This article describes an after-school program at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf (HMS), the oldest public day school for deaf students in the United States, where almost half of the student body imagined and created bridge and robotic machines. The Deaf Robotics Engineering and Math Team, or the DREAM Team club, included HMS students in…

This qualitative study examines the transition of eight elementary preservice teachers into student teaching after participating in a science methods course that included a significant amount of teaching after-school science to elementary grade students. These eight participants had a chance to practice teaching inquiry-based science and to reform…

Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…

Very large numbers of students for whom English is not their native language attend public school classrooms in the USA every year. It is estimated that there are currently about 5.3 million English learners in K-12 grades (National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition 2011). While teacher preparation programmes are required to prepare…

Citywide implementation of project-based learning highlights the benefits--and the challenges--of promoting exemplary practices across an entire out-of-school time (OST) network. In summer 2009, the City of Philadelphia and its intermediary, the Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC), introduced project-based learning to a network of more…

This article narrates the story of how a peace education program, over the course of a year, shifts from a more traditional form of peace education as conflict resolution skill building to a critical form of peace education. The path of this journey was neither straight nor direct; rather it meandered through an iteration of itself that actually…

Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…

Within the school library community, there have been persuasive calls for school librarians to contribute to science learning. We present a conceptual framework that links national standards of science education ("Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas," referred to as…

Building on the empirical work of the previous two studies, this paper describes the development of the Minds In Motion curriculum (MIM), as well as the setting and circumstances of a randomized controlled trial conducted to evaluate this intervention. Throughout this paper the authors emphasize the benefits and challenges of assembling an…

The roles that program leaders establish in their relationships with youth structure how leaders are able to foster youth development. This article examines the complex roles program leaders create in youth programs and investigates how they balanced multiple roles to most effectively respond to the youth they serve. Analyses of qualitative data…

During the 2010-2011 school year, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) piloted the After-School Global Language Opportunity Benefiting All Learners (GLOBAL) program for 12 weeks at eight different school sites. This school year the program expanded to 25 weeks and 11 sites. GLOBAL is an approach to learning that allows students to develop basic…

This article describes a new paradigm for accountability that envisions afterschool programs as learning organizations continually engaged in improving quality. Nearly 20 years into the era of results-based accountability, a new generation of afterschool accountability systems is emerging. Rather than aiming to test whether programs have produced…

State and national organizations recently developed policies focused on increasing physical activity (PA) in afterschool programs (ASPs). These policies emphasize "activity friendly" environment characteristics that, when present, should lead to higher levels of PA and reduce the amount of time children spend sedentary during an ASP.…

This article examines the culminating activity--"la cosecha" or the harvest--in a yearlong project in which teachers at a bilingual afterschool program and staff from a citywide environmental advocacy group taught students to plant, harvest, and sell produce grown at the school site. The authors show how students are socialized to become…

Afterschool programs that provide strong science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning experiences are making an impact on participating youth not only become excited and engaged in these fields but develop STEM skills and proficiencies, come to value these fields and their contributions to society, and--significantly--begin to see…