This study aimed to examine the effects of a sexual education program (SEP) focused on sexual media literacy (SML) for school nurses. A quasi-experimental, pre-/posttest design was used to examine SML knowledge, awareness, reinterpretation skill, and self-efficacy. A total of 66 school nurses participated. The experimental group (n = 35)…

Background: Different studies reveal an association between parent involvement, metacognition, and academic achievement; however, the majority analyse the developmental process of acquisition in experimental or quasi-experimental designs with students enrolled in child education. Adolescence is an important stage in personal and academic…

To provide further insight into stress generation patterns in boys and girls around puberty, this study investigated longitudinal reciprocal relations between depressive symptoms, dysfunctional attitudes, and stress generation, the process by which individuals contribute to the occurrence of stress in interpersonal contexts (e.g., problematic…

This study builds on previous research and policy that view teen sports as an educational tool and public health asset. The results highlighted that school-based athletics continued to be the most popular activity provided by high schools in the U.S. and was the only school-based extracurricular activity that showed an increase in participation…

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…

Life span developmental psychology proposes that the ability to create a coherent life narrative does not develop until early adolescence. Using a novel methodology, 10-, 12-, and 14-year-old participants were asked to tell their life stories aloud to a researcher. Later, participants separated their transcribed narratives into self-identified…

This article embeds the study of character development within the two-decades-long research program framed by the Lerner and Lerner model of positive youth development. Character development involves attaining the feelings, thoughts, and skills needed to act coherently across time and place to serve self and others in mutually beneficial, positive…

Vygotsky measured his 'zone of proximal development' in years. To do this, he needed a scheme of age periods, and a set of tasks that could diagnose the next age period without defining it. In this paper, we compare the age periods in his late lectures with Halliday's categories of logico-semantic expansion as used by three adolescent…

Since the emergence of middle schools as distinct educational settings in the 1960s, proponents of the model have advocated for structures and approaches that best meet the particular developmental needs of young adolescents. Middle school researchers have developed frameworks of best practices for schools that have been widely, if not uniformly,…

Interpersonal relationships during adolescence can be powerful avenues for personal development. As school is a universal context for youth, positive teacher-student relationships (TSRs) are one potential source for such developmentally promotive relationships. Unfortunately, research has shown a decline in the quality of teacher-student…

Puberty is often implicated in the onset or exacerbation of psychopathology during adolescence, and pubertal timing and tempo have emerged as important predictors of wellbeing. In the psychosocial literature there is a tendency to view individual differences in the nature (timing and tempo) of pubertal development as either determined by stress…

Despite recognition of the importance of a developmentally appropriate approach to sexuality education, there is little direct guidance on how to do this. This study employed in-depth interviews with experienced sexuality educators and developers of sexuality education materials to identify how this concept is understood and applied in the field.…

Purpose: Today's education system focuses primarily on the academic skills of individuals. However, art and music education is thought to affect both humor and interpersonal problem-solving skills by supporting the social and emotional skills of adolescents. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate how receiving art and music education…

Growing up in a high family risk (HFR) environment is accompanied by difficulties in executive functions (EFs) and interpersonal skills (IS) that may persist into adulthood. Because preadolescence is a critical period, this study will assess a multicomponent mediational intervention program, to determine the possibility of improving these skills.…

The authors designed and evaluated an innovative, branded campaign called 'Adelante' to promote positive youth development (PYD) and reduce risk behaviors among Latino youth near Washington, DC. Repeated cross-sectional surveys were conducted in the intervention and a comparison community to evaluate campaign exposure and changes in PYD outcomes.…