Youth development pdf

Similar results have been obtained by Lewin-Bizan et al. The model was also confirmed with youth of years old by Bowers et al. Hopeful future, in fact, seems to be a strong predictor of higher PYD score and membership in the most favorable trajectories. Both personal characteristics and contextual opportunities seem then to play a role in the development of positive youth development.

Several studies have been devoted to the development of positive traits here named values or strengths which reflect thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Values underscoring a personal view such as loving and courage are contrasted with civic values, which guide individuals toward being active and responsible citizens such as responsibility and tolerance.

Values and strengths develop across life span along with a time perspective valuing past experiences e. Managing new capacities, knowledge, curiosity, openness to new experiences, and exploration are included as more cognitive values thus subsuming a positive orientation of the individual toward his future. Both educational activities and everyday life exercises have been accordingly developed and disseminated in order to boost happiness and wellbeing.

Life Design and positive development in preadolescents A third approach that emphasizes the relevance of focusing on positive aspects of development is Life Design. This paradigm has been recently developed taking into account the complexity and dynamics, which characterize current times, and the difficulties individuals experience in constructing career trajectories Savickas et al.

A central dimension in Life Design is career adaptability, a psychosocial construct reflecting resources relevant for managing work and career challenges that may affect participation to personal life Savickas, Core career adaptability resources are: Concern, which describes the extent to which the individual is future oriented and prepared for upcoming tasks and challenges. Additionally, a study conducted in the Larios laboratory and described by Sgaramella involving 75 preadolescents attending middle school supports this view and suggests a positive relationship between hope and optimism on one hand and, respectively, present life namely active citizenship , and future orientation namely confidence in the possibility of reaching personal future goals thus underlying the relevance of fostering these resources for both a satisfying present and a positive future orientation.

The attention to the future so clearly expressed by these resources underline the preventive structure of this approach. A focus is in fact on promoting future career by planning individual, small- and large-group prevention programs to be implemented before a career transition occurs, before an unexpected event makes a person more vulnerable.

These interventions stimulate positive person-environment interactions; promote proactive career behaviours; focus on developing and applying different resources for positive career development. Results of studies previously mentioned underline the relevance of fostering positive development in preadolescence and support the relevance of interventions already at this stage, i.

This is particularly true in current times and in the next future, given that they will be more and more frequently required to construct their future in a continuously changing context, where linearity of professional trajectories is not any more useful for future planning Savickas et al.

Person centered interventions to promote positive development trajectories The analysis sketched above and the empirical contributions mentioned on the one hand underline the role of complex, multifaceted, interrelated variables in positive development and on the other testify a shift which has been also paralleled by attempts to make a similar choice in interventions. Authors of an increasing number of programs refer either to PYD, to positive psychology, or to Life Design studies.

They focus on building on the existing strengths of vulnerable youth and providing them with the additional support and tools needed to achieve their potentials. Two guiding lines can be evidenced in these actions, used to describe them in the following sections. The first one mainly focuses on fostering hope and optimism as strengths that sustain agentic behaviours and well being.

The second one regards dimensions considered relevant for career construction and life design. Fostering positive resources for wellbeing and future orientation. A program for preadolescents was developed by Pedrotti, Lopez, and Krieshok that aimed at enhancing hope through five weekly minute sessions. During the teaching units, the authors proposed stories of hopeful characters to encourage participants in thinking about goals, agency, and pathways. A control group also was identified and administered the measure as well.

Upon completion of the program all students were again administered the CHS and an increase in hope scores was found to be significantly larger in the group of students who participated in the program, as compared to the control group.

These results were maintained 6 weeks post-programming, suggesting that students continued in utilizing the tenets learned in the program. The first session focused on hope theory and its importance to positive outcomes. The second was dedicated to recognize goals, pathways, and agency components of hope, and to plan personal goals.

In the third, participants were encouraged to discuss about their goals and hope, to review their personal goals in order to be more specific, positive, and clearer, and to identify multiple pathways and positive thoughts to pursue their goals. Lastly, in the fifth session, middle school students were stimulated to review and share their personal hope stories and to think about future steps. To increase the effectiveness of the intervention, collaboration of their significant adults parents and teachers was also promoted.

