What is learning across settings and how is it related to issues of equity? Please use at least two quotes from Piha or Banks readin
What is learning across settings and how is it related to issues of equity? Please use at least two quotes from Piha or Banks readings to support your ideas.
Positive Development in a Disorderly World
Reed W. Larson University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Adolescents need to develop competencies to navigate an adult world that is complex and disorderly: a world of heterogeneous macro- to microecological systems containing contradictions and catch-22s. This exploratory essay examines adolescents’ conscious processes of developing pertinent competencies for pursuing goals (agency) in these kinds of ‘‘real-world’’ settings. It draws on qualitative longitudinal research on youth’s experiences working on arts and community projects in which they encounter the irregular dynamics of complex human systems. I describe how youth develop ‘‘strategic thinking’’: executive skills for formulating strategies based on forecasting dynamics in navigating these systems. I also describe how youth learn to manage emotions (in self and others) that arise in these real-world transactions and how they develop motivation that sustains their work toward goals. Even as we learn more about the biological hardware of development, I argue that we must study youth’s conscious, proactive processes in developing their own ‘‘software’’ to navigate complex and disorderly human worlds.
The current global recession is a poignant reminder of how disorderly the world is that adolescents must prepare to enter. Over the years exuberant investors and ordinary people accumulated enormous debt, precipitating a chain reaction that cascaded through every sector of the economy and part of the world: foreclosures, bankruptcies, and unemploymentFes- pecially among young people. The theories and sta- tistical models of economicsFthe most math-based social scienceFwere proven drastically wrong (during the crash, some indicators were falling outside pre- dictions by as much as 25 SD units per day). The lesson was that economic systems are much less predictable than thought. As John Maynard Keynes had argued, heterogeneous processes are at work; different situa- tions bring forth different dynamics (Skidelsky, 2009).
Other human ecological systems (à la Bronfen- brenner, 1979, or Lerner, 2002) present adolescents with similar unruliness. Political systems, commu- nity institutions, familiesFall exhibit dynamics that
can sometimes be just plain bizarre. We have ‘‘Banks too big to fail’’; abundant examples of dysfunction across multiple levels of government; structural racism in societies founded on principles of equality; and cultural wars among people from the same culture. Adolescents must be prepared to deal with macro- to microsystems containing contradictions, catch-22s, bureaucracy, and b.s.
Globalization and modernization have not created a more orderly world for youth. Since the European Renaissance, many people have believed the world was evolving toward becoming a rational, just, and well-functioning machine. Yet, in the words of soci- ologist Anthony Giddens (1990), ‘‘living in the modern world is more like being aboard a careening juggernaut than being in a carefully controlled and well-driven motor car ’’ (p. 53).
In this paper, I explore what this disorder means for adolescents’ conscious process of develop- mentFor positive development. What are the com- petencies they need to develop for navigating adulthood in a disorderly world? And how do they develop theseFwhat are the processes? To think about these questions, I am going to focus on acqui- sition of competencies for agencyFfor working to- ward goals in real-world contexts. In the heart of the paper, I discuss adolescents’ development of compe- tencies in three domains (emotional, motivational, and cognitive ecological) that are important to achieving goals in an unruly world. To examine de- velopment within each domain I draw on research on middle adolescents’ experiences working on arts and community projects in organized youth programs. At
r 2011 The Author
Journal of Research on Adolescence r 2011 Society for Research on Adolescence
DOI: 10.1111/j.1532-7795.2010.00707.x
Presidential Address, delivered at the Meetings of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Philadelphia, PA, March 12, 2010. The research described in the address was funded by the William T. Grant FoundationFto whom I am extremely grateful. Thanks also to Hyeyoung Kang, Aisha Griffith, and Sharon Irish for as- sistance with this paper, as well to Kate Walker, Dave Hansen, Nickki Pearce Dawes, Patrick Sullivan, Natasha Watkins, Dustin Wood, Jenell Kelly, Vikki Rompala, Robin Jarrett, Jodi Dworkin, Rachel Angus, Aimee Rickman, Colleen Gibbons, Philip Hoffman, and many others who worked on the project. Copies of our articles are at http://www.youthdev.uiuc.edu. This address is dedicated to my father, Curtis L. Larson, a ‘‘farm kid’’ and professor of civil engineering, from whom I learned to think strategically about complex real-world problems.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Reed W. Larson, De- partment of Human and Community Development, University of Illinois, 904 W. Nevada St., Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail: [email protected] illinois.edu
JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, 21(2), 317 – 334
the end, I conclude with general points for future theory and research on adolescent positive develop- ment. An overarching theme is that our field needs to better understand the challenges that young people face in learning to navigate complexity and disorder.
