After School Programing

There is renewed interest in out-of-school programs for informal learning as a way to complement or supplement formal classrooms. Compelling evidence of learning in the context of virtual worlds is emerging, but few empirically detailed comparisons of programs based on such technologies exist. This article presents a cross-case analysis conducted on two out-of-school programs based on virtual environments involving Global Kid’s “I Dig Science” situated in the virtual platform Teen Second Life and Games, Learning & Society Program’s “Casual Learning Lab” based on the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. Ethnographic methods were used for data collection across both in-game and face-to-face contexts at both sites with virtual and face-to-face data collection techniques used in combination. Analysis involved a code set of eleven a priori themes based on the shared goals of each program, resulting in 44 codes total. In this paper, the authors detail contrasts between the two programs in terms of argumentation, problem-solving, information literacy, and workplace skills, highlighting differences between the two programs in terms of their contrasting “locus of intentionality” (designer versus participant) and concluding with a set of “petite generalizations” in the form of design heuristics for future virtual worlds based programs.

In this era of education reform, school counselors are among educators being held accountable for the academic achievement of minority and poor children. School counselors in urban schools serve a disproportionate number of minority and poor children at risk for school failure. Urban school counselors can play critical roles in engaging their school’s stakeholders in implementing partnership programs that foster student achievement and resilience. This article discusses team facilitator,  collaborator, and advocacy roles and strategies for urban school counselors and specific types of partnership programs they need to promote to foster academic achievement and resilience in minority and poor students.

What can family members learn about each other from writing together? What sense of community can develop between family members and across other families as they write together? What areas of culture and community can be realized as families write together? These are the questions that fostered this current inquiry into a family writing project. Four families, connected through an urban community school, met together to write and share with one another. Excerpts of adult and children's writing is included and discussed along with the structure of developing a family writing project. Implications for classroom practices for teaching writing with children are discussed.

This paper analyzes discourses in method materials for thoughtful dialogues in the classroom. It focuses on materials presenting religious and moral subjects. 'Thoughtful dialogues' refers to a family of interrelated methods for philosophizing with students, e.g. philosophy for/with children, and Socratic seminars, using open-ended questions, and an investigating and collaborative interlocution. The questions guiding the study were:

This article sheds light on the educational trajectories of undocumented youth who engage in forms of organizing through a community-school partnership in an urban public school in Chicago. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study in an urban public high school, readers learn that undocumented youth gain a positive sense of identity and belonging to their school and community by participating in a community-based after-school program called The Dream Act Club. First, the article argues that undocumented youth participation in community organizing helps them make sense of their identity in relation to the larger community and societal context. Second, the article argues that social spaces like The Dream Act Club provide networks of support and what Levinson calls (2001) “intimate cultures,” enabling undocumented youth to accomplish two things (a) critique and dismantle negative stereotypes around the undocumented status that are perpetuated through the media and political figures on a larger scale, and through school-based personnel perceptions’ of undocumented youth on a local, school level; and, (b) critique larger immigration policies through community organizing ef- forts. By situating these powerful narratives of undocumented youth in the context of current issues in immigration policy, I (they/we) can write against the negative discourses that circulate in the national immigration debate in the United States about undocumented youth. These narratives enable us to consider the voices and needs of undocumented youth through their eyes. Their narratives challenge educators, researchers, and policy-makers to humanize the complicated identity formation processes in contentious political climates to better understand their social worlds and impoverished realities.

Organized after-school activities promote positive youth development across a range of outcomes. To be most effective, organized activities need to meet high-quality standards. The eight features of quality developed by the National Research Council's Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth have helped guide the field in this regard. However, these standards have largely been defined in terms of universal developmental needs, and do not adequately speak to the growing ethnic and racial diversity within the United States, which is further complicated by issues of power and social class differences. Given U.S. population shifts and after-school funding priorities, the time has come to consider new ways to provide organized after-school activities that are responsive to youth's culture and everyday lives. The goal of this article is to explore how we can help ensure that after-school activities are culturally responsive and address the specific needs of the youth who participate in these activities. Based on theory and empirical evidence, we provide proposed practices of cultural responsiveness for each of the eight features of quality for program structure and staff. The article

The Game-Design and Learning (GDL) initiative engages middle school students in the process of game design in a variety of in school, after-school, and summer camp settings. The goal of the GDL initiative is to leverage students’ interests in games and design to foster their problem-solving and critical reasoning skills. The present study examines the effectiveness of an after school version of the GDL program using a quasi-experimental design. Students enrolled in the GDL program were guided in the process of designing games aimed at solving problems. Compared to students in a control group who did not attend the program (n ¼ 24), the children who attended the GDL program (n ¼ 20) showed a significant increase in their problem-solving skills. The results provide empirical support for the hypothesis that participation in the GDL program leads to measurable cognitive changes in children’s problem-solving skills. This study bears important implications for educators and theory.

