Working Study Guide (Exam II)

Understand the stereotypes of adolescent development within the family in American culture

- "Why Do They Act That Way?; Get Out of My Life, But First, Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall? Your Defiant Teen; Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy; Yes, Your Parents Are Crazy" - Books for parents of teenagers tend to focus on problems (i.e., adolescents rebel against their parents just for the sake of rebelling) - Makes stress and strain between teenagers and parents seem commonplace, even normal - Problems: 1. The stereotypes presented in these writings isn't true 2. The more that parents believe them, the more they expect their own child to conform to them, and the worse their relationship with their teenager becomes (self-fulfilling prophecy) - Scientific studies indicate that, on average, there is very little emotional distance between young people and their parents - Family problems are no more likely to occur during adolescence than at other times in the lifespan - Among teenagers and parents who report having problems, the great majority had troubled relationships during childhood, and declines in families are greatest in families where relationships were less close to begin with

Describe how school violence has changed the climate of school and the outcomes for students (e.g., zero-tolerance policies)

- 1/4 students has been a victim of violence in or around school, and 1/6 is worried about being physically attacked or hurt there - Each year 1/12 teachers are threatened, and in 1/2 of these incidents, the teachers have been physically attacked - These problems are especially common in middle schools - White students are more likely to be victimized than Black students, especially when White students are in the minority, but Black students are more likely to be victimized in schools with a higher proportion of minority students - Violence is more common in overcrowded schools located in poor urban neighborhoods - Some (students) make sure that they steer clear of students who have reputations for violent behavior and go out of their way to act friendly if they can't avoid them. Others learn which parts of town to avoid. Still others befriend peers who can serve as protectors - Asian students were often the victims of violence and verbal harassment at the hands of their Black and Latino classmates, in part because they believed that teachers favored Asians and discriminated against their non-Asian classmates - Some educators have suggested that schools should refer aggressive students to law enforcement, and many schools have police officers on duty to deter assaults and arrest students who cause trouble (zero tolerance) - Suspending or expelling students from school increases their likelihood of getting into further trouble and dropping out - Many students end up with arrest records and contact with the justice system for acts that in the past would have been treated by school officials as disciplinary infractions - Has a disproportionate impact on Black students, who are more likely than others to report that school rules are unfair and inconsistently enforced, and to be suspended or expelled, even though they are no more likely to commit the sorts of acts that would warrant these responses - School violence is more effectively reduced though programs that attempt to create a more humane climate - Schools should define infractions carefully, train staff into how to respond appropriately, reserve suspensions/expulsions for only the most serious disruptive behaviors, require school police officers to have training in adolescent development, and implement preventative measures to improve school climate and increase students' attachment to school

Describe how adolescents spend their time

- Academic - Social - Maintenance/work - TV/computer - Adolescents' free time is not best thought of as a zero-sum phenomenon, where involvement in one activity displaces involvement in another. Rather, there are well-rounded adolescents who have substantial time commitments across many different activities, adolescents who tend to focus on one type of activity, and adolescents who don't do much of anything outside of school - Relatively busier adolescents are better adjusted and more accomplished than their classmates, but whether their better adjustment is a cause or consequence of their busy schedules isn't clear

Understand the determinants and consequences of popularity and rejection among peers during adolescence

- Although it is widely agreed that popular adolescents are generally more socially skilled than their unpopular peers, there is a surprising variability among popular teenagers with respect to other characteristics - Whereas sociometric popularity is determined by social skills, friendliness, sense of humor, and so forth, which are valued by people of all ages and backgrounds, the determinate of perceived popularity are highly variable. - Because the determinants of status can easily differ between schools, or even among groups within the same school, it is hard to predict what adolescents will be popular without knowing what is valued in that adolescent's social context - Whereas many of the things that lead to popularity also make adolescents more likeable, some of the things that help maintain popularity once it is established may actually make adolescents less likeable - In general, adolescents tend to affiliate with peers who have a similar level of popularity within their school, mainly because the more popular kids reject the less popular ones - Predicting perceived popularity is further complicated by the fact that peer norms change, and socially competent adolescents are skilled at figuring them out, adjusting their behavior in response to them, and even influencing them - Agressive adolescents who use their aggression strategically and selectively (instrumental aggression) are much more popular than adolescents whose aggression is unplanned and frequent (reactive aggression) - Adolescents whose early popularity comes from impressing their peers with delinquent and "psuedomature" behavior have more interpersonal and behavioral problems as young adults - Compared with their less popular peers, popular adolescents are more likely to have close and intimate friendships, have an active social life, take part in extracurricular activities, and receive more social recognition - Adolescents who describe themselves as well-liked and socially competent fare well psychologically over time (have higher self-esteem both as adolescents and as adults), regardless of whether they are genuinely popular among their classmates - Having friends outside school can buffer the harmful consequences of having few friends in school - One set of unpopular adolescents comprises teenagers who have trouble controlling their aggression. Withdrawn adolescents make up a second unpopular set; these adolescents are shy, anxious, and inhibited, and boys of this sort are frequently victims of bullying. A third group is both aggressive and withdrawn. These adolescents have problems controlling their hostility, but like other withdrawn children, they tend to be nervous about initiating friendships with other adolescents - Unpopular aggressive children are more likely than their peers to think that other coo;dren's behavior is deliberately hostile, even when it is not (hostile attributional bias) - In general, unpopular withdrawn children are excessively anxious and uncertain around other children, often hovering around the group without knowing how to break into a conversation or activity - Their hesitancy, low self-esteem, and lack of confidence make other children feel uncomfortable, and their submissiveness makes them easy targets for bullying - Often, adolescents who are rejected by their peers were also spurned during middle childhood, and this rejection, in turn, was the consequence of behavioral and emotional difficulties apparent in early elementary school - Others are rejected in adolescence mainly because they've been rejected in the past - Many of these youngsters are especially sensitive to being rejected, and show a heightened neural response to rejection, as well as increased susceptibility to depression as a consequence - Some are depressed, and their depression leads them to behave in ways that make them targets of harassment - Unfortunately, the more these children are teased, rejected, and bullied, the more anxious and hesitant they feel, and the more they blame themselves for their victimization, which only compounds their problems - Children who are victimized but who have supportive friends are less likely to be caught in this vicious cycle than those who don't - Rejection by peers is a significant source of stress for adolescents, who show greater brain activation to rejection than children do, as well as a stronger biological stress response to it - Peer rejection and friendlessness are associated with subsequent depression, behavior problems, and academic difficulties - Aggressive individuals who are rejected are at risk for conduct problems and involvement in antisocial activity as adolescents, not just as a direct result of their rejection, but because the underlying causes of their aggression also contribute to later conduct problems - Withdrawn children who are rejected are likely to feel lonely and are at risk for low self-esteem, depression, and diminished social competence - again, both as a result of being rejected and in part because the underlying causes of their timidity also contribute to later emotional problems - Rejection is especially likely to lead to depression in adolescents who place a lot of importance on their standing in their peer group and who believe that they, rather than their peers who reject them, are at fault - Adolescents who are both aggressive and withdrawn are at the greatest risk of all

Describe the history of adolescent peer groups in the United States, specifically how educational requirements, economic factors, and demographics changed the nature of peer groups / Understand whether or not adolescent peer groups represent a separate culture within the United States