DEVELOPMENT IN A COMPLEX WORLD
The world is not entirely unpredictable. There is order. But the neat and tidy diagrams we use to depict the human ecology can lull us into thinking there is more order than actually exists. If the anal- ogy is to biological ecosystems, they contain tre- mendous disarray. In nature, innumerable microbial to macrobiological systems interact in inter- twinedFbut also competitive and chaoticFways. Similarly, when we are talking about the human ecologyFthe ‘‘real world’’ that adolescents must learn to deal withFa crucial point is that all of Bronfenbrenner ’s different systems are composed of human minds, each with idiosyncratic ways of thinking and acting. No wonder things get bizarre.
The human world that adolescents must learn to navigate is less like the logically ordered world of physics that Leibnitz, Descartes, and other founders of modern science imagined and more like a blooming, buzzing Darwinian jungle. Human sys- tems are ‘‘messy systems’’ (Moss, 2001). The nu- merous micro- to macrosystems in the human world each partly functions according to its own distinct rules, culture, and history. I am going to use ‘‘het- erogeneous’’ regularly to remind us of these multiple dynamics at play within and between systems. What is critical is that these systems are not passive. They are active, sometimes passionately reactive.
So there is order, but it is not tidy, static, and logical. It is pluralistic, dynamic, and ‘‘eco-logical.’’ This complexity shapes the developmental chal- lenges faced by adolescents. I will illustrate this later with the example of a group of youth who were trying to get principals to adhere to a school district’s disciplinary code. To run a successful campaign to achieve this formidable goal, they had to understand the different ways that school board members, principals, teachers, and students think and adapt their actions accordingly. They had to use ecological reasoning adapted to the functioning of these differ- ent systems.
Adolescents must learn to navigate this com- plexity. William James suggested that: ‘‘We carve out order by leaving the disorderly part out.’’ This is on the front page of a book How Doctor’s Think (Groopman, 2007), and maybe doctors can get away with it. But adolescents cannot. This is especially true
if you are poor or a youth of color. When Frank Furstenberg (2006) spoke at the SRA meeting in San Francisco, he described how being poor is like a game where the dice are loaded against youFeach roll adding to the cumulative odds of disadvantage. Margaret Spencer (2006) described how African American male youth are subject to catch-22s across micro- to macroecological systems. But regardless of class or race, a young person trying to get a toehold in the adult world needs to develop competencies to navigate disorder and complexityFas best they can. They need to develop competencies for agency in real-world settings.
The Problem of Human Agency in a Disorderly World
Agency is the ability to set goals and organize one’s actions to reach them (Bandura, 2006): to get from Point A to a chosen Point B. This ability is crucial to adulthood in modern societies. The promise since the Enlightenment has been a world in whichF as visualized by the Nobel economist, Amartya Sen (1999)Fall people are free to realize their capa- bilities.
