Hirokazu Yoshikawa – författare

Social settings have enormous power to promote or hinder positive youth development. Researchers and practitioners know a great deal about features of schools and programs for youth that affect development, but much less about how to transform settings to bring about these desirable features. This book shows how to harness the power of settings. It shifts the debate from simply enhancing youth outcomes at the individual level to improving the settings of youths'' daily lives. The book offers researchers and practitioners blueprints for creating and changing influential settings including classrooms, schools, universities, out-of-school time programs, ethnic systems of supplementary education, and other community-based programs. Leading scholars in psychology, education, human development, sociology, anthropology, economics, law, and public policy discuss a wide array of social change strategies, and describe how to measure key features of settings as a target and guide for change. The authors also demonstrate how larger social structures - such as school districts, community coalitions, community data resources - can support change. Many of the chapters describe ways to make settings work for all youth, including those marginalized by reason of race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation. Toward Positive Youth Development will guide researchers, educators, administrators and policy makers to improve schools and youth programs for all of America''s youth.

Social settings have enormous power to promote or hinder positive youth development. Researchers and practitioners know a great deal about features of schools and programs for youth that affect development, but much less about how to transform settings to bring about these desirable features. This book shows how to harness the power of settings. It shifts the debate from simply enhancing youth outcomes at the individual level to improving the settings of youths' daily lives. The book offers researchers and practitioners blueprints for creating and changing influential settings including classrooms, schools, universities, out-of-school time programs, ethnic systems of supplementary education, and other community-based programs. Leading scholars in psychology, education, human development, sociology, anthropology, economics, law, and public policy discuss a wide array of social change strategies, and describe how to measure key features of settings as a target and guide for change. The authors also demonstrate how larger social structures - such as school districts, community coalitions, community data resources - can support change. Many of the chapters describe ways to make settings work for all youth, including those marginalized by reason of race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation. Toward Positive Youth Development will guide researchers, educators, administrators and policy makers to improve schools and youth programs for all of America's youth.

Social settings have enormous power to promote or hinder positive youth development. Researchers and practitioners know a great deal about features of schools and programs for youth that affect development, but much less about how to transform settings to bring about these desirable features. This book shows how to harness the power of settings. It shifts the debate from simply enhancing youth outcomes at the individual level to improving the settings of youths'' daily lives. The book offers researchers and practitioners blueprints for creating and changing influential settings including classrooms, schools, universities, out-of-school time programs, ethnic systems of supplementary education, and other community-based programs. Leading scholars in psychology, education, human development, sociology, anthropology, economics, law, and public policy discuss a wide array of social change strategies, and describe how to measure key features of settings as a target and guide for change. The authors also demonstrate how larger social structures - such as school districts, community coalitions, community data resources - can support change. Many of the chapters describe ways to make settings work for all youth, including those marginalized by reason of race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation. Toward Positive Youth Development will guide researchers, educators, administrators and policy makers to improve schools and youth programs for all of America''s youth.

During the past quarter century, community psychologists have worked to make relevant contributions to human welfare in community settings and to effect social change. Working with and in schools, neighborhood organizations, religious institutions, social programs, and government agencies, the community psychologist has come to understand how social settings and social policy influence behavior and foster change that promotes individual health and well-being. Using a social ecological paradigm as their guiding framework, they focus on the interactions between persons and their environments, cultural diversity, and local empowerment for understanding organizational, community, and social change. Community psychologists have relied on multiple methods of obtaining data but more often, they have had to develop new methodologies or adapt existing ones. These innovative methods have been recorded in the American Journal of Community Psychology throughout the years of its history and have changed the way that researchers in the field have gathered data.

During the past quarter century, community psychologists have worked to make relevant contributions to human welfare in community settings and to effect social change. Working with and in schools, neighborhood organizations, religious institutions, social programs, and government agencies, the community psychologist has come to understand how social settings and social policy influence behavior and foster change that promotes individual health and well-being. Using a social ecological paradigm as their guiding framework, they focus on the interactions between persons and their environments, cultural diversity, and local empowerment for understanding organizational, community, and social change. Community psychologists have relied on multiple methods of obtaining data but more often, they have had to develop new methodologies or adapt existing ones. These innovative methods have been recorded in the American Journal of Community Psychology throughout the years of its history and have changed the way that researchers in the field have gathered data.

