Schools and Informal Learning in a Knowledge-Based World

Schools and Informal Learning in a Knowledge-Based World

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  • Author: Javier Calvo de Mora
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 0429666195
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 218

This book has two purposes: To open up the debate on the role of informal education in schooling systems and to suggest the kind of school organizational environment that can best facilitate the recognition of informal learning. Successive chapters explore what is often seen as a duality between informal and formal learning. This duality is particularly so because education systems expend so much time and effort in certifying formal knowledge often expressed in school subjects reflecting academic disciplines.Recognizing the contribution informal learning can make to young people’s understanding and development does not negate the importance of valued social knowledge: That complements it. Students come to school with knowledge learnt from their families, peers, the community and both traditional and social media. They should not have to "unlearn" this in order to enter the world of formal learning. Rather, students’ different learning "worlds" should be integrated so that each informs the other. In a knowledge-based society, all learning needs to be valued. Some contributors to this book reflect on how new educational systems could be created in a move away from top-down authoritarian and bureaucratic management. Such open systems are seen to be more welcoming in acknowledging the importance of informal learning. Others provide practical examples of how informal learning is currently recognized. Some attention is also paid to the evaluation of informal learning. A key objective of the work presented here is to stimulate debate about the role of informal learning in knowledge-based societies and to stimulate thinking about the kind of reforms needed to create more open and more democratic school learning environments.


Informal Learning

Informal Learning

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  • Author: Jay Cross
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 111804696X
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 320

Most learning on the job is informal. This book offers advice on how to support, nurture, and leverage informal learning and helps trainers to go beyond their typical classes and programs in order to widen and deepen heir reach. The author reminds us that we live in a new, radically different, constantly changing, and often distracting workplace. He guides us through the plethora of digital learning tools that workers are now accessing through their computers, PDAs, and cell phones.


Education for Life and Work

Education for Life and Work

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  • Author: National Research Council
  • Publisher: National Academies Press
  • ISBN: 0309256496
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 203

Americans have long recognized that investments in public education contribute to the common good, enhancing national prosperity and supporting stable families, neighborhoods, and communities. Education is even more critical today, in the face of economic, environmental, and social challenges. Today's children can meet future challenges if their schooling and informal learning activities prepare them for adult roles as citizens, employees, managers, parents, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. To achieve their full potential as adults, young people need to develop a range of skills and knowledge that facilitate mastery and application of English, mathematics, and other school subjects. At the same time, business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management - often referred to as "21st century skills." Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century describes this important set of key skills that increase deeper learning, college and career readiness, student-centered learning, and higher order thinking. These labels include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills- such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn. 21st century skills also include creativity, innovation, and ethics that are important to later success and may be developed in formal or informal learning environments. This report also describes how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science. Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century summarizes the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education. In this report, features related to learning these skills are identified, which include teacher professional development, curriculum, assessment, after-school and out-of-school programs, and informal learning centers such as exhibits and museums.


Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy

Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy

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  • Author: Professor Lucy Green
  • Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
  • ISBN: 1409493903
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 310

This pioneering book reveals how the music classroom can draw upon the world of popular musicians' informal learning practices, so as to recognize and foster a range of musical skills and knowledge that have long been overlooked within music education. It investigates how far informal learning practices are possible and desirable in a classroom context; how they can affect young teenagers' musical skill and knowledge acquisition.


Learning in Places

Learning in Places

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  • Author: Zvi Bekerman
  • Publisher: Peter Lang
  • ISBN: 9780820467863
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 332

Learning in Places is a concerted effort undertaken by an outstanding group of international researchers to create a resource book that can introduce academic, professional and lay readers to the field of informal learning/education and its potential to transform present educational thinking. The book presents a wealth of ideas from a wide variety of disciplinary fields and methodological approaches covering multiple learning landscapes - in museums, workplaces, classrooms, places of recreation - in a variety of political, social and cultural contexts around the world. Learning in Places presents the most recent theoretical advances in the field; analyzing the social, cultural, political, historical and economical contexts within which informal learning develops and must be critiqued. It also looks into the epistemology that nourishes its development and into the practices that characterize its implementation; and finally reflects on the variety of educational contexts in which it is practiced.


Learning Beyond the School

Learning Beyond the School

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  • Author: Julian Sefton-Green
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1351615688
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 238

Whilst learning is central to most understandings of what it is to be human, we now live in a knowledge society where being educated defines life chances more than ever before. Learning Beyond the School brings together accounts of learning from around the world in organisations, spaces and places that are schooled, but not school. Exploring examples of learning organisation, pedagogisation, informal learning and social education, the book shows not only how understandings of education are framed in terms of local versions of schooling, but what being educated could and should mean in very different social and political contexts. With contributions from scholars based in Australia, Europe, the USA, Latin America and Asia, the book brings together accounts of learning outside of school. Chapters contain rich and detailed case studies of innovative projects, new kinds of learning institutions, youth, peer-driven and community-based activities and public pedagogies, as well as engaging with the dimensions of an argument about the place and nature of learning outside of the school. It challenges dominant versions of school around the world, whilst also critically discussing the value and place of non-institutionalised learning. Learning Beyond the School should be of interest to academics, researchers, postgraduate scholars engaged in the study of comparative education, youth work, education systems, digital culture, sociology of education and youth development. It should also be essential reading for practitioners and policymakers who are interested in youth and education system reform.


