Using the communities of practice framework to examine an after‐school environmental education program for Hispanic youth

Environmental education researchers have called for a greater analysis of ‘learning’ in environmental education in relation to contemporary theories and explanatory frameworks of learning. Situated learning, as a prominent example, is a sociocultural theory that contends that learning is a social process that occurs as individuals participate in ‘communities of practice’. This study aims to enhance our understanding of the usefulness and applicability of the communities of practice framework to the analysis of learning in environmental education, focusing on the learning in after‐school environmental education programs for Hispanic youth. Results suggest that the framework can be applied to identify some environmental education programs as communities of practice, characterized by the development of joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire. The framework was also found to be useful in identifying and describing learning as bringing about changes in identity formation as a result of participation in the programs. Finally, we suggest that such programs, due to their free‐choice nature and multiple opportunities for participation, also offer suitable contexts for further research regarding the relevance of sociocultural theories of learning to environmental education practice.     

Understanding How Families Use Magnifiers During Nature Center Walks

This analysis uses a sociocultural learning theory and parent–child interaction framework to understand families’ interactions with one type of scientific tool, the magnifier, during nature walks offered by a nature center. Families were video recorded to observe how they organized their activities where they used magnifiers to explore in the outdoors. Findings include that families used magnifiers for scientific inquiry as well as for playful exploration. Using the concept of guided facilitation where families develop roles to support their joint endeavor, three roles to support family thinking were found to be: (a) tool suggester, (b) teacher, and (c) exploration ender. Some families struggled to use magnifiers and often, parents and older siblings provided support for younger children in using magnifying lenses. Implications to informal science learning theory are drawn and suggestions for future family learning research are offered: (a) inclusion of sociocultural and situated perspectives as theories to study informal learning in outdoor spaces, (b) further study on the role of siblings in family interactions, (c) design-based research is needed to encourage family role-taking when engaging in science practices, and (d) new conceptualizations on how to design informal programs that support science learning while leaving space for visitors’ personal agendas and interests that can guide the families’ activities.     

分布式认知理论对当代网络教育的启发意义

互联网情境下的学习具备其独特的时代特征,而学习理论也经历着从行为主义、建构主义到分布式认知的演变过程。当代教育的发展形势使得教育者和研究者们越来越关注知识协同建构的社会本质。文章介绍了"社会-文化观"下的分布式认知理论,并介绍了这种新型认知观对当代网络教育的意义。     

‘Straitjacket’ or ‘springboard for sustainable learning’? The implications of formative assessment practices in vocational learning cultures

In contrast to theoretical and empirical insights from research into formative assessment in compulsory schooling, understanding the relationship between formative assessment, motivation and learning in vocational education has been a topic neglected by researchers. The Improving Formative Assessment project (IFA) addresses this gap, using a sociocultural approach to explore the relationship between formative assessment practices and ‘learning cultures’ in vocational education. This article explores the influence of learning cultures in vocational education on the practice of formative assessment and evaluates critically two closely related questions. Why do some learning cultures foster formative assessment that leads to instrumental learning while others develop deeper forms of learning? When is formative assessment a springboard for sustainable learning, and when does it remain an instrumental straitjacket?     

When you’ve only got one class,one chance: acquiring sociocultural knowledge using eclectic case pedagogy

In this paper we describe the creation of an eclectic case pedagogy based on case‐based methods, sociocultural learning theory and visual studies successfully used in a university teacher education course designed to help students acquire sociocultural knowledge about schooling and teaching. Using qualitative data collected across three semesters and four offerings of the course, we outline the types of cases that made up the eclectic case pedagogy, as well as how students recognized the efficacy and significance of this pedagogic method for their learning. Students highlight three specific kinds of learning opportunities afforded to them when engaging with the eclectic case pedagogy including: guided participation, dismantling and building connections and close in(tro)spection of schooling and society. The benefits students attribute to this approach suggest the eclectic case pedagogy may especially befit courses that aim to expand preservice teachers’ knowledge base around issues of historical inequalities in schools, institutional barriers to equity, and teaching within and about difference.     