- As the family has become a less important political and economic institution, universal norms have come to replace particular ones. And this has required a change in the way in which adolescents are prepared for adulthood. - The spread of compulsory education was a major factor in the development of peer groups as we know them today - Educators first developed the idea of free public education, with students grouped by age - a practice known as age grading - in the middle of the nineteenth century. In doing so, they established an arrangement that would encourage the development and maintenance of age-segregated peer groups - It was not until the second quarter of the twentieth century, however, that most adolescents were directly affected by educational grouping - Attending elementary school was common before 1900, but until `1930 or so, high school was a luxury available only to the affluent - Adolescent peer groups based on friendships formed in school were not prevalent until well into the twentieth century - Some theorists do not see these age-segregated peer groups as a bad thing. They feel that as society has become more technologically advanced, adolescents have come to play a valuable role in preparing one another for adulthood. - During the past 100 years, contemporary societies have shifted away from being post figurative cultures. They have become configurative cultures, in which socialization of young people is accomplished not merely through contact between children and their elders but through contact between people of the same age - These theorists believe that as configurative cultures have change even more rapidly, they will be replaced by prefigurative cultures, in which young people would become adults' teachers - Perhaps the most important factor influencing the rise of adolescent peer groups in contemporary society was the rapid growth of the teenage population between 1955 and 1975 (this trend turned downward in 1975. The relative size of the adolescent population decreased until 1995. But during the last decade of the twentieth century - when the products of the baby boom began raising adolescents of their own - the size of the teenage population began increasing once again) - Changes in the number of adolescents may warrant changes in the allocation of funds for social services, educational programs, and health care, since adolescents' needs are not the same as those of children or adults - Changes in the size of the adolescent population have implications for understanding the behavior of cohorts - Baby boomers, for example, were members of a very crowded cohort. During their adolescence, they encountered a lot of competition for places in college, jobs, and so on. The size of this cohort also meant that it could attract a great deal of public attention from politicians to advertisers. - In contrast, members of Gen X, who were adolescents in the late 1980s and early 1990s, were members of a much smaller cohort, with less competition among individuals but far less clout. - Because the Gen Z cohort, today's teenagers, is considerably larger than Gen X, it will likely be much more influential - There are those who claim that age segregation has led to the development of separate youth culture, in which young people maintain attitudes and values that are different from - even contrary to - those of adults. But some argue that industrialization and modernization have made peer groups more important, that adults alone can no longer prepare young people for the future, and that peer groups play a vital role in the socialization of adolescents for adulthood - Moreover, recent studies have found that adolescents engage in more exploratory behavior, behave more prosaically, and learn faster when they are with their peers than when they are by themselves

Understand the core developmental issues affecting parents when their children are passing through adolescence

- At the same time that adolescence are entering into a period of rapid physical growth, sexual maturation, and, ultimately, the period of the life span that society has labeled one of the most physically attractive, their parents are beginning to feel increased concern about their own bodies, about their physical attractiveness, and about their sexual appeal - At the same time that adolescents are developing the capacity to think systematically about the future and do, in fact, start looking ahead, their parents are beginning to feel that possibilities for changing their own lives are limited (before midlife, individuals tend to measure time in terms of how long they have been alive; after midlife, they are more likely to see things in terms of how much longer they have to live) - The naive optimist of adolescence may clash with the hardened pragmatism of middle age - For adolescents, this phase in the family life cycle is a time of boundless horizons (power, status, and entrance into the roles of adulthood); for their parents, it means coming to terms with choices made when they were younger - Studies show that parents' mental health problems, which are at an all time high while their children are adolescents', negatively affect the way they interact with their adolescents, which in turn adversely affects the teenagers

Explain the role, structure, and function of cliques and crowds

- Cliques are small groups of between 2 and 12 individuals - the average is about 5 or 6 - generally of the same ethnicity, same sex and, of course, the same age - Can be defined by group activities or simply by friendship - Provides the main social context in which adolescents interact with one another - Some cliques are more open to outsides than others, but virtually all are small enough that the members feel they know each other well and appreciate each other more than people outside the clique do - Three factors appear to be especially important in determining adolescent clique membership and friendship patterns: orientation toward school, orientation toward the teen culture, and involvement in antisocial activity - Despite the popular image of adolescents as cliquish, fewer than half (to 75%) of the adolescents in any school are members of cliques - Girls are more likely than boys to be members of cliques, whereas boys are more likely than girls to be isolates - Very few students are liaisons or connected to just one other adolescent in a dyad - Adolescents' cliques show only moderate stability over the course of the school year although cliques cliques become more stable later in high school - Adolescents' positions in their school's social network are relatively stable over. time: Adolescents who are members of cliques in the 9th grade are clique members in 10th grade; 9th grade isolates remain, for the most part, isolates 1 year later - Although the actual composition of of adolescents' cliques may shift over time, the defining characteristics of their cliques or their best friends do not - The more recently a student has arrived at a school, the less well connected he or she is likely to be; developing a social network is especially hard on students whose families move frequently - Adolescence marks the emergence of larger collectives of peers, called crowds - These crowds typically develop their own mini-cultures, characterized by particular styles of dressing, talking, and behaving - Not until early adolescence can individuals accurately list the various crowds in their schools and reliably describe the stereotypes that distinguish the crowds from one another - Crowds are "reputation-based clusters of youth, whose function in part is to help solidify young people's social and personal identity" - In contemporary American high schools, typical crowds includes "jocks," "brains," "nerds," "populars," and "druggies," but their generic presence is commonplace around the world (minus "jocks") - Unlike cliques, crowds are not settings for adolescents' intimate interactions or friendships, but instead serve three broad purposes: to locate adolescents within the social structure of the school, to channel adolescents toward some peers and any from others, and to provide contexts that reward certain lifestyles and disparage others - The key point is that membership in a crowd is based mainly on reputation and stereotype, rather than on actual friendship or social interaction - It can be very difficult for adolescents, who - if they don't change their reputation early in high school - may find themselves stuck, at least in they eyes of others, in a crowd they don't want to belong to or even see themselves as a part of - Some individuals can be members of more than one crowd simultaneously, if their reputation is such that they fit into them - Although an adolescent's closest friends are almost always members of the same clique, some of them may belong to a different crowd, especially when one crowd is close in lifestyle to the other - As crowds become less important, between middle and late adolescents, their influence over the individual's behavior weakens - Many of the basic distinctions among crowds that have been found in studies of predominantly White high schools also exist among adolescents from ethnic minority groups. There is evidence, however, that in multiethnic high schools adolescents first divide across ethnic lines and then form into the more familiar adolescents crowds within ethnic groups - Crowds are not simply clusters of cliques; the two different structures serve entirely different purposes. Because the clique is based on activity and friendship, it is the peer setting in which adolescents lean social skills - how to be a good friend, how to communicate effectively, how to be a leader, how to enjoy someone else's company, or how to break off a friendship that is no longer satisfying. In contrast, because crowds are based more on reputation and stereotype than interaction, they probably contribute more to the adolescents sense of identity and self-conception than to his or her actual social development

Explain the sex differences in family relationships

- Differences between the family relations of sons and daughters are minimal...sons and daughters report comparable degrees of closeness to their parents, amounts of conflict, types of rules, and patterns of activity - Teenagers relate very differently to mothers and fathers, though - Adolescents tend to be closer to their mothers, to spend more time alone with their mothers, and to feel more comfortable talking to their mothers about problems and other emotional matters; as a consequence, mothers tend to be more involved than fathers in their adolescents' lives - Fathers often rely on mothers for information about their adolescent's activities, but mothers rarely rely on fathers for this - Fathers are more likely to be perceived as relatively distant authority figures to be consulted for objective information but not for emotional support - Adolescents also fight more often with their mothers than with their fathers and perceive mothers as more controlling, but this does not appear to jeopardize the closeness of the mother-adolescent relationship - Although adolescents spend about twice as much time with their mothers as with their fathers, time spent with fathers is more predictive of adolescents' social competence and feelings of self-worth

