Growing evidence suggests that Positive Youth Development (PYD), a holistic approach to developing assets and competencies, can help prepare young people for success in adulthood, including success in the workplace. At its core, PYD focuses on creating a supportive, developmentally appropriate learning setting by emphasizing positive…

As physical educators continue to advocate for school-based PE, they should also consider ways to extend their work into community settings in an effort to ensure that all kids have an opportunity to develop physical literacy. This article describes how positive youth development programs can provide an opportunity for physical educators to engage…

One of the central tenets of the neoliberal world view is that there is no alternative to market-based societies with their focus on competition, individualism, and the abandonment of social safety nets and environmental protections. This vision has become the new common sense. As neoliberal policies and practices have spread across the planet,…

Lack of money has long kept promising preventive programs from expanding. Existing government-funded programs are furthermore subject to budgetary cutbacks or complete loss of funding. Moreover, preventive programs traditionally offer no accountability for success or failure. This leaves government entities in a bind where if they invest their…

To understand regulation and agency, it important to consider the nature of the regulatory challenges that adolescents must deal with. These include emotional, motivation, interpersonal, and other obstacles and problems. In this chapter, the author discusses the challenges reported by youth working on arts, technology, and social justice projects…

Although it is assumed that the values learned in physical activity-based youth programs can be applied in other areas of life, the transfer of values has not been widely explored. The purpose of this article is to address the transfer issue as it relates to physical activity programs and school cultures. The article begins with an overview of the…

4-H has long emphasized the importance of civic engagement and community service for positive youth development. One pathway to this ideal is youth action research and evaluation. This article demonstrates how participatory youth research and evaluation can lead to the successful implementation of community action projects. It describes the…

Against a background of low literacy among many Jamaican children and young adults, the Learn-to-Read-Read-to-Learn @ Your Library was launched by the Jamaica Library Service and the Library and Information Association of Jamaica. The year-long program seeks to develop creative and literate learners through reading, writing and artistic…

The efforts of the Miami Youth Development Project reported in this special issue illustrate how Developmental Intervention Science (DIS; a fusion of the developmental and intervention science) extended to include outreach research contributes to the development of community-supported positive youth development programs. In the process, the…

Many schools attempt to implement multiple programs to promote positive young adolescent development; however, these programs are often fragmented and lack coordination. The authors describe an initiative designed to help schools coordinate their social-emotional and character development (SECD) efforts to improve school climate and help students…

The rise in female delinquency has resulted in large numbers of girls being incarcerated in Youth Development Centers (YDC). However, there are few gender specific treatment programs for incarcerated female adolescent offenders, particularly for those with a history of substance dependency. In this article, we present a Multi-level Risk Model…

This paper describes a project called Peace Revolution [http://peacerevolution.net], which provides an opportunity for young people from around the world to learn and share positive messages and activities relating to peace. The Peace Revolution project aims to empower young people via a unique process related to youth development, helping young…

This paper describes work directed toward creating community-supported positive youth development interventions that draw on a developmental intervention science outreach research approach. With respect to developmental interventions, this approach focuses on creating evidence-based longitudinal change intervention strategies for promoting…

Including students with disabilities fully in the general education curriculum has become accepted in elementary schools, but issues such as teacher collaboration, standardized testing, gaps in skill levels, and scheduling challenges continue to pose significant obstacles to full inclusion in middle schools and high school. This article describes…

This article introduces the clover model, a research-based developmental model of resilience and psychopathology related to the prevention of aggressive behavior and the promotion of resiliency in adolescents. It describes how social cognitions and emotions function differently at different periods of adolescent development and influence problem…