Informal Learning Settings Research Articles

EXPRESS: The Pedagogy of Hospitableness: A transformative approach for hospitality workforce development

The ability to deliver hospitable service is essential for hospitality professionals in tailoring authentic and emotionally resonant guest experiences. However, limited attention has been given to how such a Hospitable Service Mindset (HSM) can be developed in the current and future hospitality workforce. Grounded in Transformative Learning Theory (TLT) and through qualitative interviews with hospitality trainers and educators, this study proposes the "pedagogy of hospitableness," a framework encompassing conditions and practices that trigger, support, amplify, and accelerate the development of an HSM across formal and informal learning settings. The findings contribute to the expansion and advancement of TLT through the integration of social and emotional dimensions and the emphasis on connectedness as a crucial element in transformative learning. The study also demonstrates the applicability of TLT in hospitality workforce development settings, providing insights for industry trainers and educators on effectively nurturing hospitableness.

Learning and Distributed Expertise in Community‐Based Science

ABSTRACTIn the face of growing social‐ecological challenges, multiple forms of expertise must be brought to bear in environmental problem‐solving. As such, community‐based science has been touted as a potential way to “democratize” scientific knowledge production, allowing for multiple sources of expertise to be harnessed and for learning across stakeholders to occur in new ways. The extent to which this occurs, however, is mediated by a variety of factors. Focusing on the context of a dam removal and river restoration initiative in the Western United States, we leverage community science literacy as a conceptual lens to critically interrogate if and how multiple forms of expertise are taken up through community‐based science toward the goal of watershed revitalization. Based on an analysis of empirical evidence collected from interviews, ethnographic observations, and project artifacts, we found that local residents in the watershed demonstrated robust forms of situated local knowledge that they often leveraged toward the work of science. This occurred through processes of coordination work, which were mediated by opportunities for individuals to shift between roles, the contributions of brokers and boundary spanners, and issues of power, status, and rank. While individuals demonstrated and shared their nuanced local knowledge, dominant science still structured if, when, and how this was taken up in the project. Ultimately, we suggest that leveling hierarchies in community‐based science—and affording broader publics greater epistemic agency in shaping the work of science—is key to fostering social‐ecological transformation through science learning in informal settings.

Building capacity for inclusive informal STEM learning opportunities for autistic learners

BackgroundResearch is needed to better understand the specific challenges for autistic learners in informal STEM learning settings. This study aimed to increase inclusion in STEM museums, with a larger goal of increasing the impact (i.e., learning and application of knowledge during and after visits) of informal STEM learning settings for autistic youth. We conducted an online parent attitudes survey with 93 parents of autistic adolescents and 53 parents of adolescents in the general population to better understand the experiences of autistic adolescents when visiting STEM-related museums. Parent responses informed professional development training for museum staff at four partner museums, which taught strategies to better support autistic learners. Then, autistic adolescents (n = 20) and their parents were randomly assigned to visit one partner and one control museum. They were asked to report their experiences through an online survey and semi-structured interviews.ResultsParticipants who completed the parent attitudes survey indicated significantly lower inclusion, engagement, and general impact of STEM museum visits among autistic adolescents compared to the general population comparison group. Parents of adolescents who visited partner and control museums reported higher STEM impact during visits to partner museums; however, parent-reported inclusion, engagement, and general impact did not differ significantly between partner and control museums. Qualitative analysis identified four themes (Spectrum of Museum Impact; Adolescent-Environment Fit; Barriers to Engagement, and Barrier Breakers), providing context for quantitative findings.ConclusionsFindings underscore the need for increased inclusion for autistic individuals in informal STEM learning environments like museums. This project demonstrated feasibility of professional development training of forward-facing staff and identified several themes that should inform future efforts to improve inclusion in informal STEM learning settings.

