Informal Contexts Research Articles

Experimentation and Research in the Physics Course for the Preparation of Primary School Teachers in Naples

Physics preparation for primary school teachers has received attention only in recent decades. Research on science education provides useful guidelines, often disregarded. Several interrelated research questions must be addressed by field research, namely, (a) which physics subjects to teach in primary school and its relationships with other sciences, technology, and mathematics; (b) how to prepare teachers to grasp the complexity of their tasks; and (c) how to bridge pre-service and in-service training. In this study, we describe innovative aspects of a course, based on the research and action research of our research group, that aims to overcome the limitations of a purely academic approach. Future teachers are dynamically involved in activities in informal and formal contexts and in the training of in-service teachers’ activities. The idea of cognitive resonance and a phenomenological approach to the modeling process are the basis of the activities that integrate key concepts of physics with transversal ones to develop skills in physics, mathematics, technology, and language. Field research carried out with qualitative methods shows that the course, despite being demanding, is well received by students. Dozens of students are then involved in the activities of the group when they start a teaching career at school.

Exploration of university students’ lived experiences of using smartphones for English language learning

This study aimed to understand the nature of learning English in the digital age from students’ personal ‘learning lives’. Drawing on hermeneutic phenomenology’s principles, this study conducted conversational interviews and obtained reflective reports from students over 5 months. The findings reveal that students’ English learning experiences are sociocultural processes involving a complex interplay between learner agency, other agents, the cultural practices using smartphones, and the wider context. Furthermore, learning English using smartphones facilitates an approach to it or Computer Assisted Language Learning that embraces ‘anytime’ and ‘anywhere’ learning and involves a seamless integration of personal, social, formal, and informal learnings. Therefore, we propose smartphone-assisted English language learning (SAELL), addressing smartphone use for learning English, based on qualitative data and recent trends in the field. Future research should include rich qualitative evidence to support the SAELL framework in practice in multiple empirical settings. Empirical studies are mostly applied within university settings; however, the practical implications have more relevance to students, teachers, educators, and policymakers who may be involved in shaping novel smartphone learning spaces for formal and informal contexts.

Dyscalculia in Early Adulthood: Implications for Numerical Activities of Daily Living.

Numerical abilities are fundamental in our society. As a consequence, poor numerical skills might have a great impact on daily living. This study analyzes the extent to which the numerical deficit observed in young adults with Developmental Dyscalculia (DD) impacts their activities of everyday life. For this purpose, 26 adults with DD and 26 healthy controls completed the NADL, a standardized battery that assesses numerical skills in both formal and informal contexts. The results showed that adults with DD had poorer arithmetical skills in both formal and informal settings. In particular, adults with DD presented difficulties in time and measure estimation as well as money usage in real-world numerical tasks. In contrast, everyday tasks regarding distance estimation were preserved. In addition, the assessment revealed that adults with DD were aware of their numerical difficulties, which were often related to emotional problems and negatively impacted their academic and occupational decisions. Our study highlights the need to design innovative interventions and age-appropriate training for adults with DD to support their numerical skills as well as their social and emotional well-being.

An Observational Investigation of How Exhibit Environment and Design Intersect to Influence Parent–Child Engagement

This naturalistic, observational study examined how specific design elements in two play-centered science center exhibits influence child and parent engagement. We observed the level of engagement, pretend play, and sharing among 57 3- to 9-year-olds (M = 5.67 years) and their parents at either an indoor, technology-based exhibit or an outdoor, nature-based exhibit. Overall, exhibit elements that were interactive or allowed for free play engaged children the most and fostered the most pretend play and sharing, regardless of indoor or outdoor environment. Directed play elements were associated with increased levels of parent involvement with their children at the exhibit, particularly outdoors. These novel results demonstrate how exhibit-level factors influence parent and children’s engagement in informal contexts. Implications for children’s autonomy in guiding their own informal learning experiences and recommendations for museum exhibit space design are discussed.

Music Learning as Life in an African American Family: The Story of Charlie Gabriel in New Orleans

The focus of this study is the early music education of Charlie Gabriel who learned to play jazz as a child in New Orleans and went on to enjoy a successful, international performance career. The work is based on an oral history account where the primary data collection process was interview. The key issues that emerged from the oral history are (1) the ubiquitous presence of music in Mr. Gabriel’s life experience and the musical enculturation this presence enabled, (2) the life-sustaining role of music in the lives of family members, which gave rise to a drive to participate actively in music and a pervasive striving for musical excellence, and (3) ever-present mentorship and apprenticeship in Mr. Gabriel’s home and in the musical community. These issues are discussed in the context of related literature on the roles played by musical families; the musical community; music for income/supporting survival, including federal support during the Great Depression; striving for musical excellence in both informal and formal learning contexts; and African roots of early jazz pedagogy

