After-School Programs to Promote Positive Youth Development

Nancy L. Deutsch, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Her research involves how different contexts influence adolescent lives and identities, with a focus on out-of-school contexts and youth-adult relationships. Her first book, Pride in the Projects: Teens building identities in urban contexts (NYU Press, 2008) is a qualitative study of youth experiences in an urban after-school program that explores issues of relationships, gender, race, class, and intersectionality in teens' identity construction as it occurs in out-of-school settings. Her second book, After School Centers and Youth Development: Case Studies of Success and Failure, co-authored with Barton Hirsch and David DuBois (2011, Cambridge University Press), won a Society for Research on Adolescence Social Policy Book Award. Her research has been funded by the William T. Grant Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, among others. Dr. Deutsch is affiliated with Youth-Nex, the U. Va. Center to Promote Effective Youth Development.

Executive Summary: Overview of Brief and Recommendations for Practice and Policy.- Chapter 1. Summer Learning Programs: Investigating Strengths and Challenges.- Chapter 2. Universal Challenges, Specific Contexts: Insights from Looking Within and Across Different After-School Settings.- Chapter 3.  Specialized After-School Programs: Five Case Studies. 

"Volume 2 of the series, Learning From Specific Models, is broken into three chapters and seems best suited to those in education who work with summer programs and schoolcommunity partnerships and for those who are responsible for resource allocation and evaluation of these programs. ... would be appropriate for those who are involved in developing, implementing, researching, evaluating, or funding these programs for youth. This audience may include researchers, practitioners, educators, program developers, funders, and policy makers." (Michelle Stroffolino Schmidt, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 62 (50), December, 2017)