Preparing Students for the 21st Century: Exploring the Effect of Afterschool Participation on Students’ Collaboration Skills, Oral Communication Skills, and Self-Efficacy

This study addressed key questions about LA’s BEST afterschool students’ self-efficacy, collaboration, and communication skills. We compared student perceptions of their own 21st century skills to external outcome measures including the California Standardized Test (CST), attendance, and teacher ratings. We found a substantial relationship between student self-efficacy compared to student oral communication and collaboration skills. However, we did not find that higher attendance in LA’s BEST led to higher self-efficacy, though further investigation is needed. We found that LA’s BEST students were able to evaluate their abilities so that they are similar to the outcome measures of CST and teacher ratings. Moreover, the high-attendance group demonstrated significantly better alignment with the teacher ratings than the lower attendance groups in self-efficacy, oral communication skills, and collaboration skills.