Search

Teachers and students rely more on online-learning environments than ever before, including open, trusted and high-quality online learning resources produced by public broadcasters. For educators, this represents both an inspiration and challenge in the wake of new techologies and online learning environments. This article is a case study of one such online learning environment created by Australia’s multicultural broadcaster, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), an adaptation of Nam Le’s award-winning short story, “The Boat” (2008). SBS’s The Boat (2015) is an immersive online experience that explores a refugee perspective and is accompanied by SBSLearn online learning materials. The Boat (2015) connects informal and formal learning though the delivery of both SBS Charter-driven content and Australian teachers’ pedagogical perspectives to local and global audiences including students and teachers. This article, co-written by the media producer of SBS’s The Boat (2015), and the educator who wrote the accompanying formal learning resources, shares principles for creating innovative and connected learning environments from different perspectives, including broadcaster editorial, technological innovation and educational design, with an intention to create a pedagogy for seamless access to engaging, immersive environments and principles for broadcaster and educator collaboration. Interviews and observations of broadcaster and teacher practice inform this analysis.

Practitioners designing for mobile learning (mLearning) and scholars exploring the same are faced with the challenge of planning for and understanding a variety of ways and places of learning. This study focuses on one crucial distinction concerning this; that of formal and informal learning. Through the analysis of contemporary research literature, we found that informal learning is represented as more enriching than formal learning. We also identified that some representations of informal learning, such as subconscious and tacit, actually gainsay the idea of designing the learning process. Based on these results we propose a number of implications to enhance pedagogical sustainability in mLearning design. We argue that in order to fuse informal and formal learning, mLearning designers need to offer more clear definitions of the concepts “formal” and “informal”; they need to omit some design aspects to the learners themselves, or to offer a design in form of a learning path that students themselves can customise according to their learning habits, routines, and preferences.

Practitioners designing for mobile learning (mLearning) and scholars exploring the same are faced with the challenge of planning for and understanding a variety of ways and places of learning. This study focuses on one crucial distinction concerning this; that of formal and informal learning. Through the analysis of contemporary research literature, we found that informal learning is represented as more enriching than formal learning. We also identified that many representations of informal learning actually gainsay the idea of designing the learning process. Based on these results we propose a number of implications to enhance pedagogical sustainability in mLearning design. We argue that in order to fuse informal and formal learning, designers need deep knowledge about different students’ learning environments, habits, preferences and everyday uses of technology. One way to achieve this is to have learners co-designing, another is to offer a design in form of a learning path that students themselves can customize according to their learning habits, routines and preferences.

Sexuality education in public schools in the US is a set of curricula geared toward sexual health, sexual identities, sexual acts, associated values, as well as intimacy and relationships (Naz, 2014). Taught under the curricular umbrella of family life education in the present study, it is governed by state and federal legislation and shaped by community values. It is also uniquely controversial both politically and personally (Drazenovich, 2015; Giroux, 2011). In this study, I developed research questions grounded in Sexual Configurations Theory (SCT): a contemporary, comprehensive theory of sexual identities and behaviors (van Anders, 2015). I also used the theory of legitimate peripheral participation, which is a well-established theory of social interaction that can explain how learning occurs within and around a community (Lave and Wenger, 1991). I analyzed the curriculum of two rural public school divisions in the southeastern US to identify salient categories of curricula relevant to the research questions. I also interviewed 29 school personnel and community partners involved in the curriculum development and guest lectures. I aimed to identify differences in their perceptions of the curriculum as well as how students may have learned about sexuality in out-of-class contexts (for example, the internet, pornography, peer-to-peer, in households, etc.) (Charmaraman, Lee, and Erkut, 2012; Tight, 2016). Results indicated that participants perceived adolescents engaging in informal learning about sexuality elsewhere. The participants reported trying to help adolescents bridge these gaps in instruction with community partnerships, guest lectures from health professionals, and referrals to resources inside and outside of the school. I conclude that curriculum, context, and community are overarching principles in teaching and developing sexuality education. The evidence gathered and interpretations presented provide a rich description that drives implications for sta