Thirty-one students attending middle school participated in the activity and a comparable number of peers were involved as a control group in the project. As the authors underline, 18 months after the intervention a higher level of hope, well-being, and self-efficacy was registered in students involved in the positive training.

Although this program has been developed to prevent depressive symptoms in children from 10 to 13 years old, it can be used to reinforce positive and optimistic beliefs. Specifically, it is structured in 10 sessions and aims to teach participants to identify negative beliefs and pessimistic explanations for events and to generate a more realistic explanatory style.

In order to verify the efficacy, the authors Gillham et al. The experimental group reported fewer depressive symptoms through the 2-years follow- up, and moderate to severe symptoms were reduced by half.

The workshop lasts three hours and addresses the definition of optimism and the typical aspects of the optimistic person. By using specific examples from school and extra-school settings, participants are encouraged to recognize optimistic thoughts and differentiate them from negative ones, thus emphasizing the relevance of some positive thoughts and strategies for their development and future.

Then the definition of hope and the characteristics of the hopeful person are provided, and participants are stimulated through exercises to identify goals for their future and hopeful and optimistic solutions to achieve them.

In order to verify the efficacy of this activity, 71 elementary and middle school students were involved. Fostering resources for career development. As regards career adaptability, the core resources in Life Design Savickas et al. However, useful suggestions of meaningful activities to be implemented with preadolescents can be found in the literature for each component.

The program developed over a three thematic weekly group activities lasting overall 8 hours, together with 3 practice weeks. During the group activities the definition and the typical aspects of respectively an optimistic and hopeful person were addressed.

Similar definition of resources useful to face difficulties were analyzed. Practice activities in natural contexts, encompassing both school and family context, were used to facilitate generalization.

Concrete examples from school and family life e. Stories of positive models of peers were provided to them during the activities. Eighty students were involved, half of them as active participants to the program and half as a control group. A multivariate analysis of variance showed significant changes in the level of hope, resilience, and time perspective. Adaptability resources they ascribe themselves also increased. As regards participation in the school context and involvement in school, a higher interest in interpersonal relationships and commitment with school goals was observed, thus suggesting that working on attitudes toward future and future challenges may also foster positive attitudes toward persons in the current context with a preventive value against non- adaptive and risky behaviours.

Interestingly, the analysis of change in participants who at the beginning of the activity showed a low level of adaptability, i. Additionally, both at the beginning of each session and at the end of the whole activity, participants were also asked to define respectively hope, optimism, and a useful strategy with their own words and were given the possibility to compare the definitions given in the two assessment points.

A development in reflexivity and in the awareness of their learning process was also observed. Finally, it is worth mentioning an example of intervention where new technologies to engaging preadolescents in constructing their future careers have been used. The 6 hours online intervention are organized in three stages steps , each of which starts with a minute video showing specific instructions on variables that the students will later be asked to reflect on.

After the presentation of the video, in the first and second meeting, students are invited to answer different online questionnaires and, at the end of the second step, they receive a personalized report describing the strengths they recognize themselves.

In addition, at the end of the third step, participants are invited to write down two goals in line with their strengths and their wishes. The analyses carried out by the authors to verify the effectiveness of the program showed that, at post-test middle school students that participated to this online-program had higher levels of career adaptability and life satisfaction than peers in the control group.

Participants indicated more key aspects of Life Design dimensions, such as self- determination and attention to choice processes, descriptions of work activities rather than simply mentioning a specific job; they wrote about expectations and goals about their future, personal strengths, life satisfaction, relationships and investment in education. Conclusions and future directions Although more studies are needed with higher numbers of participants, several preliminary conclusions can be drawn from programs and activities described above: 1.

It is possible to foster positive characteristics and attitudes during preadolescence with short and group activities which may also be proposed using more friendly modalities; 2.

From a primary prevention perspective, it could be advantageous to involve preadolescents in projects that take into account at the same time important dimensions within positive development perspective and, more particularly, Life Design resources, such as career adaptability, hope, optimism.

