Foundation Grants
2003 Edmund A. Stanley, Jr. Research Grants
Marc Camras, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego will write about a collaboration between UCSD, public schools and community-based organizations. The collaboration involved an afterschool program whose goals were to nurture social affiliation and sense of belonging in immigrant youth. Camrus will describe the potential of afterschool programs to support youth's appropriation of "social capital," primarily through fostering relationships with others who are not part of youth's home community and through engagement in civic education and service learning activities during the non-school hours.
Selim Iltus, Ph.D., and Jason Schwartzman, Ph.D. will write about their collaborative work with two community-based agencies in New York City providing afterschool programs: New Settlement Apartments and Hartley House. Iltus and Schwartzman's research documented how the afterschool programs struggle to integrate multiple perspectives (between and among afterschool program staff, young people and parents) on what constitute important learning outcomes and processes, while incorporating community resources as an integral part of the learning process.
Gil Noam, Ph.D., Program in Afterschool Education and Research, Harvard University has been funded to conduct the first phase of a research project exploring relationships with youth in afterschool settings. While the construct "caring relationships" is used frequently in the literature on youth development, there has been little in-depth and empirical research that explores how such relationships are formed, maintained and strengthened. Phase I of this research project will involve an extensive literature review of best practices in relationship-building, followed by the convening of experts from a range of disciplines and selection of research methods.
Katherine Schultz, Ph.D.. and Jaskiran Dhillon of the University of Pennsylvania will write about the Media Arts Program, a collaboration between a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania high school, community based arts organization and the University of Pennsylvania. In the program, students engage in learning about media and technology and participate in community-based research with the goal of becoming critical viewers and producers of media. Schultz and Dhillon will explore issues of student engagement and learning in and out of school. In addition, they will describe how a community-based afterschool program can help to close the academic achievement gap for low income and minority students.
