Adolescent Development

One of the most important factors of quality middle schools, according to experts, is responsiveness to the findings of developmental psychology regarding the emotional and intellectual development of students as they operate with peer groups. Current thinking about adolescent self-esteem, self-concept and identity formation stems from work such as that of Freud, Piaget, Erikson, and Fitzgerald's description of adolescence as an existentialist crisis of varying proportions. Adolescence takes place within multiple contexts, and experts agree that adults who display authenticity in dealing with adolescents stand the best chance of guiding or mentoring them along the path to an intellectually, emotionally, and physically healthy adulthood.

Keywords Adolescence; Authenticity; Concrete Operational Thinking; Developmental Psychology; Developmental Responsiveness; Ego; Existentialism; Formal Operational Thinking; Id; Identity Formation; Multiple Contexts; Peer Groups; Role Confusion; Self-Concept; Self-Esteem; Stages of Development; Superego

Overview

According to the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, there are three main criteria for a quality middle school in the United States. The middle school must be:

• Academically excellent—they challenge all their students to use their minds well;

• Developmentally responsive—they are sensitive to the unique developmental challenges of early adolescence and respectful of students' needs and interests; and

• Socially equitable, democratic, and fair—they provide every student with high-quality teachers, resources, learning opportunities, and support and make positive options available to all students.

While the first and second criteria might seem like common sense, the second criterion—developmental responsiveness—is perhaps less obvious. The Forum defines developmental responsiveness in this context as a school that "provides access to comprehensive services that foster healthy physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development…and develops alliances with families to support the well-being of students" (Lipsitz & West, 2006, pp. 60-61).

For middle and high schools to deliver on the promise of a higher quality education for all students, parents, teachers, and administrators, need to develop a better understanding of adolescent development and its possible implications for pedagogy.

Adolescent Development's Many Influences

Adolescent development takes place within many contents, only one of which is school or the classroom. This "multiple contexts" view allows developmental psychologists, parents, and educators to look at adolescent development in the broadest possible sense and help address the many different ways adolescents can be influenced. Youngblade and Theokas offer insight as to how adolescents can be guided in their behavior:

More broadly, working from the perspective of developmental systems theory and contextual psychology, researchers theorize that behaviors arise from the dynamic, bidirectional interaction between a person and multiple levels of their ecology. Youth will thrive when there is a goodness of fit between individual developmental needs and contextual resources. In addition, researchers in the field of developmental psychopathology suggest that multiple contextual factors influence both competent and risky developmental trajectories.

Thinking about and characterizing adolescent behavior goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. Among the Greeks we hear echoes of sentiments that would be repeated throughout history by those who observe, parent, or teach adolescents. Socrates (470 BCE to 399 BCE), for example, said young people are "inclined to contradict parents and tyrannize their teachers," while Aristotle (384 BCE to 322 BCE) wrote, "youth are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine" (cited in Dahl, n.d.).

Since the end of the nineteenth century, researchers have learned much more about adolescent development by applying scientific tools and methods, and pedagogues have sought to apply those insights to areas such as curriculum development, rewards and punishments, and classroom management. This article offers a history of research on adolescent development, some key figures in the discussion and a discussion of how it bears upon education.

G. Stanley Hall: Adolescence as a "New Birth"

In 1904, G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924) published Adolescence, a seminal treatise on child psychology, with an emphasis on adolescent biology—such as was known in the days before DNA and brain scans. Evoking biblical imagery, he described adolescence as a "new birth" in which, following the metaphor, the old child dies, only to be reborn as a new young adult. But as with any birthing process, the event is not without its share of trauma, and certainly there can be emotional complications that may persist to adulthood.

Dahl and Hariri describe Hall's approach to the study of adolescent development:

"One overarching principle evident throughout Hall's work-and an issue of increasing salience today-is the importance of a multidisciplinary framework for understanding adolescence. Hall drew from many different areas of investigation and observation. The title of his book, Adolescence, Its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, speaks to this diverse range of interests. Hall sought to integrate understanding across multiple disciplines. He focused attention on the role of physical growth, the biologic changes of puberty, brain development, genetic influences, sleep and biological rhythms, physical health, social transitions, religious, educational, and cultural influences" (p. 368).

