Afterschool Education: Approaches to an Emerging Field By Gil G. Noam, Gina Biancarosa, and Nadine Dechausay of the Program in Education, Afterschool, and Resiliency

Introduction

These are exciting times for the field of afterschool education. Working in this emerging field, we have a chance to define, refine, and transform the learning opportunities of millions of children and youth. It has been estimated that young people in this country spend almost a third of their organized time (including school hours) in afterschool and summer programs, and there is a growing recognition that such programs should be used to strengthen learning. The field is bursting with creative ideas, and so many promising models and trials are now underway that it would be impossible to catalog them all.

Yet the challenging work of creating a system of learning—incorporating a trained staff, readily available curricula, and an array of well-researched model practices—has barely begun, and there exists little systematic and conclusive research on afterschool to guide our practices. Therefore, in this book, we have attempted to define the field of afterschool learning in such a way as to make sense of the major topics that emerged in our interviews and observations of existing programs, discussions with program leaders, and our own demonstration projects. We chose to focus our efforts on three essential aspects of afterschool learning—bridging school to afterschool; homework, or extended learning; and curricula, or enriched learning—leaving other equally crucial topics (e.g., tutor-training and supervision, the use of new technology, the development of age-appropriate learning strategies, and finding the best ways to connect afterschool to the community) for future consideration. We intend to refine and develop the ideas expressed in this book and to sharpen our collaboration with schools, afterschool programs, and community organizations. Our goal is to make this research and development effort relevant and immediately applicable to the current learning conditions of children and youth.

The afterschool movement consists of different constituencies that share general goals yet diverge greatly on strategies. The growing number of policymakers, researchers, service providers, teachers, parents, and youth making up the field of afterschool education today do not speak with a unified voice on all subjects. The greatest current philosophical divide in the afterschool movement is that which exists between representatives of community youth development organizations and schools. In general, school reformers, superintendents, principals, and teachers tend to emphasize the goal of academic alignment, while youth development advocates and staff of community organizations tend to focus their energies on fostering democratic participation in group learning activities, nurturing physical skills through sports, and relaxed play. These orientations frequently clash, and thus have to be recognized and addressed in any learning initiative.

Recently, due to changed funding streams (e.g., 21st Century Community Learning Centers) and an increased recognition that institutions must jointly serve children and families in order to solve the complex challenges of education, there has been considerable progress in overcoming this school-versus-community-program divide.¹ The new collaborative spirit has great implications for setting learning goals, because it brings with it potential information, communication, and even alignment across learning environments. But it also raises significant dangers. For example, the call for “alignment of learning” in afterschool could become synonymous with the demand for an extended school day: a significant danger according to many in the field (Halpern, 1999; S. Richards Scott, personal communication, July 17, 2001). Conversely, school administrators might be tempted to cut arts, sports, and projects during the school day in order to concentrate on academic test preparation, relegating these crucial activities to the afterschool hours. Because not all children participate in afterschool activities, such a policy would amount to depriving many children of significant non-academic skill and talent building during school hours.

Despite many differences in focus, it is possible to identify a growing consensus regarding afterschool programming articulated around the following points:

• The afterschool hours should be structured differently from the school day, in order to provide a varied experience for children and youth.
• Fun, mentoring, and enrichment should form some part of these hours.
• Programs should support the academic learning of the school day by supporting basic skills and homework, as well as by providing tutoring for academically at-risk children.
• Programs should experiment with other forms of learning, such as projects, service learning, and outdoors adventures to deepen school learning and create new interests and abilities.
• Programs should encourage the widest and richest connections possible with the community and with families, and they should make an effort to expose children to the different cultures found in their communities.²
• Programs should encourage children to pursue their own learning and to set goals for themselves.

While content in afterschool differs greatly, the way in which time is structured proved surprisingly consistent across the afterschool programs we surveyed. In general, afterschool programs consist of three main blocks:

1. homework help and tutoring
2. projects, service-learning, journalism, and other enriched learning experiences that are not directly tied to the school days
3. non-academic activities such as sports, crafts, and play

Obviously, each of these three aspects of programming possesses a learning component. Yet each has different goals, involves a different relationship to school learning, and demands a different skill set from providers.

Extended Learning
Homework help and tutoring is a direct extension of the school day, typically defined and checked by teachers. As homework tutors, afterschool staff inevitably serves as an extension of the school day staff. We therefore refer to homework and related learning in afterschool programs as extended learning. Extended learning is “aligned” to the learning that occurs during the school day.

Enriched Learning
Project-based learning activities embody a philosophy of learning distinct from the merely academic, emphasizing self-direction, exploration, and hands-on experience. Such activities can either be highly aligned to academic, school-based learning, or function in an unconnected manner. Some programs, for example, take science or social studies curricula from the school day and develop museum trips, community service, or apprenticeships around these school goals. Other programs develop projects with their students that are entirely focused on the afterschool world, with no tie back to academic curricula. Given the participatory nature of choosing projects, in many programs the link between project-based and school learning can be no more than accidental. But the actual intentional goals of projects produce many transferable skills, from intention and motivation to flexibility, understanding, and research strategies. These projects can enhance learning preparedness and school attachment, which are widely recognized as two essential ingredients to academic success. Because of the potential of this type of learning for enriching children’s experiences of education, we refer to it as enriched learning.

