Through play-centered opportunities for discovery and exploration, a child can uncover his or her interests, talents, and authentic self, and the dividend may ultimately prove to be life-defining. If engaging in purposeful play is among the most effective means through which children identify the all-consuming activities that bring them joy, and…

Contemplating one's teaching has long been an essential part of teacher education. Accordingly, as an instructor of a literacy methods course with a tutoring component, I asked education majors in the class to send me weekly e-mail reflections about their teaching experiences. However, they had difficulty considering their lessons. I knew poetry…

T.A.L.E.S., Teaching And Learning with Engaging Stories, is an alternative teaching method that focuses on enhancing learning by teaching science, math, ELA, and social studies through story. A six-week research study investigating socioeconomically disadvantaged students' responses to oral stories was conducted during an afterschool tutoring…

A skilled workforce is critical in high-quality out-of-school time (OST) programs. However, the workshops commonly used to train OST staff are not adequately preparing practitioners to deliver quality programs that can benefit youth. Professional learning communities (PLCs) are a practice-focused alternative that has a track record of improving…

This study examined a long-term afterschool leadership program situated in a Midwestern university town in the US. The activity-based program for boys considered to be disengaged with school and at risk for dropping out of education, was based on the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) model. The program curriculum was strongly…

The purpose of the study was to reveal the cognitive characteristics of talented children who come from economically vulnerable contexts in Chile. Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) was administered to a sample of 5,160 students who took part in the process of identification of gifted students from the program PENTA UC in Chile between…

This study was an investigation of the use of a NAO humanoid robot as an effective tool for engaging readers in an afterschool program as well as to find if increasing engagement using a humanoid robot would affect students' reading comprehension when compared to traditional forms of instruction. The targeted population of this study was…

The purpose of this exploratory descriptive study was to help address the need for reintegrating African American male youth into high school by allowing African American males who were in detention the opportunity to chronicle their experiences as they pursue their educational goal of successfully returning and completing high school. The…

Executive function (EF) describes a complex set of skills, including flexible attention, inhibitory control, and working memory, that coordinate to achieve behavioral regulation. Visuospatial skills (VS) describe the capacity to visually perceive and understand spatial relationships among objects. Emerging research suggests VS skills are…

This paper describes an after-school club aimed to engage elementary students in project-based learning by integrating mathematics and literacy connections within a community-based topic. Building on students' backgrounds and interests, researchers created the Community Super Investigators (CSI) Club as part of an after-school program to explore…

Previously developed K12 Engineering Activity Modules were modified to include a literacy component and facilitated 2 days a week as part of an afterschool Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) program. The afterschool program started in October and ended in April, with a winter and aspring break. In this pilot, 2 K12 teachers…

Science learning is most often examined within formal education contexts, even though students spend more of their lives outside of the classroom. Students may interact with scientific phenomena during these out-of-school experiences, providing additional opportunities for learning to take place. Prior studies have found that optional science…

"You Can't Be What You Can't See" presents a rare longitudinal account of the benefits of a high-quality, out-of-school program on the life trajectories of hundreds of poor, African American youth who grew up in Chicago's notorious Cabrini-Green housing project in the 1980s and early '90s. The result of a five-year research project by…

This report is the results of an online survey of likely 2022 voters, conducted August 30-September 12, 2022. The data show that voters and parents alike have a clear vision of their priorities for education and schools, school funding, and parental involvement. [This report was prepared with Lake Research Partners. For "Across the Aisle:…

After-school programs offer young people opportunities for self-expression, exploring their talents, and forming relationships with supportive adults. That is, after-school programs promote young people's social and emotional learning (SEL) skills--whether the programs use that term or not. Despite these programs' potential, Noelle Hurd and Nancy…