Out-of-school-time (OST) programs have long focused on children's social and emotional development as part of their mission of building a culture of connectedness and positive relationships between youth and adults. Research demonstrates that high-quality, evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs are associated with positive…

While social skills training allows students to acquire social skills, often it does not enhance their performance of those skills outside the social skills training context. A withdrawal design was used to determine if a modified Tootling intervention could enhance at-risk, first-grade students' performance of two recently trained social skills…

Spatial skills are crucial to STEM disciplines and involve a variety of cognitive processes and skills related to visualising, reasoning and communicating about spatial relations. Particularly in the primary school years, attaining 'spatial literacy' gives children a valuable set of skills and knowledge that can aid them in successful…

Aiming to promote equity in computing, this study proposes an educational model that offers an alternative approach to inspire K-12 students to become interested in CS and develop their computational thinking (CT) skills. It also examines the experience of marginalized students during the COVID pandemic in a learning environment grounded in the…

Despite generous funding, the current data shows slow-moving demographical changes in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, and little to no slowing in the decline of STEM-associated career interests in underserved communities (Leeker, Maxey, Cardella & Hynes, 2019). While a considerable amount has been written about the…

The increase in diagnoses of autism for elementary aged students paired with schools increasingly moving towards inclusive classroom models creates a challenge for general education teachers. This quantitative quasi-experimental study was designed to investigate the efficacy of an after school, explicit social skills intervention, and the impact…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate students' perceptions of their personal and social responsibility skills during and following an eight-week physical activity (PA) afterschool program (ASP) focused on social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies. Specifically, student knowledge of SEL competencies and general PA attitudes…

This study examined professional teacher noticing in the context of written responses 12 pre-service teachers (PSTs) provided in a reflective journal after posing addition and subtraction problems for students in an after-school tutoring program. Professional teacher noticing skills, attending, interpreting, and deciding, were situated within the…

This paper examines the context for developing computational thinking (CT), computational participation (CP), and spatial reasoning among predominantly Black elementary students in grades 5 and 6, who attended a public school in the urban fringe of a large city in the Eastern United States. A case study is presented as the method to examine two…

This is the technical appendix to a report that offers early lessons from an initiative focused on social and emotional learning (SEL) in elementary schools and out-of-school time (OST) programs. In 2016, in an effort to gain knowledge about how to help children develop SEL skills, The Wallace Foundation launched a six-year project called the…

In 2016, in an effort to gain knowledge about how to help children develop social and emotional learning (SEL) skills, The Wallace Foundation launched a six-year project called the Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative (PSELI). The goals of PSELI are for students to experience reinforcing messages about SEL both in school and…

Out-of-school time (OST) programs can play an important role in fostering the development of literacy skills among children and youth. To investigate the variety of literacy skill-building strategies OST programs use, researchers from the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) examined the practices of 31 programs in Massachusetts. This…

This article focuses on the beliefs of primary school children aged 7-11 years in England concerning the impact of adult-led after-school extended provision (EP) on their development of non-cognitive skills (NCS). In responses to a questionnaire survey and focus group interviews, children were more positive than parents, teachers and school…

It is widely accepted that children in Scotland, as in other high-income countries, are not engaging in sufficient moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA), the consequences of which can be adverse for health and wellbeing. In this paper, it is contended that active play (a form of gross motor or total body movement in which…

Purpose: Homeless children are more likely to have social skills deficits relative to same aged peers and may benefit from a social skills intervention. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the Let's Be Social application with the addition of behavioral skills training (BST) to teach social skills to children who were homeless.…