A goal of many after-school programs is to provide supervision to youths who might potentially
engage in delinquent activities during the afternoon hours. By comparing students who
remained in a sample of Maryland after-school programs to students who withdrew prior to
the end of the school year, this study provides evidence that after-school programs are serving
a lower-risk population than intended. Findings indicate that prior to dropping out of the
programs, dropouts scored in the more at-risk direction on 11 out of 12 indicators examined
in this study and had significantly more peer drug models and days absent from school than
students who stayed in the programs. Census data indicate that dropouts came from neighborhoods
characterized by higher levels of social disorganization than students who stayed in
the programs. Program attendance is also related to several of the risk-factors examined. The
results suggest the need for improved communication with parents and further creativity in
program planning as a means of retaining high-risk students.

The new report, by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, synthesizes knowledge from the fields of youth development, psychology, sociology, education and the cognitive sciences. Drawing on decades of theory and research as well as insights from those who work with young people, it describes what children need to grow and learn, and how adults can foster their development in ways that lead to college and career success, healthy relationships and engaged citizenship. It also identifies the obstacles that children in poverty and children of color may face in achieving their potential and suggests how policy and practice can help overcome those challenges. These three factors rest on four “foundational components,” qualities that adults can directly influence:

A demand for an educated Latinx student population will require investigating academic and psychosocial factors (psychological capital) for this growing population in the United States. Toward this end, the purpose of this study was to measure the differences in psychological capital factors between Latinx students enrolled in a 4-H after-school program at a Catholic elementary and middle school and a public middle and high school. Response to statements reflective of self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience were collected from 55 adolescent youth. The Psychological Capital for Youth (PsyCap-Youth] Garcia, Carmenaty, Robles-Piña, & Piña) was used to compare responses from adolescent youth from the two predominantly Latinx schools. Findings indicated that students enrolled in a Catholic school had statistically significant higher scores on hope, resilience, and optimism, but not on self-efficacy, than students enrolled in a public school. These findings have implications for foundational use of psychological capital factors in curricula for 4-H after-school programs across the nation and the world.

Keywords: Latinx, psychological capital, 4-H, after-school programs, public and private schools

This research provides the review of an issue that is an urgent challenge in the development field: the effectiveness of after-school programs on preventing school-age youth violence in vulnerable settings of developing countries. The existence of highly underprivileged youth in poor neighborhoods and its association with violence have spurred a variety of programs covered by the name of after-school activities. Most rigorous trials of after-school interventions to prevent youth violence have been conducted in developed countries, with far fewer in Latin America. In this review, ranges of databases were systematically searched. Six studies in five Latin American and Caribbean countries have been identified, and most reported results favor after-school. But also some concerns have emerged: the results in some domains of youth behavior are null or even negative for some subpopulations. These findings suggest that after-school interventions hold significant promise for preventing violence and criminal behavior in at-risk school-age youth, but also that there is an urgent need for a significant upgrade in the quality of the programs and in the fidelity of the implementation. The identified concerns also demand more rigorously evaluated and reported studies, even of the different components of the interventions.

The evaluation team reports primarily on formative results and – to a limited degree – on summative results. The results from the various data collection efforts are synthesized and triangulated to assess the degree to which CCF awards: 1) Increase the capacity of quality school readiness programs, 2) Increase parent engagement to support student learning, and 3) Increase teacher professional development focused on evidence-based instructional activities and the use of student performance data to improve instruction.

After school programs (ASPs) are popular and receive substantial public funding. Aside from their childcare and supervision value, ASPs often provide youth development and skillbuilding activities that might reduce delinquent behavior. These possibilities and the observation that arrests for juvenile crime peak between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. on school days have increased interest in the delinquency prevention potential of ASPs. This study examined effects of participation in ASPs conducted in Maryland during the 1999-2000 school year and the mechanism through which such programs may affect delinquent behavior. Results imply that participation reduced delinquent behavior for middle-school but not for elementary-schoolaged youths. This reduction was not achieved by decreasing time spent unsupervised or by increasing involvement in constructive activities, but by increasing intentions not to use drugs and positive peer associations. Effects on these outcomes were strongest in programs that incorporated a high emphasis on social skills and character development.

