Activity of Extra-Curricular Educational Institutions in Solving Children and Youth Socialization Problems
Edita Stuopytė
Institute of Educational Studies
Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University College Dublin, 7-10 September 2005
Introduction
Within the recent decades a rapidly changing society has essentially changed the development conditions of children and youth. In the Central and East European countries the biggest concern is caused how to ensure equal possibilities and the right not to be discriminated. According to Miller (2005), Kieselbach, Beelmann and Traiser (2002), Chamberlayne (1999) and others, the number of young people who do not attend schools, the facts of social exclusion are increasing as well as youth delinquency, insufficient learning motivation of schoolchildren, harmful habits such as drug addiction are spreading. The society change is reflected in all institutes of socialization having direct influence on a child‘s socialization: family, school, institutions of formal and informal education dealing with youth (Fashola, 2001, Eraut, 2000).
According to Witt & Baker (1997), Hentze (1999), Nancy (2002), Majauskienė & Leliugiene (2004) and other researchers, the development conditions of children and youth have changed due to new the distribution of functions of the above mentioned socialization institutions. Extra-curricular educational institutions are attributed to such socialization institutes.
Extra-curricular educational institutions are independent, democratically organised, their activity is based on humanistic principles and general values. They are communities of children, their parents, educational institutions and offices involved in the activity, teachers seeking together for defined educational goals. Rademacker (1999), Bužinskas (2002), Leliūgienė (2003), Kvieskienė (2003) Colley, Hodkinson & Malcolm (2002) consider extra-curricular educational institutions to be one of the most important institutes in personality socialization.
Children and youth having a lot of leisure time often spend it without any purpose and meaning, surrender to negative influence of the environment and get involved into criminal activities. Due to this, they fall into the view of law and order institutions thus, it may be stated that the lack of occupation is an increased risk factor. It is presumable that if young people had purposeful positive occupation in their free time (both at school and extra-curricular educational institutions), that is if they had the possibility to get involved into interesting, actual and socially acceptable activities, the problems of children and youth socialization would decrease.
Extra-curricular educational institutions, performing the functions of children and youth social protection, their rehabilitation and adaptation in social life, organizing purposeful leisure and etc. could realize the programs of early social help and prevention.
The research problem could be defined via such questions as: what possibilities for young people are provided and what children and youth socialization problems are solved by extra-curricular educational institutions? The research objective is to highlight the activity peculiarities of extra-curricular educational institutions in solving children and youth socialization problems. Research methods: scientific literature, document analysis, questionnaire in written.
The first part of the article analyses extra-curricular education as the factor of an individual’s socialization, the problems of social exclusion and social inclusion are discussed. In the second part, on the basis of the empirical research done, the peculiarities of extra-curricular educational institution activities are defined in solving the problems of children and youth socialization. A quantitative empirical research was done in 2004. Three different groups of respondents participated in the research (total number of respondents was 251): children and youth involved in the activities of extra-curricular educational institutions, their parents and pedagogues working in these institutions.
Extra-curricular education as the factor of an individual’s socialization
One of the main problems which have to be solved at school is life quality of children and youth determined by the conditions of a changing society. Nowadays formal knowledge and skills are not enough for a pupil or student, he/she has to become an initiative personality with creative and critical thinking, able to work and create in a constantly changing world. In this context understanding that a person’s education is not completed when he/she graduates from school or university, he/she continues learning actively in everyday activities and life becomes important. According to Mannion (2003), at schools the most important problems are: poor attendance of lessons, leaving school, worse learning results than they could be due to abilities. All this may influence social exclusion. Referring to Parsons (1999), social exclusion and poor attendance of lessons have a long-term negative impact on social cohesion. Besides, criminal behavior is very often characteristic for such children. Extra-curricular educational institutions participate in solving the problems of this kind and seeking successful socialization of children and youth through realization of various socio-educational programs.
According to Kurienė (2002), extra-curricular education is a purposeful, organized, coordinated, integrated activity carried out by different educational institutions after lessons. It does not duplicate learning contents acquired during the lessons. This activity aims at developing pupils’ cognitive abilities and stimulating them for work.
According to Colley, Hodkinson & Malcolm (2002), Smith (2002), Kvieskiene (2003), Kuriene (2002), Leliugiene (2002), Dapkiene (1998) and others, it is possible to define the following types of extra-curricular education:
Ø Formal extra-curricular education. It is provided by specialized music, art, choreography, drama schools, sports, languages, extra-mural or Sunday schools of ethnic communities. These institutions provide extra education under the programs accredited by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Lithuania.
Ø Non - formal extra-curricular education. It is provided by profile science, technical and artistic training clubs, tourism centers, children clubs, centers of leisure activities etc. established and run by public and non-governmental organizations, private persons. Institutions of this type function under individual short-term and long-term programs accredited by the founders of institutions, they are flexible but their activities are limited.
Ø Informal education. This type of education is provided by institutions such as mass media, libraries, museums, galleries, information centers, theaters and others. These institutions influence educational process at several levels: through educational programs coordinated by state educational offices, through independent programs for children and youth, through programs which are not meant for children and youth however, they have considerable influence on them.
Contents and forms of extra-curricular education are chosen and created by the schools taking into consideration their possibilities and children’s needs. High quality extra-curricular education (formal, non-formal or informal) contributes to successful children socialization: children are given the possibility to spend their leisure purposefully, reveal their abilities and advantages, realize individuality, improve knowledge and social skills etc. Successful children and youth socialization decreases the possibility of social exclusion. On the basis of the research performed by the Centre for economic and social inclusion, in 2002 in Great Britain, social exclusion could be defined as the process, during which individuals or groups are partially or totally excluded from full-fledged participation in social life.