Citizenship education ‘goes global’: extra-curricular learning in an overseas campus of a British civic university

Active citizenship is increasingly being framed in the context of lifelong and life-wide learning. However, research on young people’s participation in and experience of different forms of civic practice, particularly in informal settings in different sociocultural contexts, is scarce. Consequently, little is known about how these experiences shape their learning about active citizenship, their understanding of the self and their relationship to society. This paper reports findings from a small-scale qualitative research on students’ experiences of participation in extra-curricular activities (ECAs) in a UK Transnational Higher Education institution in China, in relation to the development of active citizenship and lifelong learning capacity. The findings suggest ECAs can provide opportunities for students to accumulate knowledge and develop skills, attitudes and values that underpin the promotion of active citizenship, while developing habits and skills essential for lifelong learning.     

Analysing Creative Design Process: A Set of Tools to Understand Activity in its Socio-cultural and Historic Context

Previous theoretical frameworks used to research and explain creative design processes tend to privilege individual expression and not address the context in which the process occurs. This is problematic due to the ways in which creative activities are embedded in and shaped by socio-cultural and historic contexts. In this article we focus on the ways in which cultural historic activity theory (CHAT) and its analytical activity systems can be used to reveal creative processes in context. We draw on the tools and concepts of CHAT and data from a study of visual communication design (VCD) students and lecturers situated within a transnational higher education (TNHE) context at a university in China. An analytical framework was constructed to research practices used in creative design process learning. The dynamic nature of CHAT offers design process research methods a set of analytical tools to capture the powerful parts played by artifacts and interactions within specific sociocultural and historic learning contexts.     

Lifewide learning in the city: novel big data approaches to exploring learning with large-scale surveys,GPS, and social media

ABSTRACT

Despite UNESCO’s Learning Cities agenda, which argues for the mobilisation of resources to promote education across all sectors and environments, there is little evaluative research on Learning City engagement which is both naturalistic and empirically rigorous. The research on informal adult learning in urban contexts is particularly sparse. This paper provides a case study of informal learning and lifewide literacies amongst Glaswegian adults using three distinct approaches to data collection: a household survey capturing rich data on learning attitudes, behaviours, and literacies; GPS trails that track mobility around the city; and the capture of naturally occurring social media. The work operationalises Learning City indicators, and explores domains beyond education, some of which have not previously been considered in surveys of adult learning, for example, physical mobilities and transportation patterns. We use theoretical concepts of social identity and capital to situate inclusion within explanatory frameworks of marginalisation in less tangible domains of informal learning using multi-stranded data. A triangulated analysis of city-wide participation in lifewide learning reveals a demographic picture of groups marginalised from learning opportunities and practices. We conclude with a call for new approaches to exploring learning participation which offer novel methods to evidence informal learning and lifewide literacies.     

Reflections on learning: widening capability and the student experience

This paper argues for a more nuanced perspective on learning that takes account of the real and situated contexts of student experience. It is presented against a backdrop of the agenda to widen participation in higher education (HE) in the UK, which has led to a rise in students from non-traditional backgrounds entering into HE. Responding to this, an argument is made in favour of widening ‘capability’ in learning, to produce a more socially just pedagogy. Drawing on examples of the student learning experience a series of reflections is produced from an undergraduate programme of education studies. Such reflections, linking personal knowledge with wider social and cultural practices, are used to produce notions of ‘cultural wealth’ across informal and formal learning contexts. It is argued that by creating choice and freedoms in student learning the exclusivity of university education may be challenged and a more socially just pedagogy usefully considered.     

The role of environmental factors in beginning teachers’ professional learning related to differentiated instruction

Little research has investigated factors that facilitate beginning teachers’ participation in professional learning activities related to differentiated instruction (DI). This study examines environmental factors for DI learning activities in a sample of 272 beginning teachers from 72 primary schools. Multilevel analyses show that teacher education, reflective dialogue, deprivatized practice, educational type, and diversity in student population are related to beginning teachers’ use of DI learning activities (i.e., learning in interaction and changes in practice). As such, the findings revealed that beginning teachers’ participation in such activities may depend on a multitude of factors. Several suggestions regarding these factors are made. First, teacher education can provide foundational knowledge of DI applications. Second, schools can enable teachers to have in-depth conversations with colleagues and provide opportunities to observe good teaching practices. Lastly, alternative schools and schools with diverse student populations can inspire other schools to enhance participation in DI learning activities.     

