In recent years, Maker-centered learning has emerged in schools and other spaces as a promising new phase of STEM education reform. With a sharp focus on equity, the authors investigate community-based STEM Making programs to determine whether, and how, they can address the educational needs of youth of color. They explore what it means for youth…

Over the last decade the 21st Century Community Learning Center program (21st CCLC) funded by the U.S. Department of Education has served over 100,000 Texas students annually in after-school centers. Approximately 779 local Texas 21st CCLC programs served students from over 800 schools during the 2012-13, and/or 2013-14 academic years. Statewide…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has proven to be an effective conduit to improved attendance scores, grades, and graduation rates; to adaptive behaviors and gainful employment in adulthood; and to a wide variety of other measurable factors spanning the spectrum of human adaptiveness and wellness (Aspen Institute, 2018). Although SEL has been…

Family and consumer sciences (FCS) professionals frequently work as advocates for survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). The purpose of this study was to explore IPV advocacy at the individual, relational, community, and societal levels of the Social Ecological Model (SEM) and to provide suggestions for FCS courses based on findings. This…

This paper draws on positive youth development theory to highlight the significance of Horizon Youth Service (HYS) participants' hip-hop music production, focusing on three HYS organizational features that supported participants' growth. The author's findings lead to recommendations for out-of-school time (OST) programs that combine creativity…

This personal perspective piece examines the researcher's positionality through the stance of humanizing research in multiethnic youth communities. Drawing on Paris and Paris and Winn's notions on humanizing research, this article reexamines positionality by revisiting two subjectivities in a three-year qualitative case study with African…

In the first in a series of surveys that take the pulse of the afterschool field during the pandemic, it is clear that although afterschool programs remain a vital partner to help young people emerge from this crisis strong, resilient, and hopeful, they are in dire need of support. In a survey conducted by Edge Research on behalf of the…

Indigenous communities worldwide face threats to their linguistic and epistemic heritage with the unabated spread of dominant colonial languages and global monocultures, such as English and the neoliberal, imperialistic worldview. There is considerable strain on the relatively few Elders and speakers of Indigenous languages to maintain cultures…

One of the key services community colleges provide is community education, meaning those programs and activities that are often offered for leisure or self-improvement and not for credit. Programs of this nature are increasingly challenged to be self-financing, whether through user fees or externally funded grants. The current study explored 75…

This article describes a project designed to explore how art educators can use "assemblage" to facilitate collaborative learning in their classrooms. It also explores how "assemblage thinking" facilitates collaboration by moving beyond static approaches to artmaking and encouraging students to draw on their own identities to…

The Youth Arts and Music Center Initiative is a community-wide effort to design and build an arts center in East Palo Alto. The six-year process, supported by the Goldman Foundation, centered on youth leadership and the arts, and engaged a cross-sector collaborative of partner organizations in an attempt to address the city's shortage of existing…

Peer volunteers have been found to be effective in delivering psychosocial interventions when they come from the same culture and share similar experiences as participants. We examined the clinical utility (feasibility and preliminary effectiveness) of a community-based, manualized, peer-delivered group counselling program to address the need for…

Leadership talent development has been identified as a priority in national and state standards for gifted education. However, leadership programs in schools are not always supported by mandates or funding in individual states and implementation is not always feasible within the constraints of local gifted service models. Although some research…

Imagine a school community in which all children and youth have equal opportunities to thrive. Social and cultural markers no longer negatively predict young people's academic, social, and emotional outcomes or their life chances. This is the community the authors aspire to build. Their work necessarily focuses on both youth and adult social and…

This article explores the Japanese history of women's adult social education after the Second World War and presents a case study of the women's classes held in Chofu City. Under the Allied Occupation following the war, the democratisation of Japan was urgent, and developing women's adult education was indispensable. The newly established Women's…