Parents with Intellectual Disability Learning to Parent: the role of experience and informal learning

Parenthood for people with intellectual disability remains controversial. This is so despite current concern about the participation of people with intellectual disability in socially valued roles. Formal parent training is frequently presumed necessary to teach competent parenting. Effective programs require specific skill assessment followed by performance‐based training. Training needs to include modelling, practice, and feedback and to occur in situations where the skill is needed. The role of the informal and naturally occurring context of parenting‐‐the context of everyday family life‐‐has been overlooked. Drawing on an ethnographic study of family life with six parent couples, two central themes on the role of informal learning and experience in parenting are reported. Several ways in which service providers can take account of the experiential nature of learning about parenting are proposed.     

Formal,nonformal and informal modes of learning: A glimpse of the Tanzanian experience

Conclusion This short report has reflected upon and illustrated the different ways and means by which formal, nonformal and informal modes of learning have been made to interact with each other in Tanzania. Integration to such an extent has been made possible both through structural changes in the educational system as well as through the operation of some specific learning programmes. The rationale for using such an integrative approach has also been outlined.The interaction between formal, nonformal and informal structures and modes of learning is certainly not comprehensive nor completely integrated, as is evident from the report. Rather, a rational start has been made in that direction within the overall framework of Tanzania's development goals and aspirations.     

Older adults,in Lebanon,committed to learning: Contextualizing the challenges and the benefits of their learning experience

ABSTRACT

The University for the Third Age, a relatively new concept in Lebanon, provides educational and social opportunities for older adults. The goal of later-life educational institutions supposedly covers more than a mere provision of learning. This being said, highlighting the significance of rewards associated with older adult learning—and the barriers it faces—is needed. Through this study, we hope to deepen the understanding of the benefits of later-life learning. In addition, we also payi special attention to environmental and social factors that were previously excluded dimensions of the challenges to learning. We explored the benefits perceived by older adults after finishing one term at a University for the Third Age in Lebanon. Also, we distinguished between the different types of barriers faced by seniors in the same context. We included 461 older adults from two cohorts, and we followed a qualitative approach, using content analysis of 247 solicited answers to our research questions. The data consisted of relatively short answers describing self-perceived benefits of the learning experience, as well as its perceived challenges. Findings indicated the existence of three types of benefits: social, cognitive, and psychological, with cognitive benefits the most reported ones. In addition, educational challenges were categorized into dispositional, situational, and institutional, with the latter being the most reported. After interpreting the findings with the Self-Determination Theory in mind, it was concluded that educational challenges negatively affect the well-being of older adults, while educational rewards could enhance it.     

Problem-based learning in formal and informal learning environments

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered instructional strategy in which students solve problems and reflect on their experiences. Different domains need different approaches in the design of PBL systems. Therefore, we present one case study in this article: A Java Programming PBL. The application is developed as an additional module for the Learning Management System (LMS). This way the LMS is extended by PBL functionality and the LMS learning resources can be used in PBL.     

Space and embodiment in informal learning

Changes in pedagogy to emphasise independent study and group work have increased the need for informal learning spaces on campuses. University libraries have been quick to respond to this need, partly because of the decline in book lending and partly because of technology enablers. Furthermore, new types of buildings that combine many types of facility, including libraries and informal learning spaces, are being built. This research aimed to explore students’ experience of such informal learning spaces, through focus groups and walk with interviews. It was found that the creation of different types of learning atmosphere, should be understood as a multi-sensory experience, and actively constructed by learners themselves. Informal learning spaces are important destinations for students, who have favourite places to study, where they often work alongside companions and find motivation to work in the presence of others.     

Microcultures and informal learning: a heuristic guiding analysis of conditions for informal learning in local higher education workplaces

This article contributes to knowledge about learning in workgroups, so called microcultures in higher education. It argues that socially constructed and institutionalised traditions, recurrent practices, and tacit assumptions in the various microcultures influence academic teachers towards certain behaviour. In line with this perspective, we present a heuristic with the potential to differentiate various types of microcultures: the commons, the market, the club, and the square. The heuristic is based on a socio-cultural perspective and research on collective action. Its purpose is to assist academic developers to fine-tune their approaches while engaging with colleagues, but also to aid further inquiry into how institutionalised norms and traditions influence academic teaching and student learning.     

