Urban, early adolescents' developmental experiences and engagement/disengagement with challenge in out-of-school time programs

In this study, associations between developmental experiences and engagement/disengagement with challenge were examined among a group of urban, early adolescents in Out-of-School Time Programs (OSTPs). The research literature suggests a number of cognitive, social, and emotional benefits are linked to engagement with challenge and developmental experiences should increase the chances of early adolescents' engagement with challenge in OSTPs. If we know which developmental experiences have the strongest relations with engagement with challenge, then OSTPs can be designed to provide more of these experiences and maximize benefits for youth. Results from a sample of 274 urban youth in 5th to 8th grades from 23 OSTPs in the Greater Kansas City area show that, at the individual-level unit of analysis, developmental experiences shared positive associations with engagement with challenge but they were negatively correlated with disengagement with challenge (all data is based on adolescents' self-reports). Adolescents in higher grades tended to spend fewer hours in OSTPs and reported lower rates of developmental experiences. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that after controlling for youth's intrinsic motivation to participate, developmental experiences together account for 35.1% of the variance in engagement with challenge. More specifically, initiative experiences of problem-solving and time management were significantly associated with engagement with challenge. At the program-level unit of analysis, developmental experiences were significantly related to disengagement with challenge but not engagement with challenge. The major implication of these findings is that, for early adolescents, OSTPs providing higher rates of initiative experiences are likely to support higher engagement with challenge and, by extension, also provide greater learning benefits.