The WERA Task Force Global Research in Extended Education participated in an Invited Symposium at the Conference of European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) 2023 in Thessaloniki, Greece, last August 22, 2023. The Task Force was represented by Dr. Nanine Lilla, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany; Prof. Dr. Marianne Schüpbach, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany; Prof. Dr. Ingrid Gogolin, University of Hamburg, Germany; and Prof. Dr. Liesel Ebersöhn, Unit for Education Research in AIDS, South Africa.
The symposium, entitled “Hope for Disadvantaged Students: Extended Education in a Global Perspective” focuses on the role of extended education in addressing the challenges of societal changes including family changes and increased complexity of educational processes at times of global change and uncertainty. Forms of extended education are being explored in numerous nations around the world. Examples are extended education offerings such as “All-day schools” in Germany, “Outside school hours care” in Australia, or “Out-of-school time” in the UK. These approaches have been designed to promote the development of school-age children and youth supplementing formal education. They aim in particular to offer a means to support educationally disadvantaged students, e.g. because of their socio-economic background or due to cultural or linguistic characteristics. Meta-analyses of US studies show that non-formal education can be successful in promoting disadvantaged students in their academic achievement or social skills. However, other studies show that it is precisely the target group of particularly disadvantaged pupils that do not benefit from the offerings as desired. The symposium presents empirical papers that will give insights into the ambiguous state of evidence from the perspective of studies from different education systems around the globe.