Understand the effects of poverty and financial strain on adolescent development

- Income loss is associated with disruptions in parenting, which in turn, lead to increases in adolescent difficulties, including a diminished sense of mastery, increased emotional distress, academic and interpersonal problems, and delinquency - According to the Family Stress Model, financial strain increases parents' feelings of depression and anxiety, worsens marriages, and causes conflicts between parents and adolescents; these consequences, in turn, make parents more irritable, which adversely affects the quality of parenting - In contrast, parents who are able to maintain a more positive outlook through the difficult times are more likely to protect their adolescents from the psychological harm associated with financial strain, and adolescents who have stronger self-regulation are better able to cope with their families difficulties - Not surprisingly, the family climate created by economic strain, often characterized by high levels of conflict in multiple relationships, puts adolescents at risk for a variety of problems - Persistent poverty, like temporary economic strain, undermines parental effectiveness, making parents harsher, more depressed, less involved, less consistent, and more embroiled in conflict - These consequences all have negative effects on adolescent adjustment, which are manifested in increases in anxiety and depression, more frequent conduct problems, diminished school performance, and less prosocial behavior - Poor adolescents are more likely to be exposed to violence, to feel more alienated from school, and to be exposed to high levels of stress - Families fare better when they have adequate resources of social support and when they have strong ties to religious institutions - Two specific sets of family management strategies employed by parents in poor neighborhoods seem to work: those that attempt to strengthen the adolescents competence through effective child rearing within the home environment or through involving the child in positive activities outside the home, and those that attempt to minimize the child's exposure to dangers in the neighborhood - Although adolescents in poor neighborhoods benefit from consistent parental monitoring, they do not thrive when their parents exercise excessive control - According to the National Runaway Safeline, in the US on any given night, 1.3 million adolescents are living on the streets - Teenagers are more likely to be homeless than any other age group - Studies find that the population of runaway youth is 75% female, most are between the ages of 12-17, and includes a large proportion of LBBTQ+ teens, - It is estimates that about 1/3 of homeless adolescents nationally are Black, which is twice the proportion of Black youth in the general population; it is also estimated that Latino adolescents are significantly less likely than other teenagers to be homeless - Homeless youth are more likely than other adolescents to engage in high-risk behaviors, including drug use, unprotected sex, and sex with multiple partners, and to suffer from a range of health problems, including depression, suicidal ideation, and poor nutrition - Many teenagers become homeless: - Because their families fell into financial ruin and lost their home - To escape family problems, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse - After being released from foster care or incarceration without any provision for their post-release living arrangements (moving to a shelter is often not a possibility, because many shelters do not accept unaccompanied teenagers) - Disruptions in schooling are common, which makes it less likely that homeless adolescents will finish high school and become gainfully employed - Many homeless teenagers resort to dealing drugs or exchanging sex for food, clothing, or shelter (which is especially common among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning LGBTQ+ youth, who are more likely to be abused when they live in adult shelters and victimized when they are living on the street) - Although many states have enacted policies to protect and support homeless teenagers, the extent of these services falls far short of the need for them

Understand the extent of mass media's influence on adolescent development, behavior, and social relationships. Also, discuss the limitations associated with studying the impact of media / Describe the positive and negative effects of social media on adolescents' relationships and mental health

- Individuals who report that their devotion to online gaming is a problem appear similar to individuals with other types of addiction - Pathological (violent) video gaming is correlated with self-reported aggressive behavior - Playing prosocial games, however, can lead to increases in empathy, which may increase adolescents' inclinations to help others, playing sports video games is associated with increased participation in sports, and playing certain games can facilitate the development of problem-solving skills - Gaming in excess of 3 hours a day is associated with more hyperactivity and conduct problems in school, gaming for less than an hour a day is associated with better functioning than no gaming at all, especially among adolescents who played single-player games (may enhance visual skills, reaction time, hand-eye coordination, information-processing skills, and problem-solving abilities) - The relationship between screen time and adolescents' mental health depends on how much time is occupied in digital activity - A moderate amount of screen time doesn't appear to have negative effects on mental health and may even have some positive ones - The amount of time adolescents spend watching TV and playing video games is inversely linked to the amount of time they spend in physical activity - Health experts are concerned that the vast amounts of time teenagers spend on the Internet is sedentary, which is associated with obesity, high blood pressure, poor sleep, and other indicators of poor health - To the extent that the Internet is used by adolescents to acquire accurate information, it can be a positive force (depends on the quart and content of the information conveyed). This may be especially true with respect to educating adolescents about healthy behavior such as safe sex. - There also is some evidence that the Internet can be used successfully to promote mental health and help individuals deal with depression and anxiety - It is extremely difficult to disentangle cause and effect, because adolescents choose which mass media they are exposed to and how much exposure they have - Although it has been speculated that TV violence images provoke aggression, for example, aggressive adolescents are more prone to choose to watch violent programs - Similarly, sexual behavior may be correlated with listening to "sexy" music or watching television programs with a lot of sexual content, but it is impossible to say which causes which - Although several major studies have found that adolescents who report a lot of media use are significantly more troubled than adolescents who use these media less often, it is not known whether large doses of mass media cause problems, whether adolescents with more problems spend more time online as a way of distracting themselves from their troubles or both - It is important to keep in mind, too, that not all media exposure is the same, and that not all exposure is bad - There are three basic schools of thought concerning the media's impact on adolescent development: - One argues that adolescents' knowledge about the world, attitudes and values, and behavior are influenced by the content to which they are exposed; the media shapes adolescents' interests, motives and beliefs about the world (cultivation theory) - A second school of thought, called the uses and gratifications approach stresses that adolescents choose the media to which they are exposed; any correlation between what adolescents are exposed to and what they do or think is due not to the influence of the media, but to the fact that individuals with particular inclinations choose media that are consistent with their interests - According to the third school of thought, adolescents' preferences and their media exposure affect each other. Moreover, adolescents not only choose what they are exposed to, but interpret the media in ways that shape their impact (media practice model) - These problems in distinguishing correlation, causation, reverse causation, and spurious causation make it almost impossible to say for sure whether media exposure genuinely affects adolescent development Sex - The most common sexual messages on television and in film involve men seeing women as sex objects, sex as a defining aspect of masculinity, sex as a competition, and sex as fun and exciting; the message that women are sex objects is one that teenagers seem especially susceptible to - A high proportion of teenagers believe that what pornography portrays is "realistic," and reported that it is their main source of information about sex - Some studies have concluded that exposure to sex on television or online accelerates adolescents' sexual behavior, leading them to start having sex at an earlier age. Others have found that adolescents who are interested in sex choose to expose themselves to more sexual content but are not affected by it. Still others find evidence for both, or different effects on different adolescents - There is evidence that repeated exposure affects adolescents' attitudes, beliefs, and intentions. For example, adolescents who are exposed to a lot of media in which women are objectified have more tolerant attitudes toward sexual harassment, more sex-stereotyped beliefs, and more sexist attitudes, although the impact of exposure appears to depend on how realistic the adolescent perceives the imagery to be - Adolescent girls who frequently read fashion magazines are more dissatisfied with their bodies than are girls who do not, and controlled experiments have indicated that showing girls images of thin models increases their body dissatisfaction - Moreover, frequently reading magazine articles about dieting or weight loss leads to increases in unhealthy;thy weight control behaviors, such as intentional vomiting and inappropriate use of laxatives (similar results are reported in studies of girls' responses appearance-related commercials on television and websites) - Boys are also more dissatisfied with their body after seeing music videos featuring exceptionally buff models or comparing themselves to others on social media - Helping adolescents develop better media literacy skills may counter this process Violence - Once researchers take into account factors that lead some adolescents to want to play violent video games, the actual effects of playing are small and often nonsignificant - Moreover, how adolescents respond to video games depends on whom they play them with; one study found that when adolescents played violent video games with their parents, they reported declines in aggression - And, it may not be violent video games, but highly competitive ones that are problematic (may make adolescents more aggressive and less prosocial) - In contrast to studies of violent video games and music, numerous studies have shown that repeated exposure to violent imagery on television leads to aggressive behavior in children and youth, especially among those who have prior histories of aggression - Adolescents' exposure to relational aggression on television predicted their subsequent use of relational aggression Drugs - The effects of seeing smoking in movies are strongest among adolescents who are initially less inclined to take up smoking, which argues against the notion that adolescents' desire to smoke leads to their exposure to smoking in movies and suggests instead that exposure to smoking in movies may actually influence adolescents to start smoking - Exposure to ads for alcohol and tobacco can affect adolescents beliefs about the degree to which using these substances is socially approved - Evaluations of media campaigns designed to reduce adolescent smoking, drinking, and drug use show tray certain types of messaging may be more effective than others (i.e., emphasizing the questionable motives of the tobacco industry has proven to be effective) Socializing - Social communication on the Internet, like social communication face-to-face or over the phone, creates both positive and negative experiences - 2/3 of adolescents report that things have happened that have made them feel better about themselves - 60% say that social media has made them feel closer to someone - 25% of adolescents report that something that happened online led to a face-to-face argument with someone/the end of a friendship - Among all adolescents report having seen someone post something mean about someone, but 85% have said that they had told someone posting mean things to stop - Social media leads to improvements in empathy and can facilitate adolescents' civic engagement - Frequent online communication brings friends closer, perhaps because online communication facilitates self-discloser - Spending a lot of time in other online activities, however, (e.g., watching videos) leads to lower quality relationships with one's close friends, presumably because the activities take time away from interacting with them - Adolescents find it easier to imitate conversations with crushes and potential romantic partners online than through face-to-face conversations, and they may find it easier to flirt on a social media site than in person - Opportunities for misunderstanding the emotional content of a message are greater when people communicate online, which can create problems / the public nature of many adolescents' postings can strengthen a relationship that is affirmed but can create jealousy and mistrust when unexpected images are encountered - When adolescents seek and find social support and positive feedback, they feel better; when they seek it but don't get it, they feel worse - Some teenagers become so addicted to maintaining their online relationships that they may develop what has been nicknamed "Facebook depression," which is thought to be the result of spending too much time obsessing about one's online relationships - Frequent messaging, especially with acquaintances who are not close friends, can become compulsive and lead to feelings of depression - Adolescents with high needs for popularity are more intensely concerned about what is posted online and report higher levels of FOMO, which can be upsetting - Social media sites are a context in which the socially rich get richer and the socially poor get poorer - Adolescents who report symptoms of depression are more likely to use social media to engage in social comparison and feedback seeking, which may increase their anxieties, concerns, and likelihood of victimization, just as these behaviors do when they are done online