Positive outcomes of these activities can be facilitation of positive behaviors in group context, a protective factor against non-adaptive and risky behaviours. Person-centered interventions described above aimed at building skills in order to foster positive development and strengthen protective abilities Nota et al. Un mondo di colori, chiaroscuri e ombre. Teaching life skills can promote positive development and widen the scope of opportunities available to all young people.

This is par- ticularly true for youth who have not had a chance to learn these skills at home or through connections with positive role models and for those who left school early and are typically less likely to find quality employment. Reproduc- tive health services include support during pregnancy, such as prenatal, postpartum, and abortion services, as well as prevention and health promo- tion.

In addition, services targeted to youth may include providing infor- mation and counseling on sexuality, safe sex, sexual violence and abuse, and referral for any needed services Senderowitz, Most are easily treated, without severe or lasting consequences, if diagnosed and treated early. But unmarried adolescents are often denied services in countries where premarital sex is frowned upon.

Even where young people are legally protected, many obstacles prevent youth from using existing services, including inconvenient hours, lack of transportation, high costs, lack of information about their existence, fears about the lack of confidentiality, or cultural and gender barriers Cunningham et al.

For these reasons, making clinics youth-friendly by training doctors and nurses on how to interact with young clients, having clinic hours that are convenient for youth, and offering space where young people can consult with providers in privacy may increase the use of health services among young people.

These include training service providers and other clinic and pharmaceutical staff in youth-friendly prac- tices; making clinics and pharmacies more accessible and acceptable to young people, for example, by providing services in mobile units to visit poor and rural areas; and using community-based outreach and information campaigns to generate both demand and support for reproductive health services among young people.

Provide Youth with Opportunities for Civic Engagement. In practice, programs that promote civic engagement or service among youth typically require them to make a voluntary commitment of time and effort to activities that contribute to the development of their local, national, or global community Sherraden, They can be run by governments, employers, nonprofit organizations, and other civil society groups and may include services such as volunteering in public health clinics, building sus- tainable housing, literacy tutoring, protecting the environment, or building small-scale infrastructure.

Youth service programs are more likely to be suc- cessful if they provide structured, organized activities and sustained partic- ipation by each young person Cunningham et al.

Provide Youth with Information and Guidance. Finally, allowing young people to make positive choices across developmental domains such as education, employment, and family formation and to avoid engaging in risky behavior requires providing them with information and guidance. Youth are not merely passive beneficiaries of services such as education and health.

As they move from childhood to adulthood, they become increasingly independent decision makers who must choose from a wide array of avail- able options with widely varying consequences. In the absence of informa- tion and guidance, the range of perceived or real positive and relevant options may narrow, and youth may be more likely to engage in the only options that seem available to them: low-quality alternatives or risky behaviors, or both World Bank, , a.

Youth may have biased views about the value of education, for instance, as shown in a survey of boys in the Dominican Republic who severely underestimated the economic returns to completing secondary school Jensen, Boys who were given the true returns were significantly more likely to attend school the following year than those who did not receive the information.

Youth may also have distorted expectations of the type of employment they can secure, or they may not fully understand the repercussions of early marriage or the possible consequences of drug use.

Both the school context and the media can be effective ways to inform youth about existing opportunities available to them for example, financial assistance, health services, employment services and to expose them to pos- itive messages and role models. Schools have several advantages as a place for delivering information and guidance.

Specifically, schools reach many young people at once from an early age, and they are responsible for impart- ing skills and knowledge in a structured and safe environment. In addition, teachers whom youth perceive as caring and trustworthy can act as positive role models Cunningham et al. This is especially important in the delivery of information on sensitive topics such as sexuality Blum, This is par- ticularly true when media campaigns provide youth not only with informa- tion about what to do or not to do, but also concrete advice about where to find the services they may need, such as career orientation services, free condoms, or counseling.

Using Scarce Resources Efficiently The policy and program recommendations discussed here are not meant to be exhaustive. They are merely the policies for which the strongest evidence of effectiveness is available. Additional approaches may be worth pursuing, but must be justified on the basis of rigorous evidence. A number of popu- lar policies and programs intended to promote positive youth development and prevent risky behavior have, however, been found to be either ineffec- tive or even harmful.