Sexuality education in public schools in the US is a set of curricula geared toward sexual health, sexual identities, sexual acts, associated values, as well as intimacy and relationships (Naz, 2014). Taught under the curricular umbrella of family life education in the present study, it is governed by state and federal legislation and shaped by community values. It is also uniquely controversial both politically and personally (Drazenovich, 2015; Giroux, 2011). In this study, I developed research questions grounded in Sexual Configurations Theory (SCT): a contemporary, comprehensive theory of sexual identities and behaviors (van Anders, 2015). I also used the theory of legitimate peripheral participation, which is a well-established theory of social interaction that can explain how learning occurs within and around a community (Lave and Wenger, 1991). I analyzed the curriculum of two rural public school divisions in the southeastern US to identify salient categories of curricula relevant to the research questions. I also interviewed 29 school personnel and community partners involved in the curriculum development and guest lectures. I aimed to identify differences in their perceptions of the curriculum as well as how students may have learned about sexuality in out-of-class contexts (for example, the internet, pornography, peer-to-peer, in households, etc.) (Charmaraman, Lee, and Erkut, 2012; Tight, 2016). Results indicated that participants perceived adolescents engaging in informal learning about sexuality elsewhere. The participants reported trying to help adolescents bridge these gaps in instruction with community partnerships, guest lectures from health professionals, and referrals to resources inside and outside of the school. I conclude that curriculum, context, and community are overarching principles in teaching and developing sexuality education. The evidence gathered and interpretations presented provide a rich description that drives implications for sta

This article is based on a socio-cultural discourse model of literacy, whereby literacy events are regarded as being situated within social practices, creating various formal, informal, and non-formal literacy events that are part of 10multiliteracies. The aim of the research was to analyze primary pupils ’ literacy practices (8–12 years) from the perspectives of 1,354 primary pupils, 1,020 family members, and 96 teachers in Costa Rica, using an ex-post facto design and a survey method. The findings indicate that the three groups of participants (pupils, family members, and teachers) have different views on 15and conceptualizations of literacy practices in school and in the community. The results show that young learners develop their literacy practices according to their different communicative needs inside and outside school. A multimodal literacy is promoted outside school to meet students’ daily communicative needs. However, the school promotes a monomodal lit20eracy, which allows pupils to respond essentially to school needs.

Practitioners designing for mobile learning (mLearning) and scholars exploring the same are faced with the challenge of planning for and understanding a variety of ways and places of learning. This study focuses on one crucial distinction concerning this; that of formal and informal learning. Through the analysis of contemporary research literature, we found that informal learning is represented as more enriching than formal learning. We also identified that some representations of informal learning, such as subconscious and tacit, actually gainsay the idea of designing the learning process. Based on these results we propose a number of implications to enhance pedagogical sustainability in mLearning design. We argue that in order to fuse informal and formal learning, mLearning designers need to offer more clear definitions of the concepts “formal” and “informal”; they need to omit some design aspects to the learners themselves, or to offer a design in form of a learning path that students themselves can customise according to their learning habits, routines, and preferences., QC 20181129

Teachers’ innovative work behavior and professional development is receiving more attention lately. More precisely, it is argued that teachers’ formal and informal learning is crucial to anticipate and deal with continuous changes and innovations in technology and didactics, for example. Therefore, this study researches the teachers’ innovative work behavior by studying relations between (in)formal learning activities, employability (i.e. five competences: occupational expertise, anticipation and optimization, personal flexibility, corporate sense and balance) and innovative working behavior (IWB, i.e. ideas generation, promotion and realization). Furthermore, the mediating role of employability between learning and innovative working behavior is studied, too. Based on path analysis conducted on questionnaire data from 301 primary and secondary school teachers from the French-speaking community of Belgium, findings conclude that employability competences are related to both formal and informal learning, but the relationship between informal learning and employability is stronger. Next, making a distinction between the frequency and use of social informal learning is relevant given the differentiated role the different components play. Feedback use in particular seems to play an important role in teachers’ employability and IWB. Finally, it can be concluded that employability partially mediates the relation between the undertaking of (in)formal learning activities and dimensions of innovative working behavior. Results imply that schools should pay more attention to supporting teachers’ informal learning since it’s crucial for improving their ability to innovate and to be able to deal with changes in the dynamic world of education.