非正式环境中的科学学习及其评价

在终身教育的背景下,发生在非正式环境中的科学学习逐渐受到国内外研究者们的重视。相比课堂上的科学课程的学习研究,目前国内关于非正式科学学习的研究还处于起步阶段。欧美研究者对于非正式环境中科学学习的目标、特征以及评价做了系统研究,本文主要通过梳理文献概述非正式环境中所关注的结果的种类及其评价,为我国的相关研究提供资源,为我国在此领域的研究提供借鉴。     

Assimilatory tools for informal learning: prospects in ICAI

This section was introduced in Volume 16, No. 2, for such purposes as: rapid publication of summaries of work in progress (normally in the issue following receipt); outlines of projects or research themes in particular institutions; short papers expressing a strongly-held view or highlighting gaps in the literature; and conventional letters to the editor. We reserve the right to reject submissions or to require changes before publication.     

Where the wild things are: informal experience and ecological reasoning

Category-based induction requires selective use of different relations to guide inferences; this article examines the development of inferences based on ecological relations among living things. Three hundred and forty-six 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children from rural, suburban, and urban communities projected novel diseases or insides from one species to an ecologically or taxonomically related species; they were also surveyed about hobbies and activities. Frequency of ecological inferences increased with age and with reports of informal exploration of nature, and decreased with population density. By age 10, children preferred taxonomic inferences for insides and ecological inferences for disease, but this pattern emerged earlier among rural children. These results underscore the importance of context by demonstrating effects of both domain-relevant experience and environment on biological reasoning.     

Authenticity in learning for the twenty-first century: bridging the formal and the informal

The paper attempts to bridge informal and formal learning by leveraging on affordance structures associated with informal environments to help learners develop social, cognitive, and metacognitive dispositions that can be applied to learning in classrooms. Most studies focus on either learning in formal or informal contexts, but this study seeks to link the two. The paper proposes three tenets to augment de-contextualized learning in schools by putting back the: (a) tacit, (b) social-collective, and (c) informal. This paper seeks to advance the argument for a consideration of how formal learning might be made more authentic by leveraging the affordances of informal learning. Two case examples are illustrated. The first case shows learners operating in a virtual environment in which??through the collaborative manipulation of terrain??adopt the epistemic frame of geomorphologists. The case seeks to illustrate how the tacit and social-collective dimensions from the virtual environment might be incorporated as part of the formal geography curriculum. In the second case, interactions between members of a school bowling team highlight the contextualized and authentic metacognitive demands placed on learners/bowlers, and how these demands are re-contextualized??through metacognitive brokering??to the formal curriculum. Productive linkages are made between informal and formal learnings and anchored through learners?? authentic experiences.     

Formal,nonformal and informal learning: Some North-South contrasts

It is argued that in the countries both of the South and of the North, inadequate attention has been given to the interactive dimensions of informal and formal learning. The differences between informal and formal learning have often been stressed in the past, but it is equally important to acknowledge the critical similarities as far as individual motivation and interest in learning are concerned. Before erecting new models for the integration of all three modes of learning, formal, nonformal and informal, into a system, it should be noticed that they already constitute a single comprehensive system — at least for the middle-class child. The problem in both the North and the South is often that the individual's learning is unsupported by any strong infrastructure of informal or nonformal education. This can happen in the industrialised countries, where the resources for informal learning are rich and varied, as well as in the developing world, where all too often the formal school has to operate without the support of a rich environment of literacy and learning.

