The article considers the beliefs and practices of elementary-aged children who write for personal fulfillment. Mobilizing Lips-Wiersma's (Lips-Wiersma & Morris, 2011) notion of "meaningful work," I examine the ways in which these children experienced writing and sharing their work in a voluntary after school writing workshop and at…

This practitioner paper explores the positive impact playwork could have for Australian OSHC (Outside School Hours Care) environments and in turn, educators and children. Through a discussion of four theoretical perspectives pertaining to physical space from a playworkers perspective, the authors show how developing a conceptual understanding of…

The Double Reduction policy represents a significant educational reform endeavor of the Chinese government to alleviate the overly heavy burdens of homework and off-campus training for compulsory education students. Using the method of literature review, this study surveys the existing empirical research on the effects of the policy on the…

Studies have shown that course participation and academic performance are key factors in defining the success of online education, but much remains unknown regarding how best to define the success of online K-12 after-school education that are popular in Asian countries. To address this issue, we used a longitudinal clustering approach to analyze…

Aim: Investigating the relationship between what Japanese elementary school students (aged 8 to 12) actually do and what they want to do in their free time, and clarifying the problems concerning Japanese children's free time. Background: Previous studies reported that 51.2% of Japanese fifth and sixth graders answered that they were either…

Children in urban environments tend to have limited exposure to environmental education programs for many reasons. This paper describes the development of a short-session after-school program, created to introduce children in an inner-city school to the concept of urban ecology. In this program, we met with a class of 20 fifth graders once a week…

Following a massive wave of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, educators found the need to be hyper-critical of how they spend their instructional time with students. Almost all students are expected to return nearly a full grade-level behind and would likely have to learn to navigate a completely new school environment. As a result,…

The present article discusses the possibilities of interdisciplinary integration for teaching art to primary-school students in after-school activities. Integrated teaching, as one of the ways for putting into practice the socioconstructivist approach to learning and the theory of the guided construction of knowledge, is used as a basis for…

Purpose of the Study: Children express themselves freely with the help of art education and have the opportunity to learn thanks to richer content and experience. The purpose of this study was to help elementary school students recognize and learn about cultural heritage in their environment through various art activities. Research Methods: The…

This synthesis aims to see the effects of Socio-scientific Issues-Based Instruction (SSI) on the academic achievement of students in Turkey and to help shape future studies on this topic. A mixed-research synthesis method was employed in this study. As a result of the data searching process, 12 studies with quantitative data and 6 studies with…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced much of schooling online and limited students' access to informal learning opportunities such as afterschool programs. The purpose of this study was to investigate how fourth- and fifth-grade students engaged in an online engineering program and what factors influenced their engagement. We drew on a four-dimensional…

In this article, we discuss tensions that emerged as we collaborated with teachers to iteratively design and refine an afterschool reading intervention approach that emphasizes inquiry and disciplinary learning for upper elementary readers positioned as struggling in school. Our findings are organized around four design tensions that help us…

Open badges are portable, digital credentials that offer the opportunity to reward learning in both formal and informal settings, providing an inventory of competencies and interests. Previously, a comprehensive framework of open badges in the 'Working Scientifically' strand of the National Curriculum in England (ages 5-16), extending into post-16…

Tutoring has always been a salient part of education and schooling. When attending elementary school, 1934-1942, selected pupils were tutored after school, free, with no extra salary for teachers. It was then considered customary, evidently, for teachers to tutor those needing extra assistance.

The purpose of this study was to identify whether the quality of afterschool educators varies across economic groups of students. This article describes a statewide study of the relationship of ratings on CLASS--a validated measure for teaching and learning interactions--and student economic status. In essence, what is the distribution of…