This article is based on a socio-cultural discourse model of literacy, whereby literacy events are regarded as being situated within social practices, creating various formal, informal, and non-formal literacy events that are part of 10multiliteracies. The aim of the research was to analyze primary pupils ’ literacy practices (8–12 years) from the perspectives of 1,354 primary pupils, 1,020 family members, and 96 teachers in Costa Rica, using an ex-post facto design and a survey method. The findings indicate that the three groups of participants (pupils, family members, and teachers) have different views on 15and conceptualizations of literacy practices in school and in the community. The results show that young learners develop their literacy practices according to their different communicative needs inside and outside school. A multimodal literacy is promoted outside school to meet students’ daily communicative needs. However, the school promotes a monomodal lit20eracy, which allows pupils to respond essentially to school needs.

This article is based on a socio-cultural discourse model of literacy, whereby literacy events are regarded as being situated within social practices, creating various formal, informal, and non-formal literacy events that are part of 10multiliteracies. The aim of the research was to analyze primary pupils ’ literacy practices (8–12 years) from the perspectives of 1,354 primary pupils, 1,020 family members, and 96 teachers in Costa Rica, using an ex-post facto design and a survey method. The findings indicate that the three groups of participants (pupils, family members, and teachers) have different views on 15and conceptualizations of literacy practices in school and in the community. The results show that young learners develop their literacy practices according to their different communicative needs inside and outside school. A multimodal literacy is promoted outside school to meet students’ daily communicative needs. However, the school promotes a monomodal lit20eracy, which allows pupils to respond essentially to school needs.

This article is based on a socio-cultural discourse model of literacy, whereby literacy events are regarded as being situated within social practices, creating various formal, informal, and non-formal literacy events that are part of 10multiliteracies. The aim of the research was to analyze primary pupils ’ literacy practices (8–12 years) from the perspectives of 1,354 primary pupils, 1,020 family members, and 96 teachers in Costa Rica, using an ex-post facto design and a survey method. The findings indicate that the three groups of participants (pupils, family members, and teachers) have different views on 15and conceptualizations of literacy practices in school and in the community. The results show that young learners develop their literacy practices according to their different communicative needs inside and outside school. A multimodal literacy is promoted outside school to meet students’ daily communicative needs. However, the school promotes a monomodal lit20eracy, which allows pupils to respond essentially to school needs.

This article is based on a socio-cultural discourse model of literacy, whereby literacy events are regarded as being situated within social practices, creating various formal, informal, and non-formal literacy events that are part of 10multiliteracies. The aim of the research was to analyze primary pupils ’ literacy practices (8–12 years) from the perspectives of 1,354 primary pupils, 1,020 family members, and 96 teachers in Costa Rica, using an ex-post facto design and a survey method. The findings indicate that the three groups of participants (pupils, family members, and teachers) have different views on 15and conceptualizations of literacy practices in school and in the community. The results show that young learners develop their literacy practices according to their different communicative needs inside and outside school. A multimodal literacy is promoted outside school to meet students’ daily communicative needs. However, the school promotes a monomodal lit20eracy, which allows pupils to respond essentially to school needs.

This article is based on a socio-cultural discourse model of literacy, whereby literacy events are regarded as being situated within social practices, creating various formal, informal, and non-formal literacy events that are part of 10multiliteracies. The aim of the research was to analyze primary pupils ’ literacy practices (8–12 years) from the perspectives of 1,354 primary pupils, 1,020 family members, and 96 teachers in Costa Rica, using an ex-post facto design and a survey method. The findings indicate that the three groups of participants (pupils, family members, and teachers) have different views on 15and conceptualizations of literacy practices in school and in the community. The results show that young learners develop their literacy practices according to their different communicative needs inside and outside school. A multimodal literacy is promoted outside school to meet students’ daily communicative needs. However, the school promotes a monomodal lit20eracy, which allows pupils to respond essentially to school needs.

This article is based on a socio-cultural discourse model of literacy, whereby literacy events are regarded as being situated within social practices, creating various formal, informal, and non-formal literacy events that are part of 10multiliteracies. The aim of the research was to analyze primary pupils ’ literacy practices (8–12 years) from the perspectives of 1,354 primary pupils, 1,020 family members, and 96 teachers in Costa Rica, using an ex-post facto design and a survey method. The findings indicate that the three groups of participants (pupils, family members, and teachers) have different views on 15and conceptualizations of literacy practices in school and in the community. The results show that young learners develop their literacy practices according to their different communicative needs inside and outside school. A multimodal literacy is promoted outside school to meet students’ daily communicative needs. However, the school promotes a monomodal lit20eracy, which allows pupils to respond essentially to school needs.