Collins (2003) states that socially excluded are not only people suffering from poverty. Socially excluded groups of individuals are defined as people who in fact have no possibilities to be active citizens. It is influenced by inter-related problems the people face such as unemployment, poor skills, low income, bad living conditions, high level of criminality, health problems, broken family, poverty, insufficient education, belonging to unacceptable/discriminated ethnic minority, living in very distant places, financial responsibility for encumbrances or a combination of several from the above mentioned problems (Collins (2003), Mannion (2003)).
Any person independently on his/her age (child, youngster, adult) may be socially excluded. Analyzing the works of many researchers (Collins (2003), Mannion (2003), Madsen (2003) it turned out that the process of social inclusion is significant both for individuals and the whole society. The issue is becoming important for specialists professionals as well. According to B. Madsen (2003), a general problem for social workers and pedagogues is looking for the answer to the question how to build up communities creating conditions and motivating individuals to be socially active. Professionals are expected to have such skills as social invention and brightness in professional area, ability to combine at least two – integration and social inclusion – paradigms in one’s professional activity.
According to Madsen (2003), social inclusion and integration differ in essential principles. Integration process is focused on an individual and formation of his/her identity, while social inclusion – on an individual’s relations with social environment, society. In socio- educational activity both paradigms are important, only it is necessary to understand their differences and the main goals. To enable a person for changes and life quality, it is necessary not only to correct his/her personal characteristics, views etc. as well as relations with social environment. It is also important to ensure that social environment accepted a person and provided him/her with the possibility to become a full-fledged society member. Workers of extra-curricular educational institutions have to give attention to the fulfillment of these goals.
Schools realizing the process of social inclusion are effective means in fighting against discriminative approaches, building up open communities and society, ensuring equal accessability to education (Madsen, 2003). It is a very complex task as it can be realized only together with the solution of youth socialization problems. One of the ways to solve these problems is organizing high quality extra-curricular education.
According to Kvieskienė (2003), Leliūgienė (2002), Dapkienė (1998), Witt & Baker (1997), out-of-school activity programs may be one of the ways to ensure structured, clearly defined, better supervised and more effective children’s leisure time. Such programs are essential for youth aged 10-14 for their leisure occupation as well as for preventing delinquency.
With reference to Witt & Baker (1997), young people have a lot of time left at their discretion and a big part of it is spent ineffectively. Only 60 percent of time is spent at school, doing homework, eating, helping at home or doing some paid work, 40 percent of time they spend on their own. Extra-curricular education is not compulsory however schools should be interested in having as many pupils as possible to be involved in this activity. Purposeful occupation prevents children from negative social phenomena.
Referring to Kvieskienė (2003), Leliūgienė (2002), Dapkienė (1998) and others it can be stated that socio-educational function of extra-curricular educational institutions can be defined as purposefully directed actions realized via leisure, health programs aimed at children’s socialisation in society life.
Through different activities it is important to create conditions for a child to perceive oneself as a personality, develop his/her interests, enable to understand one’s possibilities in changing socio-economical situations. Children organizations according to I. Leliūgienė (2002), first of all have to ensure the possibility for children to integrate into social relations with the surrounding environment. One of the children organization goals is to build confidence and readiness of its members for social activity, development and keeping up of democratic relations culture.
Thus, it can be concluded that extra-curricular institutions via realizing their mission are able actively and successfully solve the problems of children and youth socialization through different areas of their activities such as: social protection of children and youth, free services of educational leisure, health and other services, professional orientation, participation in different forms of social activities, joining society life and others. Empirical research aimed at finding out how these activities are realized by extra-curricular educational institutions.
Empirical research results
Research subjects.
Research population – educators dealing with extra-curricular education, schoolchildren and their parents.
Research sample – 87 schoolchildren from three X basic schools, children music schools, children sports schools, children and youth centre, 81 educator and 83 parents. Total number of respondents was 251.
Sampling criteria of the researched:
Ø Heads of schools and parents were selected as respondents due to the fact that they deal with extra-curricular educational institutions and their activities, children and youth who were involved into the activity.
Ø Pupils of 5-12 forms participated in the research.
Data collection method. Data was collected applying a quantitative research method that is a written questionnaire. During the research, a convenient non probability sampling was carried out. On the basis of scientific literature analysis, questionnaires were prepared for each group of respondents.
Questionnaire characteristics. The questionnaire contained two main diagnostic blocks:
1. Extra-curricular educational institution activities in solving the socialization problems of children and youth: activity tendencies of extra-curricular educational institutions, possibilities provided by extra-curricular educational institutions, etc.
2. Demographic block: gender of respondents, age, education, position.
Characteristics of respondents. Approximately half of all respondents (56,0%) deal with complementary education club activities in basic schools, the rest of the respondents divided almost into equal parts from children an youth centre, children sports school and children music school (see Fig. 1):
Fig. 1. Grouping of the respondents according to institutions
The respondents fell into almost equal groups (see Fig. 2):
Fig. 2. Grouping of the respondents
Figure 3 represents grouping of the respondents according to age.
Fig. 3. Grouping of the respondents according to age
One of the questions was what possibilities extra-curricular educational institutions provide for children and youth? The research results demonstrated the viewpoint of the pupils, their parents and teachers to the problem analyzed. 98 percent of all respondents indicated that extra-curricular educational institutions give children and youth the possibility of self-expression, they can satisfy their expectations, develop abilities (97 proc.), meet new friends, communicate (97 proc.) and others. The research results are presented in the 1st table.