Dynamic,Playful and Productive Literacies

This paper reflects on recent projects in a variety of media forms, in both formal and informal educational settings, discussing ways of expanding our notions of literacy practices which reflect their place in the wider lived experience of digital culture. We have collected these reflections under three headings. The first of these, Dynamic Literacies, presents an overarching view of literacy as both ideological, following the ‘new literacy studies’, and dynamic, incorporating both semiotic and sociocultural versions of literacy in ways which reflect the changing nature of lived experience in the digital age. The second strand, Productive Literacies, constructs an argument around digital making practices with younger learners which views these as media crafting, critique and artistry. The third strand, Playful Literacies, explores recent projects which are located in games and game-authoring practices as a specific example of connecting pedagogy to contemporary media forms and learner agency in formal and informal settings. Taken together, the three perspectives allow for common ground to be established between multimodal production practices, whilst providing suggestions for framing literacy pedagogy in response to the pervasive use of media and technology in contemporary digital culture.     

Schools and informal science settings: collaborate, co-exist, or assimilate?

In this metalogue we build on the arguments presented by Puvirajah, Verma and Webb to discuss the nature of authentic science learning experiences in context of collaborations between schools and out-of-school time settings. We discuss the role of stakeholders in creating collaborative science learning practices and affordances of out of school time and formal science learning contexts. We contend that authentic science learning experiences are those where science learning happens within a social milieu and advocate for true collaborations between schools and informal settings in ways that emphasize the goals of the collaboration and strengths of each setting.     

Leveraging mobile technology for sustainable seamless learning: a research agenda

Over the next 10 years, we anticipate that personal, portable, wirelessly networked technologies will become ubiquitous in the lives of learners—indeed, in many countries, this is already a reality. We see that ready‐to‐hand access creates the potential for a new phase in the evolution of technology‐enhanced learning, characterised by ‘seamless learning spaces’ and marked by continuity of the learning experience across different scenarios or contexts, and emerging from the availability of one device or more per student. The challenge is to enable learners to learn whenever they are curious and seamlessly switch between different contexts, such as between formal and informal contexts and between individual and social learning, and by extending the social spaces in which learners interact with each other. In this paper, we review the potential of mobile learning research for designing seamless learning environments that can bridge both formal and informal learning, present a research agenda and discuss important methodological issues that concern research into formal and informal learning.     

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.     

Critical information literacy as core skill for lifelong STEM learning in the 21st century: reflections on the desirability and feasibility for widespread science media education

Grace Reid and the late Stephen Norris argue in this issue the urgent need for widespread Science Media Education (SME) as an integral part of formal and informal science education. SME is to achieve two goals: First, allow learners to critically evaluate any media as a source for scientific information by understanding the socio-economic and socio-cultural context of how and why news and entertainment media are created, and secondly, utilize media as a legitimate and productive source for science education and science learning. While laudable, I will argue that SME as an integral part of STEM education is unrealistic, and offer instead that the broader concept of Information Literacy might be more easily achieved within the current strong movement to conceptualize STEM education via science and engineering practices and within the broad goals of strengthening learners’ 21st century skills.     

The Impact of a Web-Based Research Simulation in Bioinformatics on Students’ Understanding of Genetics

Providing learners with opportunities to engage in activities similar to those carried out by scientists was addressed in a web-based research simulation in genetics developed for high school biology students. The research simulation enables learners to apply their genetics knowledge while giving them an opportunity to participate in an authentic genetics study using bioinformatics tools. The main purpose of the study outlined here is to examine how learning using this research simulation influences students’ understanding of genetics, and how students’ approaches to learning using the simulation influence their learning outcomes. Using both quantitative and qualitative procedures, we were able to show that while learning using the simulation students expanded their understanding of the relationships between molecular mechanisms and phenotype, and refined their understanding of certain genetic concepts. Two types of learners, research-oriented and task-oriented, were identified on the basis of the differences in the ways they seized opportunities to recognize the research practices, which in turn influenced their learning outcomes. The research-oriented learners expanded their genetics knowledge more than the task-oriented learners. The learning approach taken by the research-oriented learners enabled them to recognize the epistemology that underlies authentic genetic research, while the task-oriented learners referred to the research simulation as a set of simple procedural tasks. Thus, task-oriented learners should be encouraged by their teachers to cope with the scientists’ steps, while learning genetics through the simulation in a class setting.     