But to achieve this, young people need to develop competencies to work toward goals. Adolescents and emerging adults need these competencies to reach the goal of meaningful adult employment. They need skills to navigate a labyrinth to adult work that is increasingly destandardized, complex, and disor- derly (du Bois-Reymond & Chisholm, 2006; Meijers, 1998). Then, if you get employment, more and more jobs require skills for dealing with unstructured problems and trying to achieve difficult real-world goals (i.e., creating, developing, implementing). Jobs requiring rote labor are paying less and disappearing (Levy & Murnane, 2004). Young people need these competencies in other domains as well. Abilities to work toward goals (e.g., to change your life cir- cumstances) are also important to adults’ well-being (Cantor, 1990; Little, Snyder, & Wehmeyer, 2006). Furthermore, we especially need a new generation of young people who can use these competencies to address pressing economic, social justice, and eco- logical problems (Bandura, 2006; Ginwright, 2010). Abilities to exercise agency are important not only to individuals, but to our collective well-being.
To help us think about what is entailed in these competencies for agency, let me provide a definition: Abilities to organize and regulate actions over time to work toward a long-term goal, as an individual or with others, in complex real-world contexts. Notice that I am talking about ‘‘work.’’ Notice also that I see agency
318 LARSON
as not just individual; it can be collaborative. But part of the ‘‘problem of agency’’ is that reaching goals in real-world contexts is not easy.
To get from A to B in the real world, young people first need cognitive skills to navigate ecological com- plexity. In real-life situations the pathway to a goal is not always clear; you may have to find or create it. You need to figure out and deal with the challenges and obstacles in the way. You need to navigate dis- orderly ecological systemsFand the people who compose them. In sum, part of the problem of agency for adolescents is development of cognitive-ecolo- gical skillsFecological reasoningFto navigate the heterogeneity and complexity of the real world.
A Limited and Wayward Organ
But that is only part of the problem of agency. Reaching goals in a disorderly world also depends on a person’s limited human mindFwhich philos- ophers for millennia have recognized to be ‘‘a flimsy and wayward organ’’ (Shorto, 2008, p. 20). It con- tributes its own forms of disorder, its own distinct challenges. To achieve goals in the real world, ado- lescents need to develop competencies to navigate these.
I am going to discuss two major limits or chal- lenges of the human mind that are central to youth’s development of agency. First, a person’s ability to get to Point B is subject to human emotions. The anger, anxiety, and even joy that can arise in trying to reach a real-world goal can disrupt work, derail effort, and distort thinking. For adolescents, puberty increases this emotional reactivity (Steinberg, 2007). In three studies, including one in India, we found that ado- lescents (signaled at random times over a week) re- ported experiencing wider extremes of emotions than adults providing similar reports. These in- cluded both more extreme negative and positive emotions (Larson & Sheeber, 2008). Dahl (2004) suggests the adolescent brain is like a ‘‘natural tin- derbox’’ in which strong emotions and drives can ‘‘hijack’’ attention. To develop agency, adolescents need to gain competencies to navigate or manage these emotions.
The other developmental challenge I will discuss is motivational. To reach a difficult goal, you must devote sustained effort to it. Plenty of adults have difficulties with motivation and do not complete goals they set for themselves (Gollwitzer, 1999; Steel, 2007). Motivation easily stalls: ‘‘I’d better check email before I work on my thesis.’’ As I will discuss, these motivational issues can be a larger barrier for ado- lescents. Many teens’ have a limited time perspective
(Nurmi, 2004). So development of competencies to sustain motivation is important to agency.1
Now it is tempting to see these challenges of the human mind as internal and separate from the dis- order of the real worldFas issues concerning teens’ development of ‘‘self-regulation.’’ But many emo- tional and motivational challenges that obstruct agency occur in response to interactions with the external world. They arise as part of the process of working toward a goal: frustration with lack of progress, anger at people who are uncooperative, or lapses in motivation due to tasks becoming repetitive and tedious. So even though I will deal with them as distinct competencies, they are interrelated with the complexity of interactions with the world.
In this paper I discuss these three subprob- lemsFor challengesFfor adolescents’ development of agency. I will cover the two ‘‘human mind’’ chal- lenges first, because they are more familiar. I start with the emotional challenges to agency and youth’s acquisition of emotional competencies to address them, then the same for motivational development. Third, I discuss the challenges of navigating a dis- orderly world and acquisition of cognitive-ecological skills for navigating it. For each, I explore the two questions of what develops and how it develops.
POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Before doing this, however, I want to briefly review two other topics that have been building blocks of positive development thinking and research.
Adolescents’ Cognitive Potentials
To this point, it may seem like I have a pessimistic view of the human conditionFall this talk of dis- order and disruptive emotions. But like many posi- tive developmentalists I believe that, despite these obstacles, adolescents have powerful, often unreal- ized strengths and potentials (Lerner, Phelps, For- man, & Bowers, 2009). This includes the capacity to be conscious, deliberate producers of their own devel- opment (Lerner, 2002). This optimism comes partly from research suggesting that adolescence is a period for acquisition of higher-order executive functions, including those pertinent to emotional, motivational, and cognitive-ecological competencies.
1A third important limit or challenge of the human mind- Fwhich I will only touch on in passingFis the many cognitive flaws, fallacies, and biases that psychologists are always uncov- ering. A fuller treatment would consider how youth develop competencies to navigate these.
DEVELOPMENT IN A DISORDERLY WORLD 319
Brain development. Although we know little about the adolescent brain, evidence suggests that the teenage years are a time when there is con- siderable development of command and control centers in the prefrontal cortex as well as formation of more neural connections across regions of the brain that potentially provide greater integration including between emotional, volitional, and other functions (Paus, 2009). Now one view of existing evidence is that adolescents’ acquisition of executive functions is primarily driven by brain maturation and that this maturation must precede acquisition of these functions.2 A contrasting view is that adolescents’ experiences drive the development of these functions (and the corresponding changes in the brain). At the moment, causal evidence is limited (Paus, 2009). But there is substantial evidence from other species and other periods of the human life span indicating that experience can, at least partly, influence neural development (Fox, Levitt, & Nelson, 2010; Paus, 2008).
Steinberg et al. (2006) suggest that we think of adolescence as a critical period for brain development related to executive functions. Bunge and Zelazo (2006) suggest there may be a sequence of critical periods. A critical period is a developmental win- dow when specific functions in the brain are open to being shaped by experience. Again, evidence is limited, and caution is needed. The idea that adolescents might be conscious producers of their own brain development remains an enormous leap (and inevitably a gross oversimplification). Yet it is plausible to think of the adolescent brain as progressively ready for experiences that contri- bute to acquisition of higher levels of executive functions.
Cognitive development. Let me discuss what these higher-order functions are. We have learned from cognitive research that the new reasoning potentials of adolescence are much more varied and diverse than Piaget ever imagined (Kuhn, 2009). Daniel Keating (2004) described the development of an executive suite of new capabilities. These include planning, self-governance, goal-directed behavior, values, and principles (Steinberg et al., 2006). They also include capabilities for selective inhibition, inductive reasoning from evidence, and epistemic understanding (Kuhn, 2009; Moshman, 2005). In
sum, this suite includes an eclectic mix of different advanced and ‘‘meta’’ capabilities, whichFat least potentiallyFdevelop and become integrated with each other over adolescence and beyond.
A characteristic of many of these functions is increased ability to think about dynamic processes in systems. This includes thinking about dynamics within and between complex systems (Fischer & Bidell, 2006). For example, adolescents gain capacities for navigating situations in which they need to reconcile competing demands and goals (Kuhn, 2009). This also includes abilities to think about the dynamics of messy human systems (e.g., emotional, motivational, ecological processes). An important line of research shows that adolescents’ develop new abilities to think about the dynamic causal processes underlying the ordering of events in a person’s life (Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol, & Hallett, 2003; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).
This executive suite and these potentials for dynamic systems thinking are relevant not only to what adolescents learn. They are also relevant to how they learn it. Kuhn (2009) suggests that adolescents’ new potentials provide them analytic tools to be producers of their own development. They become able to consciously reflect on their experiences, draw conclusions, and create rules for navigating different types of situations.