Understand adolescents' role in the American workplace, how it has changed over the years, and how it compares with that of other industrialized nations

- Prior to 1925, teenagers from all but the most affluent families left school between the ages of 12 and 15 to become full-time workers - As secondary education became more widespread, more young people remained in school well into middle and late adolescence, and fewer dropped out to work - Compulsory education laws were passed in most states that required individuals to stay in school until at least turning 16, child labor laws restricting adolescents' employment were enacted, and part-time jobs were not plentiful - The employment of American teenagers declined steadily during the first four decades of the 20th century - The situation began to change during the second hall of the 20th century, with the froth of the retail and service sectors of the economy - The trend of students holding jobs during the school year began to reverse itself about 30 years ago - Policy makers began calling for tougher standards in high schools - Just as adolescent workers became increasingly in demand as the service economy expanded during the last half of the 20th century, the retraction of the economy during the first decade of the 21st century increased competition for the same jobs that teenagers could have just for the asking a couple of decades before - The growth of new technologies during the first part of the 21st century expanded leisure opportunities for many teenagers, many of whom simply preferred to spend their free time online rather than behind a cash register - Student employment in other comparably industrialized countries also varies considerably from country to country - School-year employment is common in Canada and Australia, where about 1/2 of all students hold jobs - It is nearly unheard of in Japan or Korea where schoolwork is more demanding of teenagers' afternoons, evenings, and weekends - School-year employment is rare in France, Italy, and Spain - But common in Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden

Understand the impact of peers on psychosocial development during adolescence

- Problematic peer relationships are associated with a range of serious psychological and behavior problems during adolescence and adulthood - Individuals who have poor peer relationships during adolescence are more likely than their socially accepted peers to be low achievers in school, drop out of high school, show higher rates of delinquent behavior, and suffer from an array of emotional and mental health problems as adults - Adolescents consider the time they spend with their peers to be among the most enjoyable pares of the day - One reason is that activities with friends are typically organized around having a good time, in contrast to activities with parents, which are more likely to be organized around household chores or the enforcement of parental rules - Rather than being competing institutions, the family and peer group mainly provide contrasting opportunities for adolescent activities and behaviors - The family is organized around work and other tasks, and it may be important in the socialization of responsibility and achievement. The peer group provides more frequent opportunities for interaction and leisure, which contributes to the development of intimacy and enhances the adolescent's mood and psychological well-being

Understand tracking (another key aspect of school organization) and its effects on adolescent development

- Proponents of tracking note that ability grouping allows teachers to design class lessons that are more finely tuned to students' abilities - Critics of tracking point out, however that students in the remedial track receive not just a different education, but one that's worse than that provided to those in more advanced tracks - When students are tracked, they tend to socialize only with peers of the same academic group - Tracking can polarize the student body into different subcultures that are often hostile toward each other - Decisions about track placements often discriminate against poor and ethnic minority students and may hinder rather than enhance their academic progress (other studies have found, however, that students' ability has a stronger influence than their background on initial track placement [but White, middle-class students are more likely to be, eventually, moved into higher tracks than others]) - The ways in which students' schedules are arranged may lead students to be tracked in several different subject areas simply because they are tracked in one class, which makes the effects of tracking even more substantial - Those in more advanced tracks receive more challenging instruction and better teaching, and they are more likely to engage in classroom activities that emphasize critical thinking rather than rote memorization. As a result, being placed in a more advanced track has a positive influence on school achievement, on subsequent course selection, and on ultimate educational attainment - To the extent that a student's family background influences his or her track placement, tracking has the effect of maintaining income inequality - Because students are assigned to different tracks on the basis of test scores and other indicators of aptitude, and because students in the lower tracks receive an inferior education, the net effect of tracking over time is to increase pre-existing academic differences among students - Generally, tracking has positive effects on the achievement of high-track students, negative effects on the achievement of low-track students, and negligible effects on students in the middle - Parents of students in the higher tracks favor the practice, while parents of students in the lower tracks oppose it - For high-ability students, within-classroom ability grouping raises their expectations for achievement and raises their teachers' evaluations of them; for low-ability students, the opposite is true - On the one hand, separate special education programs can be tailored to meet the specific needs of students and can target educational and professional resources in a cost-effective way . On the other hand, segregating students on the basis of academic ability may foster social isolation and stigmatization - Studies of gifted youngsters have found that those who are integrated into regular classrooms have more positive academic self-conceptions than those assigned to special classes, and that these effects persist even after graduating (they are also more likely to get into "good" colleges and have higher career aspirations). - One downside to being placed with students of high academic ability, however, is that when (other) students compare themselves to their high-achieving classmates, they don't feel as competent as they would if their point of comparison were students who were not so smart (big fish-little pond effect). This is especially common in low-achieving students (even with mainstreaming, adolescents who have learning disabilities may suffer psychological consequences related to their problems in school) - Mainstreamed high-ability students may also learn less

Understand school desegregation (falls under the category of "Ethnic Composition," which is another key aspect of school organization) and how it has affected student development and achievement

- Research indicates that desegregation has surprisingly little impact on the achievement levels of either minority or White youngsters - In addition, some evidence suggests that minority youngsters' self-esteem is higher when they attend schools in which they are the majority - In general, students fare better psychologically when the cultural environment of their neighborhood is consonant with the cultural environment of their school - In schools that mix students from low- and high-income neighborhoods, students from low-income neighborhoods actually do worse than they do when they attend schools that are less socioeconomically diverse, especially if they are Black or Hispanic - Students feel more engaged, safer, less lonely, and less harassed in relatively more diverse multiethnic schools than in multiethnic schools that are less balanced - In general, though, research suggests that being in the minority in one's school is hard on students; it undermines students' attachment to school, which leads to depression and substance use - Cross-ethnic friendships are more common among male than female students (more likely to be involved in athletics / more positive stereotypes)