Web 2.0 and Transfer: Trainers' Use of Technology to Support Employees' Learning Transfer on the Job

We steer transfer research in a new direction by examining the use of Web 2.0 technologies for supporting learning transfer resulting from formal training. We report survey results from training professionals (N = 83) on how their organization uses such methods to cue and support workers’ application of learned knowledge and skills on the job. Guided by the technology acceptance model (TAM) theory, we examined predictor variables found to influence technology use based on empirical and theoretical support in the information technology (IT) literature. Results indicate that trainers are influenced by several individual factors (computer experience, computer anxiety, and computer self‐efficacy), as well as their organization's learning climate, to use Web 2.0 tools to support transfer of learning. Trainers also prefer to use social media, networking applications, and visual media to support transfer among learners. We discuss implications for using Web 2.0 technologies in support of learning transfer and provide directions for future workplace learning research.     

“Thank You for Being Republican”: Negotiating Science and Political Identities in Climate Change Learning

When engaging with socioscientific issues, learners act at the intersection of scientific, school, and other societal communities, drawing on knowledge, practices, and identities from both in and out of the classroom to address problems as national or global citizens. We present three case studies of high school students whose classroom participation in a unit on the politically polarizing topic of climate change was informed by their political identities and how they situated themselves in climate change’s sociocultural, historical, and geologic context. We describe how these students, including two who initially rejected human-influenced climate change but revised their understandings, negotiating dissonant identities in the classroom through repeated engagement with conflicting political and scientific values, knowledge, and beliefs. These case studies problematize building bridges between formal and informal learning experiences and suggest that it may be necessary to leverage disconnections in addition to building connections across settings to promote productive identity work. The results further suggest that supporting climate change learning includes attending to identity construction across ecosocial timescales, including geologic time.     

Digital resource developments for mathematics education involving homework across formal,non-formal and informal settings

The aim of this paper is to explore further an under-developed area – how drivers of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment conceptions and practices shape the creation and uses of technologically based resources to support mathematics learning across informal, non-formal and formal learning environments. The paper considers: the importance of mathematics learning in informal and non-formal as well as formal settings; how curriculum focuses on pedagogy supporting these needs, contrasting this focus in England and Serbia; and in these contexts, the roles of homework, the potential of technologies and the roles of the teacher. Technological developments to support mathematics learning for 11- to 14-year-old pupils in the two countries are explored and contrasted, and ways that recent developments inform our understandings of formal, informal and non-formal learning through learning activities, learning support and settings are modelled. The conception of ‘extended pedagogies’ is introduced; implications are outlined.     

Reconfiguring mathematical settings and activity through multi-party,whole-body collaboration

This study examines the consequences of whole-body, multi-party activity for mathematics learning, both in and out of the classroom. We develop a theoretical framework that brings together contemporary theories related to social space, embodied cognition, and mathematical activity. Then, drawing on micro-ethnographic and case-comparative techniques, we examine and juxtapose two cases of implementing whole-body, collaborative movement to engage learners in the mathematics of number sense and ratio and proportion. Analytically foregrounding the interdependence among setting, embodied activity, and mathematical tools and practices, we illustrate how whole-body collaboration can transform how learners experience learning environments and make sense of important mathematical ideas. The analysis enriches our understanding of the changing spatial landscapes for learning and doing mathematics as well as how re-instating bodies in mathematics education can open up new forms of collective mathematical sense-making and activity.     

