Abstract
Despite the fact that adolescents’ waking hours are flexible, little is known about the links of adolescents’ choices of leisure time activities for academic, psychological and behavioural functioning. Participation in activities can provide opportunities to develop specific skills and to interact with nurturing and caring adults as well as a sense of belonging with particular peer groups and recognition from others. Time use and monitor studies have provided rich descriptive pictures of adolescents’ daily lives including what teens do, who they are with and their affective states across their out-of-school experiences. The study therefore examined the influence of structured and unstructured activities on academic performance of Junior High School students in Cape Coast Metropolis in the Central Region of Ghana. A descriptive survey design was adopted using a sample of 364 students selected from six public junior high schools in Cape Coast. A questionnaire was used to gather the data. The Cronbach’s alpha co-efficient for the reliability of the instrument was 0.76. Simple linear regression was used as statistical tools to analyse the data collected. The findings of the study were that both structured and unstructured activities respectively do influence students’ academic performance. It was recommended that stakeholders such as parents, guardians, and teachers must be aware of the kind of after-school activity their wards/students engage in so as to help them make better choices due to the influence that their choices make on their academic performance.
Highlights
The activities adolescents participate in after-school may be structured activities or unstructured activities
Among the teens that participate in extra-curricular activities, some participate in structured activities within the community such as sports teams, youth groups or hobbies
The findings of the study were in line with earlier studies by Gilman (2001), Bartko and Eccles (1998), Mahoney (2001) and Mahoney and Cairns (2007) that participation in structured extracurricular activities are associated with increased school satisfaction, high academic performance and lower school “drop-out” rates
Summary
The activities adolescents participate in after-school may be structured activities or unstructured activities. According to Pittman, Tolman and Yohalem (2005), structured activity is planned, directed, designed for child’s developmental level and it is an organized activity with an instructional purpose. According to Marsh (2002), participation in extra-curricular activities (ECA) is only one of the many choices adolescents make regarding their discretionary time. Among the teens that participate in extra-curricular activities, some participate in structured activities within the community such as sports teams, youth groups or hobbies. Adolescents like to spend their free time with peers, either face-to-face or via the telephone, discussing topics of interest such as behaviours of other group members, fashion, music and television programmes (Coleman & Hendry, 2000). Adolescents develop social competence, receive security and support, and feel happy (Coleman & Hendry, 2000)
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