Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-5-2023
Abstract
After-school youth development programs support social-emotional functioning which leads to better academic and behavioral outcomes. This article examines three common predictors of social-emotional functioning individually and concurrently to better understand the role of these predictors in the after-school setting. The common predictors are staff/student relationships, sense of belonging, and program engagement. That data came from 144, 3rd through 8th grade, students across 9 different elementary and middle school sites who regularly attended a large youth development program. Regression analyses were run and the results indicated that each variable was an individually significant predictor of social-emotional functioning. Results from multiple regression analyses demonstrated that there was a better model fit when including all three variables in the same model. Interestingly, the results indicated that program engagement was a strong predictor above and beyond staff/student relationships and sense of belonging on self-management and self-efficacy. Sense of belonging and program engagement both predicted social awareness. Implications of these findings for after-school program planning and development are discussed.
Keywords
after-school youth development, program engagement, sel, sense of belonging, staff/student relationships
Language
English
Publication Title
Psychology in the Schools
Rights
© 2023 The Authors. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Fisher, A. E., Johnson, L. R., Minnes, S., Miller, E. K., Riccardi, J. S., & Dimitropoulos, A. (2024). Predictors of social emotional learning in after-school programming: The impact of relationships, belonging, and program engagement. Psychology in the Schools, 61, 1318–1335. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.23113
Manuscript Version
Final Publisher Version