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Zusammenfassung Sowohl in den südlichen als auch in den nördlichen Ländern der Welt ist nach Ansicht des Verfassers den interaktiven Dimensionen des informalen und formalen Lernens nicht genügend Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet worden. Zwar sind die Unterschiede zwischen informalen und formalen Lernen oft hervorgehoben worden, doch ist es gleichermaßen wichtig, die kritischen Ähnlichkeiten von individueller Motivation und Lerninteresse zu beachten. Bevor neue Modelle für die Integration aller drei Elemente — formal, nicht-formal und informal — in ein System aufgestellt werden, sollte man bedenken, daß diese bereits ein einziges umfassendes System darstellen, zumindest für Kinder der Mittelklasse. Im Norden wie im Süden besteht das Problem darin, daß das Lernen des Einzelnen durch keine feste Infrastruktur informaler und nicht-formaler Frziehung gestützt wird. Das kann auf Industrieländer, wo verschiedenartige Möglichkeiten für Lernen außerhalb der Schule reichlich zur Verfügung stehen, ebenso zutreffen wie auf Entwicklungsländer, wo die Schule allzuoft ohne Unterstützung durch eine an Lese-, Schreib- und anderen Lernmöglichkeiten reiche Umgebung arbeiten muß.

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Résumé Il est montré que l'attention que l'on accorde à l'importance de l'interaction de l'apprentissage scolaire formel et de l'apprentissage diffus, tant dans les pays du Nord que dans ceux du Sud, est insuffisante. La différence qui existe entre l'apprentissage scolaire formel et l'apprentissage diffus a souvent été soulignée dans le passé mais il est également important de reconnaître les similitudes criticables en ce qui regarde la motivation et l'intérêt individuels relatifs à l'apprentissage. Avant que d'ériger de nouveaux modèles d'intégration des trois modes d'apprentissage: scolaire formel, non formel et diffus, en un système, il convient de remarquer qu'ils constituent déjà bel et bien un système global en soi — du moins pour l'enfant de la classe moyenne. Le problème est que souvent, au Nord comme au Sud, l'apprentissage de l'individu n'est pas aidé par une infrastructure solide d'enseignement diffus ou non formel. Et ceci peut se produire tout aussi bien dans les pays industrialisés, où abondent les ressources de tout ordre offertes à l'apprentissage diffus, que dans le monde en développement où, trop fréquemment, le système scolaire formel doit fonctionner sans être soutenu par un milieu alphabétisé propice à l'apprentissage.

     

Lifelong learning ecologies in online higher education: Students' engagement in the continuum between formal and informal learning

Lifelong learning opportunities are readily accessible through the hybridization of digital learning contexts—from formal to informal—in today's globally networked knowledge society. As such, expanded learning opportunities generate a continuum of learning contexts and experiences mediated through digital technology. Consequently, there is an urgent need to actively examine the interconnections and complex relations between what is learned in formal university scenarios and the everyday learning that happens outside of the classroom, particularly the informal learning that is afforded through expanded and emerging digital contexts. The current research problem illustrates that expanded and emerging professional development scenarios require new pedagogical designs for empowering lifelong learners to harness the affordances of the web across both formal and informal contexts and practices. This study outlines ways in which students shape their learning ecologies in virtual contexts to support formal academic learning in online higher education. The paper presents qualitative results from a larger mixed methods interpretive case study. The multicase and multisite study examines three fully online graduate programmes in Education and Digital Technology during the 2017–18 academic year, collecting data in the form of online programme documentation, student interviews and online participant observation. Purposeful and criterion sampling were used to select 13 participants across three sites in Spain, the UK and the USA. The study was underpinned by a lifelong learning ecologies theoretical perspective to analyse learning processes across a continuum of practices and contexts. Findings illustrate how students conceive of, as well as how they organize their learning ecologies through a unique configuration of activities, digital resources and networked social support, indicating that academic programmes and teachers have an essential role in empowering student learning ecologies across contexts, recognizing past trajectories and supporting the development of valued disciplinary practices and perspectives across a continuum of learning.     