Konjunktiv II-Variation im urbanen Sprachgebrauch in Österreich

The city as a social structure has a distinct relationship with its inhabitants. It creates a socio-pragmatic environment that produces communicative characteristics in the form of usage patterns that go hand in hand with conventionalised practices (cf. Gal 1987) and are dependent on everyday-life contextual aspects.
 Accordingly, research of urban varieties is ideally based on language data that is as authentic as possible and includes socio-demographic and diatopic aspects. Following this idea, the study presented examines the subjunctive II in urban Austria by analysing free conversations in formal and informal contexts (interviews and conversations among friends), and correlating the results with spatial and social parameters. The data used was collected in Vienna and Graz, the two largest cities in Austria, as well as in their respective surrounding areas and was grouped by gender, age and place of residence.
 The subjunctive II is realised in synthetic as well as periphrastic forms (cf. Merkle 1993: 69–73.; Donhauser 1992; Glauninger 2008). In rural Austria speakers use the entire range of variants (cf. Ziegler/Glantschnig 2013; Breuer/Wittibschlager 2020), while urban speakers exhibit a much narrower range, as we show in our analysis. Striking features in the use of variants can be seen above all in the form of contrasting modes of construction, i. e. synthetic vs. periphrastic realisation. The study reveals that there are hardly any differences between the two urban centres and only minor differences between a city and its surrounding area. However, the inclusion of social parameters provides a more differentiated picture: Here, higher relative frequencies of synthetic forms are found among male and older speakers compared to female and younger speakers. Thus, a preference for more conservative forms among the former contrasts with a preference for more modern (analytical) variants among the latter.

Sport Knowledge: The Effects of Division I Coach Communication on Student-Athlete Learning Indicators

Sporting environments are informal contexts of learning that are dependent upon coaches’ use of effective instructional communication strategies. Coaches’ use of power while communicating instruction to athletes is especially germane, as coaches must appropriately use relational influence to inspire optimal athletic performance. Using French and Raven’s power bases (i.e., expert, referent, reward, legitimate, and coercive power), this study considers Division I student-athletes’ reports of affective learning for their sport and coaches, cognitive learning, state motivation, and team winning percentages as a function of their coaches’ use of power. Data collected from 170 student-athletes participating in team sports at Power 5 institutions revealed two significant canonical correlation roots. The first demonstrated that the increased use of prosocial power and avoidance of antisocial power were associated with greater amounts of affective learning for coaches, cognitive learning, and state motivation. The second revealed that expert power was associated with increases in cognitive learning and winning. This research has heuristic implications for expanding the assessment of athlete experience, as well as practical implications regarding the identification of effective modes of relational influence in coaching.

How Communion and Agentic Beliefs Predict Technology-Supported Formal and Informal Learning

Recent pandemic circumstances facilitated a rapid shift to online learning. The home and school environments are now intertwined, so the connection of formal and informal environments is inevitable. The studies of online learning resources (OLR) use before the pandemic shed light on studies of pandemic school-home learning nexus. This paper examines the higher edu-cation situation before the pandemic. We discuss students’ use (N = 1323) of technology in learning in light of the role of educational technology, taking a socio-cultural perspective of learning in the broader context of formal and informal socio-cultural contexts and practices of interaction with humans and tools. An analysis of OLR identified three factors. The first two factors involved overlapping formal and informal learning, while the third was clearer collaboration and interaction for formal learning. The three factors were analysed using hierarchical regression to assess predictors for technolo-gy use, focussing on three factors. (1) Beliefs about learning with technolo-gy, examined within the two-dimensional structure of agency and commun-ion. (2) Self-regulated learning, which is critical for informal learning and al-so received significant attention in formal learning. Since it is claimed that teachers are not ready for integrating informal learning, we examined (3) teachers as role models as predictors of ICT use in learning. Finally, (4) since obstacles were among the primary critical factors in previous related studies, we examined whether they still have predictive power. The findings indicate that communion and agentic beliefs are the strongest predictors.

Doran H. Ross

Doran H. Ross

Learning in digital play: a dual case study of video gamers\u2019 independent play

This paper explores the implications of youths’ out-of-school gaming practices for teaching and learning in formal and informal learning contexts. We report on a study where we examined the video game play of two youths using a case study approach. User experience approaches, e.g. the think-aloud protocol and interviews, were grounded in the theoretical framework of social semiotics to analyse the gameplay videos and to discuss the implications for the youths’ learning. The paper contends that youths are demonstrating critical thinking, empathy, and multimodal literacy through their gameplay. We offer suggestions for how adults can use video games for youths’ learning.

