study examined the efficacy of this event as a learning experience through a survey of…

Background: Recent reports have noted a need for increasing both the recruitment and retention of young people into the STEM disciplines. While many studies have reported on the benefits of classroom reform in formal education environments, less is known about the role of informal education programs in young people's academic aspirations, interest…