Educational researchers and practitioners have cited the need for new directions in youth leadership studies as it relates to globalization. Globalization is considered one of the most important economic, cultural, and social trends of the last century, yet there is much debate about the educational curricula that best support the development of…

Undergraduate students are a critical resource for university-community programs that provide enriching learning opportunities for school-age youth who have limited exposure to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Many universities offer afterschool outreach programs that enable youth to interact with science faculty, and many such…

Like other STEM fields, computer science (CS) lacks representation of minorities, such as Black and Hispanic individuals, both in the number of bachelor's degrees obtained and the number of individuals in the CS workforce. Out-of-school CS programs are often designed with the intent to inspire young people to pursue careers in CS. Much of this…

This project aimed to investigate through empirical analysis the possibilities and impossibilities for everyday life in the institutional spaces of school-age educare. The data consists of twelve weeks of fieldwork in twelve settings and group interviews with staff teams in each setting. Through empirical analysis of the variation in institutional…

Afterschool programs play a significant role in the lives of minoritized students, offering a safe space for them to develop academically, socially, and emotionally. Program administrators are responsible for the oversight of the organization and must ensure that all staff members receive the necessary professional development to impact the lives…

Although researchers and policymakers have focused on school as the critical place in which learning occurs, organized youth programs offer different environments in which early adolescents can learn. However, early adolescent learning in organized youth programs is an under-researched area of learning, which may limit the ability of youth…

Nearly five years after the pandemic, a majority of afterschool programs are able to serve as many or more students as they served before the pandemic began. Still, most providers are concerned about their programs' sustainability and staffing capabilities. Overwhelming majorities of afterschool program providers report offering their students…

Background: Mental health is a priority for high schools, but extant programs often focus on symptom reduction rather than promoting adolescents' developmental assets. Objective: The goal of this study is to examine whether Art in Mind (AIM), a strengths-based after-school organized art activity tailored to fit the needs of adolescents with…

As educators, we anticipated the social-emotional learning (SEL) of the children from the neighboring community would be greatly impacted due to the lack of social interaction necessary for human development during COVID. As literacy experts, we thought we could support these children through read-alouds focused on SEL. Our goal was to provide…

Background: Everyday digital technologies play an important role in mediating human activity that is socio-political and humanizing. The everyday cyborg engages in speculative fabulation that is about fantastical new world-making in times of multiple crises. The work presented in this article builds on previous projects that have examined how…

The Summer and Afterschool Needs Assessment helps youth serving programs and organizations learn best practices and identify areas where they might benefit from guidance or support. The Needs Assessment draws from the best available evidence on what constitutes high-quality afterschool and summer learning programs and organizes these Success…

Three years after the onset of the pandemic, there is little evidence of academic recovery in the U.S. The latest data reveal a sobering reality: In spite of many school districts' efforts to accelerate learning, students remain far behind pre-pandemic levels of achievement. Even more troubling, many students did not accelerate their progress at…

Given that learning is not neutral or politically innocent (Giroux, 1983) and education is shaped by one's sociopolitical context (Paris & Alim, 2017), this paper shifts understandings of learning from the individual to the collective, centering community as a framework for reimagining education to advance equity. This paper explores the…

Stories of children moving in and out of refugee camps are not uncommon yet are often overshadowed by the dominant narratives of oppression, political failure, and war -- the stories "told of" rather than "told by" refugees. Dominant narratives on refugees largely shape perceptions about children and youth in displacement as…

The purpose of this quantitative comparative study was to determine the differences in literacy and mathematics pass rates between AY 2021-2022 and AY 2022-2023, whether a 21st CCLC Program contributed to score differences and whether there is an interaction between them in a southeastern state. A two-way mixed ANOVA was used to answer the…