Free-choice learning suited to women’s participation needs in environmental decision-making processes

United Nations mandates recognize the need to promote the full participation of women in environmental decision-making processes on the basis of gender equality. But, there remains a profound lack of effective women’s participation in some sectors of environmental decision-making. Free-choice environmental learning offers an effective educational process for encouraging and developing such participation. This study outlines the shifts in and possibilities for women in environmental decision-making processes in and beyond Western and Northern contexts, and proposes free-choice learning as a pathway to furthering women’s participation.     

Examination as the method in the recognition of prior language learning

ABSTRACT

Recognition of prior learning (RPL) is a principle in education to acknowledge and validate learning acquired during and throughout an individual’s lifetime. Formal, non-formal and informal learning can be assessed, recognised and accredited for various purposes in an individual’s education or professional life. The methods of assessing prior learning vary across educational levels but examinations and portfolios are the most common methods in European higher education. This study investigated how Finnish university students perceived and RPL examination as the method of recognising their non-formal and informal learning of English for academic purposes. During a three-year period data were collected with a questionnaire and interview from RPL participants studying Business and Economics, and with an electronic survey with non-participant students from the same degree programme. The findings indicate that Finnish university students in both groups preferred the examination as the RPL method for non-formal and informal learning of academic English, and some RPL participants were critical of the option of a portfolio for the assessment of prior language learning. This can be seen to emphasise the use of similar assessment methods in both the RPL assessment and the equivalent formal learning instruction.     

Reframing Resources in Engineering Teaching and Learning

Abstract

The notion of “resources” is often framed in an economic sense: money, time, equipment and the like. The authors reconceptualise this notion, situating resources as embedded in curricular frameworks, teacher practice and student experience. This leads them to define resources as “the potential to participate in socio-cultural action” which is illustrated in this article through a series of reflections on the part of the authors, all within the context of engineering education. First, they demonstrate that curriculum can be productively thought of as a route marker for the development of resources that students need in order to enact their role as professional engineers. Thereafter, they show that lecturers bring tacit resources of trust, care, creativity and credibility to the teaching and learning space, and that these are necessary to overcome the inertia that often resists the transformation of teaching and learning practice. Finally, they reflect on how students’ prior learning experiences can be harnessed as a resource for teaching and learning. In so doing, they present resources as tied to sociocultural practices and personal and institutional histories, and encourage others to take up these ideas so as to consider how resources, viewed in the authors’ sense, are valued within (engineering) education.     

On the determinants of employment-related organised education and informal learning

This paper analyses the distribution of employment-related organised education and informal learning in the Canadian workforce. The paper draws on a large-scale survey, the Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL), which was based on structured and standardised telephone interviews with a representative sample of 5783 Canadian members of the employed labour force. In exploring the determinants facilitating employment-related informal learning, three analytical categories of factors derived from previous research on learning participation were used: individual-level factors, job characteristics and workplace environment. The analyses focus on differences in individuals, jobs and workplace characteristics among adult workers who acquired or improved their job-related skills through different training pathways. In addition, analyses were performed to compare the extent to which these factors differ in their influence on learning decisions among workers who combine both organised education and informal learning and those who receive only informal learning. The results indicate that important predictors of participation in employment-related organised education and informal learning are age, educational attainment, learning skills, occupational class, education-job relation, degree of autonomy, degree of labour intensity, principal area of production and organisation size.     

Human-material relationships in environmental and sustainability education – an empirical study of a school embroidery project

In recent discussions about the widening and opening up of anthropocentric perspectives in environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research, a recurrent issue has been what reasonably could be a subject of inquiry and an agent of knowledge. This article aims to showcase an empirical study of the relevance of human-material relationships in crafting learning processes by following an embroidery project with year 8 students in the Swedish craft subject of educational sloyd. How the human-material correspondence unfolds in the crafting learning process is analysed with the aid of Ingold’s practice of correspondence and Sørensen’s notion of participation, performance and imagination. Rather than assuming that materials contribute to certain environmental and sustainability aims, the analysis empirically demonstrates how the human-material correspondence unfolds. The analysis identifies three human-material relationships: attuning, troubling and tracing correspondence. Drawing on the findings, the human-material relevance for environmental and sustainability education and research is further discussed.     