Understand how school climate (i.e., philosophy, practices) affects adolescents

- Students achieve and are engaged more in school when they attend schools that are responsive and demanding Students are engaged when teachers provide opportunities for students to genuinely display their competencies, when schools facilitate students' feelings of belonging to their school, and when students are assigned work that is "authentic" - challenging, fun, and relevant to the real world - Students who are engaged in school profit more than just academically from it: It enhances their mental health and protects them against the harmful effects of family problems, stress, and victimization - Students who are disengaged from school are more likely to misbehave and engage in substance use, both because doing poorly in school leads to problem behavior and because students who engage in problem behavior are evaluated more negatively by their teachers - Some disengaged students show their lack of interest in school through their behavior, by not showing up regularly or failing to complete assignments. Others disengage emotionally, losing interest in school and feeling that school is depressing or an unsafe place. Still others disengage cognitively, checking out mentally when they are in class and devoting little efforts to their schoolwork - Different forms of engagement feed on each other - someone who starts to feel disconnected from school (emotional disengagement) is more likely to start skipping school (behavior disengagement), which in turn increases the likelihood that he or she will lose interest (cognitive disengagement) - Academic functioning and psychological adjustment affect each other, so that a positive school climate enhances adolescents' psychological well-being as well as their achievement, mainly by strengthening their engagement in class - Students and teachers are more satisfied in classes that combine a moderate degree of structure with high student involvement and high teacher support - Teachers encourage students' participation but do not let the class get out of control. Classes that are too task oriented make students anxious, uninterested, and unhappy - Students do best when their teachers spend a high proportion of time on lessons, begin and end lessons on time, provide clear feedback to students about what is expected of them, and give ample praise to students when they perform well - Students also demonstrate higher achievement when the classroom climate promotes cooperation between students, rather than competition - One of the strongest influences on how much students enjoy going to school is the extent to which they feel their teachers respect and care about them - Bullying is more likely to occur in schools where teachers are unsupportive and harsh, where the school climate is disorderly, and where students are not treated with respect

Describe how research in behavioral genetics enhances our knowledge of development within the family

- Studies indicate that both genetic and non shared environmental influences, such as differential parental treatment, peer relations, and school experiences, are particularly strong in adolescence. In contrast, shared environmental factors, such as family socioeconomic status ir the neighborhood in which two sibling live, are less influential - Genetic factors strongly influence many qualities that previously had been assumed to be shaped mainly by the environment - Genetic factors have been linked to: - Aggressive behavior - Various emotional and behavioral problems - Adolescent competence, self-image, and self-conceptions - Intelligence - The maturation of brain regions associated with complex reasoning - School performance (more modestly) - Many studies have shown that adolescents with the same genetic predispositions develop differently they grow up in different environments - Genes may shape tendencies, but whether these tendencies are actualized often depends on the environment (the inverse is also true; people who are exposed to the same environment may be affected differently as a consequence of their genes) - Inherited tendencies to develop particular disorders is the reason that all sorts of mental illnesses run in families. This does not mean that every adolescent with an alcoholic parent is destined to develop alcoholism, or that every adolescent with a depressed parent is doomed to develop depression, but it does mean that individuals whose parents suffer from a psychological disorder are more likely to develop to than individuals whose parents do not - Not all people with a genetic tendency toward a particular problem develop the disorder, though, because most disorders are the product of an interaction between genetic and environmental factors (diathesis-stress model) - Are some people genetically inclined to benefit from positive influences in their environment? Yes they are; two adolescents can be exposed to equally advantageous environments but may not be equally affected by this influence because one has inherited a stronger tendency than the other to benefit from exposure to positive parenting - The very same genetic factors that make some people more susceptible to stress and other toxic environmental influences also make them more easily influenced by positive contexts (differential susceptibility theory) - Just as some periods of development, like adolescence, are times of heightened plasticity, or malleability, even among people of the same age, some are genetically more malleable than others

Discuss what is known about online and in person victimization and harassment (bullying)

- Studies of American and European youth indicate that about 1/3 of students report having been physically bullied at some point during the past year, although in some studies, the percentage of students who report having been victimized has been considerably higher - Hispanic and Black students are less likely than White students to report having been bullied, but they are just as likely as White students to report having been hit, robbed, stolen from, put down, and having their belongings damaged - Scholars differentiate bullying from other forms of aggression by its repetitive nature and by the imbalance of power that describes the bully and victim - Rates of victimization vary considerably from country to country, although around the world, adolescents who come from less affluent families are more likely to be bullied - Rates of bullying and victimization have both declined in the United States - The prevalence of bullying is higher in schools and in countries characterized by greater income inequality (and where having a wide gap between the economically "strong" and economically "weak" is also more widely tolerated) - Although relationships between adolescents who dislike each other have not been studied extensively, such mutual antipathies are not uncommon. These relationships frequently involve bullies and victims, often with an antisocial adolescent repeatedly harassing a withdrawn classmate - Adolescents who are bullies are also likely to assist and reinforce other bullies and, like the bullies they support, are also more likely to have conduct problems, be callous and indifferent to the problems of others, and "morally disengaged" - Being victimized or witnessing the harassment of others makes students anxious, but, oddly enough, witnessing the harassment of others appears to buffer some of the harmful effects of being victimized (especially students in an ethnic majority) - Students who are harassed by their classmates report a range of adjustment problems, including low self-esteem, depression, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, sleeping difficulties, as well as loneliness, problems in social skills, and difficulties in controlling negative emotions, such as anger and aggression - antisocial activity (can be both a cause and effect) - Although being bullied has adverse consequences regardless of whether other students witness it, public victimization, especially when other students watch but don't offer any assistance, is particularly humiliating - Adolescents who are the victims of relational victimization are also likely to be the victims of relational victimization, suggesting that some of the characteristics that prompt one type of bullying also prompt the other - One of the most pernicious effects of victimization is that it undermines academic performance, school attendance, school engagement, and feelings of academic competence, all of which has cascading effects well beyond adolescence - even after taking into account background factors, being bullied during adolescence is associated with lower educational attainment, and, as a consequence, diminished earnings in adulthood - Victimization can even harm cognitive development - Many adolescents who report having been victimized also report bullying others - These adolescents have the greatest adjustment problems (same with cyberbullying) - Evaluations of school-based anti-bullying programs have shown small but significant effects when implemented during elementary school, but no effect whatsoever after 7th grade; in fact, during high school anti-bullying interventions may actually lead to more bullying - One study of bystanders found that onlookers were more likely to intervene and defend the victim in schools in which doing so was expected - not so much by teachers but by other students - Bystanders who intervene when someone is bullied are themselves more likely to have supportive relationships with teachers and friends, to be more religious, and to have a strong sense of ethnic identity - It is important top note, however, that a significant amount of bullying occurs outside of school - Adolescents' réponses to being bullied vary. One study found that there were four categories of victims - Those who were mainly passive (reported fewer emotional or behavioral problems) - Those who were mainly aggressive - Those who were support-seeking - And those who did a little of everything - Feeling supported by parents or teachers seems to have a protective effect against the adverse effects of victimization - Other studies find that victims who avoid blaming themselves for having been bullied and respond by behaving proactively, rather than retaliating, fare better - It helps to explain that bullies dow what they do in order to get attention, and that when they re ignored, they are likely to seek other targets - Physical bullying is more common (than cyberbullying) - Cyberbullying affects victims in ways that are similar to physical bullying, although not to the same degree as reported. by those who are victims of physical bullying - Unlike physical bullying, which declines over adolescence, cyberbullying becomes more common - In general, girls and boys use cyberbullying differently - girls use it to spread gossip and rumors (and [victims] develop emotional problems from it), whereas boys use it to directly insult others (and [victims] develop behavioral problems from it) - Most adolescents who engage in traditional bullying also frequently engage in cyberbullying, and adolescents who are frequent victims of traditional bullying are also frequent victims of electronic harassment - Most cyberbullying is not anonymous, and most victims of online bullying suspect a friend or someone else from their school - Bullies who "specialize" in cyberbullying, which takes a bit of planning, tend to be less reactive in their aggression and more instrumental, often using electronic bullying to enhance their own status, and they tend to be better adjusted than whose who engage in physical bullying - They and their classmates are also more likely to view cyberbullying as wrong, and the more often teenagers witness cyberbullying the more likely they are to become more emotionally inured to it - Adolescents are more likely to engage in cyberbullying if they believe that their friends are, if they have poor relationships ships with their parents, and if their parents are unaware o their online behavior or overestimate the success of their rules regarding their child's Internet use

