Spatial reasoning skills are a great predictor of students' Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) achievement and attainment. However, researchers have mainly viewed spatial reasoning skills as an internal cognitive process that is measured through the administration of psychometric testing and laboratory experiments. Further,…

In living history museums, where young people work and volunteer as historically dressed interpreters, participate in field trips, and attend summer camps, young people can simultaneously represent the past, the present and the future. In these spaces, they also shape the past through their questions, their retellings, and their reimaginings based…

Purpose: A prior randomized trial found a school social intervention yielded significantly better outcomes (social and autism features) immediately following intervention compared to typical school programming (services-as-usual [SAU]) for children on the autism spectrum. In that study, children in the SAU condition subsequently completed a summer…

Background and Context: With the growing movement to adopt critical framings of computing, scholars have worked to reframe computing education from the narrow development of programming skills to skills in identifying and resisting oppressive structures in computing. However, we have little guidance on how these framings may manifest in classroom…

Group work is commonly adopted in university science laboratories. However, student small-group discourse in university science labs is rarely investigated. We aim to bridge the gap in the literature by characterizing student discourse group roles in inquiry-based science labs. The instructional context for this study was a summer program hosted…

The authors describe Hexacago Health Academy (HHA) 2.0, a five-year summer intervention designed to increase interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) among mostly Black high school students in Chicago. The program features public health fundamentals and game design using principles of systems thinking, social-cognitive…

This report is part of a commissioned paper series that highlights the profound and ongoing effects of COVID-19 on educational opportunities and underscores the necessity of bold, systemic reforms to ensure equitable and effective learning environments. The papers examine evidence-based strategies to mitigate opportunity gaps, strengthen student…

This study examined the role of psychosocial perceptions in predicting academic engagement in a sample of 254 gifted adolescents. Three hierarchical linear regressions were performed to examine if, and to what extent, gifted students' psychosocial perceptions (i.e., hope, academic self-efficacy, academic self-concept, academic motivation, and…

A prior randomized trial found a school social intervention yielded significantly better outcomes (social and autism features) immediately following intervention compared to typical school programming (services-as-usual [SAU]) for children on the autism spectrum. In that study, children in the SAU condition subsequently completed a summer social…

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been described as a mechanism to allow more undergraduates to engage in research experiences. To understand whether CUREs are viable to scale-up undergraduate access to research experiences, it is essential to carefully evaluate whether CUREs promote comparable self-reported outcomes for…

Struggling writers often need more instructional support than is present in commercially available process writing curricula. In this study, we employed a one-group, pretest-posttest design to evaluate whether 41 struggling primary grade writers who attended a university-based summer learning program would increase in writing ability, given a…

Given his role as Director of Technology, it may come as a surprise that Devon Jacobs is a staunch supporter of a no phones/limited technology approach for young students. In fact, when applying for his position at North Country School/Camp Treetops, he was drawn to the school's commitment to a reduced screen time, reduced media environment for…

Rehearsals have become an increasingly popular pedagogy to support preservice teachers in developing competency in enacting challenging instructional practices and communicating associated pedagogical commitments. To understand how best to support learners participating in rehearsals, researchers have begun to analyse the facilitation of teacher…

In this paper, we explore the ways that a STEAM-focused summer program for Indigenous youth supported learning in accordance with Indigenous axiologies (what we value esthetically or morally), ontologies (what we believe to be real and how we enact those beliefs), and epistemologies (what we know and how we know it) or AOE. Part of these AOEs…

The study examined how the NSF-funded, Maryland , the Summer Success Institute, functions as what is known as a third space. Ten African American doctoral students in STEM disciplines shared their perceptions of the benefits of being in a third space. The study hypothesized that SSI operates as a third space, promotes persistence, and combats…