Educational participation of young refugees in the context of digitized settings

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the educational participation of young refugees in the context of digitalized settings. Education policies often consider digital media beneficial for the educational participation of disadvantaged groups, or vulnerable groups facing many challenges in education and society, such as young people with a forced migration background. Moreover, digital media are highly relevant in the everyday lives of young refugees. Our 3-5-year (02/2019-07/2022) research project focuses on the trans-organizational orientation occurring in different everyday media-permeated life contexts of young refugees, which includes the formal educational setting of school, the non-formal setting of child and youth welfare, and informal contexts in the everyday life of young refugees. Through combining grounded theory, ethnography, and neo-praxeological methodologies, organizational cross-connections and cross-relations were revealed in practices and arrangements, involving digital artifacts as well as human actors. This article presents methodological insights into distributed educational practices concerning understanding information, acquiring knowledge, and developing agency in which digital media are implicated. Emerging dimensions of educational inequalities within digitalized educational contexts, which became apparent during lockdown periods in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, are discussed.

Spoken Grammar: Meaning, Principles and Characteristics

Abstract
 The terms Spoken Grammar was coined by the two corpus grammarians, Ronald Carter and Mike McCarthy. In the 19th century, it came under the impact of a number of local dialects represented by the cockney dialect in London, and the Lothian dialect in Edinburgh. The discussions, debates and studies on Spoken grammar have led to the specification of three main viewpoints concerning the existence of this types of grammar. The viewpoints entail that (1) grammatical rules do not govern spoken language, which is disorderly and disordered; (2) Speaking English lacks a distinct grammar. It has the same syntax as written English grammar; and (3) spoken language is regulated by a separate grammar with its own set of rules and conventions; i.e. it has its own grammar represented by its own set of rules, regulations, and classifications compared to those of the written language. T validate or refute the implications of the preceding viewpoints, relevant literature concludes that spoken grammar is quite prevalent in everyday conversational spoken English. It is characterized by being more flexible and less strict compared to written grammar. This is so because the informal context of using spoken grammar makes it have a syntax that varies from the traditional written grammar in a number of aspects. This purely theoretical research aims at shedding light on the definition, meaning, principles and the main characteristics of spoken grammar. The emphasis on the distinctive features of spoken grammar has triggered the researchers to focus on a further point of discussion, namely the differences between spoken and written grammar. To substantiate such differences, examples from closely relevant grammatical literature have also been provided. The research ends with some concluding points drawn upon from the preceding discussed and presented points.

Makers Do Math! Legitimizing Informal Mathematical Practices Within Making Contexts

In this paper, we argue that making activities within non-formal learning environments (e.g., museums, libraries) provide opportunities to engage youth in what we define as mathematical practices for making, everyday mathematical practices within the context of making activities. The mathematical practices identified from two non-formal school-based contexts highlighted three mathematical practices for making: informal measurement, spatial reasoning, and curiosity. These practices are identified in prior scholarship as being beneficial and foundational for the understanding of mathematical concepts. As educators and researchers turn to non-formal and informal contexts, with an eye toward understanding ways youth engage in the activity of making, descriptions of mathematical practices for making build upon prior everyday mathematical practices and open up a new landscape of inquiry.

Fixing the Crooked Heart: How Aesthetic Practices Support Sense Making in Mathematical Play

We build on mathematicians’ descriptions of their work and conceptualize mathematics as an aesthetic endeavor. Invoking the anthropological meaning of practice, we claim that mathematical aesthetic practices shape meanings of and appreciation (or distaste) for particular manifestations of mathematics. To see learners’ spontaneous mathematical aesthetic practices, we situate our study in an informal context featuring design-centered play with mathematical objects. Drawing from video data that support inferences about children’s perspectives, we use interaction analysis to examine one child’s mathematical aesthetic practices, highlighting the emergence of aesthetic problems whose resolution required engagement in mathematics sense making. As mathematics educators seek to broaden access, our empirical findings challenge commonsense understandings about what and where mathematics is, opening possibilities for designs for learning.

Self-directed Use of Digital Devices for Out-of-class English Learning

Twenty-first-century teaching and learning provide online resources accessible to foster learning experience across time and spaces in an informal context. Hence, enhancing learners’ voluntary adoption of digital devices is crucial to augment the promising assistance of technology for English language learning. This study sheds some light on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learners’ voluntary digital devices for out-of-class language learning. A total of 267 Indonesian ESP learners participated in this study through a survey and semi-structured interview to examine how they were involved in informal digital learning of English beyond the classroom. The results showed that the learners used digital devices for both intentional learning to strengthen coursework and incidental learning to expand access to the target language. It was also found that the learners frequently employed digital devices for personalized aspects of the language rather than authenticity and connectivity. As for the digital device selection, the learners mostly preferred mobile phones to computers and tablets to carry out out-of-class English language activities. These results provide fruitful insights for educators on supporting ESP learners to engage in informal digital learning of English and achieve possible synchronicity between teachers' designed digital activities and learners' actual learning practices.

