Afterschool settings have continued to be identified as an ideal outlet for supporting youth development in many arenas, including physical activity (PA) behaviors and social emotional learning (SEL) skills. In fact, PA centered programs are ideal settings for youth to 8 develop and practice SEL skills in authentic ways. However, there a several…

Children's poor social-emotional functioning has been an increasing concern prior to and amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Childhood and adolescence are critical stages of life where they acquire key cognitive and social-emotional skills that shape their future mental health. When a student's social-emotional health suffers, so do their relationships,…

The Information Age Publishing new book series, Current Issues in Out-of-School Time, is designed with a purpose to disseminate original research and promising practices that further the Out-of-School Time (OST) field. This first book sets the foundation on which the series rests upon, by offering an analysis of the progress made since the 2000s,…

Researchers are increasingly interested in the issue of school accountability. Despite this, program standards for afterschool programs are not as fully developed as in other fields. This study bridges that gap and presents the results from a study to identify benchmarks and indicators for high quality afterschool programs. This research employed…

The purpose of this article is to give an overview of research on extended education in Switzerland and to point out the gaps in the field. In Switzerland official education statistics and research on extended education are still in their infancy. This is directly associated with the fact that extended education has only been widely discussed…

The need to play is primeval in human beings, at least as strong as the urge to fight. While the larger gaming community has traditionally focused on the fairly lucrative potential of exploiting the urge to fight in the form of violent and destructive war games, the "Serious Games" segment has become aware of the power of applying this…

Research has shown that engaging families through youth development and after-school programs may benefit children. This paper extends knowledge in this arena, describing a set of strategies for implementing family-strengthening activities in youth development settings. The paper reports findings from a pilot evaluation of the Boys & Girls Clubs…

The Refuge is an after-school care programme in the southeastern USA that caters to the academic and psychological needs of impoverished African-American children. This study evaluated the Refuge through interviews with staff, small group discussions with children and persistent observation. By evaluating the after-school care services they…

This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…

In these days where "accountability" is the byword, organizations more and more frequently seek to evaluate their programs. They often hire outside evaluators to help them assess the effectiveness of their programs, to find out what works and what doesn't, and to determine what programmatic changes would be beneficial. ActKnowledge, a…

This is the fourth report of a process evaluation of Palm Beach County Prime Time, Inc., an intermediary organization dedicated to improving the quality of afterschool programs, by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. It covers the 2007-2008 program year, which was the inaugural year of Prime Time's formal Quality Improvement System (QIS)…

Although there has been a rapid increase in funding and attention to after-school programs, there is little understanding of how after-school programs impact children's developmental trajectories. The heterogeneity of American children makes it very unlikely that all children need after-school programming or that there is but one brand of…

This report covers the third year of Chapin Hall's process evaluation of the Prime Time Initiative of Palm Beach County, Florida, a system-building effort to strengthen the quality of after-school programs in the county. During the past two decades, the after-school field has expanded enormously, partly in response to increasing concern about…

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL AREA OF THE PROGRAM WAS READING. THE BOOK LEVELS INCREASED FOR THE CHILDREN. THE LONGER A CHILD WAS INVOLVED WITH THE PROJECT, THE GREATER WAS HIS RATE OF PROGRESS. IN EVALUATING THE ROLE OF THE LANGUAGE LABORATORY, IT WAS EVIDENT THAT A MEDIAN INCREASE OF SLIGHTLY MORE THAN THREE READING LEVELS WAS ACHIEVED. THROUGH THE…

Researchers and policymakers are increasingly interested in the issue of school accountability. Despite this, program standards for afterschool programs are not as fully developed as they are in other fields. This study bridges that gap and presents the results from a study that identifies benchmarks and indicators for high quality afterschool…