Past research suggests that community after-school programs (ASPs) are crucial sites for culturally relevant programming for minority and immigrant youth; yet, we know little about how ASPs address language in their programming. Using an ethnographic fieldwork approach, we examine the goals and practices of ASP workers serving immigrant youth with diverse ethnic and language backgrounds in San Francisco, California. We find that, despite the best intentions regarding culturally relevant programming, ASP workers faced funding mandates, capacity issues, and increasingly diverse youth populations, and they adopted English-only policies or simply placed little priority on native-language usage. Ultimately, we observed competing processes related to English dominance: a lack of support for English language learners (ELLs) and bilingual youth, and the use of English as a bridge language across racial and ethnic lines. While staff sought to support and empower immigrant youth, ELL youth were often left on the sidelines and had limited opportunities to develop social capital in ASPs. Without reworking funding

Organized after-school activities promote positive youth development across a range of outcomes. To be most effective, organized activities need to meet high-quality standards. The eight features of quality developed by the National Research Council's Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth have helped guide the field in this regard. However, these standards have largely been defined in terms of universal developmental needs, and do not adequately speak to the growing ethnic and racial diversity within the United States, which is further complicated by issues of power and social class differences. Given U.S. population shifts and after-school funding priorities, the time has come to consider new ways to provide organized after-school activities that are responsive to youth's culture and everyday lives. The goal of this article is to explore how we can help ensure that after-school activities are culturally responsive and address the specific needs of the youth who participate in these activities. Based on theory and empirical evidence, we provide proposed practices of cultural responsiveness for each of the eight features of quality for program structure and staff. The article

The current study examines associations between participation in after-school programs and change in Latino parent involvement with schools. Hierarchical linear regression analyses demonstrated that parents of children who had higher after-school program attendance rates were significantly more likely to report increases in the quality of relationships with their children's teachers, frequency of parent-teacher contact, and engagement with their children's schooling over a twoyear period. However, greater home educator contacts were related to decreases in quality and quantity of parent-school involvement. A primary implication is that attendance in school-based after-school programs may draw parents into children's regular-day school context. Editors' Strategic Implications: The authors illustrate the promising practice of using after-school programs to promote parent involvement and to help integrate the often disparate family and school contexts for Latino children.

After school programs (ASPs) are popular and receive substantial public funding. Aside
from their child-care and supervision value, ASPs often provide youth development and skillbuilding
activities that might reduce delinquent behavior. These possibilities and the observation
that arrests for juvenile crime peak between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. on school days have
increased interest in the delinquency prevention potential of ASPs. This study examined effects
of participation in ASPs conducted in Maryland during the 1999–2000 school year and the
mechanism through which such programs may affect delinquent behavior. Results imply that
participation reduced delinquent behavior for middle-school but not for elementary-schoolaged
youths. This reduction was not achieved by decreasing time spent unsupervised or by
increasing involvement in constructive activities, but by increasing intentions not to use drugs
and positive peer associations. Effects on these outcomes were strongest in programs that
incorporated a high emphasis on social skills and character development.

Research Purpose: As the need for quality after school care for school-age children grows, so does the need for a tool to measure the quality of after school programs. This study uses existing literature to develop a practical ideal type for after school programs. The model is then used to asses The Eastside Story; a program in Austin, Texas. Recommendations to improve of The Eastside Story program are drawn from the assessment.

Methodology: A thorough examination of literature pertaining to after school programs reveals five primary components of quality programs: strategic planning, partnership elements, staff elements, effective program practices, and child-centered location. Utilizing the case study research method, these five components are used to assess the Eastside Story program. The data collection methodologies in this case study include document analysis, structured interviews, and direct observation.

Results: The results of the case study illustrate Eastside Story's strengths and weaknesses. While current level of strategic planning at The Eastside Story fails to meet the criteria set in the practical ideal type, the criteria was met or exceeded for effective program practices and staff elements. Room for improvement within the partnership elements component was also identified.

