PSYC336_Chapter 14 - Cognitive Development in Adolescence

Improving student adjustment in middle and high school: reforms in high school - "Check and Connect"

"Check and Connect": school-based program. Students are assigned an adult monitor in 9th grade who stays in touch with the student; promotes school engagement; and is present during interactions between students, family members, and school personnel

Developmental tracks from school to work: Youth Development Study - implications

1. High school counselors: provide more encouragement for students to consider an associate's degree or vocational degree in a field of interest - Represents a viable pathway to a productive career 2. High schools: better prepare college-oriented students to be successful when they get there - Teaching strategies for becoming a successful college student - time-management, stress-management, and study skills 3. Business and political leaders: forge stronger links to schools - Partner with local high schools and provide internships for students/support programs to strengthen urban schools

Developmental tracks from school to work: after high school

1/3 of today's graduating seniors do not attend college during their 20s, and only ~50% of students who enroll in college ever complete their degree People without a college degree: much higher unemployment rate and earn less money over their lifetime Period after high school is less predictable and more turbulent than it was two decades ago - individuals combine working part-time or full-time with going to college, and some shift from one part-time job to another

Decision making skills: Montana Meth Project

2005: Montana was losing a war on methamphetamines - 50% of incarcerations and 50% of foster care admissions were meth-related Perceptions of the drug: glamorous or fun - pervasive, especially for teens and young adults Montana Meth Project: research-based, large-scale prevention program aimed at reducing rates of meth use, supported by hard-hitting media ads - Ads: attack root of problem - users perceived benefits in using the drug but little to no risk. Portrayed violence, broken relationships, and gruesome physical nature of meth addiction - increase chance that adolescents would think of these images when deciding to use meth The Montana Meth Project's approach: aligns with decision making in adolescence - risks, consequences, emotions, family communication, peer pressure, and so on

Decision making skills: competent decision making - reasons adolescents may make risky decisions

Adolescents focus more on benefits than risks of certain health-risk behaviors - Longitudinal studies: perceptions of benefits are stronger predictors of later substance use and sexual activity than perceptions of the risks for children and adolescents between 10-18 Once adolescents begin to engage in smoking, drinking, drug use, or early sexual activity - previous estimates of the risks of these behaviors decrease - Most of them don't experience any immediate negative consequences

Occupational choice: family and socioeconomic influences

Adolescents from higher-SES homes: more likely to choose high-status occupations - doctor, scientist, engineer, or lawyer Adolescents from lower-SES families: more likely to choose blue-collar, service industry, or low-status jobs - plumber, food service employee, or office worker Reason: educational attainment - Studies tracking young adults throughout their 20s: children of higher-SES parents are more likely to finish college than children of lower-SES parents - More educated/higher SES parents: know more about the college-application process and are better able to advise their children on a major that suits their interests and abilities, have more connections within their profession

Improving student adjustment in middle and high school: transition - children risk factors

Adolescents with more risk factors at the time of transition to middle or high school (poverty, parental conflict, or behavior problems) had greater drops in self-esteem and academic achievement These problems can persist, leading to a downward spiral in school grades and academic motivation Minority adolescents (particularly Latino and African American students who moved into a school with a lower proportion of same-race or ethnicity peers) felt less connected to the school, had poorer grades, and were absent from school more often

Information processing skills: choice of cognitive effort

Advancement of adolescent information processing: improving ability to manage and deploy mental resources Cognitive advance and a strong motivational component Adolescents are more selective (than younger children) about where and when they allocate cognitive resources and about the level of engagement they have in various activities - They can concentrate on activities they believe are part of their personal identity and that they are good at - May allocate fewer mental resources to things they believe they're not good at Example: someone identifies foreign language mastery as an area of high interest and strength - becomes engaged in relevant activities. Another sees foreign language as an area of weakness and focuses on technological skills as an area of strength - End results: huge variety in the domains of expertise among adolescents and the attained levels of skills in these domains

Formal operational thinking: isolating and combining variables

Another type of formal operational reasoning: isolating and combining variables to draw conclusions - typically in scientific domains

Occupational choice: gender - work-family balance

Anticipation of balancing work and family life can impact careers more than men Working women face a "second shift" when they come home - spending more time on cooking, house maintenance, and child rearing - Men are participating more than in the past Women, consciously or unconsciously, make educational and career choices that allow them flexibility to perform household and child care duties when they decide to raise a family

Information processing skills: information processing in adolescents - memory

Aspects of memory improve during adolescence: working memory capacity, use of more effective strategies for remembering, and expanding their knowledge base Enables adolescents to organize information in long-term memory in increasingly systematic ways