Looking back over the past quarter century or so, it becomes apparent that Community Psychology has developed a rich tradition of theory, empirical research, action, and innovative methods. Within the field of psychology, community psychology challenges traditional ways of thinking. It considers not only the person but also whole ecological systems, recognizing that the linkages between persons and systems may be as important as either factor alone. It examines both top-down and bottom-up change; it recognizes the need for cultural diversity; and it recognizes the need for both research and praxis-actually, their interaction, which is termed "action research" or "action science. " Many of the important writings have been published in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJ CP). l As such, the intellectual history of the field is embedded in this journal. In 1996, The Publications Committee of the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA, Division 27 of the American Psychological Association), in cooperation with Plenum Publishing Corporation, published a call for an editor or editorial team to "develop a volume which will use the most impactful papers from the [AJCP] to portray the rich tradition of . . . action research . . . " (Call for Nominations, 1996, p. 17). The editors of the volume you are holding answered that call and were subsequently asked to bring the project to fruition.

Looking back over the past quarter century or so, it becomes apparent that Community Psychology has developed a rich tradition of theory, empirical research, action, and innovative methods. Within the field of psychology, community psychology challenges traditional ways of thinking. It considers not only the person but also whole ecological systems, recognizing that the linkages between persons and systems may be as important as either factor alone. It examines both top-down and bottom-up change; it recognizes the need for cultural diversity; and it recognizes the need for both research and praxis-actually, their interaction, which is termed "action research" or "action science. " Many of the important writings have been published in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJ CP). l As such, the intellectual history of the field is embedded in this journal. In 1996, The Publications Committee of the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA, Division 27 of the American Psychological Association), in cooperation with Plenum Publishing Corporation, published a call for an editor or editorial team to "develop a volume which will use the most impactful papers from the [AJCP] to portray the rich tradition of . . . action research . . . " (Call for Nominations, 1996, p. 17). The editors of the volume you are holding answered that call and were subsequently asked to bring the project to fruition.

Looking back over the past quarter century or so, it becomes apparent that Community Psychology has developed a rich tradition of theory, empirical research, action, and innovative methods. Within the field of psychology, community psychology challenges traditional ways of thinking. It considers not only the person but also whole ecological systems, recognizing that the linkages between persons and systems may be as important as either factor alone. It examines both top-down and bottom-up change; it recognizes the need for cultural diversity; and it recognizes the need for both research and praxis-actually, their interaction, which is termed "action research" or "action science. " Many of the important writings have been published in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJ CP). l As such, the intellectual history of the field is embedded in this journal. In 1996, The Publications Committee of the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA, Division 27 of the American Psychological Association), in cooperation with Plenum Publishing Corporation, published a call for an editor or editorial team to "develop a volume which will use the most impactful papers from the [AJCP] to portray the rich tradition of . . . action research . . . " (Call for Nominations, 1996, p. 17). The editors of the volume you are holding answered that call and were subsequently asked to bring the project to fruition.

This landmark volume commemorates the fortieth anniversary of the Children’s Defense Fund, which has been an uncompromising champion of American youth for all of those years. Yet the book looks not to the past but at our current circumstances—and at the challenges we must meet now and in the future on behalf of our young people. The book examines critical issues—prenatal and infant health and development, early child care and education, school reform, the achievement gap, vulnerable children, juvenile justice, and child poverty—and highlights crucial practical and policy measures we need to consider and undertake if we are to better serve American children. An invaluable survey of the conditions facing American youth—and a call to action at the local, state, and national levels—Improving the Odds for America’s Children is an urgent, informative, and inspired volume that addresses shortcomings and challenges we cannot afford to ignore. Contributors include Sara Rosenbaum, Partow Zomorrodian, Jack P. Shonkoff, Joan Lombardi, Deborah Jewell- Sherman, Jal Mehta, Robert B. Schwartz, Jerry D. Weast, Greg J. Duncan, Richard J. Murnane, Michael S. Wald, Jane Waldfogel, Robert G. Schwartz, Laurence Steinberg, Arloc Sherman, Robert Greenstein, Sharon Parrott, and Eric Dearing.