Positive youth development programs such as those offered by Boy Scouts of America (BSA) provide sources of support and opportunities for leadership and character development. Programmatic experts from BSA collaborated with researchers to develop a visual theory of change (pathway model) for youth development in Scouts BSA and for adult volunteer…

Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis," described the frontier as the lifeblood of American ideals and warned that the frontier's closing would mean the factors that once enabled America to prosper could no longer be relied on in the century ahead. Boy scouting was shaped by a similar nostalgia for the vanishing frontier as well as…

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the militarisation of school life was the primary motivation and the ideological basis for the introduction and promotion of the Boy Scouts in China. Church schools used Scouting to expand the influence of the schools themselves and even their religion. Chinese and western educators in Republican China…

The article explores the possibilities for cosmopolitan learning within a site such as the 23rd World Scout Jamboree. The approach is interdisciplinary, combining a theoretical conceptualisation of 'cosmopolitan learning' taken from Intercultural Education with a Cultural Studies focus on the representation of national and global cultures. This…

This instrumental case study explored non-formal educators' lay theories of adolescence using the case of the Boy Scouts of America's Scouts BSA program, a co-ed program serving youth between the ages of 11 and 17. We conducted an iterative analysis of 110 structured interviews with Scouts BSA adult volunteer leaders who served as scoutmasters or…

The middle school years are marked by a critical interplay of biological, cognitive, and social development, which collectively shape adolescents' experiences and developmental trajectories. Recognizing the complexity of these processes is crucial for creating nurturing environments that support adolescents' academic, social, and emotional…

In this article we present our findings regarding of providing online educational activities, delivered by six adults, during 13 weeks (first semester 2020) to 15 children aging from 5 to 7 (the Beaver scouts), on a non-formal education context. The activities combined guided play and problem-based learning activities. Our research objective was…

Extracurricular activities play an important role in the school lives of students. To understand this effect, the authors of this article consider public schools in Azerbaijan and analyse the effect of extracurricular activities on students' academic performance. They conducted a study investigating three groups of extracurricular activities:…

This Practice to Policy brief, based on insights from UnidosUS's Affiliate Network of community-based organizations and public charter schools in Illinois, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California, highlights the critical role of Out-of-School Time (OST) programs in supporting the Latino community, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19…

Despite years of recruitment efforts, women remain significantly underrepresented throughout engineering. While research into precollege engineering education has expanded, it has primarily focused on formal learning settings, even though students spend significantly more time outside of the classroom. The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything,…

Possessing awareness about the human body is important for the maintenance of good health. To increase such awareness in children's daily lives, we developed and implemented a two-hour activity session for a group of nine Cub Scouts. Three graduate students, one undergraduate student, and one high school student assisted faculty during this…

In the globalizing world, the success of each nation in transferring the values of its culture to the new generations is directly related to the continuation of their culture. Both international and national studies include findings regarding character education in the family and at school, the cause of which is that the new generation has the…

Although organized activities promote positive youth development, Latina/os are least likely to participate among ethnic minority youth. This study tested whether an indicator of social stratification, namely mothers' documentation status (i.e., nativity, citizenship, and legal status), explained low activity participation rates among Mexican and…

Extracurricular activities play an important role in the educational process as they provide students with the opportunity to deepen their knowledge and develop various skills, meet their creative needs and acquire the culture of free time. They also provide space for a closer relationship between the club coordinators and students, for students'…

This research aims at describing the factors influencing the extracurricular activities especially scouting. This research also aims at describing the Scouts skills that can form the students' character. This research is also to describe the strategies for the formation of the students' character through scout activities. This research was a…