(Under)valuing care work: the case of childcare workers in small‐town Quebec

This paper challenges the assumptions that women ‘care’ as a matter of course, that care work is natural, inevitable, and easy—requiring little skill and as a result should not be highly valued or rewarded. It does so by assessing the impact of Quebec’s (Canada’s) $7/day childcare program on an economically disadvantaged community near the Quebec/Ontario border. This pilot study of mothers and childcare workers marks the first phase of research in the community. This paper looks at some of the care work involved in childcare settings in small‐town Quebec. At the same time, the paper aims to show the importance and impact of Quebec’s childcare initiative on an economically hard‐hit community. It shows that, despite mothers’ recognition of the importance of the program to themselves, their children and their community, there is still evidence of the undervaluing of the care work that childcare providers do.     

‘The rules above the bed’: academic language and learning as hospitality

ABSTRACT

In times of widening participation, Australian universities trade on notions of diversity, framing themselves as hospitable places of access and inclusion. In this space, Academic Language and Learning (ALL) practitioners may be seen as extending the welcome of the university through practices aimed at addressing students’ diverse needs. These include identifying students ‘at-risk’ of failure and attrition, conducting one-to-one appointments, and embedding academic literacies by team-teaching within disciplines. In this paper, we reflect on these practices through the lens of Derrida’s notion of hospitality, drawing on key themes such as the constitutive power relationships of hospitality, the aporia between conditional and unconditional hospitality, and hospitality as an ethics of difference and openness to the ‘arrival of the new’. For each of the explored practices, we problematise the institutionalised framing of ALL practitioners as hosts in benevolent universities providing an unreserved welcome to the student ‘foreigner’. We examine the practice of identifying students-at-risk and question a conditional hospitality that risks closing the door on the unforeseeable that students may bring. Our reflection on the managerially devalued one-to-one appointments highlights hospitality as ethics, with each appointment presenting a crisis of choice in responsibly welcoming student difference. Team-teaching exposes the ambiguity of the ALL practitioner ‘being at-home’ in embedded contexts while presenting the possibility for disrupting established roles and practices. Engaging with Derrida’s hospitality thus allows us to uncover power dynamics shaping the role of ALL practitioners and offers the possibility of ethical responsiveness to student difference and a radical opening to the new.     

Older learning engagement in the modern city

Abstract

This research employs novel techniques to examine older learners’ journeys, educationally and physically, in order to gain a ‘three-dimensional’ picture of lifelong learning in the modern urban context of Glasgow. The data offers preliminary analyses of an ongoing 1500 household survey by the Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC). A sample of 1037, with 377 older adults aged 60+, was examined to understand older learner engagement in formal, in-formal, non-formal and family-learning contexts. Preliminary findings indicate that all forms of older learning participation are lower than younger and middle-age counterparts. However, there is a subset of ‘actively ageing’, socially and technologically engaged older adult ‘learner-citizens’, participating in educational, physical, cultural, civic and online activities (including online political discussions and boycotts). These older learners were more likely to be working, caretakers and report better health overall. Long-term disabilities were associated with less engagement in non-formal learning activities. Additionally, engaged older learners’ GPS trails show more city activity than their matched non-learning-engaged counterparts. Place-based variables, such as feeling safe and belonging to the local area, moderated adult participation in learning activities. The full data-set will be accessible to researchers and the general public via UBDC, providing a complex data source to explore demographically diverse learners’ within an urban context.     

Experienced teachers' informal learning: Learning activities and changes in behavior and cognition

In this study on 32 teachers' learning in an informal learning environment, we analyzed changes in conceptions and behavior regarding students' active and self-regulated learning (ASL), and relations with the teachers' learning activities. Few relations were found between observed changes in behavior and learning activities. Changes in conceptions appeared to correlate with the activities obtaining new ideas, experimenting with new methods, and reflecting on why certain teaching methods seem to be effective and others not. Only one teacher became more ASL-oriented in both behavior and conceptions. The apparent variation in teachers' informal learning should lead to differentiated support for teacher learning in the workplace.