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Against the Generation Gap: Thinking “Otherwise” about Adolescence
Abstract
Prevailing cultural views of adolescence are the product, this article argues, of a long, multidimensional process of social construc-tion. Employing a double reading of this process, this article analyzes the difficulties religious educators face on account of the reified nature of this social construction. Drawing on philosophical and psychological understandings of human flourishing, this article presents and argues for a different way of thinking about adolescents and the religious congregation's role in religious education.
This essay explores the issue of dress of teachers of Druze heritage. The Druze, among whom the rules of religious dress are rather specific, do not teach religion in schools, since the Druze religion is secret. The teacher acts as a gatekeeper and model. At the same time, Druze young people are becoming increasingly secular and may relate better to teachers who appear to be part of the modern world. This discussion examines the role of dress in teacher modeling, and the part Druze teachers may have to play in sustaining a small religion in rapidly changing times.
This paper provides a descriptive analysis of congregationally-based youth programs in one geographically specified area in northern Indiana. A response rate of 98.9 percent (N=269) from congregations to a survey and 42 additional in-person interviews with youth ministers were conducted to compile data on the characteristics of congregations, youth attendance, youth groups, and youth ministers across denominational categories. Results of the study support the hypothesis that youth programming differs across denominations. Findings also highlight the need for high response rates and representative sampling methodologies to provide a valid view of congregationally-based youth programming.
Issues of spirituality and thriving are pertinent to the period of adolescence given the marked changes in body, mind, and relationships. In order to provide an overview of the relationship between religion, spirituality, and positive youth development, this chapter offers a developmental systems perspective and proposes a relational spirituality as a framework for understanding adolescent religious and spiritual development. In addition, the chapter examines various psychological mechanisms through which religion and spirituality may promote positive youth development. Existing empirical research on the relationships between adolescent religion, spirituality, thriving, and specific indicators of positive youth development is reviewed. Finally, future directions for continuing to build the field of study are discussed.
This volume is evidence of the growing interest in adolescent spirituality within the positive youth development (PYD) movement. In particular, the current emphasis within PYD on the role of civic engagement as an indicator or outcome associated with positive development or thriving has led scholars and practitioners to look at spirituality and religion as potential resources for promoting such social contribution (Benson, Scales, Sesma, and Roehlkepartain 2005; Damon 2004; King et al. 2005; Lerner, Dowling, and Anderson 2003; Lerner et al. 2005). Although there is burgeoning interest and a mounting number of relevant publications, many theoretical and methodological issues remain to be addressed in order to elucidate more fully the relationship between positive youth development and spirituality. Based on two foundational theoretical underpinnings of PYD,
plasticity and
context, this chapter aims to provide a framework for understanding how spirituality may be a unique and robust catalyst for positive development in young people. Specifically, this chapter will explore how the ideological, social, and transcendent dimensions within spirituality provide fertile ground for promoting positive youth development. In addition, the chapter will discuss methodological issues pertinent to building the study of spirituality and positive youth development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Using the randomly selected subsample of 1,000 youth (472 boys, M age = 12.2 years, SD = 1.5; 528 girls, M age = 12.1 years, SD = 1.4) drawn by Dowling, Getsdottir, Anderson, von Eye, and Lerner (in press) from a Search Institute (1984) archival data set, Young Adolescents and Their Parents (YAP), this research employed structural equation modeling procedures to appraise the structural relations among second-order factors of religiosity, spirituality, and thriving. Three hierarchically related models were tested: The first model was a complete mediation model that involved a direct effect of spirituality on thriving and an indirect effect of spirituality on thriving, mediated by religiosity, the second model only consisted of the mediated effect, and the third model only consisted of the direct effects of spirituality on thriving and religiosity on thriving. Consistent with expectations, the complete mediation model provided reasonably good fit to the data and was significantly better than either of the alternative models. The importance of the findings reported here for the future study of youth thriving using either the YAP data set or new, longitudinal studies is discussed.
