In this article, I share how SQUAD Art Studio functions as an alternative, community-based, multisite Saturday art lab school for negotiating theory and practice with preservice art educators. SQUAD Art Studio educators' work confronts developmentalist images of children and preconceptions about young children and digital media. We revalue images…

This essay offers a broken narrative concerning the early history of anti-oppressive practice as an approach in the U.K. to youth and community work and the struggles over this in the context of UK higher education between the 1960's and the early 2000's. Educating informal educators as youth and community workers in the UK has been a site of…

Academic researchers dedicated to contributing to quality improvement in professional practice need to find more effective ways to bridge the gap between research and practice. Bridging the gap requires understanding what encourages the use of research findings by practitioners and what discourages it, as well as understanding how practitioners…

Student diversity in Canadian universities is rapidly increasing, and faculty and curriculum developers are challenged to transform programs and pedagogies to meet the learning needs of diverse students. While universities across Canada are actively attending to the need for interculturality and diversity in undergraduate education, this same need…

The concept of power is a complex and often intangible aspect of the evaluation process that is frequently a focal topic among the conceptual evaluation literature concerning collaborative or culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) contexts. Unfortunately, there remains a significant theory to practice gap as power is often rarely addressed or…

Community-based health initiatives (CBHI) play an important role in maintaining the health, function and participation of people with intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD) living in the community. However, implementation and long-term sustainability of CBHI is challenging. The Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services…

This report examines the effect of a primary component of restorative justice (RJ) programming in one community-based organization (CBO) on students' behavioral and disciplinary outcomes in four Chicago high schools from 2014 to 2016. It looks at the effect of students' use of RJ programs offered in the CBO's "Peace Room" (PR) on rates…

Coordinated systems are required to ensure evidence-informed practice and evaluation of community-based interventions (CBIs). Knowledge translation and exchange (KTE) strategies show promise, but these require evaluation. This paper describes implementation and evaluation of COOPS, a national KTE platform to support best practice in obesity…

In recent years, Maker-centered learning has emerged in schools and other spaces as a promising new phase of STEM education reform. With a sharp focus on equity, the authors investigate community-based STEM Making programs to determine whether, and how, they can address the educational needs of youth of color. They explore what it means for youth…

Research shows that adolescent participation in organized out-of-school time (OST) programs (e.g., after-school programs) is linked to positive developmental outcomes. However, whether OST program practitioners use this research to inform their decision making is unclear. Therefore, a science-to-practice gap may exist in OST programs. To assess…

This conversation began with a community arts project initiated in a poor area of Leuven, Belgium, and inspired by Paul Klee's "taking the line for a walk" (Couchez, 2012, p. 104). As educators committed to deepening democracy and believing that art can play an important role in the creation of new perspectives on how to deal with…

This snapshot describes and reflects upon two case studies of community writing projects between Emerson College and Boston Public Schools. Emerson College students were asked to tutor 10th grade BPS students for the English Language Arts portion of the state standardized assessment. Through both quantitative results and qualitative reflection,…

The Information Age Publishing new book series, Current Issues in Out-of-School Time, is designed with a purpose to disseminate original research and promising practices that further the Out-of-School Time (OST) field. This first book sets the foundation on which the series rests upon, by offering an analysis of the progress made since the 2000s,…

Despite the proliferation of theory-based behavior-change programs to promote physical activity, obesity and diabetes rates continue to rise. Given the notable ineffective interventions, it is important to examine why these efforts have been largely unsuccessful and to consider potential alternatives. The purpose of this article is to consider the…

Engaging social work students in research is challenging, in part, because of the way research is taught in the classroom and the need for learners to effectively develop connections between the "abstract world" of research concepts with the "real world" of professional experiences. This article describes the experiences of…