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 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…

Scholars have increasingly argued that we need to attend to adolescents' race, ethnicity, and culture in after-school activities to ensure positive effects. Still, little is known about adolescents' perceptions of culturally responsive practices in after-school activities (i. e., the use of diverse teaching practices, cultural engagement, and…

Organized after-school activities promote positive youth development across a range of outcomes. To be most effective, organized activities need to meet high-quality standards. The eight features of quality developed by the National Research Council's Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth have helped guide the field in this regard.…

Many literacy teachers are creating contexts for students to learn and use a range of reading comprehension strategies. As useful as reading strategy instruction is, relatively little has been documented on the ways in which reading strategies can become tools for critical literacy. In this paper, the author illustrates how a reading strategy can…

A wide variety of out-of-school time (OST) programs across the U.S. offer science education opportunities that cover many scientific disciplines and use diverse pedagogical practices (National Research Council [NRC], 2009). However, to improve youth's scientific literacy, OST educators need to "have the disposition and repertoire of practices…

Teaching about the nature of science is seen as a priority within science education, and has also been highlighted as a suitable context for challenging the most able ("gifted") learners at secondary school level. This article discusses a practical session designed to introduce the idea of physical (natural) laws. The session asks…

In response to requests from out-of-school time (OST) providers, the authors have created this practitioner's guidebook for integrating adolescent literacy development initiatives into a wide variety of OST programs. As readers will discover in subsequent chapters, the authors' definition of adolescent literacy development represents a…

This article describes the formation and enactment of a student and teacher-generated framework for re-authoring a troubling representation of Black masculinity in a popular culture narrative. This data-driven framework highlights the ways students and teacher provided a means for literacies to serve students' desire to re-author images and words…

This article looks at the competing language ideologies that preschool children negotiate in "Mi Clase Magica" (MCM), a Spanish-English bilingual/bicultural after-school program in San Diego. It examines children's language choice in interactions with peers and adults taking place at computer and "tareas" (homework) activities.…

The increasing emphasis on student achievement and mastery test scores has many after-school programs struggling with the demand to improve academics and offer homework assistance, while also offering a well-balanced program providing opportunities for play and social interaction. This paper asserts that project-based activities can encourage…

This article highlights the educational experiences of African American adolescent boys, particularly their overrepresentation in special education, and the deleterious effects on this population. Using a qualitative methodology, data were collected from adolescent boys participating in an after-school rite of passage program in which the…