A three-day art project in an afterschool program with no specific arts component illustrates the potential—and the challenges—of engaging children in creating art using recycled materials.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Angela EckhoffAmy HallenbeckMindy Spearman
Out-of-school time (OST) programs can benefit the growing population of English learners in U.S. public schools by giving them the gift of time in which to learn both English and subject matter content.
Self-assessment can be a powerful tool for evaluating program quality, yet the available self-assessment instruments do not comprehensively address practices that promote academic enrichment.
This article describes the way that an afterschool center and school begin to collaborate, using the analogy of moving from friendship to dating and marriage.
Single-sex empowerment groups can help boys from disadvantaged backgrounds make healthy choices. What qualities does an adult leader need to facilitate boys’ empowerment?
This study uses an innovative data source--the Youth Data Archive--to follow elementary and middle school students from a single school district over four academic years to discern any links between their afterschool program participation and English language development. Students attending the program had greater rates of gain in English development, but they did not necessarily achieve proficiency gains or redesignation as "fluent English proficient" sooner than non-participating students. These results point to the need for increased examination of the link between in-school and out-of
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Rebecca LondonOded GurantzJon Norman
Social network analysis of a local afterschool ecosystem in Dallas County, Texas, reveals programs’ relative isolation from one another and their dependence on just a few funding sources. Considerable opportunity exists for programs to collaborate to build a more cohesive system of afterschool programming.
The ability to set and work toward goals is not inborn. This study examines how an afterschool program worked to help elementary-age children learn goal-setting strategies.
If afterschool is to become a system at the program level and a profession at the staff level, the field needs to examine requirements resulting from differing perspectives as well as the cohesive approaches to afterschool regulation in some states. Afterschool practitioners, agency officials, advocates, and other stakeholders around the country are working to identify the competencies program staff need and creating systems to support their professional growth. Understanding the requirements of different oversight sources, the perspectives that can divide them, and the common mission that
Exposing American K-12 students to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) content is a national initiative. Game Design Through Mentoring and Collaboration targets students from underserved communities and uses their interest in video games as a way to introduce science, technology, engineering, and math topics. This article describes a Game Design Through Mentoring and Collaboration summer program for 16 high school students and 3 college student mentors who collaborated with a science subject matter expert. After four weeks, most students produced 2-D video games with themes based
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Neda KhaliliKimberly SheridanAsia WilliamsKevin ClarkMelanie Stegman
A number of studies have already investigated children's stereotypical images of scientists as being male, old, bald, wearing eyeglasses, working in laboratories, and so forth. There have also been some interventions to impose more realistic images of scientists. In this study, a science camp was conducted in Turkey with a team of scientists consisting of elementary science education researchers. They interacted with the children throughout the camp both formally and informally. Twenty-four 6th and 7th grade students participated to the science camp. The science camp was conducted near a
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Gulsen LeblebiciogluDuygu MetinEsra YardimciPinar Seda Cetin
In Continuous Education curricula in Spain, the programs on sciences of the environment are aimed toward understandings of sustainability. Teaching practice rarely leaves the classroom for outdoor field studies. At the same time, teaching practice is generally focused on examples of how human activities are harmful for ecosystems. From a pedagogic point of view, it is less effective to teach environmental science with negative examples such as catastrophe, tragedy, and crisis. Rather, teaching environmental sciences and sustainable development might be focused on positive human-environment