NC1002: How Do Structured Out-Of-School Experiences Contribute To Positive Youth Development?
Statement of Issues and Justification
After-school hours are times of great risk for unsupervised youth, and parents need safe alternatives for their youth. During unsupervised time youth are more likely to become injured, engage in drug or alcohol consumption, or engage in other delinquent behaviors (Carnegie Foundation, 1992). In addition, youth today have more discretionary time than ever before in America. Often this discretionary time is not spent in constructive activities rather it is spent on watching television, talking on the telephone with friends, and playing computer games (Perkins & Borden, in press). Parents and communities concerned about the safety and well being of their youth turn to out-of-school alternatives as a way to address the needs of the youth, their parents, and the broader community. With parents?busy schedules, transportation difficulties, child-care costs or unavailability, and other economic or time pressures facing families, youth might remain in these unsupervised settings if such alternatives were not available. Given the increasingly important role that these out-of-school activities have in every-day life, it is critical to understand how these activities impact the lives of youth. Unfortunately, there is currently no scientific research that helps parents evaluate the quality of these out-of-school activities. This may be a critical concern, as more federal and state funds will be allocated to create additional out-of-school programs to meet this growing need for their youth to be in supervised settings outside of the home.Some out-of-school activities may have risks for youth. While there appear to be general benefits for involvement in structured out-of-school experiences, there are concerns that not all activities impact youth positively. For instance, Eccles & Barber (1999) found that youth involvement in pro-social activities, such as faith-based groups or volunteer groups, was linked to higher academic achievement and lower risk behaviors, while involvement in school sports and school related clubs was associated with lower academic achievement and higher risk behaviors. This suggests that considerably more scientific attention must be paid to understanding the key dimensions of structured out-of-school activities that contribute to different types of impacts on youth.
The good news is that structured out-of-school experiences do have unique positive contributions for youth development. It has become increasingly clear that the more assets that youth have, the fewer risk behaviors and the more positive outcomes that youth will have. These assets include things such as a commitment to learning, positive values, social skills, positive identity, family and community support, meaningful roles and empowerment, clear expectations, and constructive use of time (Scales & Leffert, 1999). A key finding is that the time that youth spend in out-of-school programs is a major contributor to the development of these important assets (Scales & Leffert, 1999). Compared to family and community factors, time spent in youth programs was found to be the most consistent predictor of youth thriving which included students?school performance, their ability to overcome adversity, their effort to help others, their provision of leadership qualities, and their efforts to maintain good physical health (Sales, Benson, Leffert, & Blyth, 2000). Furthermore, youth have been found to experience the highest levels of simultaneous motivation and concentration when they are in structured out-of-school experiences rather than when they are in school or with peers (Larson, 2000). This suggests that structured out-of-school experiences need to be scientifically examined for their impact on youth outcomes with the same attention that has been given to family, school, and community factors.
Many positive qualities of the structured-out-of school experiences have been observed, but it is unclear how these qualities directly interact with the developmental tasks during adolescence. Youth workers and researchers have observed many different positive aspects to these activities and programs for youth. These settings have been thought to offer youth the opportunity to explore their self-identity; accomplish goals; solve problems in a real world context; develop personal social networks; learn and practice new physical, social, and intellectual skills; make decisions; test out new roles; receive affirmation; have boundaries clearly enforced; be respected; and have opportunity to develop and express passion and creativity (Eccles & Barber 1999; Hart; 1992; Whalen & Wynn; 1995; Zeldin; 1995). These structured out-of-school activities also provide opportunities for youth to have meaningful connections to their communities (Zeldin, 2000) and other adults (Camino, 2000). In fact, some out-of-school experiences were found to be critical to helping immigrant youth successfully adapt to their new culture (Roffman, Suarez-Orozco, & Rhodes, in press).
