Engaging youth from racial and ethnic minority communities as leaders for change is a potential strategy to mobilize support for addressing childhood obesity, but there are limited curricula designed to help youth understand the complex influences on obesity. Our aim was to develop and pilot test a systems science curriculum to elicit rural…

Peer sexuality educators' accounts of their work reveal two approaches to empathy with their students: affinity and alliance. "Affinity-based empathy" rests on the idea that the more commonalities sexuality educators and students share (or perceive they share), the more they will be able to empathise with one another, while…

The paper introduces a set of four studies focused on adolescents in the Czech Republic. In the first part, authors reflect on the cultural background, the political, social, and psychological factors that have had influence on several generations of adolescents in the period of the communist totalitarian regime. They also describe the social…

The authors assessed the emergence of a South African identity among Black, Colored (mixed ancestral origin), White (predominantly English speaking), and Indian adolescents participating in a birth cohort study called "Birth to Twenty" in Johannesburg, South Africa. They examined young people's certainty of their self-categorization as…

Legal culture is the individual's total body of knowledge, values, and attitudes in regard to his rights and opportunities to exercise them in practice. The foundations of legal culture are laid down in adolescence. Young people very often encounter a great many obstacles that limit their rights, opportunities, and equality, such as flaws in the…

In the present essay, we focus on G. Stanley Hall's contributions to the study of the role of social change for adolescent development. After introducing Hall's main ideas, we discuss recent demands adolescents face because of social change and how Hall's work could inform research on adolescent development in times of social change.

Describes the adolescent self from the viewpoint of cognitive-developmental psychology. Discusses changes in society brought by the shift to a post-industrial society. Proposes that adolescents will be able to choose between accepting the status quo and striving to envision a better social reality. (CB)

Assessment of the relationship between ontogenetic (individual) and generational (historical) change in adolescent personality development was the focus of this study. The total sample included 1000 male and female adolescents (ages 13-18) randomly drawn from 32 public school systems in West Virginia following a design using longitudinal sequences…

The United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child is a major achievement in the struggle to extend human rights to children. Its antecedents include the efforts of Dan Mulock Houwer, Eglantyne Jebb, Gustave Ador, and the work and words of Janusz Korczak (pioneer in residential care and director of an orphanage in Warsaw between 1912 and…

To meet the challenge of the current drug phenomenon it will be necessary to humanize the approach to youth, to aim with curricula and methodology at the social, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the individual as well as at the biological and intellectual dimensions. Presented at School and Community Health Workshop, Department of Health,…

Discusses the increasing problem of drug abuse among young people in terms of social causes, including the disappearance of childhood, the changing family unit, changing value systems of the peer culture, prevailing social norms, and parental attitudes. Examples are given of mass media messages that promote drug use. (CB)

Discusses the difficulties, conflicts, and dilemmas of growing up in America today and the positive steps that educators can take to facilitate this maturation process. (Author/JG)

Children growing up today face unprecedented perils and problems, and for many children the world frequently seems to be an unpredictable place. Pressures on children come from a variety of sources, such as family, peer relationships, and changes in society. (JD)

Directed toward the question of how parents and 15-year-old adolescents cope with the demands of social change occurring during unification in Germany, the comparative investigation of 40 families each in East and West Germany examines macro-social conditions of family relationships and rightist attitudes among German adolescents and adults. The…

Considers major social changes that have affected adolescent development in the latter part of the twentieth century, including changes in the labor market, family structure, attitudes toward race and gender, sexuality, mental health, and social exclusion. Suggests ways the behavior and development of young people will change in response. (JPB)