The goal of this work was to research ways in which the teaching of basic computing skills could be integrated into an after-school choral program. The team studied how to adapt the interdisciplinary, computing + music activities developed in an earlier NSF-funded project with college-aged students to introduce middle school-aged students to computing in an informal, after-school choral program. They investigated how to leverage the universal appeal of music to help students who typically shy away from technical studies to gain a foothold in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) by programming choral music. This work was funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which sought to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. The AISL program included providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. (This is the pre-copyedited version for IAP.)

The Needs Assessment Project was initiated by The Arab-American Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Ohio (ACCESS-Ohio) with grant funding from the Cleveland Foundation. It was conducted to determine the needs of recent immigrants and the low-income segment of the Arab-American community in the Greater Cleveland area. Initially 30 key confidants were interviewed to obtain background for the design of the survey instrument. A bilingual Arabic/English questionnaire was constructed and administered in face-to-face interviews of approximately 300 people in the community. A  Participatory Action Research method was employed and community members were trained to conduct the research. Thr results indicated a wide variety of needs from English-language skills to job training to access to health care. The most pressing needs appeared to be English language classes and job training for adults. Children were in need of after-school homework and English language assistance. The community had a variety of health care needs ranging from a need for health insurance, bilingual doctors, and transportation to health facilities. The major health problems included diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease related to lifestyles with rich foods and little exercise). The plight of the elderly is acute and their care ofter overburdens female  caregivers with elderly living at home. The elderly also need transportation, insurance, and aid in paying for medications. Recommendations for numerous potential community programs resulted from this study.  Note: Dr. Hassoun was Principal Investigator but this was a PAR project with dozens of community personnel participating in the project.

The authors here outline three evidence-driven school-based initiatives of the Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education at the University of Georgia: an afterschool program, culturally-responsive pedagogy training, and a longitudinal study of Latino students. All these initiatives focus on improving educational outcomes for Latino students throughout the state.

In this presentation, we discuss preliminary findings from a two-year program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison based on the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. The goal of the program was to explore ways that instructional designers might leverage adolescents’ existing interests in games in order to engage them in practices that are both aligned with schools and meaningful in their everyday offline lives. Our basic strategy was to create a community of gamers that could act as an incubator for key practices that previous research found arose naturally as a part of unstructured, advanced gameplay. Following the lead of other games-based educational programs (Squire, DeVane, & Durga, 2008) and known characteristics of game-related indigenous online communities (Jenkins, 2006; Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2009), the program was designed to encourage distributed expertise and collective intelligence (Levy, 1999) in place of standardization as well as peer-to-peer learning in the form of modeling and networked apprenticeship. WoW’s in-game “guild” structure was used as the basis for organization in the program so that the majority of the regular, weekly contact time occurred within the virtual world and on a private online guild forum. Additional monthly face-to-face meetings (“Saturday events”) on the University campus in the GLS games lab facility were also used for more structured intentional learning activities, data collection, and assessments. The target audience was students identified as chronically disengaged (or “at risk”) in school yet highly motivated by games. Here, we present the results of our analysis of eight months of ethnographic data using a coding scheme based on the main goals of our program, including argumentation, digital media literacy, sociocultural forms of learning, and workplace skills.

The risk for youth obesity is higher during the summer than any other time of year. Summer day camps can be ideal settings for preventing obesity through reducing youth summer sedentary behaviors. However, little-to-no research has examined the role of camps for promoting youth physical activity (PA) and other healthy behaviors. This study begins to address the gap in research by conducting systematic observations of 4 summer day camps (2 highly- resourced and 2 low-resourced) to determine: 1) the degree to which camps engage youth in moderate-to-vigorous PA, and; 2) to what extent camps provide important physical and social-motivational features for promoting PA. Results indicate camps provide opportunities for youth to meet national recommendations of daily MVPA. However, there were differences in PA and motivational features by level of camp resources. This study helps inform practice and policy through identifying strengths and needs of camps for promoting PA.

This paper describes the original designed lab structure for the Games+Learning+Society Casual Learning Lab, an afterschool program for teenage males who were struggling or chronically disengaged with school. In it, we detail the lab's intended design and how it proved to be entirely wrongheaded. The paper then goes on to describe in situ changes we made to the program, as well as lessons learned from the failure of its original design.

A university based mobile Maker program expanded the impacts of the land-grant mission by delivering relevant research-based STEM education using 4-H Youth Development delivery modes. The Making the Future after-school and summer camp program partnered with industry to fund the creative hands-on 21st Century STEAM/Maker programs for at-risk youth in southern Colorado.