An investigation of museum educators' questioning during field trips

Questioning as one of the most important pedagogical tools has been extensively attended to in formal teaching environments, but few studies have shed light on questioning in more informal contexts such as museums. This study sought to understand how museum educators' questioning may open up spaces for students to engage and participate in instructional discourses. To this end, we analyzed the questions museum educators asked during field trips to an industrial history museum, noting their number, type, and the extent to which they may invite student participation. The findings showed that the museum educators employed a majority of closed questions, which mainly allowed for one-word answers from a small number of students, and used few open questions to provide opportunities for extended participation by a larger number of students. The findings have implications for museum curriculum design and museum educator training, in which the ramifications of question asking should be taken into account.

Learners’ Willingness to Communicate in a Foreign Language: The Role of Informal Digital Learning of English

The trend of online teaching and learning in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic has driven contemporary students to learn English in an informal context outside the classroom. Drawing on this issue, the present study is at the cutting edge of examining the role of Informal Digital Learning of English (IDLE) in affecting students’ willingness to communicate in a foreign language. A total of 156 (male=63; female=93) Indonesian EFL students participated in survey research upon invitation. The data are obtained by means of an online questionnaire consisting of three parts: (1) willingness to communicate, (2) IDLE, and (3) demographic data. The hierarchical regression analysis results reveal that Frequency of IDLE, Receptive IDLE activity, and Productive IDLE activity are the positive predictors of EFL learners’ willingness to communicate in English as a foreign language. The results indicate that the Indonesian EFL learners are motivated to communicate in English when engaging in a range of IDLE activities. In other words, it is implied that IDLE activities (both productive and receptive) potentially build the communication behavior of Indonesian EFL learners, who learn English as a foreign language and possess a culturally homogeneous society.

Parental caringscapes – the analyses of mothering practices in local community contexts

During the last two decades of Family Sociology there is a growing interest toward understanding the complex phenomenon of parental experience. According to the changing perspective of the field, parental experience is embracing three different but interrelated aspects: the parenthood as a social institution, practices and agency of parenting and the intimate relationship between a particular child and her/his parent. This approach reflects to the changing social interpretations of parenthood and the growing emphasize on the “good parenting” in lay and professional discourses, and diversification of institutional and informal contexts of parental care. As a part of this process the status that parents occupy in different social fields shows diversity as well, and sometimes parents experience distance between the value of their parental status in varying contexts. Becoming a new mother can lead to central position in the family, while on the societal level it may goes together with a kind of isolation and the feeling of periphery. This gap has an effect on evaluation of parental competencies, autonomy and parental interpretations of care. In our study implementing a human geographic approach we suggest that parental care and the relating experiences cannot be separated from the wider and narrower space, place and time where the actual caring work is occurring.

MeLOD

In the last few years, many applications for mobile devices have been developed to support learning experiences both in formal and informal contexts. One of the main limits of these applications concerns the development of learning materials suitable for mobile learning contexts. In fact, learning content must be usually prepared in advance by teachers and maintained during the whole lifespan of the application. In this paper, we present MeLOD, a mobile learning environment, which exploits the huge amount of dataset in the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud to overcome the previous issue, and provides contextualized and continuously updated information based on students’ location. The position of the student sent by the mobile device is used to interlink Geonames DBpedia and Europeana datasets to provide information about all the interesting cultural heritage sites close to the student. Moreover, students social activities like voting and commenting are used to enhance the knowledge base of the environment and to provide recommendations for next students’ visits.

APRENDIZAGENS DA/NA CULTURA LÚDICA: POSSIBILIDADES E POTENCIALIDADES DO JOGO NOS CONTEXTOS INFORMAIS

This theoretical essay aimed to reflect on elements that affect the co-construction of the ludic culture in informal contexts and engender possibilities and potentialities of play in these learning situations. To do so, we discuss the learning of/in the ludic culture, based on the theory of situated learning, which establishes that the very participation in daily life configures learning, as it gives rise to encounters and activities that potentiate changes in the knowledge of individuals. We reflected on the possibility of informal contexts becoming play environments, as they allow children freedom to express themselves, decide, venture and relate based on their own desires and interests. However, to engender learning it is also fundamental that there is semiotic mediation, from the relations established in and through solitary games, games among peers, and games with adults. Finally, we emphasize the need to ensure spaces, times, and relationships for children to experience the possibilities of games and to engender potentialities in this process of co-construction of the ludic culture.