Promoting Academic Resiliency thru Meaningful Conversation within

After-School Programs and Extracurricular Activities

Guadalupe ValdiviaEDUC 790-2

Summer 2013

Problem Statement

• Youth who live in poor communities or attend to struggling schools have less access to ASPs/ECAs that can help them improve their communication skills, develop a strong academic identity and improve their well-being.

Objectives of the Study

• To enhance learning outside of school context by participating in meaningful activities and enriching conversations.

Importance of the Problem

• ASPs/ECAs is a place for at-risk youth to find a positive role model and healthy relationships that helped them with guidance and support, which impacts youth future decisions.

Constructs Identified & Defined

• Theory-Driven Approach• Urie Bronfenbrenner: Ecological Systems • Erick Erikson: Psychosocial Developmental • Abraham Maslow: Hierarchy of Needs • John Bowlby: Attachment • Max Horkheimer: Critical Race

• Definitions ->Next Slide

Collecting Data

RationaleIt can help philanthropist, community leaders and members, politicians, school administration and personal, and families find activities that are more beneficial to individuals that comes from a diverse background.

Background

• Don’t have access to ASPs/ECAs.• If have access:– not as structures of as good as after school

programs that are located in affluent communities.

– seek for healthy relationships that can help them thru their development.

Three key articles and why?

• ASPs or ECAs cultivating college bound students.

Clarifying The Meaning of Extracurricular Activity

• After-school hour activities such as ECAs and co-curriculum, promote exploration of individual differences and interests.

Bartkus, K. R., Nemelka, B., Nemelka, M., & Gardner, P. (2012). Clarifying The Meaning Of Extracurricular Activity: A Literature Review Of Definitions. American Journal of Business Education (AJBE), 5(6), 693-704.

Staff conceptions of curricular and extracurricular activities in higher education

• Co-curriculum activities in higher education usually became ECAs.

• Positive effects on students academic identity and academic life, such as helping with adapting to school culture and transition to employment.

Clegg, S., Stevenson, J., & Willott, J. (2010). Staff conceptions of curricular and extracurricular activities in higher education. Higher Education, 59(5), 615-626.

‘It’s just like an extra string to your bow’: Exploring higher education students’ perceptions and experiences of extracurricular activity and employability

• Life-wide Learning: learning occurs through formal and informal experiences in different ‘learning spaces’, with academic study and ECAs representing different ‘spaces’ within the student experience.

• Students engage in ECAs because do something worthwhile or to develop skills that will help them in the long-run.

Thompson, L. J., Clark, G., Walker, M., & Whyatt, J. D. (2013). ‘It’s just like an extra string to your bow’: Exploring higher education students’ perceptions and experiences of extracurricular activity and employability. Active Learning in Higher Education, 14(2), 135-147.

Research Questions

• “What effective did the positive staff-student relationships in ASPs have in the at-risk students and How did the positive staff-student relationships in ASPs impact the performance of the at-risk students academic resiliency?”

• “Did at-risk students who participated in ASPs improve academic resiliency than at-risk students who didn’t attend to any ASP?

Preferred Method for my Dissertation