Sigmund Freud: Adolescence as an Inner Struggle

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) viewed adolescence as a time of inner turmoil. It is during adolescence that, after a time of pre-adolescence Freud called the "latency" period, the superego (the conscience) formed during childhood collides head-on with the id (a primitive drive for food, comfort, shelter) that first manifested itself in infancy. Whereas the id and the ego (the sense of self) gradually came into balance within the child as they approached adolescence, the tug-of-war between the libertine id and the puritanical superego leads to inner stress and turmoil within the adolescent.

Erik Erikson: Adolescence as a Search for Self

While eschewing some of Freud's more overt sexualizing of the process of child development, Erik Erikson (1902–1994) accepted Freud's view that human development occurs in discrete psychosocial stages marked by social or cultural changes. However, Erikson viewed ages twelve to eighteen as the stage characterized by the struggle for identity in the face of role confusion. The main objective of the adolescent, then, is to create a sense of self-identity by weeding through and then synthesizing all the information they acquired during childhood. Well-adjusted adults are those who successfully worked through this integration process as adolescents.

Jean Piaget: Adolescence as the Entryway to Abstract Reasoning

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) also accepted the idea of stages of development, but he held that the stages were marked by advances in the child's mode of thinking. Piaget understood adolescence as the period of time, beginning at age twelve, when a child moves from Concrete Operational Thinking (where a child can think logically) to Formal Operational thinking (where a child reasons abstractly).

Bill Fitzgerald: Adolescence, Angst & Ennui

More recently, Fitzgerald has shown that adolescent's quest for meaning has much in common with the existentialist philosophy popularized by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre. He argues that all the core themes of existentialism—most importantly the idea that humans are left largely on their own to make their own sense (or non-sense) of the universe—are played out in the lives of adolescents for the first time, and their ramifications are perhaps felt the most keenly.

It is commonly agreed that adolescence is a time filled with conflicts. A number of these conflicts closely resemble existential issues. Among these are an increase in freedom, choice, responsibility, and awareness of isolation. In addition, there is a search for meaning which may result in increased anxiety and a sense of personal emptiness.

Adolescent Development Today

Summarizing early twenty-first century discourse on adolescent development, Youngblade and Theokas note that researchers have taken a more positive view of adolescent development. As such, they have placed more emphasis on ways to enhance adolescent development, rather than looking at the ways in which healthy development can become sidetracked:

"More recently, however, researchers and policymakers have begun to embrace the notion that optimal youth development owes not simply to a reduction in negative behavior but the growth of strengths and competencies that will prepare youth for the future. Healthy development embodies happiness and a sense of purpose and meaningful relationships that leads to youth being engaged and contributing to their families, schools, communities, and society" (Youngblade & Theokas, 2006, p. 58).

In "Great Transitions: Preparing Adolescents for A New Century," a report of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development at the Carnegie Foundation of New York, parents, educators, and all concerned about the health and welfare of adolescents are urged to band together to help adolescents make a successful transition to adulthood. According to the Council, adolescents growing up in the modern Western world must:

• Master social skills, including the ability to manage conflict peacefully

• Cultivate the inquiring and problem-solving habits of mind for lifelong learning

• Acquire the technical and analytic capabilities to participate in a world-class economy

• Become ethical persons

• Learn the requirements of responsible citizenship

• Respect diversity in our pluralistic society.

Adolescence is a pivotal time in a person's life when they experience a perfect storm of biological, psychological, and emotional waves that, once they recede, will have washed the young person onto the shores of adulthood.

Further Insights

Adolescent Biology

The most obvious changes that take place in adolescence are biological. Both boys and girls travel through puberty, a time when each becomes sexually mature. Typically, girls tend to mature a year and a half earlier than boys, which leads to what one might term a maturity gap—this gap shows itself most often in the behavior of middle school boys and how they relate to girls the same age. Researchers have found that boys who mature faster tend to reap benefits in athletics and the social status that success at sports brings. Girls who mature faster, on the other hand, are more likely to find themselves socially at odds with slower-maturing girls, and this can put the faster-maturing girls on a path to depression and eating disorders. Slower-maturing boys who are often less skilled at sports and other forms of physical activity sometimes face ridicule and other forms of social stigma from their peers.

Educators and school counselors should pay close attention to the changes that the onset of puberty brings into the lives of adolescents, and how boys and girls tend to view sexual maturity in quite opposite ways. To encourage their development of a positive identity, it is critical that educators encourage, praise and inspire them when possible.

