Building a broader learning agenda

The growing national focus on education since A Nation at Risk (The National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) has propelled a parallel movement within the child and youth development field to align its programs with the school-day learning goals. Three cases--out-of-school time programs, positive youth development programs, and community schools--illustrate how human services associated in the public's view as merely custodial care and preventative services prior to the 1990s have intentionally aligned their work with the national education agenda, investing in strategies that link program outcomes to student learning. The goals of my dissertation are to understand how the child and youth development field evolved from human services to the education sector, focusing particularly on the advocacy and policy strategies, and to examine the implementation challenges child and youth programs have faced as they made this transition. I apply a multi-case historical analysis method to trace the evolution of this sub-sector to the periphery of the education sector. My dissertation serves to widen an understanding of how child and youth programs have shifted to a broader learning agenda and its implications for the field.