There are significant limitations, however, to our knowledge about adolescents’ acquisition of these higher-order functions. First, we do not know much about what kinds of conscious executive skills, insights, or tools youth actually develop, especially for navi- gating a disorderly world. Most of the findings on adolescents’ cognitive development come from controlled laboratory studies and research on prestructured problems. This is a plus in that these methods give us more confidence in the findings. But it also means we know little about adolescents’ acquisition of executive skills for regulating goal- directed actions in real-world contextsFin which problems are unstructured and heterogeneous processes are at play (Rogoff, Baker-Sennett, & Matusov, 1994).
We know even less about how adolescents develop these higher-order functions. Authors writing about adolescents’ executive skills stress that they are ‘‘potentials’’Fsome youth may develop them but not others. The assumption is that their dev- elopment depends on having the requisite ex- periences. But what are these experiences? If youth are producers of their development of executive functions, how does this occur? One of our early steps should surely be interviewing youth about
2In the presidential address, I displayed a public service ad- vertisement with a picture of the ‘‘16-year-old brain’’ that showed a large hole in the prefrontal cortex and referred to it as a ‘‘missing part’’ of the teenage brain (New York Times, 2009).
320 LARSON
their learning experiences and how they might ‘‘produce’’ these skills.
Youth Programs as Contexts for Developing These Potentials
Organized youth programs are a good place to do this. Positive developmentalists have had a special interest in studying programs (i.e., community- based programs and extracurricular activities) as a natural laboratory for observing development. High- quality programs provide conditions that research suggests facilitate positive socioemotional develop- mentFsuch as being youth centered and supervised by supportive adults (Eccles & Gootman, 2002). In a meta-analysis, Durlak, Weissberg, and Pachan (2010) found that high-quality programs had effect sizes averaging .31 for socioemotional skills. Evidence suggests strongest effects for low-income youth (Mahoney, Vandell, Simpkins, & Zarrett, 2009; McLoyd et al., 2009).
I have argued that organized programs are a particularly good setting for observing adolescents’ acquisition of executive skills, including those for agency (Larson, 2000). Many programs for high- school-aged youth engage them in projectsFwork- ing toward difficult goals. In the research I will discuss, half the programs were arts or technology programs and youth worked on creating a mural, CD, musical production, or computer graphics. The other half were leadership or activism programs, and youth’s projects included creating a day camp for children, making a video about inequalities in city transit service, and lobbying officials (Wood, Larson, & Brown, 2009). What is important is that youth in high-quality programs typically have significant control over their projects, thus they have opportu- nities for exercise and, possibly, development of ex- ecutive competencies. Further, these projects present youth with unstructured problems in complex hu- man systems (Halpern, 2009; Mahoney et al., 2009), and they required that youth deal with the types of emotional and motivational challenges that inevita- bly arise in such work.
In order to observe these youth’s developmental experiences, we followed them over the natural course of their projects (2 – 9 months). The 11 pro- grams in the study were mostly small local programs run by an agency. A few were in schools, and one in a church. Six were in working class or poor urban neighborhoods, the rest in rural areas or small cities. We selected 8 – 12 representative youth at each pro- gram (the sample included 36 White, 32 African American, and 32 Latino youth). Then we conducted
periodic interviews with them during their projects (712 total interviews). Our staff also interviewed program leaders and observed program activities across this period, but they are not a main focus here.
Our goal was developing grounded theory about these youth’s conscious developmental processes over time, as they worked on their projects, includ- ing processes related to acquiring emotional, moti- vation, and cognitive-ecological skills.
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Emotions present challenging puzzles to adoles- cents, and solving these puzzles is crucial to their development of agency. The emotions that arise in working toward goals in real-world settings can derail attention and disrupt the work. Immanuel Kant described emotions as ‘‘diseases of the mind.’’
