How has the idea of adolescence changed over time? We now know that the brain isn’t fully developed until about age 25—or 28 or 30?! Does that affect how we think about adolescence? Our expectations?
Lesson 5: Adolescence
The word “adolescence” may make you cringe, especially if you are a parent! This time period is well known for the many physical and psychological changes that occur, such as body size, shape, and the mood fluctuations of the typical adolescent. The adolescent’s strive for identity and autonomy is often convoluted with the lack of cognitive ability and experience needed to function in the ‘real-world’, independent from parents. Family values and beliefs may need to be thrown out by the developing teenager, only to be picked up piece by piece as the adolescent travels into adulthood.
The development of self is effectively stopped or derailed when an adolescent uses dysfunctional coping mechanisms to “dull the pain.” It’s unfortunate that the majority of teenagers think that they are told to avoid drugs and alcohol because of legalities, or because parents “don’t think I am an adult.” Parents can instead communicate to teenagers that substance avoidance is imperative because of the hugely negative effects of alcohol and drugs on the adolescent brain and body.
How has the idea of adolescence changed over time? We now know that the brain isn’t fully developed until about age 25—or 28 or 30?! Does that affect how we think about adolescence? Our expectations?
Assignments for Lesson 5:
1. Textbook readings: Chapters 8 and 9. You know what to do—read the summary, take notes, quiz yourself on the Test Yourself sections WITHOUT LOOKING at the answers until after you try them yourself… J
2. PowerPoint presentations: Chapters 8 and 9… Gosh, this is GREAT stuff for class and life!
3. Adolescent Brain Assignment: This assignment is due by Sun., July 10th at 11:59pm in the Adolescent Brain Assignment folder. (20 points)
Part I: Read about the first dataset from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study at https://abcdstudy.org/families/ (Explore links and videos on this site to help you understand what the ABCD is doing!) So… What IS the ABCD study? How many participants are enrolled? WHY is this study so exciting? Give TWO of the many questions that this study is asking (a bunch are listed on this webpage!) You should have ONE fat paragraph for this part.
Part 2: Go to the following links below. Each have a summary of interesting, current research findings. Choose TWO that are the most interesting to you. Summarize each. You should have a good-sized paragraph for each (thus two total paragraphs for Part 2).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/extended-adolescence-when-25-is-the-new-181/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sa-editorial-social&utm_content=&utm_term=&sf116354272=1
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/brain-scans-9-to-11-year-olds-offer-clues-aggressive-antisocial-behavior-Penn-FIU-research
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190814113931.htm
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/childhood-obesity-linked-to-structural-differences-in-key-brain-regions
Part 3: Explain ONE textbook concept that you have not explained in this assignment yet. For this one, fully describe your concept/term/theory and provide a personal example to demonstrate your understanding of it! (one big paragraph)
Brief History of Adolescence & Youth Development
All of the collaborators of the Boston Youth Arts Evaluation Project have been serving youth since the 1990’s. Meeting together over the past three years, we have engaged in many illuminating discussions about what works effectively with teens and young adults, and what does not. Our programs have thrived because more than talking we listen to the experts themselves—the youth.
Finding out what they want, how they think programs should be designed, and what we can improve upon has been our ongoing focus. As we embarked upon this project, however, we knew that we needed to consult other experts in the field to substantiate and enhance what we knew from our experience.
We reviewed developmental theories, sought to gain a better understanding of the brain, and explored the ways in which supporting youth in the arts could aid in their growth process. All of this was directed toward the goals of 1) developing a framework that could best explain the work we do, and 2) creating tools that could assess the indicators and the outcomes in the framework.
The depth of our research rooted us in the collective knowledge necessary to develop the BYAEP Framework. The following section provides a brief review of adolescence as a stage of life and some of the latest findings about the brains of adolescents. Both topics help to elucidate the necessity of addressing the specific needs of youth in our work and the ways in which youth arts development programs are ideally suited to address these needs.
More on this subject can be found in the excellent publication (to which BYAEP contributed) by the National Guild for Community Arts Education entitled “Engaging Adolescents”
Although the first use of the word “adolescence” appeared in the 15th century and came from the Latin word “adolescere,” which meant “to grow up or to grow into maturity” (Lerner & Steinberg, 2009, p.1), it wasn’t until 1904 that the first president of the American Psychological Association, G. Stanley Hall, was credited with discovering adolescence (Henig, 2010, p. 4). In his study entitled “Adolescence,” he described this new developmental phase that came about due to social changes at the turn of the 20th century.
Because of the influence of Child Labor Laws and universal education, youth had newfound time in their teenage years when the responsibilities of adulthood were not forced upon them as quickly as in the past.
Hall did not have a very positive view of this phase, and he believed that society needed to “burn out the vestiges of evil in their nature” (G. Stanley Hall, 2010). Therefore, adolescence was a time of overcoming one’s beast-like impulses as one was engulfed in a period of “storm and stress” (Lerner & Israeloff, 2005, p. 4).
He identified three key aspects of this phase: mood disruptions, conflict with parents, and risky behavior.
Other work appearing in the late 1950s through the 1970s in Europe and America helped adolescence emerge as a field of study (important earlier work by Freud, Piaget, Maslow, and Kohlberg also addressed stages of development). In BYAEP, we were interested in how the work of Erik Erikson related to our work and how it articulated what we knew.
Erikson (1959, pp. 251-263) described the impact of social experience across the whole lifespan. Erikson looked at life in eight stages. We felt that our age group of 13-23 year-olds actually struggled with the following three stages: