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This article encourages afterschool programs to promote youth identification as community science experts. It uses the case study of the GET City program to frame the discussion of encouraging identity development should be an important outcome of afterschool programming....

The Youth Astronomy Apprenticeship (YAA) is a yearlong, out-of-school time initiative that connects urban teenage youth with astronomy as an effective way to promote scientific literacy and overall positive youth development. The program employs the strategies of a traditional apprenticeship model, common in crafts and trades guilds as well as in higher education. During the apprenticeship, youth develop knowledge and...

Youth participants in an informal after school science program created a multimodal digital video public service announcement video. This paper considers the counterstories that emerge within the video and during the making of the video that challenge existing definitions of science literacy. The investigation suggests youth engage in expansive learning where vertical knowledge and horizontal knowledge inform their actions toward...

This guidebook will help you plan your action project. The initial brainstorm pages will help you consider where to start, and the Action Project Framework will navigate you through steps to get to your destination: the completion of your project! ...

In the recent K-12 educational literature, arts-based data visualization has been positioned as a compelling means of rendering data science and statistical learning accessible, motivating, and empowering for youth, as data users and producers. However, the only research to attend carefully to youth’s data-based, artistic storytelling practices has been limited in scope to specific storytelling mechanisms, like youth’s metaphor usage....

Youth Day, held in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California, was an exploratory study to determine whether technology attracts kids to outdoor activities. Four activities were offered -- two were dependent on technology and two were not. The two technology-dependent activities were a camera safari and geocaching for treasure. The activities not dependent on technology were paper etching or rubbings...

Research on middle school participants’ engagement in afterschool programs shows that such programs often serve as developmental contexts for promoting “flow” experiences. Compared to when they are in other settings after school, participants in afterschool programs are more likely to experience high concentrated effort and intrinsic motivation, experiences consistent with Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow. Organized sports, arts enrichment, and academic...

This Pilot Project and Feasibility Study explored the extent to which rural and urban youth participating in a science enrichment program at a regional science museum exhibited gains in environmental health literacy. Two groups of youth (with 37 participants in total) participated in interactive, parallel programming at two museum locations (one rural and one urban). At both sites, youth explored...

In this Innovations in Development project, university and community collaborators are implementing resilience-focused programming for youth in informal learning contexts. The project has three objectives: (1) build the capacity of community organizations to implement youth programming on climate resilience; (2) increase youth knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy associated with climate resilience (also referred to as environmental health literacy for climate resilience);...

The Youth Experiences in Science (YES) Project of the 4-H Center at UC, Davis will produce, pilot and evaluate an informal science education curriculum expressly designed for 5-9 year olds in school-age child care (SACC) settings. Seven thematic units will be developed (three in both English and Spanish versions), utilizing the basic design process and instructional model developed in the...

Youth EXPO: Youth Exploring the Potential of Virtual Worlds was a proof-of-concept study to determine if an immersive, 3D virtual environment is an effective medium to increase high school students’ understanding of current climate change research and motivate interest in learning more about climatology-related careers. The project was conducted by the Miami Science Museum in partnership with Goddard Institute of...

This guide outlines how to tackle potential gaps in communication, engagement, scheduling, and work styles, as well as provide different ways to incorporate youth input and voice into projects. This guide is divided into four sections: Youth vs. Adults, Youth Engagement, Communicating with Youth, and Advising. ...

The aim of this evaluation study was to assess the extent to which the three PD workshop sessions (one for non-education staff, one for education staff and one for program youth) supported knowledge and confidence of Sciencenter staff and youth participants around the topics of integrating feedback from, and co-creating content with youth. The evaluation team used qualitative approaches to...

The aim of this evaluation study was to assess the extent to which youth-led products elicited public awareness of climate science or content communicated, and the desire to keep learning more about local climate impacts. The evaluation team used qualitative approaches to collect data through exit surveys and interviews with visitors at three events that were organized by the Youth...

The impacts of changes in the climate at local and global levels threaten how people live. Some frontline communities, especially in historically disenfranchised and under-resourced areas, are particularly vulnerable to the devastating effects of climatological events such as wildfires, flooding, and urban heat islands. As such, there is an urgent need for collective, evidence-based understanding and engagement to prevent and...

In stories about democratic society that take place in a democratically structured environment, Youth Radio walks the fine line between professional journalism and youth development in ways that question the automatic equation between "youth voice" and freedom of expression....

Youth Radio, an after-school media production program, consists of a main campus in Oakland, CA, and regional bureaus in Atlanta, GA, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, CA. Youth Radio’s model is to engage underserved young people in broadcast journalism, radio and web production, engineering, and media literacy through media projects that are relevant to the students’ lives and communities. In...

Rockman et al (REA), a San Francisco-based research and evaluation firm, conducted the external evaluation for Youth Radio's DO IT! program, which was funded by the National Science Foundation. Building upon Youth Radio's previous Science and Technology Program, the DO IT! initiative consisted of three primary components that promoted STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning by training underserved youth...

STEM out-of-school time (OST) programs play an important role in helping youth develop the 21st century skills they need to prepare them for the workforce, particularly the teamwork skills necessary for the growing collaborative nature of work in STEM (National Research Council, 2015). However, there is a lack of appropriate tools to evaluate this key programmatic outcome in STEM OST...

Youth Volunteer Interpreters as Facilitators of Learning about Climate Change in Zoo Settings reports on a project to pilot test climate change education resources featuring youth volunteer interpreters as facilitators for zoo visitors’ experiences. Brookfield Zoo tested inquiry-based and specimen-based interpretation at the polar bear and Humboldt penguin exhibits, and Woodland Park Zoo tested a climate-change themed "activity cart" near...

This article describes Youth as Resources, a nationwide initiative involves youth and adults as equal partners in projects that improve community life. Some examples of the projects include the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance, which engages teenagers to install solar heating in low income homes, and the Haydenville Preservation Committee, which implemented neighborhood cleanup and landscaping projects in rural Ohio....

Many Black youth in both urban and rural areas lack engaging opportunities to learn mathematics in a manner that leads to full participation in STEM. The Young People’s Project (YPP), the Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP), and the Education for Liberation Network (EdLib) each have over two decades of experience working on this issue. In the city of Baltimore, where 90%...

Citizen science by youth is rapidly expanding, but very little research has addressed the ways programs meet the dual goals of rigorous conservation science and environmental science education. We examined case studies of youth-focused community and citizen science (CCS) and analyzed the learning processes and outcomes, and stewardship activities for youth, as well as contributions to site and species management,...

As young people today grow up in a world saturated with digital media, how does it affect their sense of self and others? As they define and redefine their identities through engagements with technology, what are the implications for their experiences as learners, citizens, consumers, and family and community members? This volume addresses the consequences of digital media use for...

This online experiment explored how contextual information embedded in new media channels such as YouTube may serve as normative social cues to users. Specifically, we examined whether the number of views listed under a YouTube video about climate change would elicit inferences regarding how “others” feel about the climate issue and, consequently, might influence perceptions of issue salience. Participants in...