Embracing the Diversity of Community-Based Settings
Priscilla Little, Senior Consultant
This blog is the fourth in a series aimed at introducing community-based practitioners and K-12 educators to some of the key concepts described in Design Principles for Community-Based Settings: Putting the Science of Learning and Development into Action. It tackles the question: What are the characteristics of community-based settings that influence how they implement science-informed practices?
The flexible and free choice nature of community-based learning and development settings has implications for how practitioners can implement science-informed strategies that support equitable learning conditions. Here are some key questions to consider about your setting as you dig into the design principles and consider where you might first focus your attention:
What are my setting’s goals and approaches to teaching and learning?
Community-based learning and development settings have varying goals depending on the content and purpose of their programs; they share the broad goal of supporting learning and development, but specific goals depend on the content being offered. These settings often lead with positive youth development but then include learning opportunities such as cultivating STEM skills, learning a new physical skill such as climbing or soccer, or helping youth become community advocates. Integrating all five non-negotiables into a setting is important but identifying programmatic goals can help identify an entry point into the “blue wheel.”
How many young people do you serve?
Community-based programs range from one-on-one mentoring to large youth serving organizations with capacity to serve hundreds of young people. There are no “average class size” guidelines for community-based settings. Rather, size is driven by both the goals of the program as well as the resource capacity to offer programming. Smaller-sized settings may naturally gravitate to leading with positive developmental relationships whereas larger programs may enter into the “blue wheel” by assuring that all young people feel a sense of safety and belonging.
What are your participation expectations?
In community-based settings attendance expectations vary programmatically by goals and developmentally by age. While school age programs tend to have an expectation of consistent five day per week attendance to support working families, middle school and high school programs tend to have less frequent participation as youth explore more options and engage based on interest or skill building focus.
Since middle and high school youth “vote with their feet,” it is essential that programming is relevant and engaging to them or they just won’t show up. This underscores the need to couple environments filled with safety and belonging with rich learning experiences that promote sustained engagement, especially for older youth.
Who are the adult practitioners that work and volunteer in your setting and what training do the need to implement science-informed practices?
Practitioners who work in community-based programs run the gamut from professionally certified youth workers, to paraprofessionals, to volunteers in the community. Since there is no common, coordinated pre-service or in-service training and professional development system at the national or state level for youth workers, there is no consistent delivery mechanism to ensure that adult practitioners receive training on science-informed practices. Locally, however, many youth development practitioners are trained in learning approaches that more naturally lend themselves to engaging the whole child, especially focused on positive developmental relationships and environments filled with safety and belonging.
Who can access your community-based setting?
Although gross inequities exist within the K-12 public education system — and this has been a primary driver of the design principles work — there is universal recognition that all children and youth are supposed to have access to public education. The same is not true for community-based learning and development settings where there is documented unevenness in the availability of afterschool programming across the country. National survey data reveals that almost 25 million children and youth aren’t able to access an afterschool program in their community, with a disproportionate number of those children and youth being low-income Black and Latinx children (Afterschool Alliance, 2020). The unevenness in availability is often directly linked to a family’s ability to pay for afterschool experiences. Too often, there is s systemic pattern of “winners and losers” when it comes to participation with higher income families spending almost seven times more on enrichment activities for their children than low-income families.
What do you call your institutional “home”?
Community-based learning and development settings vary widely in their organizational affiliation. Sometimes they are part of a larger institutional structure with its own set of guidelines that influence all the differences described above. A local affiliate of a national organization has a national office that supports content development, adult capacity building, and continuous quality improvement efforts. As such, it also creates enabling conditions and potential constraints for being able to implement science-informed strategies. In contrast, a youth practitioner in a locally developed organization may only have access to these kinds of supports if they are active in a local provider network. The ability of practitioners to implement science-informed strategies then, is very much affected by the institution and structure in which they are working.
Despite the diversity of community programs, their common denominator is the commitment to create supportive learning settings that nurture young people’s strengths and interests and enable them to thrive. Relationship building is at the heart of what these organizations do.
While an organization may be known by its activities or content — an arts program, a sports league, an environmental camp — young people consistently voice a common refrain: they may initially be “hooked” by the activity, but they stay because of the bonds they form with peers and adults and this bond is driven by attention to equitable, whole-child design.
