By Gil G. Noam, Harvard Medical School and PEAR One of the great limitations in educational thinking today is how nationally isolated many of our conversations remain. In the United States, for example, we often compare Massachusetts to California or New York to Texas, while paying far too little attention to the profound educational innovations happening internationally. This is unfortunate, because some of the most important developments in extended education and youth deve

By Wolfram Rollett, Professor at the University of Oldenburg Over the past two decades, Germany has undergone one of the largest educational transformations in Europe: the rapid expansion of all-day schooling. At the beginning of the 2000s, all-day schools were relatively uncommon in Germany. Today, they are a central part of the educational landscape, with millions of students participating across the country. This development represents far more than a logistical change in

By Dr. Karin Lager, Associate Professor in Child and Youth Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden When people outside Sweden hear about our educational system, they are often surprised to learn that many Swedish children do not simply leave school at the end of the day and return home. Instead, a very large proportion of children participate in what we call Fritidshem—school-age educare, or what can be translated as “leisure-time home.” This system has been part of S