Family factors: authoritative parenting practices

Authoritative parenting: higher school achievement - Adolescents' greater cognitive maturity and their increasing desire for autonomy lead authoritative parents to grant more control to adolescents than was the case in middle childhood - Most adolescents increasingly manage their own schoolwork and activities Parents who combine warmth with monitoring of schoolwork, activity schedule, and whereabouts - adolescents with better psychological adaptation and school achievement Parents who allow adolescents to participate in decision making about their own lives tend to have students with higher school achievement and motivation levels - Likely these parenting practices help adolescents feel valued, recognize the importance of their schoolwork and psychological well-being to their parents, and to take the initiative to regulate their own behavior

Individual traits: intrinsic motivation decrease

Average levels of intrinsic motivation decline from middle childhood to adolescence - Higher achievers: less of a decline over time than lower achievers Reasons for the decline: 1. Increasing pressure to get good grades in middle and high school 2. Less cognitively stimulating experiences in the classroom High achievers: might find a way to make a subject stimulating - joining an academic club, participating in a science fair, or writing a story or blog on a topic of personal interest

Race and ethnicity in school: differences

Black and Hispanic students: lower grades and perform lower on standardized tests of achievement than white or Asian American students Gaps between groups have been closing steadily since the 1970s - still significant Differences in school success translate into differences in high school completion and college enrollment rates - 2008: ~81% of white students, 64% of Latino and 62% of black students graduated from high school on time - Among the students who graduated: smaller number of Latino and black students enrolled in higher education

Improving student adjustment in middle and high school: Carnegie Foundation

Carnegie Foundation (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989): a report on middle schools led to reforms at the middle school level Based on experimental interventions and evaluation studies - several changes were found to be effective Changes: 1. Large middle schools: educators formed smaller learning communities consisting of a class of students and teachers who stayed together for 2-3 periods during the day - Foster closer relationships with peers and teachers 2. Grouping students together in several classes often team-taught by the same teachers

Race and ethnicity in school: source of differences - attitudes towards school in immigrants

Children of recent immigrants (including from European, Asian, African and Latin American nations): put more emphasis on doing well in school than second and third generation students from the same ethnic group Reason: becoming acculturated to the US may involve devaluing academic success or losing attitudes - optimism and a strong work ethic, that were characteristic of the first generation of immigrants

Information processing skills: information processing in adolescents - processing speed

Children's speed of processing on different tasks: follows a similar developmental function - reaches its peak in about mid-adolescence. No appreciable improvement in general processing speed after adolescence

Formal operational thinking: concrete operations

Concrete operations: operations at a single level - Classifying animals into categories based on physical characteristics or classifying environments into different habitats.

Formal operational thinking: hypothetico-deductive reasoning - example

Consider different ways children and adolescents interact with a syllogism - argument whose conclusion is supported by two premises. Younger children can understand and follow the logic of a syllogism only when the premises are known to be true - Premise 1: The motorcycle is larger than the mouse. - Premise 2: The elephant is larger than the motorcycle. - Conclusion: Therefore, the elephant is larger than the mouse. When reasoning about counterfactual premises, young children generally deny that the conclusion is true because they focus on the truth-value of the statements - Premise 1: The mouse is larger than the motorcycle. - Premise 2: The motorcycle is larger than the elephant. - Conclusion: Therefore, the mouse is larger than the elephant. Adolescents: understand why, given those two premises, the conclusion follows logically - even though the conclusion is false in the real world. - They can focus on the statements themselves and understand their logical and systematic relationships

Scientific thinking: coordination of theory with evidence - earthquake study - continued

Continued to use variations of the forecaster program (such as forecasting avalanches) over a three-year period 4-5th graders: first discovered a variable was causative, they collected data to confirm this rather than to confirm the noncausality of other variables 6th grade: cumulative practice on forecasting problems - could eliminate less effective strategies and apply effective strategies to a new problem - Could isolate and control variables, plan how to collect appropriate data, and explain and justify their theories based on the evidence 7th graders: no experience with the forecasting programs - Nearly as poor as the 4th graders had been originally Conclusion: structured scientific inquiry experiences are essential - 4-7 grades: ideal time to begin instruction to support the development of scientific thinking

Scientific thinking: coordination of theory with evidence

Coordination of theory with evidence: process by which scientists cycle through explicit testing and modification of theories based on evidence Ability to coordinate theory with evidence is a distinct form of thinking different from general problem solving and reading comprehension Begins to develop during elementary school - learning about scientific strategies and procedures and gaining a metacognitive understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry

STEM education reform: elements of the approach - creation of personal connections

