课外活动在他们举动并成为潜在的促进其他事物之前，咱们能够说它们自身是有利的。咱们能够这么说，因为不管课外活动是什么，他们好像都给参与者供给了很多的价值和技能。不管是体育还是戏剧、舞蹈或音乐，这项活动的成功参与者至少会忍受“为自己的目的而感到满足和快乐”。这就是说，关于这些课外活动和学习有“非有必要”的用处，已经证明并好像在持续证明，这些课外课程的效果是真实的和有效的。因此，他们甚至可能导致咱们暂时忘记上述活动的内在价值。
事实上，课外活动的倡导者声称这种不正规的教育部分是对促进良好公民展开、健康的生活方式展开的部分责任。在身心上，一个人的休闲时刻的运用方向，个人兴趣和人才的展开，以及创造性表达的活跃出路。对课外活动参与的重要性和有效性的崇奉广泛许多受学术尊重的组织。
Returns on Investment
If when examining social behaviour we choose to take a rational choice perspective we are implying that, the reason for an adolescent taking any form of action is due to an intention of somehow increasing, to the fullest extent, that adolescent’s own personal interest in goals of importance to them. We are aware that in this respect, adolescents states of mind are more normally portrayed as being the result of their surroundings and their all-encompassing environment rather than being self motivated “rational actors” (Swanson, 2002). Despite this pre-conceived notion, as Swanson continues to argue, the decisions adolescents are confronted with, for example, in terms of time management and motivation, can in fact be seen as influential in their capability of fulfilling important milestones in their lives. Findings show that participation in activities shows criteria of both social exchange and that of investment.
In the previously cited study done by Swanson (2002), there was evidence supporting high returns for college enrolment when there was involvement in both the official academic curriculum as well as in extra-curricular activities. In economics, the law of diminishing returnsis understood to be the decrease in theoutput of aspecific production process as the quantity of a single factor of production is gradually increased, while the amounts of all other aspects of production stay constant. The law of diminishing returns states that in most productive processes, increasing more of a particular factor of production, while keeping all others stable will eventually produce lower returns per unit. So, in tandem with Swanson’s idea of return on investment, when associations with overinvestment (of extra-curricular activities) were made, indications of diminishing returns were seen.
The Zero Sum Hypothesis
This ties in, naturally, with those studies that propose that not only do extra-curriculars not have a positive effect of academic outcomes but rather that extra-curricular activities are in fact, a hindrance to any positive educational outcomes. This hypothesis is largely credited to James Coleman (1961) who, in The Adolescent Society, is often referenced as the source on the ‘zero-sum’ model of transaction between extra-curricular activities and academics (Holland and Andre 1987; Marsh 1992). A very watered down explanation of the concept of the ‘zero-sum’ hypothesis is that one investor’s profit mirrors another investor’s loss (whereby for every 1 euro someone makes, somebody loses 1 euro). In his study, Coleman investigated the social order structure of students in the typical American High School. He notes that whereas popularity is pre-eminent (leading to participation in activities such as athletics and cheerleading), academic excellence is a ‘secondary consideration’. The zero-sum logic is very typically used in studies about participation in extra-curricular activities whereby time is a fixed commodity split among a various number of activities, due to the nature of the formulation (that there are only two competing alternatives) and that the total amount of time available is constant, the individual must reduce the time spent on one activity in order to increase time devoted to the other.
