While civic participation is a crucial component of healthy and sustainable democracies, young adolescents may perceive or experience barriers that limit their civic action. This study draws from focus groups and surveys during a week-long summer civics camp to explore ways in which 47 young adolescents entering Grades 6-9 described barriers they…

Informal STEM education programs have become venues wherein girls can improve their sense of belonging and potential success (STEM identity) through interactions with role models and seeing how STEM fields are relevant to them. Despite decades of advocacy for single-sex programs' role in improving girls' STEM identity, few studies have found…

We study an early effort amid the COVID-19 pandemic to develop new approaches to virtually serving students, supporting teachers, and promoting equity. This five-week, largely synchronous, summer program served 11,769 rising 4th-9th graders. "Mentor teachers" provided PD and videos of themselves teaching daily lessons to "partner…

This study came to characterize the features of mathematical models built by mathematics pre-service teachers for a model eliciting activity. Fourteen groups participated in building the models. We used a combination of deductive and inductive content analysis to characterize the pre-service teachers' elicited models, taking into account features…

It is imperative that schools and communities give students opportunities to participate in active citizenship and prepare them with the important skills and dispositions needed to become informed citizens. Action civics is a promising practice that puts students at the heart of civics learning by providing them with the opportunity to learn about…

Several instruments previously validated for use in school library research were tested for their appropriateness in the context of public libraries' summer reading programs for youth. The researchers were also interested in whether the connection between perceived competence in one's own information skills and perceived competence in one's own…

There have been some behavioral indicators and some types of task performance that suggest greater creativity in students with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). This evidence would appear counterintuitive given that lower working memory (i.e., holding information in mind for novel recombinations) has often been documented in students…

Prior research suggests that summer learning loss among low-income children contributes to income-based gaps in achievement and educational attainment. We present results from a randomized experiment of a summer mathematics program conducted in a large, high-poverty urban public school district. Children in the third to ninth grade (N = 263) were…

This study investigated whether a four-week intensive professional development workshop for math teachers was effective in improving their knowledge and skills of mathematics concepts and technology, as well as improving their attitudes toward integrating technology into teaching math. Instruments for data collection included a pre- and post- test…

"I Wonder" boards are a teaching strategy that can be used in the classroom, as well as during science learning opportunities in nonformal settings, such as after-school science programs or summer camps.This simple strategy has led to deeper science exploration in 4-H, as young people learn alongside program staff, teachers, or…

The transfer of leadership to younger generations is an important factor in agricultural communities and is likely one reason developing leaders is a central mission of many youth organizations, including 4-H and FFA. In adults, researchers have extensively explored the relationship between personality traits and leadership (Judge, Bono, Ilies,…

At a 5-day summer camp designed for middle-school girls (N = 50), fifth through ninth-grade students were able to identify with individual scientists and learn more about the science field. Data from the girls' journals, pictorial representations, and field notes demonstrated that these young women related to scientists who actively engaged them…

Math Teachers' Circles have been spreading since their emergence in 2006. These professional development programs, aimed primarily at middle-level mathematics teachers (grades 5-9), focus on developing teachers' mathematical problem solving skills, in line with the Common Core State Standards-Standards of Mathematical Practice. Yet, to date,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect Serious Educational Games (SEGs) had on student interest in science in a federally funded game-based learning project. It can be argued that today's students are more likely to engage in video games than they are to interact in live, face-to-face learning environments. With a keen eye on…

The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of gender to the academic self-perceptions of ability and related coursework plans for high school and college across academically advanced students. Participants were academically advanced students (N = 447) from grades 5 to 12. Findings revealed that (a) girls' self-perceptions of ability…