Creation of personal connections between students and ideas in STEM fields - Students work on a project they care about over a year's time - Involving students in experiences outside the classroom where they can meet and talk to STEM professionals Idea: students have to make an emotional connection to a STEM career before they will commit to the hard work of studying math, technology, engineering, and science

Teachers and classroom practices: aspects of classroom context - curricular material

Curricular material that is challenging and relevant to students' lives is important Important curricular element is course content that features voices (through literature), images (photographs and video records), and historical experiences of traditionally underrepresented groups - Minority students express greater interest and motivation to learn when such material is presented. There are no substantial declines in interest levels among majority students

Decision making skills: social context and decision making - presence of peers

Decisions depend on internal cognitive and emotional processes and on the external context Presence of peers affects decision making. Study: adolescents (average age 14), college students (average age 19), and adults take a computer driving task in which they faced a decision whether to stop or go through yellow lights and risk being hit by another car. - Players played alone or with two familiar, same-aged peers in the room Results: - Adolescents took 2x as many risks with peers in the room - College students took 50% more risks - Adults were not influenced by the presence or absence of peers Real-life situations: adolescent peers may urge each other on to take greater risks

Teachers and classroom practices: aspects of classroom context - design of instruction

Design of instruction impacts student motivation, engagement, and learning Educational researchers recommendation: learning activities be designed to require diverse cognitive operations Example: in literature classes, instructors can emphasize mastery of vocabulary, comprehension, and memorization as well as critical thinking and the ability to understand a passage at different levels (plot, character, and theme) - Instructors can teach students strategies that assist their learning - monitoring their own comprehension of what they are reading and engaging in various methods of repairing comprehension

STEM education reform

Development of scientific thinking accelerates between 4th and 8th grade and responds to a rigorous hands-on approach to science education US: over the past decade, momentum has gathered to reform science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) instruction, reducing the gap between the top industrial countries' student achievement levels and those in the US Obama: strong support for STEM-oriented high schools in his 2013 State of the Union address - Pointed to P-Tech High School in Brooklyn - collaborative effort between the New York City Public Schools, the City University of New York, and IBM - At this school, students graduate with a high school diploma as well as an associate's degree in engineering or computer science/technology

Improving student adjustment in middle and high school: transition

Each transition between schools is associated with declines in grades, academic engagement, and self-esteem. Takes an average of 1 year to recover. Survey of 48 school districts: declines in achievement test scores from grades 8-9 were consistently larger in districts that had elementary and middle schools (two school transitions) compared with districts that had only K-8 schools (one school transition)

Race and ethnicity in school: source of differences - family income

Family income level and educational level of parents - 2012: poverty rate was ~40% among black families with children under 18, 33% for Hispanic, 13% for white, and 14% for Asian American families From an early age, lower-income students encounter risk factors that interfere with the development of basic academic skills and study habits - Less access to books and computers, less supervision from parents, lower parental involvement with school, and under equipped and underfunded schools Problems are compounded in middle and high school as classes become more difficult and homework responsibilities increase When family income and educational level of parents are taken into account: differences between groups in school achievement remain

Formal operational thinking: symbols

Formal operational stage: language becomes a medium of representing thought as other symbol systems do - mathematical symbols or chemical elements Adolescents can perform operations with these symbols and with language - Example: solving algebraic equations, balancing chemical formulae, engaging in logical arguments The ability to generate hypothetical premises underlies the appeal of imaginative fiction - stories about utopian or dystopian worlds, science fiction, and fantasy

Information processing skills

Gradual improvements in cognitive skills that begin in early or middle childhood and extend into adolescence Adolescents improvement: attention, memory, processing speed, and metacognitive understanding Metacognitive understanding: the ability to reflect consciously and deliberately on one's own cognitive processes

Occupational choice: personality traits

Holland's personality types theory: people's career interests tend to fall into six general categories that can overlap and combine with one another - Realistic - Artistic - Social - Enterprising - Conventional Strong-Campbell Vocational Interest Inventory: survey based on Holland's theory Each occupational category fits certain types of jobs better, leading to more personal satisfaction and better psychological adjustment Examples: - Investigative person: suited to a career in science or engineering - Enterprising person: suited for a position in sales, marketing, or politics

Decision making skills: competent decision making - reasons adolescents may make risky decisions - implications/prevention

Implication: prevention efforts should expand beyond informing teens about health behavior risks They should highlight the benefits of discontinuing certain behaviors - increased attractiveness and having more disposable income

Decision making skills: emotions and decision making - implication

Implication: young adolescents need support from family members and teachers in making emotional decisions Adults should encourage young adolescents to pursue activities where their heightened reward sensitivity has positive avenues for expression (sports, artistic expression, or community service) rather than potentially negative activities (hanging out with older peers or trying drugs)

Formal operational thinking: test possible combinations - vial experiment

Inhelder and Piaget studied adolescents' ability to test all possible combinations to arrive at a solution to a problem Study: researchers showed the participants five colorless liquids in vials that could be combined to produce a yellow-colored liquid. Asked children to figure out how to obtain these effects Results: - 10-11: combine the liquids a few at a time and gave up quickly - 12-16: tried all possible combinations of the liquids (including two-way and three-way combinations) until they discovered the combinations that produced the yellow color Conclusion: formal operational thinkers can think of all possible combinations and proceed to test them.