Imagining girlhood from Nancy Drew to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
In this book Grace Jantzen constructs a Quaker spirituality of beauty as a theological-philosophical response to a world preoccupied with death and violence. Having mapped the foundations of western cultural violence in the Greco-Roman period and the Judea-Christian tradition in Foundations of Violence and Violence to Eternity, she now offers her alternative vision. This vision is an original and creative feminist reading of the Quaker tradition, considering George Fox and the writings of Quaker women, exploring the themes of inner light and beauty as alternatives to violence and the obstacles to building such an alternative world. After showing how seventeenth-century Quakers offered a different option for modernity, she maps the philosophical and ethical implications of engaging with the world through beauty and its transforming power. Written for everyone interested in contemporary spirtuality, it explains how Quaker ideas can provide a way to transform our violent world into one that celebrates life rather than death, peace rather than violence. This work is the second of two posthumous publications to complete Grace M. Jantzen's Death and the Displacement of Beauty collection, which began with Foundations of Violence (Routledge, 2004). © 2010 Grace M. Jantzen; Jeremy Carrette and Morny Joy for editorial material. All rights reserved.
What are the types of environments in which youth thrive? How do we cultivate such environments to promote optimal development and positive behavior in youth? The Youth Development Handbook: Coming of Age in American Communities provides youth and development practitioners access to current theory and research in the field of youth development, including illustrations of good practice, original case studies, and a contextual approach to such topics as youth participation and diversity. The Youth Development Handbook is designed for scholars and researchers in applied developmental science as well as practitioners and policy makers who implement youth development initiatives. The book is also recommended for use in graduate courses on youth development in the fields of Psychology, Human Development & Family Studies, and Education.
The author argues that adolescents are not only philosophers, as Kohlberg and Gilligan once claimed, but should also be viewed as theologians. This view corresponds to what has been called “lay theology” or “ordinary theology.” Moreover, the article takes up the double question what adolescents might benefit from theology and what theology might benefit from adolescents. On this background, a systematic understanding of adolescents as theologians is offered, distinguishing between theology of adolescents, with adolescents, and for adolescents. In a final section, theological views concerning adolescence as a stage in the human lifecycle are discussed.
Are our current ways of talking about "the problem of adolescence" really that different than those of past generations? for the past decade, Act Your Age! has provided a provocative and now classic analysis of the accepted ways of viewing teens. By employing a groundbreaking "history of the present" methodology that resists traditional chronology, author Nancy Lesko analyzes both historical and present social and political factors that produce the presumed "natural adolescent." This resulting seminal work in the field of youth study forces readers to rethink the dominant interpretations on the social construction of adolescence from the 19th century through the present day.
Faith development theory (FDT) stands at the convergence of developmental psychologies and a tradition of liberal theology deriving from Christian origins. It took form through empirical research based on in-depth interviews with children and adults, initially conducted primarily in North America. This brief article undertakes to do the following: first, review the elements that have converged to shape FDT; second, clarify the ways in which the theory is an account of the development of the self; third, sketch and respond to the pressures to relinquish some features and claims of the theory in the light of postmodern critiques; and fourth, discuss what is at stake in the proposal to reconceive this theory as a system of types, in contrast to a sequence of stages.
This chapter presents a case example of the implementation of Positive Youth Development (PYD) at a therapeutic boarding school including the theoretical, conceptual, and empirical information about PYD, adolescent brain development, authoritative communities, and youth-adult partnerships that guided this work. Specific examples demonstrate how key concepts and underlying principles of PYD were put into practice. The chapter provides information about parents' perceptions of the school's effectiveness and explains a theory of change approach used to develop the program evaluation. The chapter concludes with a discussion of challenges and opportunities experienced in the development and implementation of the program.
