“Working together as a team really gets them fired up”: Afterschool program mentoring strategies to promote collaborative learning among adolescent participants

ABSTRACT

Opportunities for collaborative learning reflect positive peer processes that have strong implications for adolescents’ developmental experiences in afterschool programs (ASPs). However, collaborative learning, which involves considering multiple viewpoints and coordinating actions with peers to accomplish a shared goal, is often difficult for adolescents to navigate. Utilizing qualitative methods, the purpose of this study was to identify ASP mentoring strategies that promote collaborative learning among adolescent participants. Based on the experiences and perspectives of college student mentors who serve as frontline staff of a math enrichment ASP for Latino/a middle school students, we identified four mentoring strategies that promote collaborative learning: (1) nurturing personal connections with and among youth, (2) establishing positive group norms, (3) strategically splitting groups and work, and (4) modeling collaborative behaviors. These strategies reflect best practices that frontline staff can utilize to promote adolescents’ collaborative learning, skill development, and engagement in ASPs. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the coordinators, mentors, and youth participants of the Math CEO program at UC Irvine for their willingness to be a part of this study. Thank you also to the Honda Foundation, the University-Community Links Network, and many others for generously supporting the Math CEO program. Finally, thank you to our Project Reach/Simpkins Lab undergraduate research assistants at UC Irvine (Odorico San Nicolas and Diana Naomi Romero) for helping us analyze the data for this study.

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1809208. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.