| Many educators and policymakers recognize the importance of school time as an important context for adolescent development. For many school time activities, standards have been developed that address the various knowledges, skills, and dispositions that youngsters should acquire through participation in these activities. Included are standards for general classroom activities as well as standards for enrichment activities such as physical education. In aggregate these standards emphasize areas that presumably address adolescents' developmental needs.; The purpose of this study was to examine adolescent students' perceptions of classroom and enrichment settings in terms of youth development. A youth development perspective emphasizes the creation of social contexts that provide support and opportunities for development broadly conceived. Based on work of. Kahne and associates (2000), a survey was administered to 239 high school students asking their perceptions of classroom and enrichment settings in terms of (a) viewing youth as resources, (b) providing adult support for youth development, and (c) providing an attractive affective setting (safe, respectful, enjoyable).; Findings revealed that for one measure, affective, enrichment settings were rated more favorably than were classroom settings, and that girls generally assigned higher ratings to both settings than did boys. However, when physical education was separated from the other enrichment environments and then compared to the classroom setting, student ratings and gender effects changed markedly. Specifically, no longer were there significant differences for the affective construct, but now there were significant differences in both the youth-as-resources and support constructs. The scores for classroom were now higher than the enrichment (i.e., physical education) scores, with no gender effects. Consequently, further analyses were conducted in order to determine whether differences existed between physical education and the other enrichment settings, which might account for these discrepant findings.; Further analysis amongst the enrichments revealed significant differences. Overall, the majority of students responded that they had never or only once or twice had opportunities to be engaged as a resource in their school environments in the past year. And the majority of students agreed or strongly agreed that their developmental needs were supported and that school provided a positive affective context. |
