The present two studies investigated whether students' development of epistemic beliefs about the educational sciences (study A; N = 152) and linguistics (study B; N = 150) can be affected by authentic learning activities in an out-of-school lab (OSL). OSLs aim to engage students in authentic activities that attempt to simulate the ways how…

This study examines the relationship between Japanese children's inquiry skills and their participation in various after-school programs. Inquiry skills--encompassing the ability to explore, analyze, and synthesize information--are essential competencies in 21st-century education. However, limited research has explored how different types of…

Drawing on research in the context of Swedish school-age educare and adopting a post-humanist theoretical--methodological approach, we put forward the notion of mathemat-ing to conceptualise mathematical events that emerge in out-of-school configurations of practice. In them, ethical sensibilities as affects of engagement and rejection may be…

Societal changes during the last few decades have given rise to the expansion of extended systems in nations across the world. Despite differences regarding age groups and relations to compulsory school, the task of extended education is primarily to provide participants with possibilities to learn general or specific content and foster their'…

Research supports the use of engaging young students in shared reading opportunities beyond the school setting to scaffold children's social emotional and academic development. This article describes an exploratory mixed-methods case study examining the application of the Storybooks and Social Hooks (SASH) curriculum, which uses dialogic reading…

Although designed for informal educational structures and non-formal providers, the AeroEducate initiative offers youth in a variety of settings an initial exposure to the world of aviation and aeronautics. Real-world and context-based experiences spark learners' interests and may help them discover a personal and/or professional passion for the…

Purpose: This short article takes the play and passion of children's literacy as its focal point. Rather than orienting reading and writing around what should be taught or how children should respond and understand written text, in this short reflective essay we aim to explore the play and passion inherent in children's literacy practices. We do…

This study investigates the effect of out-of-school activities on gifted students' affective and behavioral tendencies. Mixed method research with a single group pre and post-test experimental design was used in this study. Twenty-five gifted students from Turkey-Istanbul participated in this study. "Environmental Affect Scale" and…

Purpose: The paper aims to investigate and describe the complex and dynamic dilemmas teachers are facing connected to students' net-based out-of-school activities. Design/methodology/approach: The authors draw on the notion of dilemmatic spaces when thematically analyzing focus group interviews conducted with 41 teachers at three lower secondary…

Despite the success of informal STEM programs, one ongoing challenge is sustaining learners' interest beyond the programs' initial impact (Morris et al., 2019). Although some longitudinal studies suggest that such programs can have a lasting impact on girls in STEM (e.g., McCreedy & Dierking, 2013), further research is needed to identify the…

The aim of this study was to explore how counselors of a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) focused out-of-school time (OST) program understood ways to support students' social-emotional learning (SEL) and STEM identity development, as well as the impact on counselors' awareness of their own SEL and STEM identity. To do this,…

Based on an empirical study of policy enactment and mathematical enculturation in Swedish school-age educare, a conceptualization of mathematics as the assemblage of "activities" and "values" is proposed. Observations were analysed using policy enactment theory and the lens of mathematical activities. The result shows that…

This study describes the design and implementation of an integrated STEM + computational thinking (CT) curriculum, which was guided by project-based learning, for integrating CT in after-school programs. The study examined teachers and students' reactions to the curriculum and the challenges in implementing such a curriculum. Results show that…

Out-of-school labs (OSLs) aim to foster students' interest in and knowledge about scientific ways of thinking and working by engaging them in authentic activities that emulate processes of scientific inquiry. However, research has not yet focused on investigating whether students perceive those activities as authentic and whether students'…

Multilingual children learning English often receive inequitable curriculum, instruction, and assessment opportunities in preK-5 schools where English is the dominant language of instruction. There is an even more prevalent gap when also considering access to high quality STEM learning opportunities. Why is STEM enrichment for multilingual…