Formal operational thinking: hypothetico-deductive reasoning

Inhelder and Piaget: types of reasoning made possible by formal operations Hypothetico-deductive reasoning: reasoning from general to specific (a deduction) that is based on hypothetical premises. - Involves thinking about hypothetical statements and understanding their logical relationships. - Most fundamental form of reasoning Inhelder and Piaget studied

Formal operational thinking: problems

Inhelder's and Piaget's book launched a flurry of studies of adolescent reasoning - had been neglected up to that point Follow-up studies raised questions about their findings 1. Classic formal operational tasks (pendulum and colorless liquids): adolescents and many adults did not solve the problems at the ages Piaget observed - Classic cross-sectional study of girls in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12: improvement with age on 10 formal operational tasks. In 12th grade, fewer than 60% of the girls could solve any one task 2. Adults can solve problems in a formal operational manner primarily in areas in which they have extensive training and experience. When tested on problems outside their area of expertise - many adults fail to reason formal operationally - Conclusion: normal brained people are capable of formal operational thinking but may exhibit it only in areas they have had extensive training or experience

Improving student adjustment in middle and high school: transition - "fit"

Interviews and observations: middle school transition experiences involve a poor stage-environment fit - classroom and school practices are not well suited to the psychological changes occurring in early adolescence Two primary areas in which the fit between middle schools and adolescents needs improvement: 1. Autonomy and control 2. Teacher-student relationships

Race and ethnicity in school: source of differences - attitudes towards school in Asians

Interviews with Asian and Asian American parents and students: attitudes promoting academic achievement Asian parents: place extremely high value on education, and their children feel a strong sense of obligation to the family to do well in school Asian parents and students: more likely to endorse a belief in a growth mindset Differences in attitudes translate into behavior: Asian students in the US and elsewhere on average spend more time on homework and other school-related activities and less time on socializing and watching television

Decision making skills: emotions and decision making - Iowa Gambling Task - to 10-30 year olds

Iowa Gambling Task to 10-30 year olds - Test was modified so sensitivity to punishment (significant losses) could be distinguished from sensitivity to reward (significant payoffs) Results: - Sensitivity to punishment was low in early adolescence but grew steadily into adulthood - Sensitivity to reward peaked in early to mid-adolescence and declined in early adulthood

Decision making skills: emotions and decision making - Iowa Gambling Task - to children and adolescents

Iowa Gambling Task to people 8-17. Gave participants standard tests of executive functioning that required flexibility, inhibiting previously correct (now incorrect) responses, and switching from one strategy to another Results: - Scores followed a J-shaped developmental function. Performance was fairly good from 8-11 but dropped considerably from 12-13 and rose to its highest level at 17 Conclusion: - Executive functioning progresses steadily across adolescence. Gambling performance undergoes a dip in early adolescence and then a rise in mid-adolescence Reason: - Excessive risk taking in the gambling task is due to heightened sensitivity to the big rewards that came occasionally. Could be due to insensitivity to the punishment of losing money

Decision making skills: emotions and decision making - Iowa Gambling Task

Iowa Gambling Task: widely used task in the study of affective decision making Players are asked to choose between four decks of cards shown on a screen. Player presses a button to turn over a card; the card states whether the player has won or lost money. Players continue to choose a deck from which to turn over a card for 100 trials. - 2 decks are advantageous: payoffs are small, there are more gains than losses - 2 decks are disadvantageous: they have occasional big payoffs, they eventually lead to net losses - Score: number of cards selected from advantageous decks minus the number from disadvantageous decks. Results: - Average adult begins avoiding the riskier decks about midway through the game. Some adults continue to choose from the riskier decks - strong tendency is associated with impairments in real-life decision making and deviations in the structure and functions of the reward and inhibition circuitry of the brain

Information processing skills: information processing improvements help complex thinking skills

Just because adolescents show steady improvements in information processing skills does not mean these changes are the main determinants of improvements in more complex skills, like scientific inquiry and decision making Improvements in basic information processing are necessary foundations for complex thinking skills Without additional ingredients of specialized knowledge, training, and expertise, cognitive advances are less likely to occur

