Community-based youth-serving organizations are often seen by participants and their families as safe and supportive environments with no stigma attached to participation. Many children attend community-based afterschool programs five days a week. In such an environment, trusted adults can consistently monitor the moods and behaviors of…

This article takes up three interrelated elements of Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy into an initial conceptual framework for moral education and explores a practical application of this framework to a lesson plan. The three elements are moral vocabulary, moral perception, and the quality of our states of consciousness. The framework constituted…

In light of the proven benefits of high-quality afterschool STEM programming for teens, the author worked with colleagues at University of Maryland Extension to institute the Pollinator Ambassador program. The program was launched through a county-based 4-H program at a partner site in a community outside Washington, DC. Following the 4-H Thriving…

The Young Olympians Program was developed to further a partnership between a university and the local Boys and Girls Club in central Illinois. The program was developed to improve youth participants' academic efficacy and social and emotional learning, while also engaging them in physical activity. This article shares the project-management stages…

In an attempt to respond to the calls for dance educators to explore alternatives to harmful authoritarian teaching practices, we propose that one such route forward is an Activist Approach to teaching, which was originally developed in physical education contexts as a student-centered, inquiry-based approach that attends to issues of embodiment…

School extracurricular activities are an important site for positive youth development in low-resource international contexts due to their relative accessibility and community relevance. Such activity programs can simultaneously illuminate local best practices and learn from research in other contexts where positive youth development research is…

Project RESET engaged resettled Chin refugee teens in critical STEM literacy practices in a community-based afterschool STEM enrichment program in the United States. Over the course of nine months, the participants multimodally and multilinguistically communicated their learning about weather, climate, and climate change, while also developing…

Our museum-based participatory research (PR) project was a collaboration between researchers and educators in an out-of-school time STEM education program for young people that positions STEM as a tool for community social justice. This project drew on literatures on reflective practice in museums and on research-practice partnerships. Yet…

In this article, teachers Niry Razafimamonjy and Josiana Andriantsalama, at the Lycee Jacques Rabemananjara beside the Indian Ocean in Taomasina, discuss how they support their students' learning and contribute to the field of English language teaching in Madagascar.

Low levels of physical activity can have adverse effects on youth development due to increased risks for many chronic illnesses and medical conditions. Improving physical literacy (PL), or the ability to move with competence and confidence in a wide variety of physical activities within multiple environments, can shape a path of healthy…

Psychiatric disorders, particularly substance use disorders, are an impactful and highly prevalent public health concern in youth from low-income neighborhoods (YLINs). Indeed, prevention and intervention programs for mental health disorders that have evidenced improvements in youth from general population are not well integrated into community…

Rangeley Friends of the Arts (RFA) is a nonprofit arts organization in Rangeley, a town of 1,200 souls in the rural western mountains of Maine. Working with existing facilities and a largely volunteer workforce, the article explains how this group established Creative After School Arts, or CASA--a program that provides a safe home away from home…

Since the early 1990s, notions about the purpose of physical education (PE) in the United States have increasingly aligned with a public health agenda driven by concerns that youth accrue too little physical activity (PA). In tandem with the shifting tides of thought about PE's purpose, authors have proposed numerous public health-aligned…

No one-size-fits-all strategy works to increase physical activity (PA) at schools. To realize success, practitioners need flexible PA programs to support the multi-component comprehensive school physical activity program (CSPAP) approach. Walk/run programs have the potential to provide this flexibility, and some have demonstrated increased…

Early childhood has long been known to be a formative time in a child's development-- a time when the brain produces more than 1 million neural connections every second during the first few years of a child's life. However, there are factors at the individual and community levels that impact the development process. In communities across America,…