The purpose of this study was to investigate pupils’ knowledge about science and what role science center is playing as a medium of communication to increase knowledge among students. This study also tried to find out pupils’ interaction: how they use science center as a source of scientific information, what they learn from their visit to a science center, their pattern of communication with it. This project also measured attraction, holding and learning power of exhibits of the science center at Dalarna University in Borlänge and learning power of planetarium program and slide show of Stella Nova Planetarium at Dalarna University.The subjects of this study consisted of students of class seven and eight and teachers of an urban school in Borlänge, Sweden. To find out students’ learning in a science center a pre and post visit test were conducted through questionnaires. Interview method by questionnaires was also used to explore pupils’ interaction with science center.The results of this study show that students learn by their visit to a science center but learning was not statistically significant (0.05).Girls learnt better than boys. School classes that have better pre-knowledge about science before a visit to a science center learnt worse than other classes having less pre-knowledge. Girls and boys interact with a science center in different ways. Science center is playing important role as a science communicator.

This dissertation analyzes how discourses of risk shape teens’ digital media practices. The purpose is to understand the relationship between discourses of risk, policy regulations, informal learning, and teens’ everyday experiences. This research serves to combat discourses that construct technology as a threat and youth as ‘at-risk’ in two ways. One, it demonstrates the agentive ways teens manage risks and two, it provides empirical evidence of the ways technologies and literacies function as risk reduction strategies. From a Foucauldian perspective of governmentality, this study considers risk to be an always already historically, socially, and politically constructed phenomenon; as such, policies serve as risk intervention strategies. The first part of this dissertation traces how risk discourses are mobilized through moral panics and federal policies regulating young people’s use of the internet. Despite research to the contrary, policies reify anxieties associated with the threat of pornography and predators. As such, policies rely on constructions of young people as passive victims and technologies as risks; such regulations unintentionally limit learning opportunities. The second part analyzes how schools regulate subjects of risk and digital media, as well as how teens themselves manage risks. Ethnographic research was conducted in a large, ethnically diverse, low-income high school in Texas. As part of a team, the researcher spent eight months observing two after-school digital media clubs. The ethnography also consisted of 18 case studies with diverse high school students. Researchers conducted individual, semi-structured, qualitative interviews with the students on a regular basis for an entire academic school year. Findings suggest discourses of risk were mobilized through school district policies which regulated teens’ use of digital media. Specifically, regulations limited students’ opportunities to develop a) social, b) network, and c) critical digital media literacies. However, students generated agentive ways to resist regulations in order to maintain robust peer and learning ecologies. The clubs constructed technologies as interventions for ‘at-risk’ youth. Within informal learning spaces teens a) developed skills, b) acquired social capital, and c) negotiated empowered identities. Lastly, the study considers how teens acknowledged and negotiated risks associated with privacy. Teens demonstrated three strategies for managing consumer and social privacy: a) informational, b) audience management, and c) spatial strategies. / text

This thesis studies the usability issues of the mobile phone in informal Swedish language learning. The concept of usability is defined by expanding the technical usability attributes of Jakob Nielsen with other recent attributes derived from considering the technical aspects of mobile learning (m-learning). Thus, the ultimate structure of the usability factors that are discussed in this study consists of: accessibility, easy-to-learn, technical design, efficiency and satisfaction. With the support of the relevant previous literature and interview, we research this topic by considering the mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), informal language-learning and usability elements, in order to explore and identify the usability of mobile phone. The goal of this study is to contribute to detailed understanding of mobile phone usage, further identify the usability issues of mobile phones by obtaining both critical and commendatory feedbacks and reflections from the users. For final results, through qualitative research approach, we offered several findings regarding the mobile phone usability with specified reasons.

This study investigated the online interactions of parents using the constructs of Wenger’s (1998) community of practice theory. Parents were surveyed and blogs and comments selections were examined to determine whether a communities of practice perspective would be appropriate as a construct to examine parents’ online interactions, and whether parents could gain similar benefits to those found from face-to-face parent support groups. This study provides evidence to support the utility of parents’ online interactions and the relevance of a community of practice perspective as analyzed with the components of Wenger’s (1998) Communities of Practice Theory. / text

Essay means attempt, and is a paper written based on self-experienced dilemmas, which the writer then returns to, reflect upon and discusses on the basis of literature and accepted theories. In this essay, I reflect upon my own professional role as a leisure-time pedagogue. The leisure-time pedagogue must provide activities that in different ways relate to the curriculum 2011. I have therefore a responsibility to influence the students' desire for knowledge. Focus of learning is different from the one in school, with an emphasis on informal learning. The dilemma is that I am unable to do any pedagogical work at the museum because of many conflicts. And that there is an ambivalence of what is expected of my work. By writing this essay, I want to explore and reflect upon leisure-time pedagogue´s meeting with a museum. I also reflect how to obtain an educational meeting, despite poorly developed awareness among teachers, other professionals, parents, and museums. There are many ways to implement work with the curriculum with a visit to the museum, and that would make the leisure-time pedagogue more of support for the whole visit. It would facilitate if the museums themselves hade a material adapted for leisure-time centre. With an emphasis on informal learning and for example aesthetic learning processes.

