The author notes that teachers who continually require students to sit still and stop talking apparently prefer to teach a grove of trees rather than a classroom full of students. School environments should be designed to enhance the development of student brains -- and student brains are about movement, not motionless stagnation. 21st century…

One of the most challenging daily experiences of teaching young adolescents is helping them transition from Piaget's concrete to the formal operational stage of cognitive development during the middle school years. Students who have reached formal operations can design and test hypotheses, engage in deductive reasoning, use flexible thinking,…

Montessori middle schools can be immensely successful and highly beneficial to students. Traditional schools notice differences in students who come from Montessori backgrounds; they find them to be adaptable self-starters who often take on leadership roles. Prestigious high schools seek to recruit Montessori middle school graduates. As more…

Lawrence Kohlberg, a psychologist, coined the term "Just Community" to describe a community built on trust and resolution, in which each member participates democratically in the development of the rules and regulations that govern their community life (Kohlberg, 1985). In a school, this means that students and teachers alike actively participate…

High expectations and appropriate standards for learning and achievement are important to any curriculum plan. The need for curriculum to meet developmental needs is particularly important for middle-level students. Middle-level students are unlike any other age group and are internally varied. Not all middle-level students need the same things at…

This report summarizes the deliberations, findings, and recommendations of the National Commission on Adolescent Sexual Health. The report defines the characteristics of a sexually healthy adolescent, provides a foundation for understanding the three developmental stages of adolescents (early, middle, and late adolescence), and offers…

Some parents raise children without knowing anything about child development and are thus bewildered about how to deal with difficult behavior. This books addresses three important areas of parenting--child development, parenting style, and discipline--and tries to help parents gain the self-control needed to become competent adults. Chapters 1,…

The importance of family to identity is an accepted tenet of identity theories, though there is some dispute about the nature of this parental relationship and its facilitation of identity formation. This study investigated the relationship between the two developmental constructs of identity and attachment. Using the Identity Status Paradigm,…

In an Adolescent Development course at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, activities are employed to encourage students to become active learners, to become critical consumers of information regarding adolescents, and to develop an empathetic understanding of adolescents and their experiences. One activity that promotes critical thinking…

This document discusses the question of gender in youth development programs, those structured activities and opportunities sponsored by organizations other than schools and offered outside of school hours. Many of these organizations offer programs for people of all ages but the clear focus of this paper is early adolescence, about ages 10 to 15.…

Early adolescence presents many challenges to youth, their parents, and educators. During these transition years, students experience physical, emotional, and educational transformations. The Scarborough school system in Ontario, Canada, conducted a study of the Ministry of Education's Transition Years pilot project in four of its schools. The…

The three parts of this book, "The Adolescent, Health, and Society,""Topical Areas for Promoting Health," and "The Future of Adolescent Health Promotion: Next Steps," offer a new framework for examining the status of adolescent health in the United States. Contributing authors have provided the following chapters: (1) "Adolescent Health Promotion:…

This paper addresses the effects of developmental changes that occur in the transition from childhood to adolescence on parent-child relationships. The first section considers four theoretical approaches to changes in relationships during the transition to adolescence. Noted especially are perspectives regarding the impetus for changes in…

This book offers parents an understanding of the nature and role of adolescent friendship. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the topic of friendship and examines the benefits and characteristics of friendship, types of love, attachment styles, and contextual features that affect friendship. Chapter 2 discusses friendship stages across the…

Data from the National Survey of Children (Waves 1 and 3), a longitudinal survey of 2,000 children who were between the ages of 7 and 11 during the first wave in 1976 and between the ages of 16 and 20 during the third wave in 1987, were analyzed to examine the impact of paternal involvement during childhood as well as the ongoing father-child…