Dr. Tom Akiva is Chair of the Department of Health and Human Development, Associate Professor, and former Director of the Schoolwide EdD program. He publishes research about continuous improvement and professional learning, youth program features, social emotional skills, equity in out-of-school learning, and citywide ecosystem approaches to learning and development.
Check out his 2022 co-edited book, It Takes an Ecosystem: Understanding the People, Places, and Possibilities of Learning and Development Across Settings.
Dr. Akiva teaches in the schoolwide EdD program:
- Foundations 1: Framing Identifying, and Investigating Problems of Practice
- Practitioner Inquiry 1: The Science of Improvement
- Youth Development in Out-of-School Settings
Dr. Akiva’s research focuses on understanding and improving out-of-school learning (OSL) program experiences for children and youth. His team increasingly focuses on city-wide approaches and he recently co-edited a book on learning & development ecosystems. Applied projects address youth-adult relationships, innovation, and equity. Current active projects include a Transformative Evaluation of Creative Learning in Pittsburgh; ongoing study of the Simple Interactions professional development approach in youth programs, libraries, and museums; a research and evaluation project with Generator-Z, and a multi-year research-practice partnership with the Remake Learning Network.
Akiva, T. & Robinson, K. (Eds.). (2022). It takes an ecosystem: Understanding the people, places, and possibilities of learning and development across settings. Information Age Publishing.
White, A. M., Akiva, T., Colvin, S., Li, J. (2022). Integrating social and emotional learning: Creating space for afterschool educator expertise. AERA Open, 8 (1), 1-18.
Akiva, T., Hecht, M., & Osai, E. (2021). Arts learning across a city: How ecosystem thinking helps shape understanding of Black-Centered and Eurocentric arts programming. Urban Education.
Akiva, T., White, A. M., Colvin, S., DeMand, A., & Page, L. C. (2020). Simple Interactions: A randomized controlled trial of relational training for adults who work with young people across settings, Applied Developmental Science.
Carey, R., Akiva, T., Abdel-Latif, H., & Daughtry, K. (2020). ‘And school won’t teach me that!’ Urban youth activism programs as transformative sites for critical adolescent learning. Journal of Youth Studies.
Akiva, T., Delale-O’Connor, L., & Pittman, K. J. (2020). The promise of building equitable learning ecosystems in urban environments. Urban Education.
Creative Learning: Transformative Evaluation, The Heinz Endowments, PI, 2019-2022, $450,000
Modeling the Creative Learning ecosystem in Pittsburgh, The Heinz Endowments, PI, 2019, $49,500
Simple Interactions 3.0, The Grable Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, PI, 2018-2020, $200,000 ($80,000 Grable, $120,000 Heinz)
Remake Making: Understanding Adoption and Adaptation of Facilitated Making in Libraries, National Science Foundation: Advancing Informal STEM Learning, PI, 2017-2019, $299,495
Awards and Honors:
- The Provost’s Award for Diversity in the Curriculum, University of Pittsburgh, February 2021
- Certificate of Excellence in Reviewing from the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, April 2020
- Scholar Award from the Out-of-School Time Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association, April 2016
- Emerging Scholar in Out-of-School Time Research from the Out-of-School Time Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association, April 2011
Executive committee, Allegheny Partners for Out-of-School Time
Research Advisory Committee, American Camp Association
Editorial Review Board, Information Age book series: Current Issues in Out-of-School Time
Publications Committee, Journal of Youth Development