Adolescent Psychology

One of the most noteworthy psychological changes in adolescents is that they move from what Piaget called Concrete Operational thinkers to Formal Operational, or abstract, thinkers. This involves more reflection on their actions and pondering hypothetical situations. Paradoxically, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for higher mental functioning, matures during adolescence, yet it is also during adolescence that many boys and girls engage in risky behavior, such unprotected sex or the use of drugs or alcohol.

While this paradox has yet to be resolved, neurobiologists using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) techniques have detected quite considerable synaptic rewiring, increased levels of neurotransmitters, and hormonal changes, which may be the cause of the mood swings that affect many young people. There is also evidence linking hormones to "puberty-specific increases in sensation seeking-with its relevance to a wide range of risk behaviors emerging in adolescence (Martin et al., 2002; Dahl, 2004)" (Dahl & Hariri, 2005, p. 372).

The state of research in the twenty-first century seems to indicate that this group is beginning to be able to think through more complex life decisions and, through practice, to understand that their actions can have either positive or negative consequences. For teachers and anyone else working with adolescents, the task at hand is to help guide and mentor adolescents through the vagaries of ethical and moral decision-making without, in the process, alienating them. What remains to be determined by science, perhaps, is why students with such rapidly maturing brain function, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, nonetheless resort at times to a high level of irrational or even self-destructive behavior.

How Adolescents View Themselves

During adolescence, young people begin to step outside themselves and look at themselves as actors in life's grand drama. This development is summarized under three headings: self-concept, self-esteem, and identity formation. According to Wigfield, Lutz and Wagner,

• Self-concept is the individuals' beliefs about and evaluations of their characteristics, roles, abilities, and relationships.

• Self-esteem is the individual's sense of their overall worth or value as a person.

• Identity is a term broader than either self-concept or self-esteem, referring to individuals' general sense of themselves and their psychological reality that includes many different beliefs and attitudes about the self.

They explain,

"Identity formation involves the successful negotiation of a variety of activities and relationships during adolescence, including school achievement, social relations with others, and development of career interests and choices, along with a great deal of exploration of different activities and roles" (Harter, 1999; Wigfield, Lutz & Wagner, 2005).

Of interest to educators is the research finding that self-esteem is often at its lowest point for adolescents when they make the transition from elementary school to middle school, and then from middle school to high school. This suggests that careful efforts should be made to help adolescents ease this transition, thus helping them boost their self-esteem.

Adolescent Disconnect from School

Children entering adolescence tend to think less of their academic abilities than students in elementary school. This attitude, if left unchecked, can result in lower effort in school, on the principle that it makes little sense to try if failure is inevitable. As a result, students reaching adolescence tend to be less motivated to do well in school than they had been several years earlier. There are some students who continue to have a drive to succeed in school without any external motivators, but this group seems to be the exception.

For parents and educators witnessing such a disconnection in the adolescent, it becomes especially important to encourage the young person and remind them, using techniques such as those from cognitive behavioral therapy, that they are in charge of how well they do (or do not do) in school. Adolescents may also respond well to incentives for good academic performance—whether those incentives are tangible or intangible. Other adolescents do well in learning situations where some friendly competition is involved.

Adolescents & Peer Relationships

The transition from elementary school to middle school can be traumatic when the adolescent's circle of friends, constructed throughout their early school years, becomes split up in middle school. Further, as adolescents develop a more refined sense of self, they may feel that they have "outgrown" some of their previous friends and may seek access to different peer groups.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, say Wigfield et al., peer groups appear to be self-selected by adolescents to reinforce certain aspects of the adolescent's personality, or even a certain skill or interest that they feel best about:

Although pressure from peers to engage in misconduct does increase during adolescence, many researchers disagree with the simplistic view that peer groups mostly have a bad influence on adolescents. Brown reviewed studies showing that it is poor parenting that sometimes leads children to get in with a "bad" peer group, rather than the peer group pulling the child into difficulties.

Both conventional wisdom and decades of research highlight the importance of peer groups in adolescent development. Those who have an interest in the education of adolescents will look at students involved in negative peer groups and seek to help them find alternative routes for validation.

One important area where adolescence shows its ugly side is bullying. Research indicates that bullying is most common at precisely this junction between childhood and adulthood that occurs in middle school—it is less prevalent in elementary and high school. While some children compensate for feelings of low self-esteem, anger, and resentment by inflicting verbal and/or physical violence on their peers, others, particularly those who are perceived to be physically weak or "nerdy," are often the victims of bullies. In the wake of increasing school shootings in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, psychology has become important to politicians, educators, and parents.