Youth from different backgrounds and types of communities have different needs for structured out-of-school experiences and these needs are not well understood. Youth of different ages, backgrounds, and communities have barriers to involvement in these out-of-school experiences (Quinn, 1999). There may be particular challenges for youth and families in rural and urban low-income areas because of lack of opportunities (Huber & Kossek, 1999; Markstrom, 1999). Not all communities or organizations have the same resources to offer youth. Low-income communities offer fewer opportunities and have transportation barriers that may limit the quality or accessibility of out-of-school experiences for youth in many areas. These resource deficits may be particularly important in light of changing demographic and economic conditions in rural and urban communities. Historically, extended kinship networks have provided support and supervision of children in rural communities; however, more families are working outside the home and relying on outside programs to care for children. Children in declining urban middle cities may also have fewer opportunities for quality out-of-school programming as economic conditions decline and resources fade. Additionally, urban and rural communities are becoming more diverse and needing to understand how to respond to the out-of-school needs of youth and their families from a variety of backgrounds.
A developmental approach is needed to understand youth development in the context of these different community conditions. Changing community conditions and individual youth developmental changes impact participation in activities and both must be understood simultaneously. As youth reach early adolescence, their participation in structured out-of-school activities decreases and generally, youth of color have lower rates of involvement in certain types of activities, although more in others (Quinn, 1999). In order to optimize opportunities for human development, contextually and cultural responsive environments must not only be constructed, but specific attention must be directed toward the development of measures and tools that are parallel the programmatic efforts. In order to facilitate the construction of these measures, a developmental approach must be adopted (Fisher, Jackson, & Villarruel, 1997). The study of adolescents in rural communities and in the structured-out-of-school experiences they engage must adopt a systems level of program, research, and evaluation. In this examination of social network/community and institutional/societal analysis, a developmental contextual perspective can shed light related to how the context contributes to, or inhibits healthy developmental outcomes (Lerner, Villarruel, & Castellino, 1999).
There is a need to understand the importance of community conditions and the reciprocal relationship between youth and communities. Villarruel and Lerner (1994b) have pointed out the need to link childrens development within communities to promote a sense of belonging and enhance learning opportunities. Community-based youth development programs offer opportunities for youth to engage in structured settings that can, and often do contribute to positive developmental outcomes while providing safe settings for adolescents. Simultaneously, these environments encourage positive peer interaction and learning that requires the implementation of four objectives: the promotion of social competence; the development of problem-solving skills; the creation of a sense of autonomy, which allows individuals to develop their identity and ability to act independently and to have an opportunity to exert control over their environment; and the instilling of a sense of purpose and an orientation toward the future (Villarruel & Lerner, 1994a). This is important since there has been a demonstrated lack of fit between what youth need and what adult-dominated settings have to offer youth (Eccles, Midgley, Wigfield, Buchanan, Reuman, Flanagan, & MacIver, 1993). Youth workers and researchers have noted that youth do not participate equally in these structured out-of-school experiences and that there is a need for more research to develop "culturally sensitive approaches to engage unserved, under-served, and disenfranchised audiences" (United States Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, 2000). Therefore, it is important to understand how characteristics of youth, their families, and their communities impact their desire or ability to participate in various structured out-of-school experiences and how these experiences can be modified to fit the needs of individual youth.
Research is needed to promote the further development of structured out-of-school activities that are available and appropriate for all youth. Overall, it is clear that structured out-of-school experiences can provide very positive benefits for youth. However, there is not body of research to help parents, teachers, students, and communities clearly understand how these experiences contribute to youth development, or why some programs have positive impacts and others have negative impacts for youth. At present, there are no measurement tools available to help researchers or practitioners to measure the quality or experiences in these structured out-of-school settings or how these experiences impact youth in both the short and long-term. There is a demand for the development of such measurement tools that can be used in multiple settings and contexts of youth development to better understand the how structured out-of-school experiences impact youth from different ethnic backgrounds, gender groups, and age groups (Zeldin, 2000). As structured out-of-school experiences continue to play a more central role in the lives of youth and families, it is critical to understand what replicable features of out-of-school youth program settings contribute to the cognitive, physical, social, and moral development of youth and decrease risk behaviors. Such understanding can enable out-of-school experiences to be structured in a way to best address the developmental needs of all youth.
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