GELO and GreX: A framework and dashboard to investigate technology competency and culture

Participation in 4th Industrial Revolution society is increasingly dependent upon competencies related to the use of digital technologies for a wide variety of purposes. A person’s competence in the use of digital technologies has implications for a wide variety of contexts and situations, including learning in physical as well as virtual spaces, career choices and employability, digital citizenship, cultural orientations and values, and even democracy (Erstad, 2010). This workshop will provide an overview of the Global Educational Learning Observatory (GELO) project and invite participants to experience a variety of self-assessment tools accessed through the customizable dashboard, the Global Readiness Explorer (GREx). The GELO project attempts to provide a framework for an international network of institutions utilizing data-driven evidence to inform evolving best practices for online and mobile learning. To achieve this, the project (i) assembles a nucleus of formal educational institutions, (ii) constructs the necessary tools to extend research on formal learning models, and (iii) reaches into the workplace as well as other more public spaces to integrate with informal learning settings. The primary source of data derives from a customizable dashboard, the Global Readiness Explorer (GREx), and the tools that can be implemented within it. These tools are designed to give individuals, organizations, and institutions the means to construct complex profiles that can be used to identify gaps in competency attainment and development. Through small group activities, participants will examine and discuss the various tool suites in the GREx including the digital learning competency profiler (DCP); the fully online learning community survey instrument (FOLCS); the Personal Cultural Orientation Scale (PCOS) and others. In this workshop, participants will choose a self-assessment instrument to participate in and then discuss their experience with a focus on improving the GREx tool suite for global use. In addition, participants will examine the GREx for use with their students as a component of determining readiness for moving into fully online learning environments. The workshop will conclude with an explanation of the global educational learning observatory (GELO), and participants will be invited to join this global research network.

The Dutch Black Hole Consortium

The Dutch Black Hole Consortium is funding an educational project to bring scientific results into both classrooms and informal learning settings. For primary level, lessons are being created using innovative techniques and research to stimulate scientific thinking through hands-on and minds-on learning. The lessons build on the existing project Minds-On. At secondary level, the focus lies with teacher education; trainee physics teachers will be able to experience real scientific research to inspire and improve their classroom practices. The consortium is also developing a large citizen science project and science museum exhibits.

A Bibliometric Analysis on Trends and Patterns in Self-Regulated Language Learning in Mobile-Assisted Learning Environments

This study analysed 498 articles published between 2005 and 2023 on Self-regulated Language Learning (SRLL) indexed in the core collection of the Web of Science database, using a bibliometric methodology based on scientific mapping, co-occurrence and burstness analysis. Results show China is the most influential contributor to SRLL research, with the largest number of total publications and citations. According to the keyword co-occurrence and burstness analysis, mobile-learning, higher education, learning context, learner strategies stand out in this field. It is also shown that listening as a significant linguistic skill is less explored in the SRLL field. It is proven that learners' language skills could be improved through mobile-assisted collaborative learning in informal settings. By identifying the developmental patterns in SRLL research, this paper can guide future researchers to explore in-depth the significant issues in this field and bring insight for further SRLL studies in terms of themes, pedagogy and methodologies.

Room corners and how they influence the memory of visual information arranged on walls

In formal and informal learning settings corresponding information units are often arranged in the space around the viewer. For example, teachers pin task relevant information on classroom walls, or museum curators arrange exhibits in museum halls. Often learners and visitors are expected to see meaningful relationships between these information units. Theoretically, Gestalt Psychology has been examining the effects of connecting and separating elements in visual information displays, leading to the question of whether these findings also hold in three-dimensional environments. Does the mostly rectangular form of our rooms also either highlight or downplay relations between information dispersed across a room? Three experiments using virtual rooms showed that the matching pairs of pictures were memorized better if both pictures were arranged on the same wall instead of across two adjacent walls: that is, the presence of a room corner between matching pairs decreased memory (Experiments 1–3). Additionally, the findings showed that the participants’ orientation of their central field of view during learning influenced the effect of corners on memory. When initially looking around in rooms, participants most often oriented the center of their field of view toward the middle of a wall (Experiments 1 and 2); however, if they were restricted to orienting their field of view toward corners, the corner effect on memory vanished (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that room characteristics influence the exploratory behavior of viewers, thereby also affecting their memories of the presented information.

