Based on lessons learned from more than a decade of OST STEM programming for urban youth, Project Exploration proposes an alternative to the pipeline: Youth-Science Pathways. Youth-Science Pathways enable program providers to move beyond “pipeline” priorities to design for outcomes in which STEM learning experiences support young people’s social and emotional development. Changing the metaphor from a pipeline to pathway transforms the purpose of the educational effort: rather than an endeavor in which students’ experiences support STEM academic and workforce outcomes, STEM experiences are put
OST programs can be part of the solution to the growing epidemic of child obesity. A first step is to understand current practices and learn about supports for—and barriers to—providing nutritious foods in afterschool programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jessica WiechaGeorgia HallEllen GannettBarbara Roth
Positive behavior support, with its emphasis on teaching desired actions rather than punishing undesirable actions, can be a powerful tool for managing young people’s behavior. This article examines its' application in afterschool settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Brian McKevittJessica DempseyJackie TernusMark Shriver
This article is a review of the 2011 book "Better Together: A Model University-Community Partnership for Urban Youth" by Barbara Jentleson. Better Together examines in depth the first decade of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership (DDNP), focusing on its involvement with six community-based afterschool programs sponsored by Duke’s Project HOPE (Holistic Opportunities Plan for Enrichment). The primary aim of Project HOPE was to provide academic support to Durham’s low-income minority youth.
Our study looks at how participation in a continuous quality improvement initiative produces higher-quality practice in Rhode Island’s afterschool community by fostering change in program management practices. Among other findings, we discovered that quality improvement begins with program managers, who then lead the process of change.
By designing accountability systems that fully embrace the notion of afterschool programs as learning organizations and by using research from organizational development, education, and youth development to create effective learning environments, funders and sponsors can help programs to improve quality—and therefore, to succeed in their goal of achieving better outcomes for young people.
This article examines a major staffing challenge in out-of-school time programs--attracting and retaining part-time staff who can be relied upon to deliver high quality programming.
This article explores the partnership between the Baltimore County 4-H program and the Baltimore County Public Library, which forged a partnership to offer structured experiential programming opportunities to meet the afterschool needs of youth who visit their local library. Their experience suggests that libraries and youth development organizations can fruitfully collaborate to create sustainable quality afterschool programming.
This paper outlines the need for sustainable, scalable afterschool computer science programs targeting girls and describes the development of one such curriculum. Evaluation research on girls’ learning of computer science and on the capacity of afterschool staff and organizations to provide computer science programming leads to our description of a research-based approach to sustaining and scaling the program nationally—an approach that other programs might use to expand their reach and impact.
Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered instructional strategy in which students solve problems and reflect on their experiences. Different domains need different approaches in the design of PBL systems. Therefore, we present one case study in this article: A Java Programming PBL. The application is developed as an additional module for the Learning Management System (LMS). This way the LMS is extended by PBL functionality and the LMS learning resources can be used in PBL.
In 2009, the North Carolina Virtual Public Schools worked with researchers at the William and Ida Friday Institute to produce and evaluate the use of game creation by secondary students as a means for learning content related to career awareness in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, with particular emphasis in computer science areas. The study required the development of various forms of multimedia that were inclusive of content and activities delivered in a distance environment via the Internet. The team worked with a game art and design graduate class to