The clustering of experiences in after-school program and quality of life of elementary school children: The application of PPCT Model

• Main Authors: Shyu,Yun, 徐昀
• Other Authors: Lin, San-Ju
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/exs27m

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 教育研究所 === 104 === The aims of this study were to investigate the types of after-school activities that elementary school children participated and the related subjective experiences. To the elementary school children, after-school activities accounted for a substantial proportion of a day and previous research has suggested that after-school activities do have a significant impact on children's physical and mental development. Based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model and his process-person- context-time model (PPCT), the author selected input variables to conduct two-stage clustering analysis . In this study, the first P (process) is regarding the elementary school children’s subjective experiences in four types of after-school activities; the second P (person) is the average of self-esteem; C (context) is parenting style. These variables were considered simultaneously in the two-stage clustering analyses to form different clusters of elementary school students across two time points (Time, T). The participants are students in 5th grade who are in the period of dramatic changes in physical and mental development so that the time interval was set as two months in order to include the time aspect in PPCT model. Data were collected by a newly developed method, Day Reconstruction Method (DRM). Students provide their subjective experiences according to the separate events regarding after-school period, one day before the data collection. For every after- school events, they reported their positive and passive subjective experience ((1) cognitive: concentrate, lost sense of time, (2) goal: clearly objectives, importance, (3) positive emotions: satisfaction, pleasure, and (4) negative emotions: anxiety, fatigue). 2218 episodes of after-school data was collected from 173 students. The free-report after-school events were categorized into four types of after-school activities: academic related, active leisure, passive leisure and maintenance. After clustering analysis for two time points, elementary school childrens’ quality of life (academic average, tend mastery goal average, average life satisfaction) were compared among groups. The results are as in below. (A) The elementary school children, aged 11-12, mostly got involved in the academic-related activities after school (34%) while there was no difference among the other three types of after-school activities (ranged from 19%~23%). (B) Children in those four after-school activities had positive experiences which was higher than the average while negative experiences was below the average. In the active leisure after-school activities, kids’ experiences are better than those of the other after school actiivties because those children tended to participate with self-willingness (autonomy). The quality of what children had engaged in the active after-school activities was pretty excellent; they experienced the balance of challenges and the ability, the degree of concentration and time-passing was high. They had the clear goals along with important activities, and experienced higher satisfaction and pleasure. (C) Cluster analysis sorted out four groups at the first time point; they were the group of the most positive development (seventy-six children), internal-external weak development/medium-processing development (thirty-four children), negative-processing development (forty-five children) and negative development (eighteen children). At the second time point, three groups were sorted out: the most positive development (eighty-one children), internal-external weak development/ medium-processing development (sixty-three children) and negative development (twenty-nine children). Among those groups, the life quality of the most positive development group is the highest than the others, including the average of academic scores, mastery goal-orientation and life satisfaction. (D) The result of chi-square analysis found that crossing two-month grouping had medium stability. The children of the most positive development group had higher stability; there were 78.66% of the children in the first time point still remained in the second time point. However, the group of negative development had lower stability. Take negative-processing development group as the example, 68.8% of the children progressed into the internal-external weak development/medium-processing development and the most positive development and the members went better development as time passed. (E) The crucial variables of clustering were the quality of proximal subjective positive-negative experiences in after-school activities (P), self-esteem (P), and the way of parenting in a family context of the main care-giver (C); these are the most significance factors impacting their quality of life. However, the number and the percentage of participation in any after-school activities made no difference regarding the quality of life among school kids. Based on the results stated above, further discussions were presented with suggestion for future applications in teaching and research directions. Keywords: Ecological model, Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), subjective experience in after-school activities, Cluster Analysis, Elementary school children.