Community Programs to Promote Youth Development (2002) / Chapter Skim
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2 Adolescent Development
2 Adolescent Development
Pages 41-65
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PART I Promoting Adolescent Development
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From page 42... ...
Understanding how to characterize positive adolescent development was a fundamental aspect of the committee's work. This section has three goals: Chapter 2 provides an overview of adolescent development; Chapter 3 summarizes what is known about the personal and social assets that are likely to be linked to both well-being during adolescence and the transition into adulthood; and Chapter 4 explores what the daily settings and experiences of adolescents need to include in order to promote the acquisition of these assets and function as a positive developmental setting.
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Research shows that the more settings that adolescents experience reflecting these features, the more likely they are to acquire the personal and social assets linked to both current and future well-being. There are a variety of settings in which adolescents' can experience the opportunities needed for positive development.
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Historically, this period of life was labeled by developmental scientists as a time of storm and stress (Arnett, 19991. Although we now know that most young people pass into and through adolescence with few major problems, some find this a very difficult period of life (Arnett, 1999; Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1989; Eccleset all, 1993;Moffitt, 1993;RutterandSmith, 1995~.
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There are also major social changes associated with both school transitions and shifts in the roles that adolescents are expected to assume as they mature. Finally, there are major psychological changes linked to increasing social and cognitive maturity.
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In many cultural groups, these challenges translate into the following more specific tasks: (1) changing the nature of the relationship between young people and their parents so youth can take on a more mature role in the social fabric of their community (among white Americans this change often takes the form of greater independence from parents and greater decision-making power over one's own current and future behavior; in other cultures, this change can take the form of greater responsibility for family support and increased participation in family decision making; in all cultures this change typically results in starting one's own family and becoming integrated into the mainstream adult community)
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Fifth, experiences with civic engagement and social institutions can be so minimal or so poorly designed that some adolescents fail to develop either the will or the skills necessary to participate fully as adult community members. Finally, experiences of racism, prejudice, and cultural intolerance can so alienate some adolescents that they withdraw from or rebel against, mainstream society and conventional social institutions.
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Programs for this age group need to take these characteristics into account. Developmental theory and the empirical evidence reviewed in Chapters 3 and 4 suggest the following kinds of programmatic needs for this age group: · Educational programs that: Help young adolescents and their parents understand the biological changes they are experiencing; Make sure young adolescents have the academic skills necessary to take and succeed in college preparatory secondary school courses; and Provide sufficient intellectual challenge that young adolescents can learn to use formal reasoning skills effectively.
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Again, developmental theory and empirical evidence suggest the following kinds of programs for older youth: . Educational programs that: Provide tutoring for college preparatory courses; Teach about multiple cultures; and Help youth learn skills needed to navigate across multiple cultural settings.
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We now turn to a more specific discussion of developmental changes during the adolescent years. Biological Changes A complete review of the biological changes associated with puberty is beyond the scope of this report, but, given the centrality of these changes, it is important to provide a brief overview (see Adams et al., 1989; Brooks-Gunn and Reiter, 1990; Brooks-Gunn et al., 1994; Buchanan et al., 1992; Caspi et al., 1993; National Research Council, 1999a)
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hormones; for the most part, boys do not. It has been suggested that the sex differences associated with the emergence of depression, eating disorders, and aggression may be linked to these differences in patterns of hormonal changes associated with pubertal development.
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The impact of these differences on the development of early adolescents is likely to vary by cultural group, depending on beliefs and norms about appropriate roles for physically mature individuals, appropriate sexual activities, and ideals related to female and male beauty. Such differences also have implications for the design of developmentally appropriate experiences for early adolescent girls and boys of different racial or ethnic groups in community programs.
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In fact, early-maturing white females have lower self-esteem and more difficulty adjusting to school transitions, particularly the transition from elementary to junior high school than later-maturing white girls, white boys in general, and both black girls and boys (e.g., Eccles et al., 1996b; Simmons and Blyth, 19871. These results suggest that youth-serving organizations should be especially sensitive of the need to design programs that will support self-esteem and prevent depression and eating disorders for earlydeveloping white adolescents.
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Some interventions designed to help adolescents form and maintain high educational and occupational aspirations and to reduce their early involvement in romantic relationships have been effective at lowering rates of unprotected sexual activity and unplanned pregnancies (Kirby end Coyle, 1997;Nicholson and Postrado, 1992;Weiss, 19951. Community programs have the potential to support these aspirations as well as provide adolescents with constructive activities that help them resist peer pressure for involvement in unprotected sexual behavior.
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The emergence of these skills, however, is a gradual process that takes place over the entire adolescent period and depends on having extensive experience in learning how to use these skills and then practicing them repeatedly and applying them to novel and increasingly complex problems (Clark, 1988; Keating, 19901. Too often, however, such opportunities are not provided in secondary schools, particularly in high-risk and poor neighborhoods (Coleman et al., 1966; Coleman and Hoffer, 1987~.
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There is a steady increase in children's information-processing skills and learning strategies, their knowledge of a variety of different topics and subject areas, their ability to apply their knowIedge to new learning situations, and their awareness of their strengths and weaknesses as learners. Although one would think that these types of cognitive changes ought to allow adolescents to be more efficient, sophisticated learners, ready to cope with relatively advanced topics in many different subject areas, Keating (1990)
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These include friendships and peer groups, changes in family relations, and school transitions. Friendships and Peer Groups Probably the most controversial changes during adolescence are those linked to peer relationships.
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argued that peer interactions are also particularly important for the kinds of advances in cognitive reasoning associated with adolescence precisely because these interactions are more egalitarian than adult-child interactions. Also, in part because of the importance of social acceptance, children's conformity to their peers and susceptibility to negative peer influence peaks during early adolescence (Brown, 1990; Ruben et al., 1998~.
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Such experiences are likely to be especially important during the early and middle adolescent years, when there are such dramatic increases in involvement in delinquent and antisocial behaviors (Moffitt, 1993) and when susceptibility to negative peer influences is at its peak.
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argues that this "distancing" in relations between adolescents and parents is a natural part of adolescent development, citing evidence from nonhuman primates that puberty is the time at which parents and offspring often go their separate ways. Because parents and adolescents in American culture usually continue to live together for a long time after puberty, distancing rather than complete separation may be the evolutionary vestige in humans.
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Drawing on person-environment fit theory, Eccles and Midgley (1989) proposed that the negative motivational and behavioral changes associated with these school transitions result from the fact that many junior and senior high schools do not provide appropriate educational environments for youth in early and middle adolescence.
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less able to teach all of their students the more challenging academic material and are more likely to use exclusionary and harsh discipline strategies that can effectively drive low-achieving and problematic students away from school (see Eccles and Midgley, 1989; Fine, 19911. Research in a variety of areas has documented the impact on motivation and school engagement of such changes in classroom and school environments.
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argue that young adolescents need safe, intellectually challenging environments to adapt to these shifts. In light of these needs, the environmental changes associated with the transition to junior high school seem especially harmful, in that they emphasize competition, social comparison, and ability self-assessment at a time of heightened self-focus; they decrease decision making and choice at a time when the desire for control is growing; they emphasize lower-level cognitive strategies at a time when the ability to use higher-level strategies is increasing; and they disrupt social networks at a time when adolescents are especially concerned with peer relationships and may be in special need of close adult relationships outside the home.
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First and foremost, program designers need to make sure programs are developmentally appropriate by providing the opportunity for increasing autonomy, participation in program decision making, leadership, and exposure to intellectually challenging material as participating youth mature. Second, program designers need to design the specific content of their programs to the changing developmental needs of the young people attending their programs.
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