The mysterious and unspoken secrets of life can be a source of fascination for young people. The bildungsroman quest for identity is often coupled with a protagonist's attempts to decode a range of secrets. Jamaica Kincaid's work of fiction, "Annie John" (1985), illustrates this journey. In this novel, the female protagonist's maturity…

The contemporary #MeToo moment has led to renewed concern about issues of masculinity and gender justice. This moment provides a strong warrant for critically analyzing different programmes for boys and men in relation to their capacity for gender transformation. This paper presents three such programmes located in Victoria (Australia) as case…

Child marriage is the practice of marrying an individual below 18 years. The drivers of this practice include poverty, gender inequality, cultural and religious norms among others. While Ghana is one of many countries worldwide in which child marriage is practised, the literature on cultural underpinnings and implications of the practice in Ghana…

Teachers, schools, and the wider education system have a responsibility to nurture young people's identity development and to optimise youth wellbeing. For the study, 10 adolescents shared their experiences and perspectives of identity development and the extent to which their identity impacted on their wellbeing and subsequent learning…

Women's artistic gymnastics is commonly understood to require early entrance and intense training during childhood. Most gymnasts retire before reaching adulthood. In recent years, the gymnast population at the highest level has "aged." In this article, we adopt a socio-pedagogical perspective to explore the training contexts, pubertal…

Purpose: This paper aims to identify challenges in a first attempt at teaching the Youth Lens in a secondary English classroom in South Korea. Design/methodology/approach: This paper includes the author's observations of a senior English class in an international school in South Korea. Findings: The author advocates that intersections of time,…

This commentary discusses the implication of child and adolescent development research for public policy in Latin America. As illustrated by the articles in this special issue, even though the research of child and adolescent development in Latin America is making significant progress, still more research is needed. Developmental research in the…

In Europe, the question of identity and youth civic engagement constitutes a challenge both for the European Union (EU) and for research on adolescent psychology. In this article, we discuss the European historical context and the current initiatives from the EU that aim to encourage civic engagement among young people. Then, we suggest some…

Sport is a context that provides positive developmental benefits to adolescents. However, these benefits are not distributed equally to all participants. This study examined whether the motivational constructs of attainment value and ability self-concept were related to positive developmental experiences in sport, and tested intensity of…

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 longitudinal study compared immigrant and native adolescents' expectations concerning the timing of conventional socially acceptable and oppositional less socially acceptable forms of autonomy. Based on normative development and a collectivist background among immigrants, both developmental and acculturative change was expected. The sample…

This paper argues that after-school programmes need to be considered an essential part of lifelong learning infrastructure, particularly in light of the dominance of the economic discourse in both lifelong learning literature and the initial schooling literature. The paper, which is based upon existing literature, begins by providing an overview…

The purpose of this replication study was to examine the relationships among life satisfaction, positive youth development and problem behaviour. The respondents were 7,151 Chinese Secondary 2 (Grade 8) students (3,707 boys and 3,014 girls) recruited from 44 schools in Hong Kong. Validated assessment tools measuring positive youth development,…

With a starting point in John Abela's groundbreaking developmental psychopathology research on adolescent depression in China, we aimed to review the state of the literature on Chinese depression across the lifespan. We began with Dr. Abela's published studies relevant to depression in China and our own research with adults before turning to the…

The historic and contemporary global concern over youth violence and indiscipline/subordination in schools has educators, school administrators and policy makers working hard to ensure that schools are welcoming and safe spaces for learners. Social harmony can only be achieved by understanding and addressing the causes of youth violence and…