Understand changing features of the family in today's society

- The family has undergone a series of profound changes during the past half century that have diversified its form and, as a result, adolescents' daily experiences - High rates of divorce, cohabitation, and childbearing outside of marriage, as well as a changing international economy, have dramatically altered the world in which children and adolescents grow up - The proportion of single-parent families, which increased during the 1970s and 1980s, stabilized at their historically high levels in the mid-1990s and has changed relatively little since then Divorce: - It appears that around 1/3 of people who married during the 2000s will have divorced within 20 years - Divorce has become far less common among college graduated than non graduates - Because most divorces occur early in a marriage, adolescents are more likely than children to grow up in a divorced family than to actually experience their parents' divorce Single Parenthood: - In addition to adolescents who live in a single-parent household as a consequence of divorce, a sizable percentage will spend time in a single-parent household from birth; today, 60% of children are born outside of marriage - However, a substantial number of adolescents who are classified as living in single-parent households actually live with more than one adult, often with the unmarried partner of the child's parent (typically the mother) - Additionally, Black youngsters are far more likely to be born outside of marriage and to experience parental divorce, but they are far less likely to experience their parents' remarriage; as a consequence, Black adolescents spend longer periods of time in single-parent households Remarriage: - Because 2/3 of divorced men and 1/2 of divorced women remarry, the majority of youngsters whose parents separate also live in a stepfamily at some time. - And, because the divorce rate is higher for 2nd marriages than for 1st ones, the majority of youth whose parents remarry will experience a 2nd divorce. - If these changes in family relationships lead to frequent changes in living arrangements, this may cause problems, too; adolescents are adversely affected by having to move frequently - Because the conditions under which divorce, single parenthood, and remarriage take place vary tremendously from family to family, it is hard to generalize about their effects Poverty: - Approximately 20% of all adolescents in the US grow up in abject poverty, and an additional 20% grow up in low-income families - Poverty is much more likely to touch the lives of non-White adolescents. One reason for the large disparity in poverty rates is the racial disparity in rates of single parenthood - (In contrast,) it is relatively easy to generalize about the effects of poverty on adolescents, which are almost always negative

Understand the primary jobs obtained by adolescents and the impact of part-time work on their development

- The majority of teenagers are employed in the retail and service industries - Old students are more likely to hold formal jobs (retail or restaurant work) - Younger students are more likely to hold informal jobs (babysitting or yard work) - Working teenagers in rural areas are more likely to be employed in agricultural occupations than are their urban or suburban counterparts The Development of Responsibility - There is surprisingly little evidence that holding a job makes adolescents more responsible - One specific aspect of responsibility that working is believed to affect is money management - Some research has found high rates of misconduct on the job among adolescent workers, especially those whose work is not closely supervised by adults - The most reasonable conclusion we can draw about the impact of working on psychological development is that it depends on the nature of the job, just as the impact of schooling depends on the nature of the school. In jobs in which adolescents are given genuine responsibility, make important decisions, and perform challenging tasks, they are more likely to com away feelings more mature, competent, and dependable. In jobs in which the work is repetitive, stressful, or unchallenging, they probably will gain very little from the experience The Impact on Schooling - Studies indicate that the issue is not whether a teenager works, but how much - Youngsters who work long hours are absent from school more often, are less likely to participate in extra-curricular activities, report enjoying school less, spend less time on their homework, and early slightly lower grades - Intense involvement in a part-time job may even increase the likelihood of dropping out of school - Students who spend a lot of time on the job have less ambitious plans for further education and they complete fewer years of college, in part because students with low aspirations for the future choose to work longer hours than their peers - Working fewer than 20 hours per week does not appear to have these adverse effects The Promotion of Problem Behavior - Employment during adolescence does not deter delinquent activity - Several studies suggest that working long hours may actually be associated with increases in aggression, school misconduct, minor delinquency, and precocious sexual activity - Rates of smoking, drinking, and drug use are higher among teenage workers than nonworker, especially among students who work long hours (which persists over time [through their late 20s]) - Drug and alcohol use are more common among adolescents who work under conditions of high job stress than among their peers who work for comparable amounts of time and money but under less stressful conditions - Working long hours disrupts adolescents' relationships with they parents, which, in turn, leads to problem behavior Possible Benefits for Poor Youth - Some researchers have found that working, even in the sorts of jobs available to teenagers, has special benefits for inner-city adolescents from single-parent families, from poor families, with poor school records, or with histories of delinquency. However, other researchers have found that working has similar detrimental effects for inner-city youth and middle-class teenagers - The age at which inner-city teenagers begin working makes a difference - Working early in adolescence may make school seem less important (increasing the likelihood of dropping out and/or engaging in problem behavior), whereas working in later adolescence, when the transition to adult work roles is more imminent, may make school seem more important In Sum - Although teenagers generally enjoy working, there is little evidence, with the exception of disadvantaged youth, that doing so contributes to their psychosocial development - Adolescents who are less attached and committed to school, and who are more involved in problem behavior, are more likely to choose to work long hours. Working long hours, in turn, leads to more disengagement from school and increased problem behavior. - Intensive employment during the school year most threatens the school performance and psychosocial well-being of those students who can least afford to suffer the consequences of overcommitment to a job

Explain standards-based reform and how it has affected American adolescents

- The past 4 decades have been dominated by what is called standards-based reform, which focuses on policies designed to improve achievement by holding schools and students to a predetermined set of benchmarks measured by achievement tests - This gave rise to proposals that American schools adopt the Common Core, a set of standards in English language arts and mathematics that schools across the country would be expected to use to evaluate whether their students were learning what they ought to learn in each grade - Like NCLB, standards-based reform sounds good in principle, but implementing this change has been more difficult than you might think - Educators haven't been able to agree on the body of knowledge and skills that comprise what high school graduates should know and be able to do - Large numbers of students did not fully acquire the knowledge and capabilities assessed on standardized graduation examinations...The economic, social, and political, costs of holding back such large numbers of students because they couldn't not pass these "exit exams" was simply too great. This created a huge incentive for states to develop exams with very low requirements for passing, which, of course, defeats the whole purpose of standards-based reform - Amid widespread disappointment over the state of public education in America, increasing numbers of parents began to look at other options - among them, charter schools (public schools that are given more freedom to set their own curricula), schools that are run by private corporations rather than local school boards, home schooling, and government-subsidized school vouchers (which can be used for private school tuition) - Although all of these alternatives gained popularity during the late 1990s, research on their costs and benefits has been inconclusive - There is considerable variability among charter, for-profit, and private schools, as well as homeschooling environments - The bottom line is that what takes place within a school is probably more important than the nature of its funding and oversight -> has led many experts to argue that we should focus on the ways in which we train, certify, place, and compensate teachers Possible affects (taken from the NCLB section of our textbook): - Cheats poor and ethnic minority students out of a good education and allows them to graduate without the skills necessary to succeed in college or the workforce (social promotion) - The focus on standardized testing adversely affects what takes place in the classroom / discourages schools from using assignments that improve important capacities like self-control, persistence, and determination - Provides incentives for schools to push low-achieving students out