Having, in the chapters of the first volume (see record
2004-20102-000) considered physical growth and the mental and moral perversions incident to adolescence, and given an anthology of descriptions of various phases of this transitional stage of life as conceived or experienced by men and women of historic or literary eminence, the author has, in the chapters that follow, to consider its normal genetic psychology, beginning with sensation and proceeding to feei- ings, will, and intellect. The material for what follows is newer, more difficult, and more incomplete, but although many data are already at hand, there has never been any attempt, within my knowledge, to bring them together or to draw the scientific and practical inferences they suggest. After examining physical changes, like changes in the senses and voice, the author examines the evolution and feelings/instincts characteristic of normal adolescence. The education of the heart is described in chapters XI, XV, and XII. Chapter XII also is devoted to that of nature and the sciences most commonly taught. Chapter XIII examines pubic initiations by indigenous cultures, classical ideals and customs, and church confirmation. The adolescent psychology of conversion is examined in Chapter XIV. The last part of Chapter XV and Chapter XVI treats of the pedagogy of the English literature and language, history, drawing, normal and high schools, colleges and universities, and philosophy. Social and religious training have each a chapter (XV and XIV, respectively). The education of girls has Chapter XVII. The final chapter examines ethnic psychology and pedagogy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study examines whether mothers' or adolescents' expectations concerning “storm and stress” behaviors at adolescence predict subsequent real or perceived adolescent behavior and attributes during the early years of adolescence. The study used a short-term longitudinal design. Participants were 6th- and 7th-grade adolescents and their mothers (N=270 families). Data were collected via telephone interviews and questionnaires at 2 time points approximately 1 year apart. Results indicated that adolescents' expectations for risk-taking/rebelliousness and for alienation and mothers' expectations for risk-taking/rebelliousness predicted increases in corresponding adolescent-reported outcomes over the 1-year period. Results are most consistent with the possibility of perceptual biases with respect to storm and stress behaviors, but could indicate the existence of self-fulfilling prophecies, particularly for risk-taking/rebelliousness.
Contributors to Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition use Alasdair MacIntyreââ¬â¢s work as a methodological guide for doing ethics in the Christian tradition. These essays are grouped in three sections: descriptions of MacIntyreââ¬â¢s approach to ethics as developed in After Virtue, reflections on the moral issues that come to the fore when viewing the Christian tradition from a MacIntyrean perspective, and selected essays on family, homosexuality, abortion, pacifism, feminism, business ethics, medical ethics, and economic justice. NANCEY MURPHY is professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller TheologicalÃâ Seminary and co-editor of Neuroscience and the Person, also published by the University of Notre Dame Press. MARK THEISSEN NATION is associate professor of theology at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, Virginia and co-editor of four books. BRAD J. KALLENBERG is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton and author of Ethics as Grammar, also published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Contributors: James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Stephen E. Fowl, L. Gregory Jones, John Howard Yoder, Craig Dykstra, Rodney Clapp, Luke Timothy Johnson, Stanley Hauerwas, Grady Scott Davis, Tammy Williams, Michael Goldberg, William F. May, Stephen Long, Nancey Murphy, Mark Theissen Nation, and Brad J. Kallenberg. ---------- ââ¬ÅVirtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition is suitable for the educated, general reader and is recommended for those interested in the important renaissance of virtue ethics.ââ¬? ââ¬âMarkets & Morality ââ¬Åââ¬Â¦ this volume of essays is refreshing and helpful for understanding the relationship between moral reasoning as a community practice ââ¬Â¦ obligation of the church. The editors and essayists of Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition provide compelling answersââ¬Â¦. This book is not only a helpful introduction to Alasdair MacIntyre, but extends his work by constructive and critical appropriations by Christian ethicists, theologians and philosophers.ââ¬? ââ¬âAshland Theological Journal ââ¬Å ââ¬Â¦ a valuable teaching tool for Christian ethicists.ââ¬? ââ¬âTheology Today ââ¬ÅThe quality of these essays is very high and their importance in the ongoing dialogue between Catholic and Protestant moral philosophers and theologians is beyond doubt. Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition is an extraordinarily useful volume for those who work in ethics.ââ¬? ââ¬âDavid Solomon, H. P. and W. B. White Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture ââ¬ÅVirtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition is a significant resource for those who teach Christian ethics in church-related colleges and universities.ââ¬? ââ¬âMichael G. Cartwright, University of Indianapolis
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