Implementing Student‐Centered Learning Practices in a Large Enrollment,Introductory Food Science and Human Nutrition Course

Informed by the latest research on how people learn, effective teachers address both aspects of the teaching–learning equation—they engage students in the course material by implementing best teaching practices and they prepare students for learning by sharing best learning practices. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of student‐centered learning practices on students’ perceptions of their ability to learn, specifically in a large enrollment, introductory food science and human nutrition course. Featured student‐centered learning practices included required assignments, optional study tools, and supplemental learning resources. A mixed method survey instrument with 5‐point Likert scales and qualitative, open‐ended questions was used to determine students’ (1) use of optional study tools and supplemental learning resources; (2) perceptions as to the quality and impact of required assignments, optional study tools, and supplemental learning resources to enhance their ability to learn; (3) perceptions as to the usefulness of required assignments, optional study tools, and supplemental learning resources to help them perform better in this course; and (4) overall satisfaction, as a learner, in this course. Overall, students identified study guides (developed using Bloom's taxonomy action verbs) (Mean = 4.34), microthemes (Mean = 4.27), and quizzes (Mean = 4.11) as the most beneficial resources to enhance their learning of the course material. Overall, 85% of students said they were extremely or very satisfied as learners in the course and nearly 75% of the students said the student‐centered learning practices should be offered to future FSHN 101 students.     

The role of work-related learning in the identity transformation of Canadian workers with low literacy skills

Workplaces are settings where power, knowledge and self are brought together in a complex social environment which includes various forms of struggle related to identity, agency, socio-cultural norms, political structures and functional practices. The purpose of this article is to uncover how formal and informal work-related learning processes influence the identity transformation of workers with low literacy and essential skills. Drawing on two recent Canadian data bases which serve as cases in this study, the position taken by the authors is that the organisational context can both facilitate and impede worker subjectivity. Various conditions, approaches to learning and training pathways are examined as they contribute to social cognitive and transformative learning theories.     

Adult literacy,learning identities and pedagogic practice

This article discusses the relationship between persistence in adult literacy and numeracy programs, changes in the participants’ attitudes to engaging in learning and pedagogic practices using data from eight Scottish literacy education organizations. It argues that literacy learning can act as a resource that enables vulnerable adults to change their dispositions to learning, achieve their goals and make a transition towards their imagined futures. Pedagogic practices that operate from an approach that emphasized learners’ strengths, rather than their deficits, and critically interrogated learners’ experiences used as a resource for learning were the most successful in enabling this transition. Holistic provision that creates a supportive community of practice was found to be the most effective in bringing about the positive changes that learners identified they wished to make in their lives.     

Adolescents' Agentic Work on Developing Personal Pedagogies on Social Media

While current research points out that young people are developing emerging culture of learning in informal spaces, less is known about such digital literacy practices in the Asian contexts where the notion of literacy tends to refer to school literacy. Research on young people's online participatory culture continues to suggest that social media offer affinity spaces where extensive knowledge is acquired, constructed and produced outside of schools. In this paper, we use two case studies on social media as illustrative examples to understand how adolescents shape their learning online. We aim to contribute to the ongoing dialectics on social media and learning by examining how adolescents exhibit agency online. We argue that social media such as Facebook offer high learner agency environments for adolescents to participate in self‐initiated enterprise and allow them to develop personal trajectories for learning. The case studies presented in this paper suggested that the adolescents' pursuit of their passions on online affinity spaces gave rise to intellectual friendships and the development of personal pedagogies.     

“GodMode is his video game name”: situating learning and identity in structures of social practice

In this paper, we report on the structural nexus of one youth??s gaming practices across contexts and over time. We utilize data from an ethnography of youth science and technology learning, as well as expertise development, across settings and developmental time. We use Ole Dreier??s theory of persons to understand how this youth is able to develop considerable gaming expertise. Additionally, we explicate the learning practices embedded in the structural nexus of this youth??s gaming and we examine associated issues of learning and identity. We problematize the lack of continuity between his formal schooling experiences and the structural nexus of his gaming practices as situated in a variety of other contexts and we reflect on the implications for the design of STEM gaming experiences in formal school environments.     

The influence of extramural access to mainstream culture social media on ethnic minority students’ motivation for language learning

The educational potentials of social media both in the formal and informal learning contexts have been widely acknowledged. However, how social media use in the informal contexts might influence students’ learning in the formal contexts is still underexplored. Path analysis of 141 survey responses from secondary school ethnic minority students in Hong Kong revealed that voluntary access to Chinese social media in daily life influenced these students’ ideal L2 self and motivated efforts in learning Chinese both directly and indirectly via bicultural integration identity and bicultural competence. The findings confirmed that social media practices in the informal contexts may influence students’ motivated efforts in learning in the formal contexts. The study suggests promoting ethnic minorities’ extramural use of mainstream culture social media to influence their acculturation into the dominant culture and motivation in learning the dominant culture’s language. It further highlights the importance of equipping ethnic minority students with the necessary socio-cultural and communication skills to facilitate positive intercultural engagement on these sites so as to safeguard the positive influences of informal social media use on students’ motivation for learning.     

