AERA 2006 - 1

Children’s After-School Activities as Developmental Contexts: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Joan Newman, Temi Bidjerano, Asil Ali Özdoğru, Çağrı Özköse-Bıyık, and Ching-Chen Kao

International comparisons in educational studies mainly look at academic outcomes such as achievement. It is also important to learn about children's activities after school as they play a major role in children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development. The study examines the types of after-school activities children from three different countries are involved in during the after school hours. Ten and 11 years old fourth graders from Bulgaria (n = 312), Taiwan (n = 292), and USA (n = 196) were surveyed about their typical after-school activities on three given days of the week. A series of ANOVAs indicated that there were significant differences among countries in all of the activities except TV viewing and outing. Within country gender differences were also observed.

Keywords: After-school activity, development, cross-cultural comparison

Citation: Newman, J., Bidjerano, T., Özdoğru, A. A., Özköse-Bıyık, Ç., & Kao, C.-C. (2006, April). Children’s after-school activities as developmental contexts: A cross-cultural comparison. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.