This article describes a mathematics session in which students explored a challenging combinatorics task, a topic shown to be difficult for students when taught traditionally. The students developed a progression of personal representations, increasingly symbolic and abstract, which they used to find a solution and justification. (Contains 8…

The purpose of this Executive Position Paper is to examine the ways in which teachers learn to implement a new mathematics curriculum. The four case study teachers described in this paper were in their first and second year of teaching the "Investigations" curriculum. In the course of learning to teach with "Investigations," the teachers were…

Why is that English language learner sitting in the back of the classroom and not speaking up? Maybe she just needs a friend. This article shares what some schools are doing to make sure their ELL students become part of the school community.

A lot has been learned about effective approaches to realizing intended out-of-school time program outcomes. As program practitioners consider fostering evidence-based practices, program administrators, staff, and stakeholders must keep in mind that it is difficult to change behavior overnight, even among children. Efforts to improve outcomes for…

This article focuses on the development of decision-making skills and environmental concern by 11- and 12-year-old students through computer-based, scaffolded learning activities. The enacted activities provided necessary scientific information and allowed for the consideration of multiple aspects of the problem, the study of the effects of every…

After-school programs receive federal support through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, established in 1999. A primary purpose of the program is to provide opportunities for academic enrichment to help students meet state and local standards in core content areas. Findings from a previous national evaluation of the program indicate that…

In this article, the authors share an episode from an after-school program and focus on eight of the twenty-four urban, sixth-grade students who volunteered to work on mathematical problem solving. When students are given a supportive environment, open-ended tasks, and thoughtful teacher questioning, their reasoning can develop naturally. By…

In response to requests from out-of-school time (OST) providers, the authors have created this practitioner's guidebook for integrating adolescent literacy development initiatives into a wide variety of OST programs. As readers will discover in subsequent chapters, the authors' definition of adolescent literacy development represents a…

This article analyzes a hybrid after-school learning activity for children called "New School" (NS). NS is an inter-institutional, collaborative project based on a partnership between a university and local elementary schools that also involves other social actors and institutions. Using a framework of third generation activity theory, the article…

This research examines whether non-school literacies can be used to teach school content. Debates around this question have hinged on two arguments: (1) that the structure of school literacy is not compatible with the structure of non-school literacies and (2) that literacies are so hybrid that their use across different domains is not an issue.…

The authors of the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" anticipated that a majority of school districts or schools would not be able to attain state and national achievement standards without assistance. Consequently, the Act created a major tenet known as Supplemental Educational Services (SES) programs to improve the learning outcomes of…

This case study reviewed the collaborative efforts of university engineers, teacher educators, and middle school teachers to advance sixth- and seventh-grade students' learning through a series of project-based engineering activities. This two-year project enriched regular school curricula by introducing real-world applications of science and…

To investigate whether games may serve as useful formative assessment environments, this study examined, experimentally, the effects of two aspects of formative assessment on math achievement, game play, and help-seeking behaviors: (a) making assessment criteria explicit through the explanation of scoring rules and (b) incentivizing the use of…

A growing set of research projects in science education are working from the assumption that science literacy can be constituted as being centrally focused on issues of social justice for the youth and for communities involved in such work (Calabrese Barton, 2003). Despite well-established links among race, class, and exposure to environmental…

This study draws on ethnographic data from a year-long multimodal media production (MMP) course and the experience of an African American female adolescent who used the production of multimodal Hip Hop texts to express her creativity and growing socially conscious view of the world. The study demonstrates how students made meaning multimodally and…