Describe the origins of secondary education in America

- The rise of secondary education in America was the result of several historical and social trends that concerned at the turn of the 20th century. Most important were industrialization, urbanization, and immigration Industrialization - As productivity became more dependent on workers' use pf machines, employers recognized that they needed employees who were more skilled than youngsters ordinarily were - In addition, the few unskilled jobs that remained after industrialization required strength beyond the capacity of many youth - Social reformers expressed concerns about the dangers children faced working in factories, and labor unions sought to protect not only the welfare of children but their own job security - New child labor laws narrowed and limited the employment of minors Urbanization - The effects of a rapidly expanding economy were seen in the tenements and slums of America's cities: poor housing, overcrowded neighborhoods, crime - Eager to improve living conditions for the masses, social reformers envisioned education as a means for improving the lives of the poor and working classes -High schools would take thousands on idle young people off the streets and place them in an environment where they could be supervised and kept out of trouble Immigration - Anxious to see that foreign-born immigrants where well socialized into the American way of life, reformers presented universal secondary education as a necessary part of the process of Americanization - Prior to the early 20th century, high schools were for the elite, with the emphasis mainly on classical liberal arts instruction - By 1920, educators saw a need for curricular reform. Now that secondary education was aimed at the masses, schooling was not just a means of intellectual training but also a way of preparing youth for life in modern society -> The comprehensive high school: Classes in general education, college preparation, and vocational education were all housed under one roof. (Plus,) New courses were added in music, art, family life, health, physical education, and other subjects designed to prepare adolescents for family and leisure as well as work

Understand the ways family interaction changes during adolescence

- There is a movement away from patterns of influence and interaction where parents have unchallenged authority toward ones in which parents and adolescents are on a more equal footing - Between ages 12 and 16, adolescents increasingly try to assert their autonomy, and conflict with parents is common. By middle adolescence, however, teenagers act and are treated more like adults. They have more influence over family decisions but they do not need to assert their opinions through interruptions and similarly immature behavior. Between ages 16 and 20, as adolescents begin to feel more independent, their relationships with their parents improve - Additionally, during early and middle adolescence, diminished closeness is likely to be manifested in increased privacy on the part of the adolescent and less physical affection between teenagers and parents, rather than any serious loss of love or respect between them, but, this is temporary. Parent-child relationships tend to become less conflicted and more intimate during late adolescence and show no decline in closeness as the adolescent enters young adulthood - Adolescents who reported more conflict with their parents during adolescence had more problems later in adolescence, during young adulthood, and at midlife - Part of the problem (with early adolescents [especially first-borns]) is that conflicts between teenagers and parents tend to be resolved not through compromise but through one party giving in or walking away, neither of which enhances the quality of the relationship or contributes to anyone's well-being. As relationships between parents and adolescents become more egalitarian, they get better at resolving conflicts

Understand the characteristics of peer groups and how they change over time

- There is a sharp increase during adolescence in the sheer amount of time individuals spend with their peers and in the relative time they spend in the company of peers versus adults - During the transition into adolescence, there is a dramatic drop in the amount of time adolescents spend with parents; for boys, this is mainly replaced by time spent alone, whereas for girls, it is replaced by time alone and time with friends - During adolescents peer groups function much more often without adult supervision than they do during childhood, partly because adolescents are more mobile and partly because they seek, and are granted, more independence - During adolescence, increasingly more contact with peers is between males and females - During childhood, peers groups are highly sex segregated( this is especially true of peer activities of children in school and other setting organized by adults). During adolescence, however, an increasingly larger portion of an individual's significant others are peers of the other sex. This shift tends to occur around the beginning of high school - Whereas children's peer relationships are limited mainly to relatively small groups - at most, 3 or 4 children at a time - adolescence marks the emergence of larger collectives of peers, called crowds - Puberty stimulates adolescents' interest in romantic relationships and distances them from their parents, which helps to explain why adolescents' social networks increasingly include more other-sex peers and fewer adults - The cognitive changes of adolescence permit a more sophisticated understanding of social relationships, which allows the sort of abstract categorization that that leads to grouping individuals into crowds - Changes in social definition may stimulate changes in larger peer relations as a sort of adaptive response: - The larger, more anonymous social setting of the secondary school forces adolescents to seek out individuals whom they perceive as having common interests and values, perhaps as a way of re-creating the smaller, more intimate groups of childhood

Explain the connection between teacher expectations and student performance

- There is a strong correlation between teacher expectations and student performance - Teachers' expectations are often accurate reflections of their students' ability (80%) - Teacher expectations actually create "self-fulfilling prophecies" that ultimately influence how their students behave (20%) - Teachers are likely to base their expectations in part on students' ethnic and socioeconomic background (may make it difficult for students from these groups to attain a level of academic accomplishment that permits upward mobility / can increase student alienation and feelings of hostility between students from different ethnic groups) - Teachers may call on poor or minority students less often than they call on affluent or White students - conveying a not-so-subtle message about whose responses the teacher believes are worthy of class attention - Teachers' expectations for minority student performance tend to be higher in schools where there is more cross-ethnic interaction between students - Several studies report that Black and Latino students perceive their teachers as having low expectations and holding stereotypes about their likelihood of misbehaving, and that when minority students attend schools where they perceive less discrimination, the students perform better and are more engaged - Teachers are more likely to give underserved positive feedback to students who have done poor work when the students are Black or Latino than when they are White, which undermines minority students' achievement by lowering the standards to which they are held - Parents also play an important role in the links between teacher expectations and student achievement - One study of Latino students found that how involved a student's parents were in school directly influenced their high school children's achievement, but also affected teachers' expectations for their child's achievement, which, in turn, led to better student performance - One factor that helps protect low-income students against the impact of low teacher expectations is having high expectations for achievement from their parents

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

A biologically based psychological disorder characterized by impulsivity, inattentiveness, and restlessness, often in school situations

Learning disability

A difficulty with academic tasks that cannot be traced to an emotional problem or sensory dysfunction

Zero tolerance

A get-tough approach to adolescent misbehavior that responds seriously or excessively to the first infraction

Reference groups

A group against which an individual compares him or herself

Experience sampling method (ESM)

A method of collecting data about adolescents' emotional states, in which individuals are paged and asked to report on their mood and activity

Routine activity theory

A perspective on adolescence that views unstructured, unsupervised time with peers as a main cause of misbehavior

Family systems theory

A perspective on family functioning that emphasizes interconnections among different family relationships (such as marital, parent-child, sibling)

Uses and gratification approach

A perspective on media use that emphasizes the active role users play in selecting the media to which they are exposed

Media practice model

A perspective on media use that emphasizes the fact that adolescents not only choose what media they are exposed to but also interpret the media in ways that shape their impact

Diathesis-stress model

A perspective on psychological disorder that posits that problems are the result of an interaction between a preexisting condition (the diathesis) and exposure to stress in the environment

Foster care

A placement in a temporary living arrangement when a child's parents are not able to provide care, nurturance, or safety

Common core

A proposed set of standards in language arts and mathematics that all American schools would be expected to use

Midlife crisis

A psychological crisis over identity believed to occur between the ages of 35 and 45, the age range of most adolescents' parents

Relational aggression

Acts intended to harm another through the manipulation of his or her relationships with others, as in malicious gossip

Describe how adolescents in families with adoptive parents, lesbian and gay parents, or foster parents do and do not differ from adolescents reared in more typical family forms

Adolescents and Adoption: -On average, adopted individuals show relatively higher rates of delinquency, substance use, precocious sexual activity, psychological difficulties, and poorer school performance, but the magnitude of the difference between adopted and non adopted adolescents is small - One reason for the mixed results and relatively modest effects is that there is a good deal of variability among adopted adolescents in their feelings about being adopted - Adopted adolescents who are preoccupied with having been adopted are relatively more alienated from and mistrustful of their adoptive parents Adolescents with Lesbian or Gay Parents - There is no evidence whatsoever that children or adolescents with lesbian or gay parents are psychologically different from those with straight parents - One recent study if Dutch children raised by female same-sex couples found that these adolescents scored higher than children raised by opposite-sex couples on measures of tolerance and conflict resolution skills Adolescents in Foster Care: - Nearly 1/3 of young people in foster care enter into their foster home as adolescents - Moreover, because adolescents are less likely to be adopted than younger children, teenagers tend to remain in foster care longer - Adolescents generally enter the foster care system for one of two reasons: parental maltreatment or delinquency - Adolescents who have spent time in foster care at at relatively greater risk for emotional and behavioral problems, some of which are the product of the abuse or neglect that necessitated their removal from their biological parents' home, some of which may gave made ur rib difficult for their parents to adequately care for them, and some of which may actually result from the foster care placement itself - Many adolescents move in and out of different placements, back and forth between their parents' home and a foster care placement, or between different foster care arrangements; forwent disruptions in living arrangements can lead to behavioral problems - Adolescents who have been in foster care are at a higher risk of homelessness

