El rol del Perú en la división internacional del trabajo y la estructura empresarial

b. What should the role of parents and peers be in supporting adolescents with comprehension difficulties?

3. What would it take to replicate good school- based literacy practice in out-of-school settings without losing the unique motivational features of existing programs? What would it take to enact good adolescent literacy practice from out-of-school programs in school settings? Is it appropriate to attempt to integrate practices from the two different learning contexts? The final set of questions is prompted by both the increasing demand that out-of-school learning programs take up more academic programming and the resistance that many out-of-school program staff voice to reframing afterschool and community-based programs as school-like spaces. Consider, for example, the seemingly opposed stances represented in the two following quotes:

Children’s needs are best addressed when formal school-day curricula and “informal” supports such as afterschool programs and other productive learning opportunities are coordinated…. Parallel systems of supplementary education can enhance school-day learning (Gordon et al., 2004).

There is the clear danger that if afterschool programs are pulled into the orbit of schools, they will lose the opportunity to forge their own distinctive goals for children’s literacy development. Moreover, children appear to want and need boundaries between different types of experiences (Sutton-Smith, 1997; Heath, 2001). Our observations suggest that children instinctively understand and value the differences in reading and writing in school and outside it. Afterschool programs surely need help gaining access to the specialized knowledge and experiences about literacy development in the educational literature. But they themselves will still be responsible for forging a literacy-related identity that makes sense given their distinctive qualities (Halpern, 2003b).

Thus, a central concern in our review was to examine the differences between school literacy programs and out-of-school time programs, focusing on contextual and structural differences between the two. We sought to examine, in particular, how after-school and community-based programs differ structurally from school settings, and we theorize how such structural differences might shape adolescents’

motivations to engage in literate tasks in the programs. For example, we examined whether the different content area emphases typically represented in schooling (i.e., science, social studies, mathematics, and English language arts) are represented in after- school and community programs and, if so, to what depth various disciplinary concepts are explored.

Moje and colleagues (O’Brien et al., 2001; O’Brien et al., 1995) have theorized that literacy practices are difficult to integrate into secondary school settings because the structure of secondary schools, divided as they are into discrete content areas with unique values and practices, presents challenges of chipping away at well-instantiated belief systems about the role of literacy (or lack thereof) within the content areas. Moreover, it is important to assess whether out-of-school time programs focus their efforts in literacy learning on only certain types of texts (e.g., narrative rather than expository), certain kinds of literacy skills (e.g., decoding and fluency, rather than comprehension), or certain content or topical areas (e.g., social studies rather than science).

We also sought information about the management aspects of school and out-of-school time programs. Eccles and colleagues, for example, have demonstrated that the structures of middle school settings actually work at odds with the developmental needs of early adolescents (Eccles et al., 1991; Eccles & Midgley, 1989; Eccles et al., 1993a; Eccles et al., 1993b). In addition, Stipek (1992) argues that school contexts are less welcoming as children move from elementary to secondary school settings. Others have documented the lock-downs, lack of recreational time, and hall sweeps of middle and high school settings (Moje, 2001).

In addition, Moje’s research with adolescents outside of school indicates that their literacy practices in informal networks, while often closely related to the kinds of skills and practices required in school, do not transfer easily to school content-area settings because neither students appear to regard their skills and practices as inappropriate for school learning and teachers appear not to be aware of or to consider inappropriate the skills that young people bring with them into schools (Moje et al., 2004a; Moje et al., 2000). Thus, it is important to examine similarities and differences in the ways school settings and after- school/community settings for learning literacy

are structured in order to assess the likelihood that practices will transfer. Specifically, we raise the question of whether and under what conditions formal out-of-school literacy and other youth development programs can serve as a bridge between literacy skills learned in informal, out-of-school settings and formal secondary school structures.

To conduct the review, we engaged in library and web-based searching. We did not engage in any empirical data collection of our own (i.e., assessments, surveys, interviews, or observations), but we relied heavily on reports from others. For example, Robert Halpern and colleagues (Halpern, 1990, 2003a; Halpern et al., 1999) conducted an extensive survey and observational study of afterschool programs (albeit focused primarily on children’s programs, only some of which included middle-school-aged youth. Other such reports came primarily from individual researchers—often graduate students conducting doctoral dissertations—reporting on individual programs. In addition, we examined several large- scale reports, such as the MDRC’s evaluation of out- of-school programs and the Afterschool Alliance’s report. Private foundations provided another source for program evaluations or reports, although these could not always be considered completely independent reports, as the foundations provided funding to many of the programs reviewed. Finally, we examined brochures and websites to gain both a sense of the range of programs in existence and information about the nature of programming. These materials, obviously, only indicate plans for programming and do not provide information on what actually happened within a given program or on outcomes measured.

Existing Out-of-School Programs