Current Developments Introduction Major Programmatic Themes Project Summaries for 1999 Publications and Presentations Network Trainees

Project Summaries for 1999 Engagement With Institutions A group of Network members have begun to explore the idea of engagement as one way to think about the link between individuals and activity settings or institutions. We think that this concept may be especially useful for studying changing pathways through middle childhood. Our focus on this concept/metaphor was stimulated by the widely held general impression that children who will end up having troubled secondary school careers often disengage from school much earlier - during their elementary school years. In American society, this is also the period in life in which the peer group begins to exert increasing influence, and that children take more responsibility for choosing activities such as participation in sports, religion, and clubs. During middle childhood, some children begin to emerge from their family cocoons by making activity and involvement choices that, given institutional arrangements not of their making, can have major consequences for the rest of their lives. We hypothesize that engagement, a more sociological, less psychological notion than motivation or performance, helps explain how children come to make these often consequential choices and learn a finite specific set of skills, attitudes, self-perceptions, and develop social connection. Further, we believe that engagement affects these outcomes through at least two mechanisms: high levels of engagement in one setting or institution often necessitate lower levels of engagement in other settings or institutions. As a result, because settings or institutions differ in so many ways, children will learn those things afforded by the institutions in which they are most engaged and are unlikely to learn those things not afforded by these settings. That is, affordances in settings set the range on what children are likely to learn in those settings and differential levels of engagement across settings limits both the range of settings one gets to experience and influences the individual's motivation to fully engage the experiences afforded. For example, "engagement" in formal or informal activities directed by adults can give shape to children's peer groups in a way to promote positive cultural values and also can provide opportunities for the growth of individual skills, competencies, and positive psychological outcomes. We have also been exploring the idea of "executive function" as one way to think about the decision-making process. It is a generic notion that refers to the way that both systems and individuals make choices, organize and coordinate engagement across activity settings and evaluate both processes and outcomes. For example, at the level of the child and the family, we would hypothesize that parents initially play the executive function role for their children, and that children gradually learn to play the executive function role for themselves and for others as they mature and are given more responsibility for making choices, coordinating activities, and evaluating progress or outcomes. However, the range of activities, the coordination demands, the potential dangers and the clarity of options are likely to be influenced by many internal and external factors such as the options available, which are likely to differ by community and by the interface and coordination among organizations. Examples of questions that are currently being addressed in this initiative include: How accurate is the assumption that middle-childhood kids in contemporary American often disengage from school? Have there been changes in the ways that schools are organized that have influenced the ways that children "engage" with what goes on there? What are the psychological and social mechanisms or characteristics of contemporary American schools and communities that promote engagement or that result in disengagement? What characterizes the types of organizations or more or less regular activities with which children choose to engage? Is the "executive function" metaphor a useful way to think about how individuals make decisions about engagement or about how organizations help individuals coordinate their engagement in various settings in order to meet their needs? Return to Project Summaries for 1999 HomePage Copyright © 2000 The Regents of the University of Michigan