Urban high school environment: size of school

Large, urban high schools are not serving the needs of their students well School districts and charter schools (like Promise Academy) have been successful at addressing some of the failings of these schools - One important factor is the size of the school Districts creating smaller schools: higher student achievement scores, lower dropout rates, decreases in delinquent behavior, and more students participating in school activities - Outcomes are greater for low-income, minority-group students Many examples of small urban schools that have achieved graduation and college matriculation rates of more than 90% Funding on a national level and from private foundations (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation) has accelerated the move to small schools

Family factors: authoritative parenting practices - minority study

Latino and African American adolescents: lower grade point averages and standardized test scores and are more likely to drop-out of high school than white or Asian American students Longitudinal study: followed 200 African American students from working and middle class families with two parents from 11-13 Results: - Increases in GPA and academic self-esteem were associated with increases in the warmth of parent-child relationships - Decreases in school performance were related to reports of increased conflict between the youth and one or the other parent

Occupational choice: gender - desire for high-prestige

Males and females do not differ in their desire for a high-prestige occupation Programs to change gender stereotypes - promoting STEM careers among women - Women still perceive gender discrimination in STEM work environments and hold lower expectations of eventual success in these careers when they enter college

Individual traits: goal orientation - mastery goal orientation

Mastery goals are associated with an intrinsic motivation to learn and deep engagement in a subject - Students who state that their goal is one of mastery tend to have higher academic achievement from age 5-17. This is less true of college students Mastery-oriented college students: may get poorer grades than their peers because they focus on their own interests in a class rather than the course requirements

Information processing skills: information processing in adolescents - metacognitive understanding

Metacognitive understanding improves considerably in adolescence - Progress occurs mainly by inhibiting strategies that are ineffective rather than by adding new strategies Example: as adolescents gain experience with science problems, they become aware of which strategies work well in solving particular problems.

Improving student adjustment in middle and high school

Middle and high schools were devised by educators who were trying to provide developmentally appropriate environments as children's intellectual, social, and emotional needs changed with age Most common model: two transitions - 1) from elementary to middle or junior high school and, 2) into high school.

Improving student adjustment in middle and high school: transition - "fit" - autonomy and control

Mismatch between increasing student desires for autonomy and control in early adolescence and the greater emphasis on the middle school teacher's control over students In schools where the mismatch is greater - intrinsic motivation and students' reported interest in various subjects decline more

Decision making skills: competent decision making - models of decision making

Models of decision making in adults. Competent decision makers: 1. Identifies possible options 2. Assesses the risks and benefits that may result from each choice 3. Evaluates how desirable each consequence is 4. Estimates the likelihood of each consequence 5. Uses the information from the previous steps in an organized fashion to decide on a course of action

Urban high school environment: four factors associated with high success - personalization

More successful schools: - Allow teachers to work with smaller groups of children for longer blocks of time during the day - Arrange for each teacher to work as counselor, advocate, and family contact for a small number of students

Urban high school environment: four factors associated with high success - common-core curriculum with performance-based assessment

More successful schools: - Present challenging assignments to students that resemble work they would do in a career or in college - Provide "authentic" assessment by having students present their report to a panel of teachers and judges from the business and professional community instead of using standardized tests

Urban high school environment: four factors associated with high success - teacher qualifications

More successful urban schools: - Hire better-trained teachers - Provide planning time for teachers to work together on the curriculum - Train teachers to work with English language learners and students with special needs

Individual traits: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Motivation is increasingly important in adolescence - adolescents tend to be more independent and self-directed than younger children Distinction is between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: - Intrinsic motivation: motivation to perform an activity for its own sake out of personal interest - Extrinsic motivation: motivation to perform an activity to achieve a reward or avoid a punishment

Decision making skills: competent decision making - assumptions about adolescents

Often assume that adolescents think they are invulnerable - Making it difficult for them to perceive the negative consequences of risk behavior (step 2) - Inaccurate at assessing the likelihood of a negative consequence (step 4) Interviews and laboratory tasks where people are asked to judge which of two scenarios is more dangerous: - Results: adolescents are just as cognitively aware of the risks and consequences of risky behavior as adults

Scientific thinking: coordination of theory with evidence - adolescents and young adults

Older adolescents and young adults: more likely to understand how to coordinate theories and evidence but are highly variable in the level of their scientific understanding Even when they have established which variables are causal and noncausal, many adolescents and young adults have difficulty understanding that variables may be additive (presence of 3 causal features makes an avalanche more likely than just 1 or 2) Experience "doing science" is necessary before adolescents and adults recognize that scientific knowledge is constructed by humans through a process of theory revision and evidence collection rather than being a truth that is simply discovered - Evolutionary theory: not a "truth" but a vast edifice of scientific theorizing and evidence modified by biologists over a 150-year period

