Promoting Learning in Informal Learning Environments

Learners need to see the relevance of their learning in their everyday lives and activities in order to understand and value the importance of learning. To do this, they need rich experiences that promote such learning and mental model building. So how can we promote substantial learning in everyday, informal environments from real world practices and experiments? Museum learning and some after-school environments have addressed this issue, but in many cases, the learning can only go but so far. This paper seeks to explore how we can promote learning in these environments that can be transferred to other places and experiences. Kitchen Science Investigators (KSI) is a research endeavor, aimed at creating an after-school environment where elementary and middle school children learn from everyday experiences. This paper tells the story of the learning that occurred in this environment, pointing out activities and artifacts that worked well at both motivating and promoting learning.