To date, no national studies of science-focused out-of-school time (OST) programs have been implemented, making it difficult to get a sense of program diversity and characteristics. In this paper, Laursen, Thiry, Archie, and Crane map the national landscape of U.S. OST science, technology, and engineering programs. The findings allow the authors to describe a generalized profile for each of eight types of OST program providers.
Formal readings and lectures are effective at delivering explanations, but the information they impart can be so densely packed and de-contextualized that students may not make full sense of the content. Arena and Schwartz found that video games have the potential to unlock the expository content delivered by lectures, textbooks, and diagrams.
Cannady, Greenwald, and Harris call into question the accuracy of the STEM pipeline metaphor. They argue that a decade of pipeline-related policy prescriptions has not significantly affected the numbers or demographics of the STEM workforce. The authors found that almost half of STEM workers did not follow the traditional pipeline to a STEM career.
One challenge in scaling up effective educational programs is how to adjust implementation to local contexts. One solution that the authors Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, and Sabelli propose is “design-based implementation research,” (DBIR) in which researchers and practitioners collaboratively identify problems and strategies during implementation while learning from this process to support innovations in new contexts.