STEM education reform: elements of the approach - opportunity structure

Opportunity structures: physical and social supports for STEM careers in the geographic location of the schools - Internships and mentorships - place high school students with local STEM employers and college programs - Some high school programs feed directly into training programs in industry and community colleges in the students' neighborhoods Idea: students are more likely to move into a STEM career if they have access to resources, people, and training in close geographic proximity to their homes

Individual traits: goal orientation - performance orientation

Performance-oriented students: do well in school, providing their goal is a positive one Negative goal: avoid bad grades - perform more poorly in school, higher anxiety, and more likely to cheat

Formal operational thinking: overview

Piaget: most of his career working with infants, young children, and school-age children - In 1958: focus on adolescent cognition in detail 11-16: formal operations is developed - Proposed by Inhelder and Piaget Formal operational thinking: characterized by thinking about abstract, hypothetical, and scientific problems - Involves mental operations on operations - Can think about the relationship between two statements or propositions. - Piaget's fourth stage of thinking

Occupational choice

Process of choosing an occupation: 1. Children and young adolescents: observe/hear about adults in various professions 2. Evaluate their own interests and talents 3. Decide how well they match up with various careers Initially vague and somewhat idealistic, ideas about careers become more specific and realistic as adolescents' ability to imagine a future self improves Occupational choice: product of multiple influences - individual's personality traits, work values, social context (gender, family influences, and socioeconomic status)

Decision making skills: social context and decision making - individual differences and parental advisement

Range of contextual factors: longitudinal survey of adolescents (12-17) in the US. Results: - Adolescents who anonymously reported engaging in more analytic and deliberative decision making tended to report less frequent risk-taking in four domains (alcohol use, drug use, risky sex, and delinquent behavior) - Factors correlated with risk-taking: degree of parental support, parental autonomy granting, and the number of deviant friends. Conclusion: parents may need to support their adolescents' decisions, be careful about granting autonomy to an adolescent who has demonstrated risky behavior in the past, and monitor their teen's friendships

Improving student adjustment in middle and high school: reforms in high school

Reforms have been implemented more slowly in high schools Interviews with 9th graders: common set of concerns - adjusting to new teachers, difficult coursework, learning the layout of the school, managing multiple classes, adapting to new peer groups and new social expectations Response to these concerns: increased emphasis in school counseling on promoting social relationships and creating a caring school community - Using older students as mentors or buddies - Providing special counseling sessions for 9th graders - Fostering closer relationships between homeroom teachers and students - "Check and Connect" Vigorous empirical evaluations of these changes in school practices have not been reported yet

STEM education reform: elements of the approach - rigorous curriculum

Rigorous curriculum: four years of courses in all four STEM areas - Example: taking biology, chemistry, physics, and environmental science courses; sequence of four courses in mathematics, courses in computer science, and courses in mechanical and electrical engineering Problems in these courses come from real-world situations, and the skills students master are those that business and technology companies as well as colleges expect students to have

Scientific thinking

Scientific thinking: root in ability of young children to create intuitive theories of physics, biology, and psychology - essence of mature scientific thinking is a process of coordinating theory with evidence Scientists explicitly state their favored theory - they know what evidence would support, refute, or modify the theory

Family factors: authoritative parenting practices - expectancy-value model

Socialize their children in the direction of high achievement in a particular area Expectancy-value model: developmental progression 1. Parents' beliefs lead to differences in parental behavior 2. Lead to differences in children and adolescents' motivational beliefs 3. Leads to differences in adolescent behavior Example: parent who believes her son has great musical potential is motivated to support music lessons and practice. Child gradually develops a belief in his own musical potential that motivates his choice to work hard on his music practice, and that buttresses the parent's belief in his talent and commitment

Developmental tracks from school to work: Youth Development Study - socioeconomic status and other factors that influence path choices

Socioeconomic status: most powerful predictor of whether a student would flounder College pathway: higher-income parents, strong academic orientation, worked steadily (not more than 15 hours per week) at a paid job during high school Associate's/vocational work pathway: weaker academic orientation but found steady high school work Attending college was less likely to lead to a job by ages 31-32 than obtaining an associate's or vocational degree

Race and ethnicity in school: source of differences - attitudes towards school in Latinos

Some attitudes toward schooling appear unique to Hispanic students. Study: asked Hispanic, black, and white students in the 9th grade write about how they pictured themselves in five years. Results: - Hispanic students: least likely to see themselves as going to college and the most likely to have social goals - starting a family or living close to their parents and other relatives to help them out Conclusion: these attitudes stem from a strong sense of familismo (family expectations and family closeness) that is common in Latino culture