Intentional Learning and Programming
These activities foster non-academic skills and social abilities in young people. Such activities not only provide a balance to the day’s programming for all children, but also are especially important for those who have chronically bad experiences during the school day. This type of programming is mostly not directly aligned with school, although it takes place in programs with or without other connections to the school day. Such learning activities are commonly referred to in youth development circles as “intentional programming.” We therefore refer to the kind of learning that occurs during intentional programming as intentional learning. Of course, most learning is intentional, in that it involves some intention on the part of the teacher and/or learner. In this sense, extended and enriched learning are also intentional. However, we use the phrase “intentional learning” in this book to describe a type of learning that does not depend upon standard academic or special curricula—a type of learning that results from programming efforts to promote learning in social, emotional, and extracurricular ways. In other words, we wish to emphasize that non-academic activities do in fact promote learning.

Our research leads us to conclude that afterschool time can be most effective and rewarding for children when programs achieve a balance between these three types of learning.

Afterschool Programs as Intermediary Spaces
As intermediary spaces, produced by vibrant collaborations between different institutions and forces such as schools, families, community-based organizations, cultural institutions, and university programs, afterschool programs can work as intermediary environments (Noam, 2001), giving children a safe platform for exploration of the various forms of learning and helping them to situate their learning in the wider context of their communities. We describe afterschools as intermediary for several reasons: they do not belong to any one group or organization, and in order to function they require the coordination of various stakeholders and “part owners” using flexible methods of management and conflict resolution. Afterschool connects to academic work without serving as a school, takes on aspects of family life (such as comfort, security, recreation) without becoming a family, and instills community-consciousness in children without becoming a civic group. Such flexibility creates risks, such as the risk of power struggles between competing groups and interests, but it is also a source of extremely productive tension and a stimulus to creativity, leadership, and effective time use. We believe that afterschool programs should define themselves not by the criteria of efficiency, but by the richness of the learning they foster and the depth of the connections they enable between different worlds. These goals require partnership at all levels. As is the pattern in all social reform movements, our current great expectations of afterschool programming will inevitably be tempered by growing realism. However, we can still seize this unique moment by focusing our anticipation, attention, and energy to create ever-improving conditions for expanding children’s learning opportunities during afterschool hours.

Methods
Our core research and writing team was assembled in June of 2001 at the Program in Afterschool Education and Research (PAER) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (see Appendix A for a description of PAER and related initiatives). Over the course of a year, the team culled information on the core topics of this report from a variety of sources. Interviews served as a major source of information. Specifically, we conducted interviews with a sample of practitioners and leaders, representing the wide variety of roles and theoretical perspectives in the afterschool field today. We made a strenuous effort to interview each of the programs in host communities (Allston-Brighton, Fenway, Mission Hill, and Cambridge) with the goal of getting direct input from programs that we hope to support through technical assistance (see Appendix B for a map and descriptions of these communities). We felt it crucial not to stop at transmitting our idea of promising practices, but to elicit input on what is most important and useful to educators working in the field.

Overall, we were encouraged by the enthusiasm with which our requests for interviews were received and the openness in sharing experiences and views demonstrated by both practitioners and leaders (see Appendix C for a list of those interviewed). For the purpose of these interviews, we developed a survey and a semistructured interview protocol. Although we make sparing use of actual quotations drawn from interviews, our report is informed throughout by their content, as well as by the PAER conference “Afterschool Settings: Learning with Excitement” held in February 2002 at HGSE. The participants at this conference contributed greatly to our revisions, and indeed a number of panelists from the conference revised their own comments for inclusion in this volume. Finally, our own experiences with the Harvard After-school Initiative, Responsive Advocacy for Life and Learning in Youth (RALLY), Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP), Project Zero, the Mental Health Initiative of McLean Hospital, PAER, and other Harvard-affiliated programs and projects also informed our thinking.

Our data collection effort was not intended to render a complete picture of all aspects of afterschool learning, but rather to serve as an empirical base for refining and extending debate on this topic and to create a plan of action for our work in the next five years. In the course of our research, we drew upon the following types of data sources:

• interviews and discussions with leaders in the field
• interviews with program directors
• existing research studies
• policy briefs and theoretical papers
• observations in programs
• volunteer questionnaires
• experiences in our own demonstration sites and consulting and evaluation experience in New York City, Boston, Cambridge,Denver, and California

By combining these sources, we were able to proceed by way of a “bootstrapping” process—a method introduced by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, which is characterized by triangulation from theory, research, and practice to create an interpretive frame and a set of specific recommendations. Obviously, our eclectic mix of sources does not provide the basis of a systematic empirical research project, but it does represent an ideal combination for a “grounded theory” that creates important distinctions, and for developing a frame for further theory, practice, and research.³

NOTES

1. In the last five years, funding for 21st Century Community Learning Centers has increased exponentially from $1 million in 1997 to $1 billion in 2002. Until the most recent renewal of this legislation, programs had to initiate collaborations between schools and community-based organizations to be eligible for this funding. Presently an increase to $1.5 billion is under consideration in Congress.

2. This was described by Sam Piha (personal communication, January 10, 2002).

3. “Grounded theory” is a way of conducting research in waves, where each successive wave of data collection is used to shape and inform future waves. In this manner, theories evolve as part of the data collection process.