This report profiles the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Escalera Program: Taking Steps to Success, a Latino-serving, community-based youth workforce development program, which was developed in 2001 in partnership with the PepsiCo Foundation and PepsiCo, Inc. and expanded in 2008 with the support of Shell Oil Company. The Escalera Program:…

Coaching success is often defined in terms of won-loss records. However, the effort to operationalize more comprehensive strategies for examining coaching success, particularly the development of self-report measures, dates back three decades (e.g., Smith, Smoll, & Curtis, 1979). This project for developing the Coaching Success Questionnaire-2…

The timing of having one's first child, in relation to the timing of other transitions into adulthood and to social functioning, was investigated based on the Finnish Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development, conducted from age 8 (173 females and 196 males) to 42. Results showed that in women, relatively early (less than…

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which five engagement benchmarks that encompass educationally purposeful activities namely: (i) level of academic challenge , (ii) active and collaborative learning ,(iii) student-faculty interaction , (iv) enriching educational experiences and (v) supportive campus environment predict various…

Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Project Green Reach (PGR) is a children's program that has offered garden-based youth education since 1990. PGR focuses on Grade K-8 students and teachers from local Title I schools who work in teams on garden and science projects. In this exploratory study, the authors used field observations, document analysis, and past…

Youth work in the United Kingdom is a profession requiring three years of training, and its beginnings are strongly rooted in a spiritual (often specifically Christian) context. Until the past few decades, spirituality was also integrated within the educational system. The author argues that intentionally bringing spirituality to the center of…

This article provides an abbreviated description of a qualitative study of the Succeeding in School (SIS) program, an Internet-based intervention designed to help students reflect on key elements of academic and career success. The American School Counselor Association's National Standards call for school counselors to focus on the academic,…

In this article, the author states his belief that community based learning among adults can be a powerful force for encouraging personal development and for strengthening democracy in this multicultural, globally interdependent, battered world. To do so, however, it needs to pervade all the curricula, degree programs, learning contracts, and…

Two cohorts of alumni, leading-edge and trailing-edge baby boomers, first tested in their college years, were followed to ages 43 (N = 136) and 54 (N = 182) on a measure of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to model the trajectory of growth for each psychosocial issue across middle adulthood. As…

Stress-related growth is defined as the perception or experience of deriving benefits from encountering stressful circumstances and, thus, has been identified as a protective factor against stress. The current study revised and subsequently validated scores on an existing measure of stress-related growth in a sample of racial/ethnic minority…

The label Attachment Disorder (AD) is used as either a description of a child's presentation, or as a diagnostic category. It is unclear whether this label is intended to be identical with the DSM-IV Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) diagnostic category, or if it is a separate diagnosis based on Randolph's Questionnaire and the premises…

During adolescence, friendship affiliations and groups provide companionship and social and emotional support, and they afford opportunities for intimate self-disclosure and reflection. Friendships often promote positive psychosocial development, but some youth learn and adopt antisocial attitudes and deviant behaviors through their friendships.…

This article asks whether a project in Canada could have any implications for schools in England. It is concerned with the ultimate challenge for teachers: not just how to create positive, healthy relationships with excellent educational progress in a "failing" school where they are conspicuously lacking, but how to do so in a lasting,…

The impact of family mobility from domestic or international moves can be challenging for families. Some families adjust and other families experience crisis. For some families, relocation may be due to a job promotion and transfer, while for other families moving may be due to divorce, loss of employment or other stressful circumstances.…

Service learning is one of the most pervasive education innovations of the past generation and has demonstrated much success in connecting schooling with community service. Service learning is designed to be integrated into, and enhance, the academic curriculum. It is believed, and there is growing evidence to show, that participation in service…