These approaches are often politically popular, appealing quick fixes for complex problems. Yet where resources are scarce, investments must be made on the basis of demonstrated impact and relative cost-effectiveness. In addition, budgetary constraints often preclude governments in developing countries from investing in programs and policies that target all children and youth. For instance, universal preschool may be ideal, but there is a strong public good rationale for focusing public resources on poor or otherwise disadvantaged children.

Indeed, steep socioeconomic gradi- ents in developmental outcomes have been documented among young chil- dren throughout the world Grantham-McGregor et al.

The Way Forward: Measuring Positive Development Among Youth in Low- and Middle-Income Countries This chapter provides examples of programs and policies that have been effec- tive in promoting positive development and reducing risky behavior among youth in a number of settings. However, youth and governments alike face different challenges and constraints across contexts and cultures, and the opti- mal portfolio of effective youth policies and programs will vary accordingly.

Consequently, the findings presented here may have limited external validity. Youth programs and policies must be evaluated rigorously to yield information for policymakers and other stakeholders for terminating, mod- ifying, or scaling up specific interventions. The lessons learned from these evaluations must be widely disseminated to promote transparency and dia- logue among various actors, including youth.

Rigorous, well-controlled eval- uations can be expensive, and officials may be reluctant to spend their scarce resources on evaluating a program rather than on investing these resources in the program itself.

Yet failing to invest in evaluation can be shortsighted and self-defeating if it means that poorly performing programs are contin- ued and that lessons cannot be applied to future interventions see Cunning- ham et al. In addition, programs and policies for youth must be chosen on the basis of greatest cost-effectiveness and pos- itive net benefit.

Indeed, the interventions discussed in this chapter are usu- ally implemented by public agencies, and these agencies have an obligation to invest public resources as effectively and efficiently as possible.

The need for rigorous impact evaluations begs the question of how to measure success. Successful interventions must reduce the prevalence of risky behavior among youth but should also aim to nurture the core attributes or competencies that help youth successfully navigate the transition to adulthood. This also has implications for monitoring. Indeed, data are often collected on the prevalence of youth risky behaviors, but rarely on measures of positive youth development such as those included in the Five Cs model Lerner et al.

Here, lessons can be learned from the process of measuring developmen- tal outcomes such as school readiness among preschool-aged children world- wide. Similarly, what the field of youth development needs is a measure of readiness for the many challenges of early adulthood, including school-to-work transition, family formation, and citi- zenship, that includes an assessment of competencies or strengths.

Every one of these young people must be afforded the chance to negotiate the transition to a happy, healthy, and productive adulthood. References Alessi, B. Service as a strategy for children and youth. Berlinski, S. The effect of pre-primary education on pri- mary school performance. Ross Business School.

Blum, R. Policy and program recommendations in adolescent sexual and repro- ductive health for Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington, DC: World Bank. Reducing the risk: Connections that make a difference in the lives of youth.

Cunningham, W. Supporting youth at risk: A policy toolkit for middle-income countries. The promise of youth: Policies for youth at risk in Latin America and the Caribbean. Wash- ington, DC: World Bank. Dehne, K. Sexually transmitted infections among adolescents: The need for adequate health services.

Geneva: World Health Organization. Eccles, J. Community programs to promote youth develop- ment. Fernald, L. Summary of child development assessments and applications to evaluations in the developing world. Gomby, D. Home visiting: Recent program evalua- tions—analysis and recommendations. It can also cover your viva questions and will help you to score very high.

Development of the Youth Athlete offers a single-authored, well-illustrated, evidence-based, and integrated analysis of the development and trainability of the morphological and physiological characteristics which influence sport performance in youth. The book critically analyses the development of the youth athlete in the context of current and future sport performance and long-term health and well-being.

Development of the Youth Athlete identifies the principal controversies in youth sport and addresses them through sport-specific examples. Presenting a rigorous assessment and interpretation of scientific data with an emphasis on underlying physiological mechanisms, the book focuses on the interactions between growth, maturation, and:.