This article reflects on the author's experience leading the 21st Century Community Learning Center (21st CCLC) program, which aimed to create a "culture of STEM" for both participants and staff. The author describes the experience of the children, the training of staff, and places for improvement.
This article presents research on collaboration between the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development and the New York Academy of Sciences to provide STEM learning opportunities in out-of-school time.
Based on lessons learned from more than a decade of OST STEM programming for urban youth, Project Exploration proposes an alternative to the pipeline: Youth-Science Pathways. Youth-Science Pathways enable program providers to move beyond “pipeline” priorities to design for outcomes in which STEM learning experiences support young people’s social and emotional development. Changing the metaphor from a pipeline to pathway transforms the purpose of the educational effort: rather than an endeavor in which students’ experiences support STEM academic and workforce outcomes, STEM experiences are put
This paper sketches the context for participation in science by girls from historically underrepresented populations and offers a detailed description of Sisters4Science (S4S) and its personalized, girl-centered pedagogy. The S4S example suggests a need to complement current out-of-school science programs with lessons from girl-centered practice and research.
This is a review of Jrene Rahm's 2010 book "Science in the making at the margin: A multisited ethnography of learning and becoming in an afterschool program, a garden, and a math and science Upward Bound program." Rahm's research focuses on the nature of how science and meaning making are achieved through these programs.
This article discusses competing models of afterschool programming. It points out the weaknesses of the additive model and concludes that the contextual model is advantageous in fostering STEM learning environments. It encourages cross-setting approaches in the design, development, and documentation of out-of-school activities.
This article examines afterschool science in light of the National Research Council’s comprehensive synthesis report on promoting science learning in informal environments (NRC, 2009). We present the results of our analysis of qualitative case studies of nine state-funded afterschool sites in California, discussing the strengths of these programs against the background of three key site-based constraints—time available for science, staff’s science backgrounds, and instructional materials—as well as the importance of partnerships with outside organizations to support sites in overcoming these
This article encourages afterschool programs to promote youth identification as community science experts. It uses the case study of the GET City program to frame the discussion of encouraging identity development should be an important outcome of afterschool programming.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Angela Calabrese BartonDaniel BirminghamTakumi SatoEdna TanScott Calabrese Barton
This article explores the partnership between the Baltimore County 4-H program and the Baltimore County Public Library, which forged a partnership to offer structured experiential programming opportunities to meet the afterschool needs of youth who visit their local library. Their experience suggests that libraries and youth development organizations can fruitfully collaborate to create sustainable quality afterschool programming.
This document describes the Dimensions of Success (DoS), an assessment tool created by researchers at the Program in Education, Afterschool, and Resiliency (PEAR). DoS was created to help out-of-school time programs and researchers monitor and measure quality. It allows observers to collect systemic data along 12 quality indicators to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of afterschool science learning experiences.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Anahit PapazianAshima ShahCaitlin Rufo-McCormick
A personal essay by a former public school teacher in the Teach for America program highlights the differences between school and afterschool education.