Minecrafters

In response to significant global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, educational environments are undergoing a fundamental transformation towards collaborative online spaces and networked learning. Networked learning includes (a) the process of learning with and through other people and resources and (b) the environment (i.e., the internet) and platforms (i.e., YouTube, websites, social media, discussion forums) that support these connections or networks (Hodgson & McConnell, 2019). This shift in how learning is done necessitates a reevaluation of pedagogical methods to foster the development of students' global skills and competencies. These competencies, as defined by the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (CMEC), are recognized as essential for individuals to not only adapt but thrive in our current and future world. This world is characterized by unprecedented simultaneous challenges, often referred to as a 'polycrisis,' and rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (A.I.) that have the potential to reshape every aspect of human existence. Therefore, it is imperative that we delve into a deeper investigation and understanding of innovative pedagogical approaches to ensure students are adequately prepared for the evolving landscape. Collaboration is arguably one of the most important of the global skills and competencies as it underpins many of the essential skills youth need to thrive in educational and non-educational settings. More specifically, collaboration underpins the type of networked learning rising in popularity in formal and informal learning settings (Bülow & Nørgård, 2021). As a result, this exploratory research focuses on Minecraft: Education Edition (M:EE) as a tool for developing collaboration through critical making and team-based learning. Over a five-day spring-break camp, two cohorts of students (grades four to six and grades seven to eight) participated in open-ended design-based learning challenges online (in the virtual meeting platform, Google Meet, and in the virtual world, M:EE). Data analysis revealed that collaboration manifested itself in three primary modes: co-constructing knowledge, peer-teaching, and conflict management. Analysis further revealed that younger versus older students build and collaborate in the online environment very differently, which at times mirrored the 'real world' classroom. These findings have implications for designing age-appropriate online learning experiences to support collaboration in a networked environment, especially within virtual simulation and creation worlds like Minecraft.

A bibliometric exploration of infographics as tools for visual literacy in education

The purpose of this paper is to examine how infographics are used in the dynamics of designing or creating in the teaching and learning process. Utilising a bibliometric approach and content analysis, we examined a sample of 760 documents from the Web of Science and Scopus databases with no lower time limit until November 2023. The analyses aimed to identify trends, including main topics, authors, sources, most cited articles, institutional affiliations, and countries in the literature. This bibliometric approach allows for the observation of trends in the educational application of promoting visual literacy through students’ design or creation of infographics in formal and informal learning settings. Initial publications emerged in 2007, gaining momentum from 2014 to the present. The most prolific fields were medical science, chemistry, and computer science. This investigation shows that educational institutions could employ infographics beyond present boundaries to prepare students—particularly Generation Alpha, digital natives—for a data-driven society. Institutions should expand their use of infographics to improve visual literacy and address the changing educational requirements of students in a dynamic learning environment. Overall, this paper provides insights into the readiness of educators and institutions to engage Generation Alpha, the digital natives, through visual literacy and infographics.

Flipping Childbirth Education.

Since many childbirth education (CBE) courses have moved online, there is a need for a pedagogical design model for online learning. In this study, an online CBE course was flipped, user studies were conducted, and a pedagogical design model was developed. Flipped learning was chosen as it combines asynchronous and synchronous learning activities. The developed model was further strengthened by conducting a pilot study with public health nurses. User data were collected with questionnaires and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. The results show that in informal learning settings, emphasis should be on which elements are asynchronous or synchronous and mandatory or voluntary. Additionally, time management and interaction between participants and their peers and the instructor should be considered for future training.

AI and AI-powered tools for pronunciation training

Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking over many spheres of human life, including language pedagogy. While some areas need to find their ground with AI and resolve ethical issues arising from its use, other spheres of education, such as pronunciation, may benefit from the system’s ability to communicate with learners and provide them with implicit feedback while carrying out different communication tasks. This technical advancement of AI then opens doors for further educational opportunities that have not existed in the past. The study aims to explore the existing use of AI-powered tools in foreign language pronunciation training by meta-analysis of 15 research papers benefiting from using AI and AI-powered tools (mobile and web applications, chatbots, intelligent virtual assistants) and provide suggestions for their future applications in educational practice. The research results also indicate that this field of study is still underrepresented in language pedagogy. The existing experience with AI-powered tools confirms a relatively good experience in developing intelligibility, increasing motivation and addressing the speaking anxiety of foreign language learners in formal and informal learning settings.

Advanced EFL Students’ Practices in Formal and Informal Language Learning Settings: An Exploratory Study of Learner Agency

This paper addresses the issue of agency that could be traced in the performance of advanced Polish learners of EFL, students of English philology. The study presented in the paper set to investigate the students’ self-reports on learning goals, behaviours and strategies typical of their language-based practices. The students were instructed to describe and reflect on all the learning activities they were involved in in both formal and informal settings by writing their reflective learning journals throughout a week’s time. The examination of the data has provided a picture of the students’ engagement in an interplay of academic and self-directed practices, which helped them meet different goals and ultimately contributed to the improvement of their language proficiency. The students demonstrated an awareness of language learning processes and an ability to reflect on aspects of their agency, referring, among others, to their intentions and motivations in pursuing their objectives.

