Sociocultural Considerations for Engagement in Out-of-School Programs

• In Event: Fostering Engagement for All: Advancing Socioculturally Inclusive Theory, Research, and Practice in Student Engagement

Abstract

Participation in out-of-school time (OST) programs is associated with positive student outcomes (e.g., Durlak et al., 2010; Vandell et al., 2020), but attendance alone is insufficient—students’ engagement is key (Hirsch et al., 2010). However, engagement varies across and within students, shaped by sociocultural factors that influence how programs are experienced. The PARC model—Programs, Activities, Relationships, and Culture (Hirsch et al., 2011)—captures three core dimensions of OST programs that shape engagement: the culture of the program, activities offered, and relationships with staff. These dimensions interact with students’ sociocultural backgrounds, which influence not only participation (e.g., Ramos Carranza & Simpkins, 2024; Ma et al., 2021) but also how students engage once enrolled. Further, intersectional identities (Bowleg, 2017; Williams & Deutsch, 2016) inform how students navigate program culture, relationships, and activities, resulting in individualized engagement experiences.

Engagement is now widely understood as multidimensional, encompassing behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social components (Fredricks, 2011). Building on this, the Dual Component model (Wong & Liem, 2022) distinguishes between learning engagement in specific activities and engagement with the program as a whole. This distinction helps capture the variability in how students participate across settings and tasks within the same OST environment. Together, we integrated the PARC and Dual Component models (see Figure 1) to conceptualize engagement as multidimensional, multilevel, and activity-specific. A student may feel connected to the program overall but disengaged in particular activities, depending on the relationships, culture, and learning opportunities embedded in each. Their behavioral, affective, and cognitive responses shape engagement at both the program and activity level.
We illustrate the utility of the integrated PARC and Dual Component models with two students from a larger mixed methods study of a school-based after-school program for middle schoolers in a mid-sized city. JR, a Black male interested in STEM, and Hillary, a Latinx female from an immigrant family who enjoys theater, exemplify how unique sociocultural contexts shape engagement pathways and barriers. Their cases highlight the need to design engagement interventions that attend to both the individual and holistic dimensions of students’ experiences.

The presentation will highlight the following provocative/novel insights:
● Barriers to engagement in OST programs begin, but don’t end with access to programs. Programs must consider both individual and holistic experiences of students within programs to promote engagement in programs and activities.
● Engagement in OST programs is multidimensional, multilevel, and activity specific. Students may experience one level of engagement in the center or program overall but this does not mean that they will be equally highly engaged in every activity they participate in within the center. Their engagement within individual activities will be driven by the specific relationships and cultures they experience in each activity as well as their cognitive, behavioral, and affective engagement in the activities themselves.
● Student engagement in OST programs is influenced by and based on their intersectional sociocultural identities which inform how students interact with different aspects of the program.

Authors

• Ashlee Lester Sjogren, University of Virginia

• Nancy L. Deutsch, University of Virginia