A critical examination of the educational policy discourse on/for school extra-curricular activities – a Deweyan perspective

ABSTRACT

There has been much discussion in educational policy on the apparent educational benefits for disadvantaged young people of engaging in schools’ extra-curricular activities (ECAs). The evidence suggests strong associations between ECAs and improved educational attainments. Arguments made about the causal processes and underpinning associations tend to revolve around individualised notions of transfer, and in particular the suggestion that ECAs develop various ‘non-cognitive’ skills of transferable educational relevance. In reviewing key literatures, we argue that such a notion cannot be justified. Instead, our analytical contribution to the field suggests that learning and development generally, and the possibilities of school ECAs specifically, should be understood through the Deweyan notions of experience and temporality. Such notions suggest that the way young people experience ECAs and mainstream classrooms should not be viewed through the lens of transfer but instead be seen as part of a set of integrating experiences of life as event, that includes and yet goes beyond schooling, and that suggests young people’s fullness of life as a unit of analysis. Our line of argument, therefore, suggests that the deployment of school ECAs as currently constituted cannot have generalisable predictive power in specifying causal outcomes for improved academic attainment.

KEYWORDS:

• Extra-curricular activities
• attainment
• transfer
• Dewey
• experience
• temporality

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Wolff-Michael Roth, Helen Gunter, and Julian Williams for their perceptive and constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No financial interests or benefits have arisen from any direct applications of our research. There was no conflict of interest in undertaking the research.

Additional information

Funding

There was no external funding in support of the research.

Notes on contributors

Carlo Raffo

Carlo Raffo is Professor of Urban Education at the Manchester Institute of Education and Director of the Spatial Inequalities and Poverty signature theme of the Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester. His main area of research is education and poverty and educational equity in urban contexts.

Claire Forbes

Claire Forbes is Lecturer in Education (ITE) at the Manchester Institute of Education. Her research interests focus upon the complex relationship between place, space, and young people’s valued educational capabilities within high poverty contexts.