The author describes an after-school science club program for urban 4th-grade students that integrated instructional technologies to investigate a pond ecosystem in the local schoolyard. The author conducted a design-based evaluation study to examine the effectiveness of the program in promoting environmental attitudes and understandings of the…

The impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is usually understood in relation to schools and districts, but the legislation has also affected community-based organizations that operate school-linked programs. This case study of an after-school program in California demonstrates how educational accountability systems that emphasize students' academic…

Afterschool programs provide myriad benefits to all who participate, but the lion's share of programs are geared toward younger children. According to a recent survey, 6.5 million children in the U.S. are in afterschool programs, and just 8 percent are in grades 9-12. However, there are 2.3 million high schoolers who would participate if programs…

Discusses the growing interest in and need for after-school programs, explaining the benefits of such programs and focusing on how parents can find a high quality program that suits their needs. Two sidebars present questions to help parents assess after-school programs and the National PTA's position on after-school programs. (SM)

While research on program effectiveness offers ample evidence that afterschool programs can benefit young people in a variety of ways, this same body of research demonstrates that not all programs are equally effective (Granger, 2008). Some programs show positive results in many or all major outcome categories. Other programs are associated with…

The purposes of this study were to (1) investigate non-accelerated middle schools students' understanding of pre-algebraic concepts, in particular, addition and subtraction of integers and the notion of equality; (2) describe and analyze how non-accelerated middle school students interact with The Geometer's Sketchpad (GSP) applets depicting…

Schools represent the primary setting where refugee children learn about Australian life and culture. They serve as a broad context for acculturation not only for academic development and language acquisition but for cultural learning too. This paper focuses on the after-school homework tutoring programme that uses University of Western Sydney…

Organized children's activities qualify as children's work, in much the same way that school work does. Both produce transferable use value and create capital that contributes to the future production of goods and services. To illustrate this argument, this article draws on qualitative research primarily based on interviews with the parents of…

This brief presents findings that demonstrate a relationship between key approaches in Communities Organizing to Advance learning (CORAL), an eight-year, $58 million after-school initiative of The James Irvine Foundation, and the academic progress of English learners. Reported findings include: (1) Children who participated in CORAL fit the…

In this commentary, we discuss the implications of recent research led by Bart Hirsch, Reed Larson and Charles Smith. Each study helps deepen our understanding of youth work practice and can inform policy strategies aimed at developing a strong, stable, committed and prepared OST workforce. (Contains 4 footnotes and a list of Resources.)

Since 2003, The Wallace Foundation has supported a range of initiatives in five cities to develop and test new, coordinated approaches to making high-quality out-of-school time learning opportunities available to more children. While much remains to be learned, we believe a coordinated approach holds considerable promise for building and…

This article discusses the different ways in which students and preschool teachers at two Swedish universities interpret the concept of professionalism. Data for this article are drawn from a study conducted in two different urban areas of Sweden which explored the following four questions: (1) What does the concept of professionalism imply for…

The present paper interrogates the ways in which school is produced as a particular bounded place (or collection of places) where sexuality, and particularly non-heterosexuality, is carefully policed by these boundaries. Drawing upon data generated in primary schools during a nationwide action research project ("No Outsiders"), we focus…

This article examines the culture of community-based after-school programs that serve low-income Hmong immigrant youth. By drawing on knowledge of Hmong culture, history, and family structure, and knowledge of mainstream American culture, the staff at the community centers are able to connect to children and adolescents in ways that schools do…

For those with a vested interest in online technologies for learning, the knowledge and skills that constitute successful participation in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) places these games squarely among the most promising new digital technologies to date. In this article, the author broadly outlines the qualitative results of a two and…