Survey Shows State of STEM in Afterschool

In late 2010, the Afterschool Alliance surveyed over 1000 Afterschool Program Directors and STEM coordinators to better understand the current state and needs of STEM programming in afterschool programs.  The results of the survey clearly show a widespread desire to offer STEM activities while identifying funding, partnerships, and professional development as valuable resources in providing high-quality STEM programs.  

Click on the image below or here to check out some of the results from our survey to get a better understanding of the current state of STEM in afterschool as well as the needs of the community as identified by the survey respondents. 

 

Time, money and training are required to provide deeply enriching STEM programs and this correlates with the needs of afterschool programs in providing high quality activities.  It is important to maintain the strong networks in place but also bring in other STEM-focused groups including federal agencies and businesses as partners to provide both expertise and a source of funding.

Afterschool programs are trying to find meaningful and engaging STEM activities for their participants but currently lack the resources and training to fully achieve their goals.  Putting in place state and national policies to increase partnerships and collaboration among various STEM-focused organizations can help reduce the cost and learning curve associated with implementing more engaging programs.  Increasing STEM activities in afterschool programs is an opportunity to provide meaningful enrichment for children and youth outside of the classroom setting to explore and grow academically and beyond. The diversity of participants in afterschool programs provides an amazing opportunity to the populations who are often left out of the STEM pipeline. 

Now that we know what the state of STEM in afterschool looks like, we need to ask ourselves how we can equip the afterschool community to better serve their participants.

 

What are some ways that your afterschool program embraces STEM programming? We are now midway through the “Year of Science in Afterschool” - what are your goals for the year to provide STEM in your afterschool programming? If you do not currently provide STEM activities but would like to do so in the future, what kind of resources would help to achieve your goal? Feel free to answer these questions in the comments so we can start creating a dialogue around how to get quality STEM programs in the afterschool space.  

Ramya Sankar is Research Assistant at the Afterschool Alliance. Bio.