混合式学习获得成功的重要因素：五种假设

基于面对面学习与数字化学习的经验,混合式学习作为二者的结合,成为当前富有前景的学习概念。但是混合式学习能否有效促进学习？哪些是影响混合式学习获得成功的重要因素？从教学方面来讲,要使混合式学习发挥真正的效用,必须正确认识混合式学习的经济价值和教育价值,用课程理念来设计学习过程,根据学习需求选择学习工具,综合考虑教学元素,帮助学生和教师做好新角色的准备。     

Towards convergence of mobile and psychological theories of learning

This special issue was designed to promote an integration of mobile and psychological theories of learning by inviting empirical research that draws upon both theoretical approaches to guide investigation into learning involving mobile devices. Five empirical articles illustrated how mobile devices afford resources to learners and how new channels of data afford researchers new insight into learning processes. Authors of two invited commentaries note the challenges involved in researching mobile learning, which unfolds across multiple contexts and can involve novel tools, multiple learners, and instructors and experts. These authors propose a taxonomy that can organize research that investigates interactions amongst learners, instructors, experts, and tools across one or more physical contexts, as well as a research agenda that would empirically test and refine assumptions made by mobile learning theorists. In this commentary, the editorial team proposes that mobile and psychological theories may be improved through convergence. Theories of mobile learning can be advanced by adopting practices previously employed to refine psychological theories of learning, whereas conducting research using mobile devices (and the data they provide) can further refine psychological theories of learning. We illustrate these positions with examples, and consider how instruction must be designed and how learners must be prepared in order to benefit from learning using mobile technology.     

Infrastructuring Distributed Studio Networks: A Case Study and Design Principles

Design educators have long used studio-based learning environments to create communities of learners to support authentic learning in design. Online social media platforms have enabled the creation of distributed studio networks (DSNs) that link studio-based learning environments into expanded communities of practice and potential networked improvement communities. As learning scientists, we do not adequately understand how to infrastructure learning and resource sharing across distributed studios. In this ethnography of the infrastructure of Design for America, a DSN, we analyzed data from interviews, online communication, and field observations as the organization grew its network of university design studios. We found that Design for America managers faced challenges of providing support and resources to address wide variation in needs across studios. Lacking an existing comprehensive network collaboration platform, managers created a proto-infrastructure to distribute support across studios. By studying their iterative adoption of communication and collaboration tools and organizational routines, we define a unique set of design principles to infrastructure DSNs: (a) surfacing local progress and problems, (b) affective crowding, (c) solution mapping, and (d) help routing. Assembling constellations of tools and designing platforms based on these principles could support learning in and the improvement of DSNs across domains.     

Toppling hierarchies? Media and information literacies,ethnicity, and performative media practices

This article suggests how we should study media and information literacies (MIL) and do so at a time, when young people nurture these literacies through multiple media practices and across spaces of learning. Our basic argument is this: in order to gain a robust knowledge base for the development of MIL we need to study literacy practices beyond print literacy and numeracy, and we need to study these practices beyond formal spaces of learning. The argument is unfolded with particular focus on ethnic minority youth since this group routinely figures as under-achieving in studies of school literacy, such as Programme for International Student Assessment. Based on a brief overview of literacy studies in view of digitization and a critical examination of recent studies of youthful media practices and ethnicity, the argument is illustrated through an empirical analysis that draws on results from a nationally representative survey of media uses among Danes aged 13–23 years. The analysis demonstrates that ethnic minority youth offer the most serious challenge to existing literacy hierarchies found in formal education. We discuss the implications of these results for educational policy-making and for future research on MIL, advocating inclusive approaches in terms of media for learning and spaces of learning.