Purpose: With video games being a source of leisure and learning, educators and researchers alike are interested in understanding children's motivation for playing video games as a way to learn. This study explores student motivation and engagement levels in playing two math video games in the game "Club Penguin." Method: This is a…

Purpose: Low consumption of fruits and vegetables is often associated with poor diet quality, and childhood obesity. The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility, and conduct a formative evaluation, of Healthy Heroes, an innovative, social cognitive theory-based program that uses child created photo-comic books to promote fruit and…

This study was designed to reveal the attitudes of music teachers toward parents' involvement. The 13 participants were active music teachers who taught one-on-one lessons in an afterschool program. The participants were interviewed in accordance with the question research protocol designed for this study. Although most of the teachers were in…

The landscape of early learning and out-of-school-time programs in the City of Santa Monica is complex, with numerous providers and funding streams. This complexity reflects its evolution in response to changes in federal, state, and local priorities and initiatives. Future shifts in funding levels, program auspices, and other features are likely.…

In this article, the author combines multicultural feminist critical theories with the voices of Black and Latina/Latino young spiritual children to extend culturally responsive teaching. The author illuminates how children use their hip-hop writing to construct themselves as people who communicate with God, choose spiritual content for their…

This article documents a community-initiated service-learning project within a teacher education program. A social justice model guided the initiative to raise critical awareness on power and privilege while countering deficit-model thinking. Partnering with community agencies serving immigrant children and youth, the faculty researcher worked…

A quality improvement system (QIS) is an intentional effort to raise the quality of afterschool programming in an ongoing, organized fashion. There are a number of reasons the QIS is gaining popularity. The main reasons community leaders are drawn to improving quality is that they know that 1) higher quality programs will mean better experiences…

The purpose of this study was to determine the benefit of an art program to children and youth living in an emergency housing facility. Factors leading to homelessness are explored and examples of the positive influence of art for children experiencing crisis and trauma are presented. Through action research, an art program was implemented where…

Social-Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986, 1999) served as the framework to explore overweight children's perceptions of different physical activity settings. Participants were children (n = 67) enrolled in an after-school and summer program for overweight African-American and Hispanic-American children from low-income families. To gain insight into…

This article is based on materials gathered from qualitative research interviews among eight-year-old and nine-year-old children participating in an after-school programme (ASP) in Oslo, and investigates how bodily play affects their sense of coherence (SOC). In line with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, children's lived experiences are regarded as layered…