We conducted significant research to answer our questions of: 1. To what extent does play improve student executive functioning and behaviour? 2. What are the benefits of clubs, extracurricular activities, and increased time with a teacher?
There are many answers and research articles that address these questions, and the vast majority support play and extracurricular activities as having many intended and unintended benefits that help students perform better in schools. Some of this research can be traced to Vygotsky and other psychologists who presented the concept that play helps to heighten social interaction and empower students to make better decisions. Many of the benefits of play, presented in the book Play = Learning (2006) include:
Practice in social interactions
Decision-making skills
Improved self-confidence
Reduced stress
Acknowledging and managing emotions
Motivation to succeed
Further academic success
These, among many others, are extremely important and too often the curriculum does not allow the opportunity for play and natural childhood growth and progression to adulthood.
Another possible consideration is the ability of students joining extracurricular activities to make new friends. Liem and Martin (2011) have concluded through their research that peer relationships mediated by school officials increased the students' perception of their emotional well-being and overall academics. The more exposure students had to these situations, the better the effects of: valuing school; class participation; enjoyment; performance; and self-esteem.
Pertaining to the effects of extracurricular activities, research often focuses heavily on sports activities. However, studies such as the one conducted by Broh (2002) have concluded that extracurricular activities do make a difference in creating a positive school climate and increasing student motivation and engagement, however not all clubs or sports are equal. School personnel should take caution that students use the opportunities and benefits presented from extracurricular activities to benefit their learning and not to distract. On this note, Collivera and Veraksa (2019) emphasize the importance of having a goal when facilitating play. They note that it is not necessarily important for the students to be immediately aware of what they are learning through their play, but that the learning that occurs through understanding their task is what matters. That is what teachers can control if the right activity is facilitated. In particular, they use the example of a student understanding that to beat the game, they have to kill captain hook. In order to do so, however, they must use and identify specific processes that require higher level thinking even if they cannot name exactly what processes they are using, such as deciding what the best method is to do it and discovering how that would work. This is the philosophy that we chose to use when implementing our project.
We can conclude that there are strong benefits for students of being involved in the school community, and as our results show we were able to see student growth and improved student well-being in action.
References
Broh, B. (2002). Linking Extracurricular Programming to Academic Achievement: Who Benefits and Why? Sociology of Education, 75(1), 69-95. doi:10.2307/3090254
Collivera, Y. and Veraksa, N. (2019) The aim of the game: a pedagogical tool to support young children’s learning through play. Learning, Culture, and Social Interaction (21), 296-310. https://doi-org.ezproxy.uleth.ca/10.1016/j.lcsi.2019.03.001
Knee, J. A., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., & Singer, D. (2006). Play = learning : How play motivates and enhances children's cognitive and social-emotional growth. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.uleth.ca
Liem, G.A.D. and Martin, A.J. (2011), Peer relationships and adolescents’ academic and non‐academic outcomes: Same‐sex and opposite‐sex peer effects and the mediating role of school engagement. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81: 183-206. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8279.2010.02013.x