In the last issue of the Journal (volume 75, number 4), we read about our esteemed colleague Israel Scheffler's love affair with Hebrew. In this issue, we continue the conversation about Hebrew as part of a series of articles by distinguished senior colleagues who bring the wisdom earned by a lifelong career in Jewish education. Many of us share…

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…

Few after-school programs target alcohol and other drug (AOD) use because it is difficult to encourage a diverse group of youth to voluntarily attend. The current study describes CHOICE, a voluntary after-school program which targeted AOD use among middle school students. Over 4,000 students across eight schools completed surveys and 15%…

This article explores the types of audience engagement strategies used by a Japanese secondary school student in an after school course preparing for a high-stakes impromptu academic writing task on a university entrance exam. The study uses appraisal theory--the branch of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) concerned with the patterning of…

After-school programs receive federal support through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. 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. This brief presents findings for the first of two years of program operations (school year…

To understand the effects of after-school programs, people need to understand the effects of various "dosages." The Harvard Family Research Project, an agency that devotes considerable resources to the study of after-school programs, recommends three categories for measuring dosage: (1) "intensity"; (2) "duration"; and (3) "breadth." Intensity is…

After school programs offer an important avenue for supplementing educational opportunities. In California, the After School Education and Safety (ASES) program creates incentives for locally driven after school programs to partner with schools and communities in providing academic support and safe, constructive alternatives for elementary and…

Quality elementary physical education programs recognize the changing development and movement abilities of children (NASPE, 2007). Educational dance within these programs provides opportunities to engage in developmentally appropriate rhythmic activities. Research to date provides modest information for physical educators regarding what rhythmic…

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is a nonpartisan, nationwide, nonprofit organization of public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary education in the states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Education Activity, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and five U.S. extra-state jurisdictions. CCSSO…

Social-Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986, 1999) served as the framework to explore overweight children's perceptions of different physical activity settings. Participants were children (n = 67) enrolled in an after-school and summer program for overweight African-American and Hispanic-American children from low-income families. To gain insight into…

There is considerable interest in identifying ways to close the Black-White achievement gap. This study examines race differences in children's participation in after-school programs, an out-of-school time experience that may influence children's achievement. Using nationally representative data spanning 1995-2005, the authors find that African…

Geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon, 2003) frames this analysis of play, multimodal collaboration, and peer mediation as players navigate barriers to online connectivity in a children's social network and gaming site. A geosemiotic perspective enables examination of children's web play as "discourses in place": fluidly converging and…

Teaching about the nature of science is seen as a priority within science education, and has also been highlighted as a suitable context for challenging the most able ("gifted") learners at secondary school level. This article discusses a practical session designed to introduce the idea of physical (natural) laws. The session asks…

The experiment reported here tested impacts of New Hope, an employment-based poverty intervention for adults on developmental patterns of children's participation in structured out-of-school activities, using a cross-sequential design spanning ages 6 through 19. New Hope increased participation in activities (lessons, sports, religious, clubs,…

This paper explored informal (after-school) and formal (elective course in-school) learning contexts as contributors to middle-school student attitudinal changes in a guided discovery-based and blended e-learning program in which students designed web games and used social media and information resources for a full school year. Formality of the…