Learning Science in Informal Environments

Learning Science in Informal Environments

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  • Author: National Research Council
  • Publisher: National Academies Press
  • ISBN: 0309141133
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 348

Informal science is a burgeoning field that operates across a broad range of venues and envisages learning outcomes for individuals, schools, families, and society. The evidence base that describes informal science, its promise, and effects is informed by a range of disciplines and perspectives, including field-based research, visitor studies, and psychological and anthropological studies of learning. Learning Science in Informal Environments draws together disparate literatures, synthesizes the state of knowledge, and articulates a common framework for the next generation of research on learning science in informal environments across a life span. Contributors include recognized experts in a range of disciplines-research and evaluation, exhibit designers, program developers, and educators. They also have experience in a range of settings-museums, after-school programs, science and technology centers, media enterprises, aquariums, zoos, state parks, and botanical gardens. Learning Science in Informal Environments is an invaluable guide for program and exhibit designers, evaluators, staff of science-rich informal learning institutions and community-based organizations, scientists interested in educational outreach, federal science agency education staff, and K-12 science educators.


21st Century Music Education: Informal Learning and Non-Formal Teaching

21st Century Music Education: Informal Learning and Non-Formal Teaching

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  • Author: Ruth Wright
  • Publisher: Canadian Music Educators' Association
  • ISBN: 098120385X
  • Category : Music
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 461


Digital Systems for Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning

Digital Systems for Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning

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  • Author: Demetrios G. Sampson
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISBN: 3319022644
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 347

Today, Digital Systems and Services for Technology Supported Learning and Education are recognized as the key drivers to transform the way that individuals, groups and organizations “learn” and the way to “assess learning” in 21st Century. These transformations influence: Objectives - moving from acquiring new “knowledge” to developing new and relevant “competences”; Methods – moving from “classroom” based teaching to “context-aware” personalized learning; and Assessment – moving from “life-long” degrees and certifications to “on-demand” and “in-context” accreditation of qualifications. Within this context, promoting Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning, is currently a key issue in the public discourse and the global dialogue on Education, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Flipped School Classrooms. This volume on Digital Systems for Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning contributes to the international dialogue between researchers, technologists, practitioners and policy makers in Technology Supported Education and Learning. It addresses emerging issues related with both theory and practice, as well as, methods and technologies that can support Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning. In the twenty chapters contributed by international experts who are actively shaping the future of Educational Technology around the world, topics such as: - The evolution of University Open Courses in Transforming Learning - Supporting Open Access to Teaching and Learning of People with Disabilities - Assessing Student Learning in Online Courses - Digital Game-based Learning for School Education - Open Access to Virtual and Remote Labs for STEM Education - Teachers’ and Schools’ ICT Competence Profiling - Web-Based Education and Innovative Leadership in a K-12 International School Setting are presented. An in-depth blueprint of the promise, potential, and imminent future of the field, Digital Systems for Open Access to Formal and Informal Learning is necessary reading for researchers and practitioners, as well as, undergraduate and postgraduate students, in educational technology.


Informal Learning

Informal Learning

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  • Author: Stephen Rutherford
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 9781536122503
  • Category : Non-formal education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

Human beings are learning all the time. Regardless of whether or not they are enrolled in formal education, people are constantly learning from everyday experiences through problems they have solved and interactions they have encountered. Humans learn from family, friends, peers and colleagues as well as through their own natural curiosity. This informal learning is a powerful part of the learning experience, and is important to lifelong learners of all ages. Informal learning is important to education, in the workplace, during leisure activities and in social situations. The impact of informal learning is therefore quite considerable. Formal learning in the classroom is well-documented and exhaustively researched, but is limited by the need for an expert to design and scaffold that learning space. Even non-formal (self-regulated or self-directed) learning involves a goal, or a specific aim, and is usually guided by a curriculum. In contrast, informal learning is generally lacking in a clearly defined aim, is rarely if ever assessed, and can occur in any environment, at any time, and by anyone. This book aims to highlight examples of the many different forms that informal learning can take, and to assess its impact on educational situations and on learning in the workplace. Drawn from educational and workplace settings from expert contributors across the globe, the studies in this volume cover a broad range of environments and disciplines. Presented is a collection of case studies, expert reviews and original research, which illustrate different forms of informal learning, and provide examples of how the potential for informal learning can be harnessed in practice. From the experiences of workplace learners, adult learners, virtual learning communities, older learners, clinicians and volunteers, this volume addresses the role of informal learning in a variety of working and learning environments. By addressing the development of skills, identities, learning approaches and professional relationships, an impression of the role of informal learning in educational development is also highlighted. Finally, via examples of ubiquitous learning using mobile technologies, revisions to curricula, the use of games in learning, and the use of pop-up schools, this volume highlights how informal learning can be embedded in learning activities that lead to profound changes in how people see the world. This book would be of interest to educators and managers alike, and aims to highlight that informal learning occurs all around us, and if we recognise it and its impact, then we can enhance our potential as lifelong learners and make work and educational environments richer and more effective.