How can we incorporate into our educational system the emerging technologies, new processes and new habits of society to improve public motivation, implication, and satisfaction in urban decision-making processes? New technology implementations in the teaching field largely extend to all types of levels and educational frameworks. However, these innovations require approval validation and evaluation by the final users. The premise is that the technology used in Virtual Reality (VR), is familiar to the Architecture students, which preview to work on specific parameters and outcome, and on the contrary, citizens with a profile not related to the field get more excited and perceive the technology as a more efficient tool. To prove this, we use a quantitative method to evaluate the satisfaction of citizens related and not related to the Architecture field. Using an interactive visualization process in a real environment, we obtained adequate feedback that allowed the optimization of this type of experiment in future iterations. The results show that the degree of satisfaction when using an advanced visualization technology was satisfactory with a differentiation between user’s profiles, Peer Reviewed, Preprint

In a university environment dominated by a traditional way of understanding knowledge, we argue that it is possible and necessary to foster capabilities among engineering students. Capabilities are understood as reasoned and substantive freedoms to lead the kind of life that people value, within a framework of respect for the core values of human development. In this sense, enhancing capabilities means fostering pro-public-good professionalism. With insight from an interview study conducted at the Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia, in Spain, we will argue how formal and informal spaces have the potential to foster capabilities such as participation, commitment, empathy, intercultural respect, critical thinking and self-reflexivity. These kinds of learning could be understood as a mixture of procedural know how and personal know how (Muller, Higher Education 70(3):409–416, 2015); as we will discuss in the last part of this paper, this kind of knowledge is difficult to assimilate within the framework of the terminology of skills and competences. Some recommendations for a capability-oriented curriculum are presented in the final section.

In a university environment dominated by a traditional way of understanding knowledge, we argue that it is possible and necessary to foster capabilities among engineering students. Capabilities are understood as reasoned and substantive freedoms to lead the kind of life that people value, within a framework of respect for the core values of human development. In this sense, enhancing capabilities means fostering pro-public-good professionalism. With insight from an interview study conducted at the Universitat Polit,cnica de Val,ncia, in Spain, we will argue how formal and informal spaces have the potential to foster capabilities such as participation, commitment, empathy, intercultural respect, critical thinking and self-reflexivity. These kinds of learning could be understood as a mixture of procedural know how and personal know how (Muller, Higher Education 70(3):409-416, 2015); as we will discuss in the last part of this paper, this kind of knowledge is difficult to assimilate within the framework of the terminology of skills and competences. Some recommendations for a capability-oriented curriculum are presented in the final section.

Preservice teachers' professional vision is an important indicator of their initial acquisition of integrated knowledge structures within university-based teacher education. To date, empirical research investigating which factors contribute to explaining preservice teachers' professional vision is scarce. This study aims to determine which factors are related to preservice teachers' incipient professional vision and may constitute necessary conditions for development processes. The participants were 55 preservice teachers who completed a questionnaire investigating their individual characteristics and opportunities used for learning and a video-based tool assessing their professional vision regarding generic pedagogical knowledge of teaching and learning. We conducted multiple regression analyses to identify relevant factors. The results showed that the number of attended courses on teaching and learning and the level of interest in the content are closely related to higher levels of professional vision. No relation was found with practical experience. It is concluded that professional vision is related to conditions of content-specific knowledge acquisition, as provided in formal teacher education programs.

Preservice teachers' professional vision is an important indicator of their initial acquisition of integrated knowledge structures within university-based teacher education. To date, empirical research investigating which factors contribute to explaining preservice teachers' professional vision is scarce. This study aims to determine which factors are related to preservice teachers' incipient professional vision and may constitute necessary conditions for development processes. The participants were 55 preservice teachers who completed a questionnaire investigating their individual characteristics and opportunities used for learning and a video-based tool assessing their professional vision regarding generic pedagogical knowledge of teaching and learning. We conducted multiple regression analyses to identify relevant factors. The results showed that the number of attended courses on teaching and learning and the level of interest in the content are closely related to higher levels of professional vision. No relation was found with practical experience. It is concluded that professional vision is related to conditions of content-specific knowledge acquisition, as provided in formal teacher education programs.

