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The following resources include:
Youth Development: Definitions
and Core Concepts
Youth
Work Central
The BEST Initiative in Boston provides this nice, compact description of youth development. You will also find a link to core competencies for youth workers and a list of additional on-line resources, both worth checking out as well.
40
Development Assets™ for Adolescents
Search Institute, Minneapolis, © 2004. Through extensive research,
Search Institute has identified the 40 building blocks of healthy
development that help young people grow up healthy, caring,
and responsible. Elsewhere on their site you can also find a
PDF of this list, similar lists for younger children, and additional
resources.
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Curriculum Design: Research and
Promising Practice
Boston
Youth Arts Evaluation Project
This framework, developed by practioners over a twelve-month period, powerfully condenses the complex transformations taking place in arts-based youth development programs into three interlocking domains: identity, creative accomplishment, and connection with the wider community. Be sure to check out the full two-page framework diagram and logic model, as well.
Living
the Arts through Language + Learning: A Report on Community-Based
Youth Organizations"
by Shirley Brice Heath, with Elisabeth
Soep and Adelma Roach. Americans for the Arts, © 1998. This
landmark report examines how learning in the arts leads to the
development of life skills and identifies the common characteristics
of effective arts-based youth development programs. After conducting
a nine-year national research project on non-school youth organizations
in low-income neighborhoods, Stanford anthropologist Shirley
Brice Heath concluded that rigorous arts programs are particularly
effective at achieving youth development goals.
Preparing All Children for 21st Century Success
by Mass. Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Task Force on 21st Century Skills, © 2008
This report from a task force of the Massachusetts Board
of Elementary and Secondary asserts that if our young
people will be able to compete successfully for tomorrow’s
jobs, today’s students will need to learn to be future
leaders who can think creatively, work collaboratively,
use technology to solve problems and take initiative.
While the focus of the report is school reform, the
publication makes a strong case for the kind of work
going on in arts and cultural out-of-school programs.
(See page 8 for the list of skills and themes.)
Powerful
Voices: Developing High-Impact Arts Programs for Teens
This monograph from the SURDNA Foundation includes a "Framework for Effective Programs," organizing key elements into three components: Philosophy, Programming Essentials, and Approach to Content and Style (pedagogy). The monograph also includes a powerful Self-Assessment Instrument which can be used in a process to identify your program's principal areas of strength and important challenges in maintaining and raising program effectiveness.
Learning in 3D: Arts and Cultural Programming in Afterschool [PDF]
by Julia Gittleman, Ph.D., Massachusetts Special Commission
on After School and Out-of-School Time, © 2007.
This issue brief published by a special joint commission
of the Massachusetts legislature summarizes the findings
from literature on the key characteristics of successful
programming. The paper also summarizes key research
on the effectiveness of out-of-school arts and cultural
programming, notes Massachusetts’ leadership in this
field, and identifies unique funding challenges for
this work.
YouthARTS Toolkit
Online
Americans for
the Arts, 2003.
The YouthArts site is designed to give detailed
information to arts agencies, juvenile justice agencies, social
service organizations, and other community-based organizations
about how to plan, run, provide training for, and evaluate youth
at-risk arts programs.
Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks
Massachusetts Department of Education
The frameworks guide local
school district personnel in the development of effective curricula
in each of the core content areas: Arts; English Language Arts;
Foreign Language; Comprehensive Health; Mathematics; History
and Social Science; Science and Technology/Engineering. For
each discipline, the frameworks include broad statements that
outline what students should know and be able to do at various
grade levels (general standards) and discrete observable skills
that demonstrate competency for these (learning standards).
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Logic-Model Planning and Evaluation
"Measuring
Joy"
Deborah Bedwell, Baltimore Clayworks. Originally appeared in
Fall 2000 National Arts Stabilization Journal.
One
executive director tells how the logic model helped her organization
use their efforts in evaluating to strengthen their programs,
allocate resources, and tell the story of their impact on young
lives more effectively.
NEA
Intro to Logic Models
An online tutorial on the logic model
and outcomes-based evaluation by the National Endowment for
the Arts, whose approach is identical to that of the Institute
of Museum and Library Services.
W.K. Kellogg Foundation Evaluation
Handbook
© 1998
This is still one of the best resources out there-an
excellent framework for thinking about evaluation as a relevant
and useful program tool. (Also available from Kellogg is their
Logic Model Development Guide
© 2001, for those who really want to dig deep.)
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Logic Models: Samples, Template
Logic Model Template [Word]
True
Colors Theater Offensive (PDF)
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