Search Institute Series on Developmentally Attentive Community and Society – serie

Developmental Assets and Asset-Building Communities examines the relationships of developmental assets to other approaches and bodies of work. It raises challenges about the asset-building approach and offers recommendations for how this approach can be strengthened and broadened in impact and research. In doing so, this book extends the scholarly base for the understanding of the character and scope of the systemic relation between young people's healthy development and the nature of developmentally attentive communities. The chapters in this volume present evidence that asset-building communities both promote and are promoted by positive youth development, a bi-directional, systemic linkage that - consistent with developmental systems theory - further civil society by building relationship and intergenerational places within a community that are united in attending to the developmental needs of children and adolescents.

According to the study conducted by Gallup Organization, only a minority of Americans experience consistent normative motivation for engaging with other people's children. Social norms theory suggests that adults are more likely to get deeply involved if that involvement is viewed as highly important, and if they perceive a social expectation to do so. This volume examines the nature of social norms in general and in relationship to children and adolescents, examining the complex dynamics of understanding the appropriate roles of parents and other adults in young people's healthy development. The volume also presents the study's findings in detail, including numerous areas of consensus among American adults, differences among American adults, and the gap between perceived importance and actual engagement. A wide-ranging literature synthesis suggests implications for both personal and collective actions with potential to change norms that inhibit engagement and to strengthen values that encourage engagement.

Regardless of its validity, many adults share a belief that today’s youth face an inauspicious future. Drugs, sex, violence, disintegration of the nuclear family, technology that replaces interpersonal relationships—that’s what you hear in the news. The media, through its dramatization of the dangers and risks children confront and pose, have created a well-established image of disenfranchised, hostile, and often-destructive children and adolescents. This image ignores the many children who are thriving as well as the possibility of positive outcomes for children and youth.With children comprising roughly 30% of the global population—almost 2 billion children worldwide—understanding exactly what leads children to grow into confident, caring, responsible adults is an issue that belongs at the forefront of every nation’s agenda. Increasingly, it is understood that we need not only to prevent negative outcomes but to promote positive outcomes.What Do Children Need to Flourish? Conceptualizing and Measuring Indicators of Positive Development, part of the Search Series on Developmentally Attentive Community and Society, focuses on how scholars and practitioners can begin to build rigorous measures of the healthy behaviors and attitudes that result in positive outcomes for children and youth. The volume is presented in five parts:- Introduction and conceptual framework.- Positive formation of the self—character, values, spirituality, life satisfaction, hope, and ethnic identity.- Healthy habits, positive behaviors, and time use.- Positive relationships with parents and siblings.- Positive attitudes and behaviors toward learning and school environments.- Enacting positivevalues and behaviors in communities.What Do Children Need to Flourish? Conceptualizing and Measuring Indicators of Positive Development is an important volume for researchers and practitioners—in fact, for anyone interested and involved in working with children and adolescents.

Perhaps no other challenge is more pressing in creating “developmentally - tentive community and society” (the theme of this book series) than mobilizing adultstoplayactive,constructiverolesinthelivesofchildrenandadolescents.In a society that too easily defaults to designing programs as cure-alls for meeting young people’s needs, particular attention must be paid to understanding and mobilizing the kind of positive, relational energy that prepares each successive generation to assume its place in society. Although programs and institutions certainlyplayimportantroles,thekeyliesinthepersonalcommitment,invol- ment, and investment of adults in young people’s lives. In Mobilizing Adults for Positive Youth Development: Strategies for Closing the Gap between Beliefs and Behaviors, E. Gil Clary and Jean E. Rhodes have ass- bled the insights of leading scholars from multiple disciplines and contexts for engaging a broad cadre of adults as allies for youth development. As the editors write,thequestionguidingthebookis,“Howcanwemosteffectivelyencourage adults, both individually and collectively, to begin to behave differently with - spect to the young people of a community, to do so consistently, and to do so in a variety of ways?” What is being proposed, then, is nothing less than a social movement that engages individuals, small groups, neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, faith communities, and broader social institutions in attending to the well-being and healthy development of young people.