Professional Identity Development of Teacher Candidates Participating in an Informal Science Education Internship: A focus on drawings as evidence

This study investigated the professional identity development of teacher candidates participating in an informal afterschool science internship in a formal science teacher preparation programme. We used a qualitative research methodology. Data were collected from the teacher candidates, their informal internship mentors, and the researchers. The data were analysed through an identity development theoretical framework, informed by participants’ mental models of science teaching and learning. We learned that the experience in an afterschool informal internship encouraged the teacher candidates to see themselves, and to be seen by others, as enacting key recommendations by science education standards documents, including exhibiting: positive attitudes, sensitivity to diversity, and increasing confidence in facilitating hands‐on science participation, inquiry, and collaborative work. Our study provided evidence that the infusion of an informal science education internship in a formal science teacher education programme influenced positively participants’ professional identity development as science teachers.     

Relationship of prior knowledge and working engineers’ learning preferences: implications for designing effective instruction

Continuing engineering education (CEE) is important to ensure engineers maintain proficiency over the life of their careers. However, relatively few studies have examined designing effective training for working engineers. Research has indicated that both learner instructional preferences and prior knowledge can impact the learning process, but it has not established if these factors are interrelated. The study reported here considered relationships of prior knowledge and three aspects of learning preferences of working engineers at a manufacturing company: learning strategy choices, verbal-visual cognitive styles, and multimedia preferences. Prior knowledge was not found to be significantly related to engineers’ learning preferences, indicating independence of effects of these variables on learning. The study also examined relationships of this finding to the Multimedia Cone of Abstraction and implications for its use as an instructional design tool for CEE.     

Two ways of acquiring environmental knowledge: by encountering living animals at a beehive and by observing bees via digital tools

ABSTRACT

Pollinating animals are profoundly affected by the current loss of biodiversity, a problem that is of concern to science, policy-makers and the public. One possibility to raise awareness for pollinator conservation is education. Unfortunately, insects such as bees are often perceived as frightening creatures; a negative emotion that may hinder successful learning processes. Thus, any educational initiative must conquer this obstacle and promote conservational knowledge. Using a quasi-experimental design, we evaluated the effectiveness of an educational programme using two student-centred learning approaches: One by encountering living honeybees (Apis mellifera) at a beehive (N?=?162), the other by using an eLearning tool connected to a remote beehive (N?=?192). We monitored secondary school students’ environmentally relevant knowledge of bees, their environmental attitudes and their perception of bees in regard to conservation and dangerousness. The results indicate that both approaches lead to the acquisition of conservational knowledge in the short and medium term. Direct experiences with nature are regarded as crucial, but using an eLearning tool in environmental education constitutes an outstanding alternative to acquire knowledge. Adolescents with low ‘green’ attitudes responded positively to the online beehive, and the perceived danger of bees played no role in the learning process.     

The potential of free‐choice learning for environmental participation in Greece

Citizen participation in environmental decision‐making is of extreme importance in securing a good quality of life. Local communities know best what alternate solutions should be implemented for appropriate management of their area. This paper presents findings about the environmental characteristics of various Greek citizens’ groups, where respondents’ abilities and willingness to participate in environmental issues governance in relation to their free‐choice learning context was analyzed. The results indicate that participants desire access to an appropriate non‐formal/informal environmental education that will enable them to enhance their knowledge and acquire skills for critical thinking and active participation.     

Disciplinary Foundations for Solving Interdisciplinary Scientific Problems

Problem-solving has been one of the major strands in science education research. But much of the problem-solving research has been conducted on discipline-based contexts; little research has been done on how students, especially individuals, solve interdisciplinary problems. To understand how individuals reason about interdisciplinary problems, we conducted an interview study with 16 graduate students coming from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. During the interviews, we asked participants to solve two interdisciplinary science problems on the topic of osmosis. We investigated participants’ problem reasoning processes and probed in their attitudes toward general interdisciplinary approach and specific interdisciplinary problems. Through a careful inductive content analysis of their responses, we studied how disciplinary, cognitive, and affective factors influenced their interdisciplinary problems-solving. We found that participants’ prior discipline-based science learning experiences had both positive and negative influences on their interdisciplinary problem-solving. These influences were embodied in their conceptualization of the interdisciplinary problems, the strategies they used to integrate different disciplinary knowledge, and the attitudes they had toward interdisciplinary approach in general and specific interdisciplinary problems. This study sheds light on interdisciplinary science education by revealing the complex relationship between disciplinary learning and interdisciplinary problem-solving.