Journal of Research on Adolescence

Considerable strides have been made in the past decade in recognizing the centrality of the cultural context of schooling to adolescent development. In this review, adopting a developmental systems conceptualization of schooling, we focus on selected new research findings from the past decade regarding how (a) teachers, curricular tasks, and classroom environments; (b) aspects of the school as an organization; and (c) district policies and practices can play an instrumental role in adolescents' intellectual and social–emotional development.

Adolescents' romantic relationships have attracted popular interest, but, until recently, little scientific curiosity. Research has been impeded by erroneous assumptions that adolescent relationships are trivial and transitory, that they provide little information beyond measures of the influence of parent‐child and peer relationships, and that their impact is primarily associated with problems of behavior and adjustment. This article proposes that distinguishing five features of romantic relationships (involvement, partner selection, relationship content, quality, and cognitive and emotional processes) is essential to describing adolescents' relationships and their developmental significance. These distinctions also help to clarify the role of context, age‐related variations, and individual differences in the impact of romantic experiences. Research is needed to illuminate questions of how and under what conditions romantic relationships affect individual development and how romantic and other close relationships jointly influence developmental trajectories during adolescence.

We enter the 21st century contending with the end of the Cold War's legacy of political uncertainty, expecting youth to play a significant part in the search for new principles that will bring about stability in the world political order. In forging the future, youth will have to collaborate with adults, but on terms more fitting of the historical circumstances that lie ahead than those of the past. This was the framework adopted by a group of social scientists who held several discussions to reflect on the issues and opportunities that bear on youth's civic engagement and development in the century that has just opened. The present article describes the results of those conversations, starting with the issue of defining civic competence, and the finding that an expansive definition is needed to match the real‐world circumstances that affect its development for youth internationally. Specific conditions, such as globalization, information – communication technology, and immigration, are emphasized as forces that affect youth and need to be taken into account by educators and policy makers. In this regard, responsibilities of schools, government, the commercial sector, and community organizations are outlined. Each is viewed as a potential constructive force for promoting engagement insofar as youth's strengths are recognized and focus is placed on building on youth's proven capacities. As always, it is youth’s task to make history in the future and society's obligation to provide youth with sufficient resources and an honest basis for hope in carrying out this task. The authors' policy recommendations are founded on this reciprocal relation that binds the youth generation with its elders in the common task of preserving, while transforming, society for the good of humanity.

In this article, we review the most important findings to have emerged during the past 10 years in the study of judgment and decision making (JDM) in adolescence and look ahead to possible new directions in this burgeoning area of research. Three inter‐related shifts in research emphasis are of particular importance and serve to organize this review. First, research grounded in normative models of JDM has moved beyond the study of age differences in risk perception and toward a dynamic account of the factors predicting adolescent decisions. Second, the field has seen widespread adoption of dual‐process models of cognitive development that describe 2 relatively independent modes of information processing, typically contrasting an analytic (cold) system with an experiential (hot) one. Finally, there has been an increase in attention to the social, emotional, and self‐regulatory factors that influence JDM. This shift in focus reflects the growing influence of findings from developmental neuroscience, which describe a pattern of structural and functional maturation that may set the stage for a heightened propensity to make risky decisions in adolescence.

Researchers have suggested that good‐quality school climates foster a sense of connection to the school and in this way contribute to fewer emotional and behavioral problems. However, few studies have directly assessed the role of school connectedness as a mediator of school climate effects. Using path analysis, this brief report examined whether four aspects of student perceived school climate (cohesion, friction, competition among students, and overall satisfaction with classes) were indirectly associated with subsequent early adolescent conduct problems and depressive symptoms through school connectedness. Participants were four hundred and eighty‐nine 10‐ to 14‐year old middle school students involved in two waves of a study. The results showed that school connectedness mediated the relations between perceived cohesion, perceived friction, and overall satisfaction with classes and subsequent student conduct problems 1 year later. School connectedness was not, however, predictive of subsequent depressive symptoms and thus did not mediate the school climate effects on early adolescent emotional problems.

Một vài nghiên cứu đã khám phá các yếu tố liên quan đến trường học ảnh hưởng đến sự biến đổi trong tình trạng bị bắt nạt và sức khỏe của thanh niên đồng tính, song tính, chuyển giới và không xác định giới tính (LGBTQ). Trong số 15,965 học sinh tại 45 trường học ở Wisconsin, chúng tôi đã xác định sự khác biệt dựa trên sự hiện diện của Liên Minh Đồng Tính – Dị Tính (GSA). Thanh niên trong các trường có GSA báo cáo ít tình trạng trốn học, hút thuốc, uống rượu, cố gắng tự sát, và quan hệ tình dục với bạn tình không quen thuộc hơn so với những học sinh tại các trường không có GSA, với sự khác biệt này lớn hơn đối với thanh niên LGBTQ so với thanh niên dị tính. Sự khác biệt dựa trên GSA lớn nhất ở các thiếu nữ thuộc nhóm thiểu số giới tính về việc quan hệ tình dục khi sử dụng ma túy. Hiệu ứng của GSA không có ý nghĩa thống kê đối với sự bắt nạt nói chung hoặc sự bắt nạt do kỳ thị giới tính, điểm số, và cảm giác thuộc về trường. Các phát hiện này cho thấy GSA có thể đóng góp vào việc giảm nhẹ một loạt các nguy cơ sức khỏe, đặc biệt là đối với thanh niên LGBTQ.

The current study examined the unique and interactive relations of 4 aspects of student‐perceived school climate (cohesion, friction, and competition among students, and overall satisfaction with classes) and adolescent effortful control in the conduct problems and depressive symptoms of 868 ten‐ to fourteen‐year‐old adolescents. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that each of the school climate variables was uniquely associated with at least 1 outcome beyond effortful control. Two‐way interactions between effortful control and school climate variables showed that among boys low in effortful control, those perceiving high levels of cohesion among students, low levels of friction among students, or high levels of satisfaction with classes reported fewer depressive symptoms. Among females, 2‐way interactions indicated that girls low in effortful control reported fewer conduct problems when their perceptions of friction or competition among students were low. Implications for perceptions of good quality school climates are discussed.

Latent growth curve analysis was used to examine the structure and interrelations among aggression, drug use, and delinquent behavior during early adolescence. Five waves of data were collected from 667 students at three urban middle schools serving a predominantly African American population, and from a more ethnically diverse sample of 950 students at four rural middle schools. One set of models focused on changes in individual behaviors; the other on changes in a global problem behavior factor. Models with separate growth trajectories for aggression, drug use, and delinquent behavior provided the best fit for both samples and revealed relations between initial levels of aggression and subsequent changes in the other behaviors. Boys and girls differed in their initial levels of these behaviors, but not their patterns of change. Differences in growth curve trajectories were found across samples. These findings have important implications for assessment and prevention of problem behaviors in adolescents.