Taking Stock: The Raw Ingredients of Learning Experiences

Priscilla Little, Senior Consultant

This blog is the third 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: How can community-based practitioners and system leaders — as well as young people and families — anticipate and optimize the diversity of community-based learning settings?

Written as a companion playbook to Design Principles for Schools: Putting the Science of Learning and Development into Action, Design Principles for Community-based Settings uses the Guiding Principles for Whole Child Design as the organizing frame to guide the transformation of learning settings. Taken together, the five principles are the nonnegotiable starting points for community-based settings to support healthy development, learning, and thriving.

Community-based programs vary widely based on where they operate, whom they serve, and what they do. For practitioners to “see themselves in the science” and put that science into practice we have to embrace the diversity of these settings.

To do this, we must understand that the recipe for creating positive experiences across diverse settings includes three main ingredients:

1. The characteristics of the adults working or volunteering in the setting
2. The background and experiences of the young people and their families
3. The characteristics of the setting itself

Who are the Adults in Your Setting?

Practitioners who work in community-based programs run the gamut from professionally certified youth workers, to paraprofessionals, to volunteers in the community. They include those with teaching experience and those without. In many large youth serving organizations staff are, themselves, older youth. School-based afterschool programs often hire school personnel to provide academic support while also engaging community members and college students to provide enrichment. Staff who run community programs in arts organizations, libraries, museums, and outdoor/nature programs usually have deep content knowledge of a topic or issue and a general interest in working with children and teens but may have no training in youth development but .

Who are the Young People Who are Drawn to Your Setting?

The groups of children and teens who participate in community learning settings usually participate voluntarily and so are drawn into the setting by the activities, supports and services it offers. Because they are not assigned to organizations or settings by specific attributes (like age or grade), most groups of young people in a community-based setting tend to be more diverse than the classroom groups young people are a part of.

What are the Characteristics of Your Setting?

Community-based settings may be familiar spaces, housed or linked to different places (libraries, youth organizations, faith-based organizations, community centers, workplaces). They are associated with organizations that have different goals, rules, resources, and approaches. As described in my last blog — A New Typology for Community Based Settings — community-based settings vary in a number of dimensions including goals, size, participation expectations, funding sources, and institutional “home.”

We call the depiction of these three features — adults, settings, and youth characteristics — the “blue wheel with wings.” It can serve as a discussion starter for educators and community-based practitioners to begin to reflect on how these three critical features interact to inform how and how well they implement science-informed approaches.

As you think about the adult, setting, and youth characteristics for your community-based program, you might ask yourself:

• What experiences, training, and personal history do my staff have that will strengthen their capacity to implement the design principles?
• What training does my staff need to create rich, culturally affirming learning experiences?
• Is the physical space where I work with youth conducive to implementing the design principles and do I have the resources needed to support learning and development?
• How does our program model and curriculum align with or support the design principles?
• How is my program grouping young people to foster the developmental relationships that science says are critical to youth success?
• In what ways are we taking intentional time to get to know our young people’s personal history and interests?
• How does my program engage families in meaningful ways that respect and honor family cultures and traditions?

In our next blog, we’ll continue to dig in more deeply to how you can use and leverage Design Principles for Community-Based Settings: Putting the Science of Learning and Development into Action.