An after-school computer club was developed in which language-minority chil
dren learned to master a series of educational computer games through readi
ng instructions, interacting with peers, and interacting with adult mentors
. Did twenty-five elementary school children who regularly participated in
an after-school computer club during an academic year (treatment group) lea
rn generalizable problem-solving skills as compared to twenty-five non-part
icipating peers who were matched for grade level, gender, and English langu
age proficiency (comparison group)? Based on a dynamic assessment given at
the end of the academic year, treatment students were more successful than
comparison students in learning how to play a new educational computer game
that was presented as a paper-and-pencil mathematics puzzle learning task.
This study shows how an informal educational environment can foster genera
lizable problem-solving skills that transfer to learning in a school enviro
nment.