Children's After-School Activities as Opportunities To Develop Cognitive Skills.

Noting that there has been increasing interest in the past 20 years in the contributions of children's everyday experiences to their intellectual growth, this study examined the contribution of everyday experience during middle childhood to the cognitive skill of planning. The major focus of the study was to identify whether children have opportunities to develop and practice planning skills in their everyday experience, describe how parents are involved, and compare practices across European American and Hispanic communities. Participating in the 3-year longitudinal study were 118 mothers (83 European American and 35 English-speaking Latino American) and their children (61 girls, 57 boys), beginning when the children were 7 or 8 years old. The Daily Activities Survey was given to mothers and children separately at all three waves of data collection. Findings indicated that 85 percent of children went home after school, and 12 percent went to day care. Children regularly participated in 2.98 organized activities and 8.48 informal activities. Findings indicated that children's opportunities to decide on their after-school activities changed over middle childhood. Much of children's experience deciding future behaviors occurred for informal activities, and this experience increased over middle childhood. Hispanic parents were more likely than European American parents to decide on their children's informal activities on their own. Girls had more opportunity to decide on informal activities on their own than boys did during these years. Gender-related patterns differed in European American and Hispanic families. Parents of European American boys or Hispanic girls and their children were more likely to share decision making regarding informal activities than the other dyads. Parents and children tended to share in the decision making for organized activities, and there was little change in this pattern over middle childhood. (Eight tables detail findings. Contains 12 references.) (KB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Children's After-School Activities as Opportunities to Develop Cognitive Skills Mary Gauvain and Susan Perez University of California, Riverside rn w Paper presented as part of a symposium entitled Children Lives After School: Opportunities for Development, Society for Research in Child Development, April 2001, Minneapolis, MN. Over the last two decades there has been increasing interest in the contributions that children's everyday experiences make to intellectual growth. This research is based on the view that cognitive development relies in part on children's participation in activities and practices available in the context in which growth occurs (Goodnow, Miller, & Kessel, 1995; Rogoff, 1998). In this paper, we discuss the contribution of everyday experience during middle childhood to the development cf one type of cognitive skill, planning. The ability to plan is critical to mature social and cognitive functioning. In fact, a basic assumption of development is that with increasing age children will have greater regulation of their own activities, and this relies in important ways on the ability to plan (Kopp, 1997). There are many changes in children's skill at planning over the years of middle childhood (Gauvain, 2001). Because children's activities during these years are managed to a large'degree by their parents, we are particularly interested in how parents may facilitate the development of children's competence at planning during these years. The main questions we are asking in our research are (1) do children have opportunity to develop and practice planning skills in their everyday experience, (2) how are parents involved in this process, and (3) are these practices similar across two cultural communities, specifically European American and Hispanic communities. These questions stem from both theoretical interests regarding the connection between everyday activity and cognitive growth, as well as practical concerns about how children spend their time when they are not in school and how this may contribute to the development of cognitive skills like planning. As background to this project, two sources are particularly noteworthy. One is David Elkind's 1981 book The Hurried Child and the other is a 1999 report published by the Packard Foundation. In his book, Elkind characterized young children's lives outside of schoolas harried and stressful. When this book appeared it aroused both professional and public attention because psychological stressors identified with adulthood, such as oversheduling one's day, shifting from activity to activity in a day with few breaks in between, anda fixation on achievement, were now being associated with youth. This circumstance resulted from many societal trends, trends that made everyday life for children in the late 20th century markedly different from that experienced by the post %rid War II generation. These include increased numbers of single parents and dual-wage-earning fathilies that necessitate long hours in afterschool care for many children; parental anxiety about maximizing future options for children that led to an upsurge in various types of apprenticeship programs outside of school; parental dissatisfaction with public schools that led to increased compensatory after-school tutorials for children; and heightened concern about child safety that led to increased privatization of play and regulation of children's play time by parents: Although these after-school experiences differ in many ways, they are similar in that they all leave children with little time outside of school that is not controlled or supervised by adults. These experiences also leave children with little time outside of school to devise their own activities' r be with small groups of children in unstructured activities where relationships and activities are developed and negotiated by the children themselves. The report from the 'Packard Foundation (1999) examined children activities outside of t=? D school. The papers in this report focui mainly on tirogranunatie and policy issues, but they also BEST COPY AVAILABLE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Research Improvement PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS CENTER (ERIC) BEEN GRANTED BY XThis document has been reproduced as eceived from the person or organization originating it. 1:1 Minor changes have been made to V\ improve reproduction quality. ° Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 2