![]() However, substantial variation has emerged in scholars’ approach to this individual-context relationship. In general, scholars who study the adolescent period acknowledge that multiple dimensions of change involving the individual and his or her context characterize this portion of the life span (Lerner et al. Furthermore, there is also development of the ability to compensate effectively when goals are blocked and/or to select new goals when initial optimization attempts fail and the chances of attaining an initial goal are lost (Gestsdottir and Lerner 2008 McClelland et al. There is also growth in the use of executive functioning, strategic thinking, and behavioral skills in recruiting goal-related resources that enable actions optimizing the chances of fulfilling their purposes. Agency involves self-regulatory skills that include, for instance, the selection of goals or the formulation of purposes that are of importance to adolescents’ developing senses of self and growing attempts to find a means to “matter” in their world (Eccles 2004 Freund and Baltes 2002 Mascolo and Fischer 2015). That is, there is uniquely marked development of intentional agency in adolescence. ![]() In contrast to earlier developmental periods, adolescents have a burgeoning capacity for self-governance, for formulating and taking actions that exert at least some control over their own development. Moreover, in adolescence, the individual has the cognitive, behavioral, and social relational skills to contribute actively and often effectively to his or her own developmental changes (Lerner 1982 Lerner and Busch-Rossnagel 1981 Lerner and Walls 1999 Ricco and Overton 2011). At the same time, most youth in Western societies are experiencing great contextual changes, such as changing schools (e.g., Eccles 2004) and the increased relevance of peer influences on behavior (e.g., Gardner and Steinberg 2005). For instance, changes in the prefrontal cortex, increases in the interconnectivity among brain regions, and increases in dopamine levels provide both vulnerabilities to risk and opportunities for growth in cognitive control (Steinberg 2010). As in infancy and early to middle childhood, the individual’s physiological, psychological, behavioral, and social relationship characteristics undergo both quantitative and qualitative changes, that is, transitions and transformations. ![]() They were regarded as “problems to be managed” (Roth and Brooks-Gunn 2003a, b).Ĭertainly, it may be argued that adolescence is the most profound period of change within the life span. When viewed from this “deficit” model, adolescents were seen by both scholars and the general public as both dangerous to themselves and to society (Anthony 1969). Since the emergence of the study of this portion of the life course (Hall 1904), adolescence has been regarded as a period characterized by purportedly troublesome transformations (e.g., in bodily attributes associated with puberty Susman and Dorn 2009, 2013) and allegedly problematic transitions (e.g., in regard to socioemotional functions linked to self-definition or identity, Erikson 1959, or to changes in the focus of social relationships, from parents to peers, Freud 1969). Accordingly we discuss the relational developmental systems metatheory and the seven principles and illustrate how the ideas associated with both approaches to adolescent development can innovatively integrate and extend scholarship about transitions and transformations characterizing the adolescent period and, as well, afford optimism that relational changes linked to positive change in the health developmental system can be identified and used to promote thriving in adolescence.Ĭonsistent with the United Nations Conventions, adolescence encompasses the second decade of life (Lerner and Steinberg 2009). Concepts associated with these ideas are used to describe, explain, and optimize the course of development in the second decade of life and, as such, to frame applied research aimed at promoting health and positive development among diverse adolescents. These relations are most often framed by models derived from a relational developmental systems metatheory, an approach to theory that is entirely consistent with the seven principles of life course health development. The contemporary study of adolescent development emphasizes that the process of development involves mutually influential relations between the developing individual and the features of his or her complex and changing context.
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