This article focuses attention on a critical need for more evidence-based social emotional learning (SEL) programs for middle school students. First, we explore the definition of SEL, pointing out how it has evolved as our world has changed. We review key SEL domains and skills and describe universal school-based SEL programming as one approach to…

In the past, researchers would consider media's impact on youth in terms of three "Cs": consumption, content, and context. This article introduces a new construct--constancy--which supplants the previous terms. Constancy refers to the ubiquitous and continuous state of connected screens in the lives of children and adolescents. Constancy…

New advances in neurobiology are revealing that brain development and the learning it enables are directly dependent on social-emotional experience. Growing bodies of research reveal the importance of socially triggered epigenetic contributions to brain development and brain network configuration, with implications for social-emotional…

The Student Success Network (SSN) consists of about 60 youth development organizations and schools in New York City that are dedicated to improving students' social and emotional learning (SEL) and academic and career success. For organizations to systematically practice continuous improvement, SSN thought perhaps they needed a champion who could…

Schools play a key role in child and youth development as both social microcosms of the broader society and reciprocally influencing people and communities. As such, schools can function as a protective factor that promotes safety, motivation, relationships, and support for positive student outcomes. However, schools may also function as a risk…

Nearly 5.5 million children in the United States grow up in the shadows of undocumented status. We review the ecological domains of influence in children's and adolescents' lives and briefly consider health, cognitive, socioemotional, educational, and labor market outcomes ripe for study. We also reflect upon the ethical policy…

Socio-techno-cultural reality, in the current historical era, evolves at a faster rate than do human brain or human institutions. This reality creates a "complexity gap" that reduces human and institutional capacities to adapt to the challenges of late modernity. New insights from the neurosciences may help to reduce the complexity gap.…

The article reviews recent classroom research developed in South America related to child and adolescent development. We review work about three themes: ethnicity, school climate and violence, and the learning process. The few studies found on ethnicity and classroom experiences told a story of invisibility, if not exclusion and discrimination.…

This article examines the development of African American adolescents' identity using a relational developmental systems theory framework, which led to the expectation that identity development is linked to both the reduction of risk behaviors and the promotion of African American adolescents' healthy development. Different personological theories…

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…

Highly readable and comprehensive, this volume explores the significance of friendship for social, emotional, and cognitive development from early childhood through adolescence. The authors trace how friendships change as children age and what specific functions these relationships play in promoting adjustment and well-being. Compelling topics…

Given the omnipresent role of gender in children's and adolescents' development, it seems necessary to better understand how gender affects the process of emotion socialization. In this introductory chapter, the authors discuss the overarching themes and key concepts discussed in this volume, as well as outline the distinct contribution of each…

Guided by an ecological framework, we explore how siblings' and parents' roles, relationships, and activities are intertwined in everyday life, providing unique and combined contributions to development. In a departure from past research that emphasized the separate contributions of siblings and parents to individual development, we find that…

Character education is integral to the educational enterprise. Recent character education endeavors across the educational landscape have originated from a variety of different organizational sources. This article provides a review of the progress character education from the 18th century up through the 21st.

This article illuminates the current status of our understanding regarding the academic and social-emotional needs of gifted, early adolescent females in the United States. A synthesis of both theoretical and empirical studies addresses two foundational questions. First, how do we describe the unique population of gifted, female, adolescent…