The project will conduct a mapping study to describe the contexts, characteristics and practices of a national sample of science-focused Out-of-School Time (OST) programs and identify exemplar programs for further study. A Field Study will seek more detailed knowledge about these programs by interviewing participants, alumni, and other stakeholders, and observing program activities. The results of these studies will be presented at a working conference at the end of the project to discuss how to develop a survey instrument to measure important youth outcomes from OST programs and collect baseline data for an anticipated longitudinal study.
This project will provide new descriptive materials about the operation and practice of the out of school learning of science. It will produce a literature review, a list of organizations that provide out of school science training and a plan for future data collection. A qualitative study will be conducted to answer questions such as to what extent OST science experiences spark interest or rather nurture or sustain it and how these outcomes fit within the broader context of lifelong learning and development. The study is intended to create a new typology of youth OST science programs that sufficiently describe crucial features that differentiate such programs.
This study, Mapping Out-of-School-Time Science (MOST-Science), has sought to build a broad national picture of out-of-school-time (OST) science, engineering and technology (SET) programs for young people. These programs are widely thought to engage youth interest in science, develop useful academic and life skills, build confidence and a positive identity, and foster positive life and career paths such as school completion and college study of SET. Yet before it is even possible to measure and compare youth outcomes resulting from diverse program models, we need good descriptions of the characteristics of these programs that may be important. This kind of information also helps to determine the extent to which youth have access to these experiences; where gaps are identified, we can identify local and national opportunities to deepen and broaden access. To answer these questions, we have gathered data through documents, interviews, and the online MOST-Science Questionnaire. We focused on intensive programs lasting more than one session because these are expected to best contribute to positive youth outcomes and to broad national goals such as increasing the size and diversity of the SET workforce. Documents and questionnaire responses from 417 programs nation-wide provide factual information about program aims, design, and audiences, while 53 interviews with program directors and other leaders provide detail on programs' rationale and methods. Together these data sources offer a rich picture of the types of programs that serve youth, the various ways they are organized and supported, and the curricular features they include. We analyzed the data by the type of organization that hosted the youth OST program. Organizations with strong expertise in both science and education—such as museums and science centers, aquariums, zoos, and universities—tended to offer programs with positive features such as high contact hours for youth and fee structures that supported youth access. They were well networked and well funded, and staff were more often trained in science. Nonprofit organizations and national youth organizations showed different strengths; they tended to reach more diverse youth audiences, and many also targeted girls. As a group, they were less well funded but used scholarships to enable youth access; however, their staffs less often included people with science backgrounds. These features may be typical of organizations that emphasize positive youth development. Comparing these features highlights the potential for mutually beneficial partnerships between organizations of different types—for example, a partnership that might meld the scientific resources of a museum with the ability of a local nonprofit to reach underserved students of color, or draw upon university outreach to provide programming to local and regional chapters of a national youth organization. Our data set shows strength among programs for girls, which may suggest that efforts to encourage girls in science are finally bearing fruit, giving girls more opportunities to experience science in supportive out-of-school learning venues. But other results point to unfilled niches. For example, programs for gifted and talented youth are relatively common, but there is a distinct lack of programs targeting youth with disabilities. We encourage organizations to form creative partnerships and funders to develop new initiatives, especially to engage these underserved groups. We also looked at the relationship between the features of the programs and the diversity of the youth participants they served. Many programs appeared to deliver high-quality programming that provided immersive experiences for youth and that used inquiry learning and practices that promote youth development and growth into capable adults. Encouragingly, programs that served high proportions of underrepresented minority youth and girls often showed the most numerous indicators of these high-quality learning experiences. These highly diverse programs enacted their mission through deliberate steps to develop partnerships, engage communities, local leaders, and families, and deliver long-term, supportive programs for youth. This work has intellectual merit because it is the first study to probe a broad national sample of youth OST programs in SET, and thus to consider the characteristics of these programs that may influence their success and persistence through time. The findings may be used by leaders of science-focused OST programs to benchmark their own activities or to identify new and fruitful types of partners or initiatives. Our analysis of program features that relate to youth diversity is the first of its kind, and sophisticated in that it combines statistical data on patterns in programs with interview data that offer explanations and insights. This work has broader impact because of its focus on programs that are successful in engaging diverse youth in science. It highlights strengths of different organizations that host science-focused youth OST programs and especially the ways they can partner to increase their impact. We have made particular effort to include the perspectives of youth program leaders, not just in our data set but in designing our study, and to communicate findings with them through publications, presentations and practical work.