The main focus of this study was the inclusion of informal methods in the educational frameworks of architectural and urban design. The project used is based on the 3D representation of virtual models of new urban proposals in order to re-organize a local market in Tonalá, Mexico. Starting from a formal course, where the students had to develop solutions to real architecture and urban problems, a second phase was designed, based on feedback in an informal environment by the end-users (citizens and professionals). The key objectives of the experiment were to show students to connect and receive feedback through technology, evaluate how these interactions can define new informal ways of learning, and discuss how this informal data can be incorporated into an academic curriculum. The results confirm how the informal interaction constitutes a great contribution in the improvement of student’s skills, even considering that the incorporation of informal data into their evaluation still remains challenging., Postprint (author's final draft)

The aim of this study is to find out the pupils’ thoughts and experiences about speakingEnglish for second language acquisition in upper secondary school. We want to establish thatoral communication is an important factor towards fulfilling the criteria to strive for indeveloping the pupils’ knowledge and skills in language learning according to the Curriculumfor Compulsory School System (Skolverket, 2006) and the Syllabus for the English Subject(Skolverket, 2001).The background presents theoretical approaches in second language acquisition, such asVygostskij’s, Piaget’s and Krashen’s theories of language acquisition. Communicativecompetence, affective factors, strategies and speech-codes used in the learning process havealso been briefly described in this study.The methods used for collecting data were observations and interviews, with a qualitativesurvey and hermeneutic approach in focus. The research took place in three different schoolsin a municipality in southwest of Sweden. For the observations, there were 71 pupilsparticipating in this study and 37 pupils wanted to collaborate for the interviews. No teacheror school workers were involved or participated in the observations or interviews. We wantedto keep the pupils’ point of view about how they use verbal language skills in English to gainknowledge about the target language., Uppsatsnivå: C

The aim of this study is to find out the pupils’ thoughts and experiences about speakingEnglish for second language acquisition in upper secondary school. We want to establish thatoral communication is an important factor towards fulfilling the criteria to strive for indeveloping the pupils’ knowledge and skills in language learning according to the Curriculumfor Compulsory School System (Skolverket, 2006) and the Syllabus for the English Subject(Skolverket, 2001).The background presents theoretical approaches in second language acquisition, such asVygostskij’s, Piaget’s and Krashen’s theories of language acquisition. Communicativecompetence, affective factors, strategies and speech-codes used in the learning process havealso been briefly described in this study.The methods used for collecting data were observations and interviews, with a qualitativesurvey and hermeneutic approach in focus. The research took place in three different schoolsin a municipality in southwest of Sweden. For the observations, there were 71 pupilsparticipating in this study and 37 pupils wanted to collaborate for the interviews. No teacheror school workers were involved or participated in the observations or interviews. We wantedto keep the pupils’ point of view about how they use verbal language skills in English to gainknowledge about the target language., Uppsatsnivå: C

The success of many organisations depends on their capacity to learn and because of this learning professionals in the fields of education and training are often engaged to build workforce capacity. The success of this scenario depends on the expertise of these learning professionals, but how is their capacity built? Formal learning is typically standardised, centrally controlled and vertically integrated approaches to the transmission of knowledge through organised curriculum modules that can lead to a qualification. Informal learning is more horizontally integrated, dynamic and occurs when peoplemake a conscious effort to learn from their experiences and engage in individual or group reflection (Burns, 2002; Foley, 2004). In the past formal and informal learning were considered separately but an infusion of formal and informal learning may be a more appropriate approach in this new economy. This paper, based on results from an interpretive study investigating professional development in large Australian organisations in 2007, explores the professional development experiences of staff employed in training and educational organisations. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires, using mixedmethods, were conducted with staff from all levels of these organisations to investigate the relationship between adult learners’ professional development and organisations’ change agenda. Results indicated that in some situations there was considerable blurring of boundaries between informal and formal learning experiences. The conclusion is made that a balkanised approach to professional development is insufficient to build the capacity of learning professionals in the 21st Century and a more dynamic approach that moves flexibly between formal and informal learning approaches is recommended.