Losing Generations Adolescents in High-Risk Settings (1993) / Chapter Skim
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11 CONCLUSIONS AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
11 CONCLUSIONS AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
Pages 235-256
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From page 235... ...
Our decision to focus on settings reflects the panel's appreciation of the profound influence that context has on adolescent behavior and youth and our judgment that the power of settings on adolescent development has not been fully appreciated. The lack of attention to settings has resulted in concentration on individual adolescent behaviors and categorical programs, such as teenage pregnancy prevention, drug abuse prevention, smoking prevention, and dropout prevention.
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From page 236... ...
Aside from their struggle to provide basic necessities, the stress of "making clo" with very little money diminishes parents' ability to form personal networks and institutional attachments and to develop the caretaking skills critical to positive adolescent development. Such parents express the difficulties they face and the need for help in providing the guidance silnnort ~n`1 ~lin~r`ricinn chat ~^ lescents need.
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From page 237... ...
Fourth, the strong influence of racial and ethnic discrimination on employment, housing, and the criminal justice system limits the options of minorities and, hence, their ability to rear their children. Limited opportunities and the many and painful indignities that racial and ethnic minorities endure in their daily lives place children and adolescents at risk for early academic and behavioral problems.
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From page 238... ...
Consequently, targeted interventions will be needed to enhance job skills, provide entry employment opportunities, and improve access to critical support services, such as child care. For those whose labor market connections are very weak or do not exist at all, more directed interventions may be needed.
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From page 239... ...
That has changed as a result of the post-WorId War II suburbanization of America and the abandonment of urban school systems by the middle class. Because school funding is tied to neighborhood wealth, the most adequately funded and highest quality schools are found not in the neighborhoods where the need is the greatest, but instead serve the children whose family and neighborhood environments already equip them with the knowledge and skills needed for success.
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From page 240... ...
Finally, the issue of residential segregation will have to be addressed by all levels of government through the vigorous enforcement of fair housing laws and other civil rights laws and regulations as well as incentive programs. In the absence of federal or state support, neighborhood residents and some local governments have developed programs that highlight different models of intervention.
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From page 241... ...
For adolescents, insurance mechanisms should support strengthening the primary care sector to encourage the provision of consistent, comprehensive, and coordinated services and, especially, prevention services: reducing smoking, alcohol, and drug consumption and preventing other behaviors that seriously compromise future health have an enormous payoff. Strategies such as restricting or banning tobacco and alcohol advertising directed toward young people shouIc]
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From page 242... ...
Because of the structural changes necessary to implement such alternatives, they are usually implemented with concurrent changes in school organization and staffing patterns. For example, rather than organizing a student's entire academic program around a designated ability track, alternatives include a mix of heterogeneous and "accelerated" classes or approaches that separate only the students at the extremes of ability.
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From page 243... ...
communities, practitioners are implementing demonstration programs aimed at creating school-to-work transition systems that are consistent with the approaches used in many other industrialized countries. These models take a number of forms-cooperative education, vocational academies, apprenticeships, school-to-work transition programs, "second-chance" programs-but they all provide integrated and sequenced academic instruction, occupational training, and work experience.
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From page 244... ...
While the threats to positive adolescent development have increased over the past two decades, institutions have either deteriorated or failed to change. The underlying causes of the increased needs are complex, including clemographic changes that have increased the proportion of adolescents living with a single parent ant!
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From page 245... ...
Given the strong influence of family and neighborhood wealth on adolescent development, vigorous enforcement of nondiscrimination statutes in the areas of housing and employment is especially warranted. Such efforts would increase the economic security of black parents and provide improved access for their children to better neighborhoods and schools.
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From page 246... ...
But states and localities must also be willing to ease controls and show a greater degree of trust in providing legitimate program responsibility and accountability to community leaders, to program staff, and to young people themselves. Teachers and parents, for example, should play a greater role in school reform and have the resources to experiment with teaching methods and services that they believe will work in their neighborhoods.
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From page 247... ...
· It would require attention to both risk factors and protective factors and to their interaction at both the individual and social levels, in order to provide the fullest understanding of healthy adolescent development. Hence, it would encourage research protocols that capture individual differences simultaneously with assessments of social contexts and daily settings.
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From page 248... ...
The research should be multidisciplinary and longitudinal; it must incorporate the unique advantages of qualitative and ethnographic methods for grasping the meaning of adolescent behavior in everyday situations. In order to simultaneously consider a process, program management, and outcome, multiple methods of research would be used: · It would move beyond a sole emphasis on measuring youth problems [drug use, pregnancy, arrest)
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From page 249... ...
~ r- 'A '^~ ~ ~2~~~~ rim , ' -- f :- research should shift to studies of the contexts and settings of daily life, especially for adolescents from Tow-income and disadvantaged backgrounds. however, the nighest priority tor ~urure Families From the panel s Perspective The role of the family as the primary socializing agency has been compromised by increasing family poverty, by long-term changes in family structure, and by the emergence of alternative agents of socialization that are more attractive to youth, such as the media and peer groups.
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From page 250... ...
It is also important to understand more clearly the extent to which family support programs actually have direct effects on adolescents. Research would also be useful to explore alternatives to families such as group homes or dormitories for adolescents who cannot live at home.
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From page 251... ...
Such research needs to move beyond single settings to assess the mix of formal and informal support; descriptive research, mapping the supports available for adolescents in different communities, would be helpful in establishing a baseline. Community-level inquiries could examine the health and behavioral status of adolescents in comparable neighborhoods with and without programs or integrated service delivery systems.
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From page 252... ...
Schoo1-to-Work Transition The United States floes not have a comprehensive school-towork transition system, and the existing programs vocational education and employment and training programs provide marginalL benefits to young people. On a policy level, there is a need for systematic evaluations of state, local, and foreign efforts to create school-to-work transition systems, with particular attention to the effects of such initiatives on adolescent outcomes.
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From page 253... ...
Examples that seem promising on the basis of prior research include individual differences in the following characteristics: perceived selfefficacy or self-competence; values placed on achievement and health; perception of future opportunity or of life chances; attitudes about normative transgression; orientation to religion and involvement with church; self-clefinition, including ethnic or ra
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From page 254... ...
One such area is the organization of risky behaviors their intraindividual covariation in the behavioral repertoires of youth. Prior research has found sufficient structures of covariation to warrant the label of "risky life-styTe," but this finding needs further examination, especially with the youth populations that are of concern in this report.
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From page 255... ...
For example, if one comprehensive school-based family resource center appears to have a positive impact in a neighborhood, how can this model be replicated in other neighborhoods that want such an institution? Other countries are believed to have created more caring social environments for youth, and this belief is supported by documented outcomes Levels of substance use, teenage pregnancy, etc.
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From page 256... ...
researchers, the public-is invested in current institutional practices-in health care, housing, education, criminal justice, child welfare, and employment. But as the century closes, the nation appears to be entering a period of reexamination and reform regarding many basic social institutions.
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