Introduction: Friendships of adolescent girls play a significant role in providing socio-emotional support and enabling the attainment of developmental tasks. The present exploratory paper focuses on an aspect of close friendships that has yet to be widely examined, which we described as the Adverse Dyadic Friendship (ADF). This is a friendship…

T he author considers adult doll play as therapeutic intervention by examining how the physical properties of reborn dolls and also sex dolls provide comfort and establish needs met through care giving. She discusses dolls providing a sense of personal identity through narrative play, community, and retail therapy, and she describes the…

Purpose: Follow-up studies of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in early childhood that focus on friendship formation during adolescence are scarce. The present study focused on exploring characteristics possibly related to the ability to establish friendships during adolescence among children diagnosed with ASD in…

Over the past two decades, a growing body of research has investigated college students' friendships and how these relationships can both enable and constrain students' success. I review this body of literature, describing the characteristics and processes of college students' friendships. First, I review work that describes characteristics of…

This study explored the experiences of seven first-year university students in Johannesburg, South Africa. Recognising storytelling as a lens to reveal identity, this study focused on student experience narratives as a tool to better understand their transition from school to university. It examined the narrated experiences of these students as a…

Objective: Our study conducted a preliminary evaluation of a peer-mentoring group program for college men (Freshmen League). Participants & Methods: We interviewed first-year men who participated in Freshmen League (n = 16) and others who did not (n = 10), asking them questions about authenticity, relationships, masculinity, and community.…

Nearly one-quarter of American adults have low-level literacy skills. Existing research provides a great deal of quantitative information about skill levels and attainment, but little information exists that highlights the contextualized experiences of adult learners. In this phenomenological study, we explored individual adult learners'…

Over the last decade research has reported a range of positive life and learning outcomes for adult and child choristers through first-person accounts derived through surveys and interviews. Little is known regarding parent and child perspectives on choral learning, particularly regarding the impacts of participating in excellent choirs on musical…

Research on third-culture individuals (TCIs) is an emerging topic in college student development. However, while emerging literature on TCIs exists, research on TCIs' personal development in postsecondary contexts is still lacking. This literature review addresses this issue. In this review, I argue that the literature predominantly illustrates…

Positive youth development has been extensively documented in contexts such as the family, school, and afterschool. Emerging theory and research indicate that digital contexts such as social media may also be venues through which young people develop skills and attributes associated with the 5 Cs model of positive youth development and thriving.…

Secrets carry valuable social information. Because the content of secrets can be damaging to the secret-keeper's reputation, people should only disclose their secrets to people whom they trust. Therefore, tracking which people know each other's secrets can be used as cue of social relationships: If one person tells another person a secret, those…

Emerging adulthood is a time filled with instability, but disclosure within close egalitarian relationships such as siblings, friends, and romantic partners can help when coping with stress. The present study examines patterns of disclosure across these relationships, as well as specific associations between relationships with siblings and peers.…

Notions of 'personal and social development' within experiential learning literature remain philosophically underdeveloped, often identified as something like practical wisdom or practical reasoning. Experiential learning practitioners and theorists make frequent claims regarding the 'life-changing' significance for participants; particularly in…

This book gathers some of Hannah Arendt's core themes and focuses them on the question, 'What is education for?' For Arendt, as for Aristotle, education is the means whereby we achieve personal autonomy through the exercise of independent judgement, attain adulthood through the recognition of others as equal but different, gain a sense of…

Using comparative case study methods, we analyzed longitudinal data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education to examine if and how 23 college students' capacities for intercultural maturity (ICM) changed over the course of their college experiences. Those whose capacities increased often had immersion experiences wherein they were…