Julie Coiro is an assistant professor in the Reading Department at the University of Rhode Island. Her research focuses on adolescents' online reading comprehension development. She has served as co-editor of the "Handbook of Research in New Literacies" (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008), among many publications. In this interview, Coiro…

Borrowing the term "translational research" (TR) from medicine, along with some of the ideas and practices that define it, holds promise as a way of linking research more closely to the practice of youth development. However, doing so entails substantial adaptation. TR is more than a new name for applied research. It comprehends the…

Parental self-efficacy (PSE) describes parents' beliefs about being able to handle developmentally specific issues and being able to influence their child in a way that fosters the child's positive development and adjustment (Bandura, 1997). Parents of adolescents have been shown to feel less efficacious than parents of preadolescent children…

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,…

Civic engagement is an important marker of thriving among adolescents, and more research is needed that clarifies the ecological assets (positive supports across settings) that foster youth civic engagement. Simultaneously modeling associations between multiple ecological assets and civic behaviors can provide a nuanced view of the way…

Introduction: Based on internal and external assets, the positive youth development approach aims to increase the capacity among adolescents to overcome challenges as they transition to adulthood. Developmental assets have been found to be positively associated with academic achievement, a variety of health promoting behaviors, and improved…

Purpose: This manuscript represents the 3rd in a series of articles documenting our longitudinal evaluation of "The First Tee," a physical activity-based youth development program that uses golf as a vehicle for teaching life skills and enhancing developmental outcomes. Previous phases of our project: (a) established initial data-based…

Mitigating the perils of transition to early adolescence, while also supporting the promise of this stage of human development, has been a major focus of middle school reform (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989; Jackson & Davis, 2000). As a result, there are many classroom-based educational programs that target the social and…

To attain the most academic success among adolescent English Language Learners (ELL), the efforts of all the people associated with them must be combined along with multiple resources. Integration of curriculum content, instructional strategies, assessment, cultural responsiveness, and community resources are all critical components of success.…

Australia's Northern Territory is twice the size of Texas, with only 230,000 people living in its enormous space. About half reside in the capital Darwin in the tropical far north; the next biggest town with a population of 25,000 people is Alice Springs, 1600 kilometers south in the central desert. Some 70,000 Indigenous people form 30% of the…

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 primary theoretical tradition in the study of college retention has been sociological. A review and synthesis of common themes of development among traditional-age, college students suggests that a developmental perspective on the retention of youth in college may have more to offer than the dominant sociological paradigm. This article argues…

Parental involvement in education remains important for facilitating positive youth development. This study conceptualized parental involvement as a multidimensional construct--including school-based involvement, home-based involvement, and academic socialization--and examined the effects of different types of parental involvement in 10th grade on…

This study examines community service effects on adolescents' prosocial behaviors as mediated through experiences made during service. Based on theoretical assumptions by Youniss and Yates, we suggest that personal agency experiences and being confronted with situations that can challenge the own world views (ideology experiences) serve as…

This study examined whether changes in children's self-reported Big Five dimensions are represented by (developmental) personality types, using a cohort-sequential design with three measurement occasions across 5 years (four cohorts, 9-12 years at T1; N = 523). Correlates of, and gender differences in, type membership were examined. Latent…