Productive Resistance: Lessons from After School about Engaged Noncompliance

After‐school education programs, owing to their informal nature and limited scope, offer opportunities for targeted instruction of specialized skills and content. One effective design element in after‐school programming is an open and responsive structure that allows for ongoing evaluation, evolutionary design, and participant voice. This structure uses participants’ resistance and critique in a process of ongoing refinement of the programs. Data are presented to illustrate how education programs using this design channel resistance in productive ways that have social and academic relevance for the child and adult participants.