Race and ethnicity in school: source of differences - stereotype threat

Stereotype threat: anxiety of fulfilling stereotypes of lower academic performance - Results: relatively lower performance by ethnic minorities under conditions where the stereotype is salient - triggering an excessive load on working memory High-achieving African American adolescents (did not believe the stereotype applied to them) performed more poorly when taking tests labeled as tests of cognitive ability as opposed to tests of content learning

Improving student adjustment in middle and high school: transition - "fit" - teacher-student relationship

Students often perceive a less personal and positive teacher-student relationship in middle school than in elementary school Students who report poorer relationships with teachers show reduced interest in subject matter - These changes are larger among low-achieving students

Individual traits

Students with higher IQ scores, better reading and math skills, and a positive academic self-concept tend to do well in elementary school. - Continues to be true throughout the secondary school years Longitudinal study of more than 4,500 students: prior grades and achievement scores were strong predictors of high school grades. - Once these factors were taken into account, psychosocial and behavioral factors (e.g. motivation and self-regulation) contributed to the prediction of high school grades

Decision making skills: emotions and decision making - theory about executive function

Studies of brain development from childhood to early adulthood: - Adolescents experience heightened reward sensitivity during or shortly after puberty Theory: executive functioning abilities develop at a slower rate, resulting in a period of development when adolescents show increased sensation seeking and risky behavior

Formal operational thinking: isolating and combining variables - pendulum study

Study: Inhelder and Piaget gave 10-16 year olds simplified versions of physics problems. To solve the problem, participants had to isolate variables (manipulate one variable and hold others constant) - Pendulum problem: participants learned about four variables that could affect the rate of swing of the pendulum: weight on the pendulum, length of the pendulum string, height at which the string is dropped, and the force of the push - Goal of problem: discover which factors determine the pendulum's rate of swing. Results: - 10-11: tried to test all of the variables at once and drew incorrect conclusions - 12-16: adolescents adopted a more sophisticated approach - held variables constant and manipulated one at a time; enabling them to discover that only the length of the string affects the rate of swing.

Scientific thinking: coordination of theory with evidence - earthquake study

Study: asked 4th graders to be earthquake forecasters and work with a computer program to determine the causal status of five variables: soil type (igneous/sedimentary), S-wave rate (slow/fast), gas level in the soil (light/heavy), snake activity (low/high), and water quality (poor/good) - Depending on which values of variables they chose, they received information on earthquake probability - specific cases the scientists had recorded levels of the variables before an actual earthquake occurred - 3 variables were causal and 2 noncausal - causal variables were independent and additive; as levels of the variables increased, earthquakes were more likely Results: - 50% initially made judgments based on their prior intuitions about what causes earthquakes (snakes were more active before earthquakes) - varied from student to student. Most did not collect any informative data - Remainder: requested case information - tended to focus on isolated cases or on a few cases that would not isolate the effects of any single variable - They could not support their theory with solid evidence

Family factors: authoritative parenting practices - expectancy-value model - study

Study: followed children over a 12-year period into adolescence - Results: evidence for parent-child bidirectional influences over time in sports and instrumental music, but not so strongly for mathematics and reading - Parents' beliefs were stronger predictors of their children's beliefs than the reverse - Adolescents' beliefs were stronger predictors of their behavior than vice versa - supporting the expectancy-value hypothesis Results were similar for boys and girls Conclusion: indicate how powerful parents' beliefs in their children can be

Family factors: authoritative parenting practices - minority study in urban middle school

Study: in urban middle school serving minority-group adolescents (Latino, African American, and multiracial students) Results: - Families in which mothers and fathers exhibited high warmth and a high degree of monitoring tended to have adolescents who engaged more with school and showed fewer school behavior problems

Urban high school environment: four factors associated with high success - support for struggling students

Successful schools don't place struggling students in lower tracks but keep all students on the same challenging track They provide extra classroom or homework support or tutoring to help students keep up

Teachers and classroom practices

Teachers who manifest care and concern for students as individuals make a difference Students who perceive their teachers as caring and supportive tend to be more emotionally engaged with school and have higher levels of achievement Study: focused on high-achieving schools. Many students described themselves as "robo-students" - complete schoolwork and get high grades but don't care about what they are learning and fail to retain it - Survey: emotional and cognitive engagement with schoolwork tends to decline between 7th and 12th grades in cross-sectional comparisons but was higher for students who reported having positive teacher-student relationships

Urban high school environment: The Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy in New York City

The Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy in New York City - Aim: help every one of its students get into college Community with failing schools, violence, and poverty Promise Academy: 90% college acceptance rate in the past few years.

