Defense Date
3-3-2026
Graduation Date
Spring 5-9-2026
Availability
Immediate Access
Submission Type
dissertation
Degree Name
EdD
Department
Professional Doctorate in Educational Leadership (ProDEL)
School
School of Education
Committee Chair
Tara Abbott
Committee Member
Jaleah Robinson
Committee Member
Tracey Reed Armant
Keywords
out-of-school time, youth workers, afterschool, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia
Abstract
For marginalized students, out-of-school time programs offer a host of academic and positive youth development benefits. However, perspectives from youth workers, front line staff who form trusted relationships with out-of-school time program participants and the Executive Directors that lead their organizations, are absent from the last three years of evaluation reports for the Pennsylvania Nita M. Lowry 21st Century Learning Center (21st CCLC) program. This missing perspective renders the observations, challenges and improvements youth workers may experience and desire invisible at a time when their labor is counted upon to supplement inequitable education opportunities due to systemic factors. This study leveraged a qualitative phenomenological method to examine the perceptions Pennsylvania-based youth workers have of what is most important to track to determine impact in their programs. The central research question was, according to youth workers in Philadelphia, what are the measures most descriptive of the impact of out-of-school time programs? Data were collected using eight sixty-minute in-depth interviews to learn more about youth workers’ experiences as employees of out-of-school time programs. A thematic analysis was utilized to create recommendations for improvements based on the data. Thematic analysis is a method to make meaning patterns within a qualitative data set (Naeem et al., 2023; Liebenberg et al., 2020; Xu and Zammit, 2020). The study recommends five measures to evaluate the impact of an OST program and three levels of intervention for implementing the measures.
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Kamara Covington, J. (2026). YOUTH WORKER PERSPECTIVES ON THE MEASURES MOST DESCRIPTIVE OF STUDENT PROGRESS IN PHILADELPHIA-BASED OUT-OF-SCHOOL TIME PROGRAMS (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/2425
YOUTH WORKER PERSPECTIVES ON THE MEASURES MOST DESCRIPTIVE OF STUDENT PROGRESS IN PHILADELPHIA-BASED OUT-OF-SCHOOL TIME PROGRAMS.