A substantial body of research highlights the value of nature experience in supporting children's well-being and development. Given the growing interest in connectedness to nature (C2N), a better understanding of C2N measurement provides multiple opportunities, including consideration of the use of tools for research purposes and practitioner…

This holistic single-case study aimed to understand the impact of digital story telling (DST) on the identity expressions of Native American youth. The question that guided the study asks, 'How do Native American adolescents in a rural, tribal-run after-school programme for Indigenous youth explore and express who they are through digital story…

Research relating to children's views on their childhood and everyday activities, as well as comparative studies around this topic, is still lacking. From this background, the current study hopes to contribute new knowledge to this field of research. This study is a comparative study exploring how children aged 6-7 years experience their everyday…

Afterschool programs have garnered much attention as promising environments for learning where children can engage in rich science activities. Yet, little is known about the kinds of instructional materials used in typical, large-scale afterschool programs that implement science with diverse populations of children. In this study, we investigated…

Peer-to-peer bullying negatively impacts over 20% of school-aged children annually. While much literature exists on bullying on school premises, peer-to-peer bullying outside of the classroom is still relatively understudied. Despite states' implementation of antibullying legislation, peer-to-peer bullying has continued in schools and other areas…

Several children in grades K-5 are attending after-school programs for various reasons, such as academic support, social interaction, and behavioral support. The problem investigated is that short-term success has been stated and researched, but the long-term academic effectiveness of after-school programs for students in urban educational…

This dissertation was designed to provide an increased understanding of what is involved in providing whole child education. The researcher of this dissertation evaluated teacher awareness, changes in instructional behaviors, and the impact on culture as a result of an elementary afterschool program. All teachers were instructed to focus on their…

Recent scholarship highlights the wealth of varied and interconnected opportunities for learning science that informal environments can provide; yet, participants with different experiences, knowledge, and backgrounds do not all learn in the same ways. Thus, studies are needed that examine how particular participants take up learning opportunities…

In this article, I offer a qualitative study of three spaces created by and for young Muslim women in Toronto, Canada: an after-school drop-in programme for Muslim girls, a Somali women's group and a Muslim women's collective. I focus on data gathered from interviews of seven Muslim women in their 20s who created the spaces, which offered refuge…

Program evaluation can play a critical role in supporting high quality implementation of social programs to help them achieve their goal of social impact. Evaluation scholars have developed a wide range of strategies to help build programs' internal evaluation capacity in an effort to support meaningful use of evaluation. However, the evaluation…

The widespread availability of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has generated new activity contexts that provide opportunities and resources for learning, at the same time as expanding the learning potential of traditional contexts such as the family and schools. Within this framework the present study analyses the frequency with…

The Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program approach has been suggested to provide students with additional opportunities for physical activity (PA) outside of traditional physical education (PE). Although research suggests that this program is successful at increasing children's levels of PA, research on implementing pedagogical models to…

Characteristic of the twenty-first century are new literacy practices that require users and producers to be fluent with the affordances of multiple modes across print and digital media. In under-resourced contexts such as East Africa, these complex new multimodal practices have not been well documented. In this paper, we explore the context of an…

This article draws on ethnographic research of a youth theatre program within a Hmong arts organization to explore the ways in which a culturally responsive program nurtured critical consciousness among Hmong immigrant youth. Hmong youth "named" struggles with stereotypes and acculturation expectations, and constructed positive ethnic…

This study explores the conditions that limit social participation for children with physical disabilities, and in particular, how school segregation practices affect participation in formal and informal after-school activities. In a sample of 491 children, to varying degrees, a majority of the children were taken out of ordinary classroom…