Information processing skills: information processing in adolescents - attention

Three aspects of attention (sustained, selective, and executive attention) improve from middle childhood through adolescence These changes make it easier for children and adolescents to focus their attention on an incoming stimulus, select relevant information, and ignore irrelevant information Adolescents show increasing skill in inhibiting undesired responses and increasing flexibility in switching attention

Individual traits: goal orientation

Three main goal orientation categories 1. Mastery goal orientation: focuses on the inherent value of learning and improving one's knowledge and skill 2. Performance goal orientation: involves demonstrating one's ability, either by getting a good score or grade or outperforming others 3. Work-avoidance orientation: consists of procrastination or engagement in activities that interfere with completing a task Good balance of mastery and performance goals is ideal in adolescence - Mastery goals: help students delve more deeply into a class project that takes the whole semester - Performance goals: facilitate studying for an upcoming test

Decision making skills: emotions and decision making - Trails Test

Trails Test: students connected items in a series with a pen but had to alternate between letters and numbers Results: steady, linear improvement in Trails Test scores across the age span from 8-17

Teachers and classroom practices: aspects of classroom context

Two aspects of classroom context are important in adolescence 1) Content of the curriculum 2) Design of instruction

Decision making skills: emotions and decision making - Iowa Gambling Task - conclusions from the studies

Two studies support the data on brain development - There is a spike in reward sensitivity in early to middle adolescence They help explain the insidious attraction of a drug like meth. - Adolescents are sensitive to rewarding effects of the drug (strong drug "high") and insensitive to the punishing effects (morning-after "lows," loss of money, gradual declines in physical appearance and quality of social relationships)

STEM education reform: in the US

US: many middle and high schools have begun to implement inclusive STEM programs that inspire and prepare students for careers in these fields Goal: encourage more children to pursue STEM careers, particularly underrepresented groups - girls, low-income students, African American, Latino, and Native American students No rigorous evaluation of these programs - several important elements of the approach 1. Making personal connections 2. Rigorous curriculum 3. Opportunity structure

Urban high school environment: four factors associated with high success

Variety of mediating variables are responsible for improvements in outcomes. 4 factors found to be associated with the highest success rates at small (and moderately sized) high schools are: 1. Teacher qualifications 2 Personalization 3. Common-core curriculum with performance-based assessment 4. Support for struggling students

Occupational choice: work values

Work values: the types of rewards a person expects to get from work - Extrinsic rewards: salary and prestige - Job security: same job in the same location - Intrinsic rewards: challenging, interesting, and creative work - Altruistic rewards: help people or society - Social rewards: meeting new people and making friends on the job - Leisure: job that leaves time for other activities/can be done on a flexible schedule People differ in their work values End of high school, adolescents tend to be overly optimistic and believe they can find a job that meets nearly all of these values - As they attend college and/or gain experience in the working world, the emphasis on extrinsic, social, and altruistic rewards tends to decrease whereas the emphasis on intrinsic rewards and job security remains strong

Individual traits: goal orientation - work-avoidance goals

Work-avoidance goals are associated with poor motivation and school performance

Occupational choice: personality traits - interests and career choice

Young adults' interests are moderately correlated with their occupations - many people blend traits from different categories and a given person might fit multiple occupations - Difficult for college students to settle on a major or career choice Young adults today often switch jobs or careers several times before settling on one - This process occurs over a longer period of time than in the past

Occupational choice: gender - differences

Young women are as likely to be employed as young men and they are making inroads into traditionally male professions - Women: concentrate in the service sector/helping professions - office assistant, nurse, elementary school teacher, social worker, and occupational therapist Reason for gender differences: - Children and adolescents hold stereotypes about which jobs are appropriate for males and females - According to these stereotypes, women typically work with people while men typically work with objects

Developmental tracks from school to work: Youth Development Study

Youth Development Study: investigate kinds of developmental pathways people take after high school and which factors predict the pathway they take. - Followed 1,000 high school graduates in St. Paul, Minnesota, until they reached 31-32 Answer questionnaires following high school graduation - identified 4 distinct developmental pathways from school to work 1. 35%: completed a four-year-college degree within seven years after high school and arrived at a self-identified course of post-college study or a job that provided skills for a career 2. 17.5%: associate's degree, a vocational degree, or a vocational certificate and worked in a job that gave them skills pertaining to their intended career 3. 28%: not established a stable career path by 31-32, even though they had attended (and some finished) college 4. 19%: same outcome as group 3 but had not attempted college "Flounderers": group 3&4. Majority had moved in and out of (mostly part-time) employment, though some were employed full-time