Yet Darwin and current emotion psychologists view emotions as innate systems that serve impor- tant functions in regulating interactions with a dis- orderly world. First, emotions arouse and direct energy and attention in important ways. Cannon (1932) stressed their role in redirecting attention to basic survival needs (e.g., fight, flight); more recent theorists recognize that emotions can also direct at- tention to higher-order goals (Gross & Thompson, 2007). Second, emotions can promote and regulate social interactions (Lewis & Haviland-Jones, 2000). Third, the experience of emotions can provide a person with useful information and assist with healthy decision making, although emotions can also mislead (Reyna & Farley, 2006; Schwarz & Clore, 1983).
So, emotions can be disease-like, direct attention away from goals, and be misleading. But they can also serve important functions in regulating inter- actions with the world, including directing attention toward higher-order goals. Such are the puzzles that adolescents face.3 Further, emotions are abstract; they can be private, repressed, or feigned. Strong emotions have peculiar disorderly dynamics: They can mess with your perception and reasoning.
Figuring out these peculiar dynamics is an im- portant developmental task of adolescenceFone I suggest is partly shaped by evolution. In contrast to species with fixed action patterns that dictate an organism’s response to given types of situa- tions, emotions in humans are clearly designed to allow our big brains the opportunity for cognitive
3Emotions are also puzzling to researchers. Ochsner and Gross (2007) describe them as ‘‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’’ (p. 87).
DEVELOPMENT IN A DISORDERLY WORLD 321
mediationFto think before we act. Humans have latitude to develop knowledge, skills, and cultural understandings that shape when we experience an- ger or joy. Humans also can potentially learn how to respond to complex situations in mature ways con- sistent with higher-order goals (Gross & Thompson, 2007), although most of us never fully get there. The developmental task is not just learning about emo- tions, but about emotional episodes: learning how different situations elicit emotions and how the subsequent emotional dynamics can then unfold.
Of course much emotional learning occurs in childhood (Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Withering- ton, 2006). But adolescence provides the opportunity for youth to apply their new executive suite to the complexity of emotions. They can develop advanced skills for mediatingFor steering throughFthe dy- namics of emotional episodes. Indeed, learning to manage one’s emotions in relation to long-term goals is seen as a central feature of becoming mature (Steinberg et al., 2006).
Adolescent scholars, unfortunately, have not had much to contribute on how this occurs. The recent Handbook of Emotional Regulation (Gross, 2007) has five chapters on emotional development, but not oneFnor a single citation in the indexFon adoles- cence. Likewise our own Handbook of Adolescence Psychology does not have a chapter or citations to emotional development (Lerner & Steinberg, 2009), a reflection of the lack of research. When we discuss adolescents’ emotionsFand there is good work (e.g., Allen & Sheeber, 2009)Fthey are typically viewed in relation to mental health problems. But it is impor- tant for us to study positive adolescent emotional development. What can adolescents learn, and how do they learn it?
Youth Programs as a Laboratory for Learning About Emotional Episodes
Organized programs are a good context to study this development, because youth’s projects elicit emo- tions and these can influence their work. Youth in our research reported experiencing frequent ‘‘hot’’ emotional episodes. These included episodes of negative emotions, such as4:
� anger at others, especially disorderly peers: ‘‘I was ready to snap, to flip at somebody’’;
� anxiety about outcomes: ‘‘My nerves got to me, dry mouth’’;
� unhappiness with outcomes: ‘‘We did really badly on a dance; we did horribly.’’
They also included positive emotions:
� Happiness from doing well ‘‘that was really exciting because we were going to be able to get it done.’’
In intensive analysis of a theater program in the research, we found that these repeated negative and positive emotional episodes appeared to provide youth with valuable information for their emotional learning (Larson & Brown, 2007). The program leaders had cultivated a culture in which emotions were accepted, discussed, and dealt with appropri- ately. As a result, differing emotional episodes ten- ded to play out …
,
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Naturalised, restricted, packaged, and sold: Reifying the fictions of 'adolescent' and 'adolescence'
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