Hi Pedro--
There is a pretty extensive literature on the efficacy of afterschool
programs for enhancing children's school performance well beyond
anything associated with the 5thDimension. And there is similar
evidence for the 5thD in particular. It being sunday and me being
at home working, I do not have my hands on all the refs, but a visit
to the 5thD Dissemination site should yield a bunch of evidence should
you need it (http://www.ced.appstate.edu/projects/5dClhse/).
The one condition that I have seen where afterschool programs do not
help is where there are coercive males running the sites.
My own particular interest in this line of activity only minimally
involves demonstrating the effectiveness of this line of involvement
of kids; in particular, I am interested in tradeoffs between structuration
of the programs and volunteer participation on the one hand and
"provability" in experimental logic terms of "effect sizes." That's
ok if you are interested in the methodological issues, and as a practical
matter in securing funding.
More interesting to me is the opportunity that such work offers for
studying development at several levels-- microgenetic/ontogenetic/
cultural-historical in a single system, thereby allowing the possibility
of fulfilling what I take to be one of the methodological desiderate
of cultural-historical activity approaches (and, not only).
mike
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