Positive youth development highlights the promotion of skills through engaging and caring settings and building opportunities for bidirectional and constructive relationships. Whole School Restorative Approaches (WSRA) promote school community relationships and social and emotional skills which are core components for positive youth development.…

Rates of intense anxiety among teenagers have risen dramatically, a major concern. Outward Bound (OB), a wilderness expedition program that promotes learning through challenge experiences, is found to help youth decrease anxiety. To understand how program staff support this learning, we asked 30 OB instructors to describe their successful work…

The psychological impacts of war on young learners' social and emotional development are examined in this integrated review. Not only can war and armed conflict have a profound influence on individual children, but they also negatively affect the entire family system. The difficulties associated with relocation, migration, and acclimatisation to…

To help school leaders understand the association between social media use and adolescents' mental health, the Center for Public Education (CPE) of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) reviewed over a hundred relevant empirical studies, professional or federal research papers, and media articles. This report attempts to answer the…

The Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed) is expanding its role as the premier policy and practice organization advocating for secondary school reform through its Science of Adolescent Learning (SAL) initiative. Learning and development research shows that adolescence is a time of great opportunity and risk. This unique stage of human…

Teachers, schools, and the wider education system have a responsibility to nurture young people's identity development and to optimise youth wellbeing. For the study, 10 adolescents shared their experiences and perspectives of identity development and the extent to which their identity impacted on their wellbeing and subsequent learning…

Over the next two years, public education faces a critical moment created by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act requiring states and school districts to identify underperforming schools and create evidence-based plans to improve learning experiences and academic performance of all students. This report recommends key strategies for ensuring…

"It Takes an Ecosystem" explores the idea and potential of the Allied Youth Fields--an aspirational term that suggests increased connection across the multiple systems in which adults engage with young people. Recent research and initiatives make a strong case for what developmentalists have argued for decades: A young person's learning…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused schools to shift to virtual or hybrid instruction, thrusting young adolescents into a very different educational environment. Stage-environment fit theory outlines ways in which educational contexts may, or may not, meet the developmental needs of young adolescents. Yet little is known about how virtual environments…

Adolescence is a period when the intellectual, physical, social, emotional and all the capabilities are very high, but, unfortunately, most of the adolescents are unable to utilize their potential to maximum due to various reasons. They face many emerging issues such as global warming, famines, poverty, suicide, population explosion as well as…

The purpose of this manuscript is to highlight several practical classroom examples of asset-driven acts of reciprocal care and content-driven community builders and icebreakers that highlight ways to "find the prize" inside each student by fostering an adolescent-centered community of care that is committed to both relationships and…

Adolescence is a time of transition characterized by rapid physical, neurological, cognitive, and socioemotional development. As students move toward adulthood, their bodies and minds change. Those changes affect how they learn and, likewise, should influence how educators interact with youth. This Alliance for Excellent Education report…

Since the emergence of middle schools as distinct educational settings in the 1960s, proponents of the model have advocated for structures and approaches that best meet the particular developmental needs of young adolescents. Middle school researchers have developed frameworks of best practices for schools that have been widely, if not uniformly,…

Interpersonal relationships during adolescence can be powerful avenues for personal development. As school is a universal context for youth, positive teacher-student relationships (TSRs) are one potential source for such developmentally promotive relationships. Unfortunately, research has shown a decline in the quality of teacher-student…

Clark Montessori Junior and Senior High School was the first public Montessori high school in the US. Marta Donahoe and Dean Blase outline the roots and founding principles of Clark Montessori in the context of Montessori pedagogy. Woven throughout this discussion of the Montessori high school environment are guiding principles that Clark adopted…