As young people mature into adults, they come to question or reassess the lessons they learned from influential adults in their lives, especially their parents and teachers. As part of the entirely normal process of making the wisdom of the species their own, adolescents sometimes cross the line and question authority in an inappropriate manner. This inappropriate form of questioning may manifest itself in many different forms, such as disrupting the teacher's lesson with under-the-breath comments, asking irrelevant questions, or displaying a lack of desire to study certain subjects.

Because they must stand before a classroom of adolescents with varying degrees of respect for authority, teachers should work to establish their credibility by showing the relevance of the subject material to the lives of their students. Equally important is that the teacher shows their care and concern for adolescents—what some have called authenticity.

COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020 created major implications for children and adolescents, with many experts examining the impact the pandemic had on childhood development. Many felt that school closures were particularly disruptive, and, according to United Nations data, an estimated 1.6 billion children and youth were affected by school closures related to the pandemic. Following such disruptions to everyday life, researchers found that the COVID-19 pandemic had a dramatic negative impact of adolescent mental health.

Terms & Concepts

Adolescence: A time for a young person, beginning between ages ten to twelve, when they experience profound biological, emotional and intellectual changes.

Authenticity: In the context of adolescence, a term used to describe genuine interest and affection shown by a teacher for their students.

Concrete Operational Thinking: A term coined by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget to describe the ability of a preadolescent to think logically.

Developmental Psychology: A field of psychology devoted to the study of human development and the application of its findings.

Developmental Responsiveness: A term used to describe the ability of school teachers and administrators to adjust their expectations of adolescents to take into account the best thinking on adolescent development.

Ego: A term coined by the psychologist Sigmund Freud to describe the child's sense of self.

Existentialism: A school of philosophy, as well as a more general philosophical stance, that stresses the need for the individual, acting alone, to make sense of their place in the cosmos.

Formal Operational Thinking: A term coined by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget to describe the ability of an adolescent to employ abstract reasoning.

Id: A term coined by the psychologist Sigmund Freud to describe the fundamental human desire for primitive drive for necessities of life such as food, comfort, and shelter.

Identity Formation: The "'individuals' general sense of themselves and their psychological reality that includes many different beliefs and attitudes about the self" (Wigfield, Lutz & Wagner, 2005).

Multiple Contexts: A term, within the context of adolescent psychology, that emphasizes the many influences—internal and external—that mold the mind of the adolescent.

Peer Groups: Associations of like-minded students who each validate the other's intellectual and/or emotional needs.

Role Confusion: As discussed by psychologist Erik Erikson, the adolescent's sense that they no longer feel comfortable in the role of the child, yet not prepared to take on the role of an adult.

Self-concept: The "individuals' beliefs about and evaluations of their characteristics, roles, abilities, and relationships" (Wigfield, Lutz & Wagner, 2005).

Self-esteem: The "the individual's sense of his or her overall worth or value as a person" (Wigfield, Lutz & Wagner, 2005).

Stages of Development: The view, popularized by Piaget, Freud, Erikson, and others, that all human beings progress through discrete stages of emotional, intellectual and physical development on the journey from birth to death.

Superego: A term coined by the psychologist Sigmund Freud to describe the individual conscience.

Bibliography

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Suggested Reading

Beal, C., Grable, L. & Robertson, A. (2001). Curriculum integration: Adolescent development. North Carolina State Humanities Extension/Publications, North Carolina State College of Education, North Carolina State University. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from North Carolina State University.

Fredricks, J., & Eccles, J. (2006). Extracurricular involvement and adolescent adjustment: Impact of duration, number of activities, and breadth of participation. Applied Developmental Science, 10, 132-146. Retrieved December 1, 2007, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier

Gilligan, C. (1987, May). Adolescent development reconsidered. 10th Annual Konopka Lecture. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Retrieved December 1, 2007, from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities:

Jackson, S. (2020). Handbook of adolescent development. Psychology Press.

Meece, J., & Daniels, D. H. (2007). Child and adolescent development for educators (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.

Pipher, M. (2019). Reviving Ophelia: Saving the selves of adolescent girls (25th Anniversary ed.). Vermilion.

Poirier, R., Colarusso, E., Bischoff, A. & Robertson, E. (2007). Exploring adolescent development through the use of popular non-fiction novels. Teaching and Teacher Education 23(8), 1345-1349. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.11.017

Rice, F. P. (2018). The adolescent: Development, relationships, and culture (14th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.