Body Worlds is a traveling exhibition of plastinated human cadavers that offers the general public an opportunity to experience the human body in a unique way. It has been met with controversy and awe; public reactions and responses have been mixed. This case study research explored visitor responses to this controversial science exhibition, and examined the meaning visitors made of their experience. Specifically, the following research questions directed this study: Within the context of the Body Worlds exhibition: (a) What meaning did visitors make and how did they respond to the exhibits? (b) What tensions and issues arose for visitors? and (c) What did this type of exhibition convey about the changing role of science centres and the nature of their exhibitions? The primary sources of data for this study were 46 semi-structured interviews with visitors to the exhibition, observation notes, and 10 comment books including approximately 20 000 comments. Data suggested that the personal, physical, and sociocultural contexts (Falk & Dierking, 2000) contributed to visitor meaning meaning-making. The use of plastinated human cadavers within this exhibition raised ethical and moral questions and controversies about body procurement, use of human cadavers in display, representations of the bodies, and issues related to the sanctity of life. The tensions and issues identified by visitors demonstrated that messages (intended or unintended) located within Body Worlds were critically examined by visitors and called into question. Finally, data from this study suggested that an interdisciplinary approach to the presentation of science served to enhance accessibility for the viewer. This exhibition demonstrated that visitors responded positively and made personal connections when the arts, spirituality, edutainment, issues, and a combination of historical and contemporary museum practices were used to present science.

Body Worlds is a traveling exhibition of plastinated human cadavers that offers the general public an opportunity to experience the human body in a unique way. It has been met with controversy and awe; public reactions and responses have been mixed. This case study research explored visitor responses to this controversial science exhibition, and examined the meaning visitors made of their experience. Specifically, the following research questions directed this study: Within the context of the Body Worlds exhibition: (a) What meaning did visitors make and how did they respond to the exhibits? (b) What tensions and issues arose for visitors? and (c) What did this type of exhibition convey about the changing role of science centres and the nature of their exhibitions? The primary sources of data for this study were 46 semi-structured interviews with visitors to the exhibition, observation notes, and 10 comment books including approximately 20 000 comments. Data suggested that the personal, physical, and sociocultural contexts (Falk & Dierking, 2000) contributed to visitor meaning meaning-making. The use of plastinated human cadavers within this exhibition raised ethical and moral questions and controversies about body procurement, use of human cadavers in display, representations of the bodies, and issues related to the sanctity of life. The tensions and issues identified by visitors demonstrated that messages (intended or unintended) located within Body Worlds were critically examined by visitors and called into question. Finally, data from this study suggested that an interdisciplinary approach to the presentation of science served to enhance accessibility for the viewer. This exhibition demonstrated that visitors responded positively and made personal connections when the arts, spirituality, edutainment, issues, and a combination of historical and contemporary museum practices were used to present science.

Workplace learning and training is often explicitly or implicitly planned to serve the economic interests of the organization. Furthermore, training planning and processes are generally determined by managers, instead of those who will be engaging in the learning. What happens to learning in the workplace when workers themselves determine its content and methods? As seen in the Community Training Plan (CTP), implemented at the Toronto Community Housing Corporation in 2003, control over workplace training by frontline staff has resulted in profound changes in many facets of working and community life. Using testimonials from a recent participatory evaluation of the CTP as well as a series of promotional videos, all of which were created by participants in the CTP, I demonstrate that the CTP has created new forms of engagement and participation; new learning foci; new spaces in the workplace; and finally a sense of staff ownership over learning.

The issues on adults‘ motivation discussed in scientific discource are not prolific. They and related problems have been studied by Viliūnas (1990), Boshier (1971), Hatter (1990), Entwistle (1998), Taylor (1982). However, there is a lack of research of adults‘ motivation for learning foreign languages in an informal educational organization. This is the foundation of the research of the master‘s thesis which enables to formulate the problem of the research, emphasizing the search for peculiarities of adults‘ motivation for learning foreign languages, highlighting prevailing motifs, their relations to some demographical sharacteristics of adults when teaching and learning is performed in an informal educational organization. Object of the research – Adults‘ motivation for learning foreign languages. Aim of the research – to analyse the peculiarities of adults‘ motivation for learning foreign languages in an informal educationa organization. Tasks of the research: 1. To carry out a theoretical analysis of learning motivation in order to find out the understanding of learning motivation, types of motivation. 2. To analyse the features of an adult‘s foreign languages learning motivation, pointing out possible learning barriers related with age, education, social status, etc., and highlighting some aspects of adults‘motivation for learning foreign languages (dominant learning motifs, tendencies, difficulties). 3. To study an informal educational organization as one of adults‘... [to full text]

The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge on how formal education gives cognitive support to informal learning at work. The ambition is to combine different theoretical perspectives on learning. Formal learning, mostly within institutions for education, is usually seen from a cognitive or constructivist perspective, and informal learning from situational or socio-cultural perspectives. Combining these perspectives, this thesis is based on a case study of how a formal training program for Swedish military personnel, going on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, gives cognitive support to their informal, experiential learning during the mission. The case study has an ethnographic research design where 17 military leaders at different levels are interviewed, observed and “shadowed” during three field periods during training in Sweden and during work in Kosovo. The empirical material and the different theoretical perspectives on learning are used to construct a perspective-integrating conceptual model of how the formal training, through different learning resources, helps the leaders to develop a subjective understanding of their coming work. This understanding is then used by the leaders to mentally frame the specific experiences and actions they encounter at work. This mental framing is also prevalent in their reflections in and on their work, and their informal learning at work can be shown to be heavily influenced by the understanding the leaders developed during formal training. However, most of this understanding cannot be related to formal learning resources, but to learning resources the military leaders themselves bring to the training in the way of their earlier experiences, their military professional orientation, and their internal discussions in free time. The main conclusions are that 1) contrary to prevailing dogma, different perspectives on learning can be brought together, and 2) if formal education is going to give cognitive support to learning at work, it needs to address the question of how the conceptual structure of the training content can be integrated with the often private concepts the workers themselves have of their work.