The role of embodied scaffolding in revealing "enactive potentialities" in intergenerational science exploration.

Although adults are known to play an important role in young children's development, little work has focused on the enactive features of scaffolding in informal learning settings, and the embodied dynamics of intergenerational interaction. To address this gap, this paper undertakes a microinteractional analysis to examine intergenerational collaborative interaction in a science museum setting. The paper presents a fine-grained moment-by-moment analysis of video-recorded interaction of children and their adult carers around science-themed objects. Taking an enactive cognition perspective, the analysis enables access to subtle shifts in interactants' perception, action, gesture, and movement to examine how young children engage with exhibits, and the role adult action plays in supporting young children's engagement with exhibits and developing ideas about science. Our findings demonstrate that intergenerational "embodied scaffolding" is instrumental in making "enactive potentialities" in the environment more accessible for children, thus deepening and enriching children's engagement with science. Adult action is central to revealing scientific dimensions of objects' interaction and relationships in ways that expose novel types of perception and action opportunities in shaping science experiences and meaning making. This has implications for science education practices since it foregrounds not only "doing" science, through active hands-on activities, but also speaks to the interconnectedness between senses and the role of the body in thinking. Drawing on the findings, this paper also offers design implications for informal science learning environments.

Human Factors Extended Reality Showcase

This alternative format session provides a forum for human factors scholars and practitioners to showcase how state-of-the-art extended reality (XR) applications are being used in academia, defense, and industry to address human factors research. The session will begin with short introductions from each presenter to describe their XR application. Afterward, session attendees will engage with the presenters and their demonstrations, which will be set up around the demonstration floor room. This year’s showcase features XR applications in STEM education, medical and aviation training, agricultural data visualization, homeland security, training design, and visitor engagement in informal learning settings. Our goal is for attendees to experience how human factors professionals use XR to support human factors-oriented research and to learn about the exciting work being conducted with these emerging technologies.

The ‘Birth of Doubt‘ and ‘The Existence of Other Possibilities’: Exploring How the ACAD Toolkit Supports Design for Learning

The circumstances in which humans live and learn are subject to constant change. Given these cycles of change, educational designers (teachers, instructional designers, and others) often search for new models and frameworks to support their work, to ensure their designs are in alignment with valued forms of learning activity. Our research foregrounds the entanglement of people (the relational), tasks (the conceptual) and tools (the digital and material) in formal and informal learning settings. In this paper, we explore the use of the ACAD toolkit with the aim of understanding how this analytical tool supports design for learning. A thematic analysis of five workshops attended by 40 educators from diverse professional and academic backgrounds in Spain and Argentina, reveals how ACAD supports educational designers in four distinctive ways: encouraging dynamic engagement with key elements and concepts; supporting the visualization of (dis)connections and (in)coherence in designs; prompting critical reflection on past practices and contexts; and stimulating discussion about future teaching practices. A key contribution of this article is the discussion about how the ACAD toolkit helps educators see the ways in which all learning is situated, subject to constraints and affordances at multiple scale levels, and oriented towards certain pedagogical purposes or values.

Foreign Language Learning Assessment in the Age of ChatGPT

In the Artificial Intelligence (AI) age now, foreign language learners can get unlimited support on their learning tasks from advanced AI chatbots, primarily the ChatGPT. At the same time, such a language chatbot intensifies the importance of rethinking learning outcome assessment. Traditional assessments that draw on a teach-and-test- approach are of little use and no longer valid for a comprehensive understanding of students’ knowledge and skills that they, by and large, obtain in informal learning settings and contribute to their overall performance. Hence, alternative assessments can reflect more on learners’ actual performance that likely involves AI chatbots and yet goes unnoticed by traditional assessment. This paper discusses alternative assessments regarding their nature, forms, characteristics, advantages, and integration into L2 programs. It establishes a foundational theoretical account for future research that would take place when ChatGPT becomes commonplace in the worldwide L2 contexts. It charts new research territories and passes the torch to second and foreign-language learning assessors to reflect on their teaching situations and reimagine L2 programs in light of the affordances of the ChatGPT, which has made a significant breakthrough in learning and teaching languages.

