"January Undergraduate Move Ahead Program" (JUMP) uses winter break as an opportunity to prepare small groups of scholarship students with high financial need for the second semester of their first-year biology curriculum and a career in life science. A winter intersession program has challenges, but more importantly, benefits that…

Two years of disruptions to schooling, coupled with recession and other pandemic-induced effects, appear to have widened preK-12 educational inequality. In particular, low-income students of color fell further behind their higher income White peers than they were pre-pandemic, on average, with the largest declines in math achievement. High-dosage…

Catching students up who have fallen behind academically is a key challenge for educators, and can be difficult to do in a cost-effective manner. This field experiment examines the causal effect of a program designed to provide struggling sixth and seventh graders with math instruction delivered in small groups of roughly ten students by select…

Developmental interventions for reading and writing often take place at community colleges during the winter or summer. These brief, intersession workshops are examples of compressed acceleration, as they give students the opportunity to exit developmental coursework and enroll in credit bearing courses the following semester. As college readiness…

How do we make of students learning something their teacher did not intend to teach? Researchers suggest it unnecessary extras, learning of implicit rules of the game, or keys to understand power structure. Based on an ethnographic fieldwork of a college alternative break trip to learn about poverty through simulation, this article suggests such…

As institutions seek to offer students an educational experience equipped with opportunities to develop as not only active learners but also engaged citizens, service-learning initiatives in the form of alternative spring breaks (ASB) have become prevalent. This study examines the potential of ASBs, as service-learning initiatives, to deliver a…

This study examined the potential impact of a week-long cocurricular community service-learning (CSL) program on undergraduate students' psychosocial development. Participants in the Alternative Spring Break program and a matched control group completed surveys assessing a number of psychosocial variables immediately before and after the program,…

A life sciences undergraduate apprenticeship initiative was run during the vacations at a South African university. In particular, the initiative aimed to increase the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Annually 12-18 undergraduate biology students were apprenticed to various institutions during the January and July vacations from…

Background: The emergence of a participatory culture, brought about mainly by the use of Web2.0 technology, is challenging us to reconsider aspects of teaching and learning. Adapting the learning-as-digital-game-building approach, this paper explores how new educational practices can help students build skills for the 21st century. Purpose: This…

In language learning contexts a primary concern is how to maximise target language interaction both inside and outside of the classroom. With the development of digital technologies, the proliferation of language learning applications, and an increased awareness of how technology can assist in language education, educators are being presented with…

Summer is a time for teachers to recharge their pedagogical batteries. Here, three veteran English teachers write about professional development programs that energized them and their teaching.

Initiated in 1974 at Gallaudet College (District of Columbia), the Learning Vacation involves the entire family in learning about, accepting, and dealing with school-aged hearing impaired children. The program is described in terms of staff, parent education, family activities, funding, potential barriers, and benefits. (SB)

Describes three public library summer reading programs for children in the 1890s: Hewins' Vacation Reading Club; the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's Summer Playground Program; and the Library League of Cleveland. The growth of similar programs and related reports in the library literature of the early twentieth century are discussed, and summer…

"Family learning vacations" 5-10 day summer residential programs for families with deaf children, are described. Guidelines for establishing such a program are given concerning rationale, physical plant, eligibility, scheduling, parent activities, children's activities, and evaluation. (Author/DB)

This article describes a cooperative college/school program in which 18 prospective teachers lived and worked with a group of school children and their regular teachers during a week-long summer trip. The benefits of this program are described by the program advisor, a college official, and a program observer. (SJL)