Young People Are Resources to Be Developed: Promoting Positive Youth Development through Adult-Youth Relations and Community Assets

Abstract

(from the chapter) The theory of positive youth development that we propose in this chapter specifies that if young people are engaged in adaptive regulations with their context, if mutually beneficial individual left-arrow rightwards-arrow context relations exist, then young people will be on the way to a hopeful future marked by positive contributions to self, family, community, and civil society. As a result of such relations, youth will manifest several functionally valued behaviors, which in American society can be summarized by the five Cs (competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring). A thriving youth will be on a developmental trajectory toward an ideal adulthood status; that is, the person will develop behaviors that are valued by society because they act to structurally maintain it. Such behaviors reflect, then, contribution and, consistent with the mutually beneficial individual left-arrow rightwards-arrow context relations that comprise adaptive developmental regulations, such contributions should support the health and positive development of self, others, and the institutions of civil society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).