Authoritative Communities: The Scientific Case for Nurturing the Whole Child introduces innovative solutions based firmly in the children’s mental health and resilience literature and in the hypothesis that humans are "hardwired to connect." These "authoritative communities" consist of such individuals and institutions as parents, teachers, coaches, elders, and a variety of organizations that are committed to each other’s well-being over the long-term and who instill children with prosocial values such as empathy and compassion. Living within these communities enables children and youth to develop a consistent sense of purpose and meaning, so that they, in turn, are able to grow up to be responsible, productive, and nurturing adults.The comprehensive coverage in this volume bring new insights and evidence to the nature/nurture debate from developmental, attachment, neurobiological, spiritual, and community perspectives, including:Nurturing as a protective factor against genetic predispositions.Counteracting the adverse influence of the media on children.Promoting a sense of community in disadvantaged youth.Spiritual approaches, from the Buddhist "minding children with mindfulness" to traditional young men’s rites of passage.Adolescent development, from psychobiology to the formation of conscience.Dispatches from the civil society movement, the School Development Program, and the motherhood movement.This volume is essential reading for researchers and practitioners as well as graduate-level students in developmental, clinical, and social psychology as well as related fields such as sociology, social work, education, and religious studies.

This new volume in the Search Institute Series on Developmentally Attentive Community and Society represents a milestone in Search Institute’s signature work on the Developmental Assets that children and adolescents need in their lives to succeed. Through the research behind this book, Karen VanderVen links this strength-based, community-based approach to human development to early childhood development and practice. In doing so, she advances a lo- term vision of understanding child and adolescent development not merely as a series of discrete stages, but as a trajectory of development in which experiences in each phase of development link to, reinforce, or redirect experiences in other aspects of life. To be sure, VanderVen explores with both breadth and depth a parti- larly critical time in child development: the early childhood years, ages 3–5. The latest research in numerous ?elds has only increased our understanding of how important it is for communities to attend to children’s developmental expe- ences in these crucial years. Positive development in early childhood leads young people on a path to a healthy adulthood; and a lack of positive dev- opment in early childhood has a blunting effect that extends into elementary and secondary schooling years.

Authoritative Communities: The Scientific Case for Nurturing the Whole Child introduces innovative solutions based firmly in the children’s mental health and resilience literature and in the hypothesis that humans are "hardwired to connect." These "authoritative communities" consist of such individuals and institutions as parents, teachers, coaches, elders, and a variety of organizations that are committed to each other’s well-being over the long-term and who instill children with prosocial values such as empathy and compassion. Living within these communities enables children and youth to develop a consistent sense of purpose and meaning, so that they, in turn, are able to grow up to be responsible, productive, and nurturing adults.The comprehensive coverage in this volume bring new insights and evidence to the nature/nurture debate from developmental, attachment, neurobiological, spiritual, and community perspectives, including:Nurturing as a protective factor against genetic predispositions.Counteracting the adverse influence of the media on children.Promoting a sense of community in disadvantaged youth.Spiritual approaches, from the Buddhist "minding children with mindfulness" to traditional young men’s rites of passage.Adolescent development, from psychobiology to the formation of conscience.Dispatches from the civil society movement, the School Development Program, and the motherhood movement.This volume is essential reading for researchers and practitioners as well as graduate-level students in developmental, clinical, and social psychology as well as related fields such as sociology, social work, education, and religious studies.

Perhaps no other challenge is more pressing in creating “developmentally - tentive community and society” (the theme of this book series) than mobilizing adultstoplayactive,constructiverolesinthelivesofchildrenandadolescents.In a society that too easily defaults to designing programs as cure-alls for meeting young people’s needs, particular attention must be paid to understanding and mobilizing the kind of positive, relational energy that prepares each successive generation to assume its place in society. Although programs and institutions certainlyplayimportantroles,thekeyliesinthepersonalcommitment,invol- ment, and investment of adults in young people’s lives. In Mobilizing Adults for Positive Youth Development: Strategies for Closing the Gap between Beliefs and Behaviors, E. Gil Clary and Jean E. Rhodes have ass- bled the insights of leading scholars from multiple disciplines and contexts for engaging a broad cadre of adults as allies for youth development. As the editors write,thequestionguidingthebookis,“Howcanwemosteffectivelyencourage adults, both individually and collectively, to begin to behave differently with - spect to the young people of a community, to do so consistently, and to do so in a variety of ways?” What is being proposed, then, is nothing less than a social movement that engages individuals, small groups, neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, faith communities, and broader social institutions in attending to the well-being and healthy development of young people.

This new volume in the Search Institute Series on Developmentally Attentive Community and Society represents a milestone in Search Institute’s signature work on the Developmental Assets that children and adolescents need in their lives to succeed. Through the research behind this book, Karen VanderVen links this strength-based, community-based approach to human development to early childhood development and practice. In doing so, she advances a lo- term vision of understanding child and adolescent development not merely as a series of discrete stages, but as a trajectory of development in which experiences in each phase of development link to, reinforce, or redirect experiences in other aspects of life. To be sure, VanderVen explores with both breadth and depth a parti- larly critical time in child development: the early childhood years, ages 3–5. The latest research in numerous ?elds has only increased our understanding of how important it is for communities to attend to children’s developmental expe- ences in these crucial years. Positive development in early childhood leads young people on a path to a healthy adulthood; and a lack of positive dev- opment in early childhood has a blunting effect that extends into elementary and secondary schooling years.

It is a great pleasure to offer this volume from Michael J. Nakkula, Karen C. Foster, Marc Mannes, and Shenita Bolstrom as the latest in the Search Institute Series on Developmentally Attentive Community and Society. Its importance to the series and this ?eld of inquiry and practice is readily evident in its title, Building Healthy Communities for Positive Youth Development. Since the early 1990s, Search Institute has invited and encouraged communities of all shapes and sizes to use its framework of Developmental Assets and principles of asset building to create strong, vibrant, and welcoming communities for children and youth. We have operated largely at the grassroots level, encouraging innovation and adaptation around a shared vision, rather than proposing a program or model for replication. We seek to learn as much from the communities as they learn from us. This book offers in-depth case studies of what happened in eight diverse c- munities that took up our invitation. In them, we see a wide array of strategies and approaches that, on the surface, seem to have little coherence. But, as Nakkula and colleagues found, underlying each of these distinct efforts was a deep commitment to transforming the social norms of community life to more effectively attend to young people’s healthy development throughout the ?rst two decades of life. There have been many ambitious efforts aimed at comprehensive community change on behalf of young people.

It is a great pleasure to offer this volume from Michael J. Nakkula, Karen C. Foster, Marc Mannes, and Shenita Bolstrom as the latest in the Search Institute Series on Developmentally Attentive Community and Society. Its importance to the series and this ?eld of inquiry and practice is readily evident in its title, Building Healthy Communities for Positive Youth Development. Since the early 1990s, Search Institute has invited and encouraged communities of all shapes and sizes to use its framework of Developmental Assets and principles of asset building to create strong, vibrant, and welcoming communities for children and youth. We have operated largely at the grassroots level, encouraging innovation and adaptation around a shared vision, rather than proposing a program or model for replication. We seek to learn as much from the communities as they learn from us. This book offers in-depth case studies of what happened in eight diverse c- munities that took up our invitation. In them, we see a wide array of strategies and approaches that, on the surface, seem to have little coherence. But, as Nakkula and colleagues found, underlying each of these distinct efforts was a deep commitment to transforming the social norms of community life to more effectively attend to young people’s healthy development throughout the ?rst two decades of life. There have been many ambitious efforts aimed at comprehensive community change on behalf of young people.

Developmental Assets and Asset-Building Communities examines the relationships of developmental assets to other approaches and bodies of work. It raises challenges about the asset-building approach and offers recommendations for how this approach can be strengthened and broadened in impact and research. In doing so, this book extends the scholarly base for the understanding of the character and scope of the systemic relation between young people's healthy development and the nature of developmentally attentive communities. The chapters in this volume present evidence that asset-building communities both promote and are promoted by positive youth development, a bi-directional, systemic linkage that - consistent with developmental systems theory - further civil society by building relationship and intergenerational places within a community that are united in attending to the developmental needs of children and adolescents.