Reflections on the Impact of COVID-19 on Pre-College Engineering Education: An Afterword to the Special Issue

In our call for proposals, our aim was to explore and document how COVID-19 has impacted pre-college engineering education (Alemdar et al., 2021). During COVID-19, engineering pre-college educators quickly adapted to new learning environments and technologies for teaching and learning. It was important to document these adaptations and lessons learned in formal and informal learning settings. The papers that made up this special show how lessons learned during this challenging time can inform the future of precollege engineering education. The papers offer both theoretical argumentation and empirical evidence to support their answers to the question of how adaptations during COVID-19 impacted pre-college engineering learning. A recurring theme of these papers is that worthy pre-college engineering learning experiences are possible even during unprecedented times. In this paper, we reflect on the papers, their individual and collective findings, and we highlight the impact of COVID-19 on education.

Use of Informal Learning Environments in Turkish Language Teaching

Teaching is divided into two as formal and informal teaching. Formal education is based on the teaching of planned, programmed and predetermined contents. This type of education, training usually take place in educational institutions, which are called schools. In this respect, formal education is divided into primary, secondary, high school and higher education. Apart from the formal education carried out in planned, programmed environments, there are also informal learning and informal education environments that we can consider as lifelong learning. Outside of school, spontaneous learning without any plan, program, realization is defined as informal learning. Informal learning can take place in almost any environment. This type of learning is one whose place and time are not defined. Learning in informal settings is an important stage in the acquisition of mother tongue. A newly born baby learns to speak the language spoken in the family environment into which he was born. When he starts talking, his family and inner circle are his learning and growing environment. Until the school age, this environment shapes it in terms of language acquisition as well as in every field. Thus, the individual performs language acquisition as used in his immediate environment. Informal learning until the school age takes place in a formal way with the school. Our study is important in terms of showing how informal learning environments can be used to carry out an effective Turkish teaching. The method of the research is literature review. At the end of the study, visual and audio tools such as radio, television, cinema, social media; places such as schools, libraries, houses; It has been concluded that activities such as conferences, theater, poetry recitals and discussions are informal environments that can be used in Turkish teaching.

Influence of parents’ views about science on parent–child science talk at home

ABSTRACT This study explores parents’ views of science as a family sociocultural background that influences how parents support children’s science talk as they engage in a science activity together at home. We focus on Indonesian families as they have distinct sociocultural characteristics that may yield different parent–child interactions than their Western counterparts in informal science learning settings. A microethnography approach and thematic discourse analysis are employed to capture the parent–child science talk and interactions. Findings show that Indonesian parent–child interactions are directive and collectivist in nature. Parents tend to lead learning at home, and the other family members voluntarily participate. Through their science talks, Indonesian parents engaged children in the science activity using explanatory talk, corrective feedback, and real-world connections. Throughout the interactions, the parents emphasized particular science knowledge and practices based on their views of science. We present three cases where the parents viewed science as a hypothesis-testing practice, as knowledge related to everyday phenomena, and as an inference-making process. Their talks and support for children’s learning varied due to these different views of science. The study adds to the limited literature on parent–child interactions in informal science learning in non-Western contexts.

Preparing to teach in informal settings: preservice science teachers’ experiences in a natural history museum

ABSTRACT Informal science learning is valuable in the development of students’ cognitive and affective skills which also influences the development of an interest in science. Successful utilisation of informal learning settings into teaching and learning requires highly qualified teachers. This study explored how engagement in a semester-long course influenced preservice science teachers’ (PSTs) views and professional development on the use of natural history museums in science education. In this study, researchers collaborated with a natural history museum to design a 14-week-long undergraduate course. Findings revealed that intense immersion to the natural history museum as a part of the undergraduate course helped PSTs to develop a solid understanding of the value of informal settings. At the end of the course, PSTs were able to identify museums as valuable informal learning environments rather than supplemental to classroom learning. In addition, they became more supportive in addressing students’ different learning preferences. Accordingly, PSTs defined their teacher role as participants of the student learning process rather than being responsible for organising the visit and managing student behaviour. Most importantly at the end of the course, they were able to make the connection between science curricula and the museum.