This interactive session explores a variety of platforms, perspectives, and resources to get started with an after school coding program. We explore three different coding platforms we use and have students present on what they do in each of these platforms. In addition, we discuss how we facilitate our coding classes and provide resources to get started. Click the computer programming links above for even more resources.

This article reports the results of peer-mediated instruction and Interventions on the academic performances of urban at-risk students in an after-school program. The students in this project were African-American males who attended an urban elementary school. The after-school program was a partnership between a large predominately African-American church, a public school, and The Ohio State University's (OSU's) College of Education. Students from the OSU's elementary education and special education programs worked along with the men of Mt. Olivet Church to provide educational opportunities for urban at-risk students. The improvement in academic performance of urban at-risk students in this study is consistent with the findings of other researchers (Poser & Vandell, 1994).

Organized after-school activities promote positive youth development across a range of outcomes. To be most effective, organized activities need to meet high-quality standards. The eight features of quality developed by the National Research Council’s Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth have helped guide the field in this regard. However, these standards have largely been defined in terms of universal developmental needs, and do not adequately speak to the growing ethnic and racial diversity within the United States, which is further complicated by issues of power and social class differences. Given U.S. population shifts and after-school funding priorities, the time has come to consider new ways to provide organized after-school activities that are responsive to youth’s culture and everyday lives. The goal of this article is to explore how we can help ensure that after-school activities are culturally responsive and address the specific needs of the youth who participat...

Case study about afterschool programming, university-community partnerships, community violence and perceptions of "urban" neighborhoods. Excerpt from the book: Sociocultural Issues in Physical Education: Case Studies for Teachers (2014). More information on the book can be found at: https://www.amazon.com/Sociocultural-Issues-Physical-Education-Teachers/dp/1475808291 and https://books.google.com/books?id=mgGkBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA28&dq=Sociocultural-Issues-Physical-Education&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwid_YHgvcXSAhWGdSYKHQJFDycQ6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=Sociocultural-Issues-Physical-Education&f=false

Steinkuehler and Johnson (2009) provided evidence that video game ‘modding’ communities allow participants to move from playing (consuming) video games toward producing their own unique game modifications, thus framing traditional forms of modding as game design and production. However, we argue that the kinds of modding practices involved in the GLS Casual Learning Lab, an after school program based in World of Warcraft involving adolescent males, incorporated modding principles in a different but equally productive way — drawing upon soft-modding (Gee & Hayes, 2010) as a capstone activity with some surprising outcomes. Soft modding involves “modding” the rules of engagement around an existing game mechanic in order to produce desired goals or outcomes.

This presentation (based on a two year ethnographical study, see Steinkuehler & King, 2009) showcases a guild discussion involving participants strategizing modifications to the program’s in-game guild, previously a closed guild available only to members of the after school program. The activities involved in designing the guild and resulting social structure, as Gee (2009) argues, involves taking available tools and designing affordances of “community” to support game play, and more importantly, social interaction, a cornerstone of the MMO experience (Thomas & Brown, 2009).

While WoW provides the basic tools for creating a guild, features have to be designed, or modded, around an intended outcome, in this case - simulating a sense of community, productive engagement with the game and also providing guild rules supporting these goals. In this way, discussing opening membership of the guild, arguing recruiting tactics, re-designing the guild’s governance (i.e., officer structure), and developing norms of participation (i.e., conditions of membership and conduct) participants were not simply enacting tools, they were designing members’ guild experience. These design considerations, once implemented would influence the overall gaming paradigm (Gee & Hayes, 2010) by shaping participants’ guild experience. This is the very essence of soft modding; “modding, not in the sense of changing software, but in the sense of changing the ways in which people interact with the game,” (Gee & Hayes, in-press, p. 67) or engineering the ways people interact in and around the game overall.

In this way, the example captures participants engaged in production on two levels. First they are engaged in the act of media production – producing their own guild. Second, and most importantly, they’re performing identities they developed through a year of participation and enacting not passive student (or consumption) identities but instead that of “designers” and “producers.” Among these boys who tend to identify themselves as lacking skills, are leaders and experts using argumentation to strategize their “mod.” From an educator’s perspective, this may resemble a form of authentic assessment – the culmination of a year of study evidencing expertise through argumentation and an understanding of the game as a played system, and also one that is “playable,” where design is something that is imposed upon them by the game mechanic but also one that they can, in places, mod for their own gains.