Springer LOST Opportunities: Learning in Out-of-School Time: 23 (Explorations of Educational Purpose, 23)

Learning in informal settings is attracting growing attention from policymakers and researchers, yet there remains, at the moment, a dearth of literature on the topic. Thus this volume, which examines how science and mathematics are experienced in everyday and out-of-school-time (OST) settings, makes an important contribution to the field of the learning sciences. Conducting research on OST learning requires us to broaden and deepen our conceptions of learning as well as to better identify the unique and common qualities of different learning settings. We must also find better ways to analyze the interplay between OST and school-based learning. In this volume, scholars develop theoretical structures that are useful not only for understanding learning processes, but also for helping to create and support new opportunities for learning, whether they are in or out of school, or bridging a range of settings. The chapters in this volume include studies of everyday and ‘situated’ processes that facilitate science and mathematics learning. They also feature new theoretical and empirical frameworks for studying learning pathways that span both in- and out-of-school time and settings. Contributors also examine structured OST programs in which everyday and situated modes of learning are leveraged in support of more disciplined practices and conceptions of science and mathematics. Fortifying much of this work is a leading focus on educational equity―a desire to foster more socially supportive and intellectually engaging science and mathematics learning opportunities for youth from historically non-dominant communities. Full of compelling examples and revealing analysis, this book is a vital addition to the literature on a subject with a fast-rising profile. Review From the reviews: “LOST Opportunities is a volume of work focusing on the learning of mathematics and science that takes place outside of school. … the book offers some exciting agendas for future work. … the main themes of the book comprise the nature of mathematics in school and outside of school, the ‘un-naturalness’ of classrooms for learning, and issues of equity in mathematics (and more widely, STEM) education. … this book is a valuable addition to the literature.” (Tim Jay, Research in Mathematics Education, Vol. 15 (3), 2013) Review "[This volume] challenges notions of communities and their practices as bounded and, instead, takes care to attend to the flow and diffusion of youth across settings.[The studies] illustrate the conceptual and methodological shifts required when a dynamic view of culture and more expansive forms of learning are employed, I believe that the studies represented in this volume will move our work forward as we seek to understand better which social ecologies support -- indeed, ratchet up -- learning and give meaning for youth, especially those from non-dominant communities." (Kris Gutiérrez, University of Colorado Boulder)  "Conventions for applying the term mathematics (or science) to certain activities have been more institutional than functional, more political than pedagogical. ... [These] conventions lead to a loss of many students whose everyday mathematical reasoning goes unrecognized, unappreciated, and unused. Treated as an absence, its presence goes untapped by future development, and local, on-call, situation specific mathematical reasoning can go untapped as a source of everyone's visible and institutionalized identity. This collection of papers examines the nature, importance, and possibilities of these forms of reasoning." (Ray McDermott, Stanford University)  "For someone who has long been interested in afterschool educational activities as a promising supplement to formal, in-school education, [LOST Learning] provides rich opportunities to think about the promise and the problems that such programs offer to those concerned with the infusion of science into the learning and development of their parti