Understand adolescents' relationships with siblings

Adolescents rate their sibling relationships similarly to those with their parents in companionship and importance, but more like friendships with respect to power, assistance, and their satisfaction with the relationship - Young adolescents often have emotionally charged relationships with siblings that are marked by conflict and rivalry, but also by nurturance and support - As children mature from childhood to early adolescence, sibling conflict increases, with adolescents reporting more negativity in their sibling relationships than in their relationships with peers and less effective conflict resolution than with their parents - Adolescents see aggression toward siblings as more acceptable than aggression towards friends, which sometimes leads to behavior between siblings that is absolutely ruthless - Over the course of adolescence, adolescents' relationships with siblings, and especially with younger siblings, become more egalitarian but also more distant and less emotionally intense - In same-sex dyads, intimacy increases between preadolescence and middle adolescence, and then declines somewhat - In mixed-sex dyads, the pattern is the opposite - Although both types of relationships become closer as individuals leave home and mature into young adulthood - Despite these changes, though, there is considerable stability in the quality of sibling relationships between childhood and adolescence - Harmony and cohesiveness in the parent-adolescent relationship are associated with less sibling conflict and a more positive sibling relationship - By the same token, children and adolescents learn much about social relationships from sibling interactions, and they bring this knowledge and experience to their friendships and romantic relationships (and vice-versa) - Thee quality of the sibling relationships also affects adolescents' psychological well-being

Instrumental aggression

Aggressive behavior that is deliberate and planned

Reactive aggression

Aggressive behavior that is unplanned and impulsive

Junior high school

An educational institution designed during the early era of public secondary education, in which young adolescents are schooled separately from older adolescents

Middle school

An educational institution housing 7th and 8th grade students along with adolescents who are 1 or 2 years younger

Comprehensive high school

An educational institution that evolved during the first half of the 20th century, offering a varied curriculum and designed to meet the needs of a diverse population of adolescents

Familism

An orientation toward life in which the needs of one's family take precedence over the needs of the individual

Identify the four basic parenting styles and be able to provide examples of each type as well as the outcomes associated with each

Authoritative Parents: - Warm but firm - They set standards for their child's conduct but form expectations consistent with the child's needs and capabilities - They value the development of autonomy and self-direction but assume the ultimate responsibility for their child's behavior - Deal with their child in a rational, issue-oriented manner, frequently engaging in discussion over matters of discipline - Strive to raise a child who is self-reliant, with a strong sense of initiative - Young people who are raised in authoritative homes are more psychosocially mature, responsible, self-assured, creative, curious, socially skilled, and academically successful Authoritarian Parents: - Value obedience and conformity - Tend to favor more punitive, absolute, and forceful discipline - Verbal give-and-take is not common because authoritarian parents believe that children should accept their parents' rules and standards without question - They don't encourage independent behavior and, instead, place a good deal of importance on restricting the child's autonomy - Place a premium on compliance - Adolescents raised in authoritarian homes are more dependent, more passive, less socially adept, less self-assured, and less curious Indulgent Parents: - Behave in an accepting, benign, and more passive way in matters of discipline - They demand very little, giving the child a high degree of freedom to act as he or she wishes - Believe that control is an infringement on children's freedom that may interfere with healthy development - Instead of actively shaping their child's behavior, indulgent parents are more likely to view themselves as resources for the child - Indulgent parents are especially concerned with raising a happy child - Adolescents raise in indulgent households are less mature, less responsible, and more conforming to their peers Indifferent Parents: - Are neither demanding nor responsive - Do whatever is necessary to minimize the time and energy they must devote to interacting with their child - They know little about their child's activities and whereabouts, show little interest in their child's experiences at school or with friends, rarely converse with their child, and rarely consider their child's opinions - Rather than raising their child according to a set of beliefs about what is good for the child's development, indifferent parents structure their home life primarily around their own needs and interests - Adolescents raised in indifferent homes are often impulsive and more likely to be involved in delinquent behavior and in precocious experimentation with sex, drugs, and alcohol

Cyberbullying

Bullying that occurs over the Internet or via cell phones

Describe the different experiences of college-bound and non-college-bound adolescents

College-bound - The population of individuals enrolled in community college, which tends to be older than that attending four-year institutions, includes highly committed students who intent to transfer to four-year college or are working toward a specific associate's degree or certificate. But it also includes students who are less committed and not sure why they are going to school, as well as some who are just taking a course here or there out of interest in the subject matter - Similar variability in commitment and goals likely characterizes the population of students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities - For many students, going to college means entering an even larger, more formidable, and more impersonal environment - For some, the transition may coincide with other life changes, such as leaving home, breaking off or beginning an important romantic relationship, or having to manage their own residence or finances for the first time - Although many more American adolescents enroll in college today than in previous years, a very large number do not graduate - Perhaps as a consequence of increasing accessibility, poor matching, and a lack of "consumer" knowledge among college applicants, rates of college attrition are extremely high - While many of the students who leave after 1 year eventually graduate, if not necessarily at the same school they started in, 1/3 of all students who enroll in college never finish - College graduates earn substantially more income than do individuals who attend college but do not graduate Non-college-bound - Individuals who drop out of high school before graduation fare especially poorly economically and suffer a wide range of problems, including unemployment, delinquency, unintended pregnancy, and substance abuse - One of the most unfortunate by-products of our having made postsecondary education so accessible-and so expected-is that we have turned out backs on individuals who do not go directly to college, even though they compare 1/3 of the adolescent population - In most contemporary American high schools, counseling is geared toward helping college-bound students continue their education - Opportunities for learning and for critical thinking are much greater in college-prep classes than in the general or vocational tracks - Students who are not headed for college find that their high schools have not prepared them at all for the world of work (even those who complete school and earn a diploma may have a hard time finding employment and a nearly impossible time finding a satisfying, well-paying job) - Many individuals who do not go to college spend their early adult years floundering between periods of part-time work, underemployment, and unemployment - The economic problems faced by non-college-bound youth have been compounded by the escalating costs of such essentials as housing and health care - Rates of depression are significantly higher among young adults who are not in school than among those who are, and they are especially high among individuals who are neither in school nor steadily employed

Sibling rivalry

Competition between siblings, often for parental attention

Prefigurative cultures

Cultures in which society is changing so quickly that adults are frequently socialized by young people, rather than the reverse

Postfigurative cultures

Cultures in which the socialization of young people is done primarily by adults

Configurative cultures

Cultures in which young people are socialized both by adults and by each other

New media

Digital media typically accessed via computers, smartphones, or other internet-based devices

Generational dissonance

Divergence of views between adolescents and parents that is common in families of immigrant parents and American-born adolescents

Understand the characteristics of good schools (as far as student achievement is concerned)

Good schools: - Emphasize intellectual activities - A common purpose - quality education - is valued and shared by students, teachers, administrators, and parents - Learning is more important to students than athletics or extracurricular activities - Seeing that students learn is more important to teachers and administrators than seeing that they graduate - All students are expected to learn, and all students are taught by teachers who use proven instructional methods - Have teachers who are committed to their students and who are given freedom and autonomy by administrators in the way that they express this commitment in the classroom - Are well integrated into the communities they serve - Active attempts are made tot involve parents in education, which is an important influence on student achievement and a deterrent against dropping out - Links are forged between the high school and local colleges and universities, so that more advanced students may take ore challenging and more stimulating courses for high school credit - Bridges are built between the high school and local employers, so that students begin to see the relevance of their high school education to their occupational futures - Are composed of good classrooms, where students are active participants in the process of education, not passive recipients of lecture material - The atmosphere is orderly but not oppressive - Innovative projects replace rote memorization as a way of encouraging learning - Students are challenged to think critically and to debate important issues, rather than being asked simply to regurgitate yesterday's lessons - Are staffed by teachers who are well-qualified and who have received specific training in teaching adolescents

Vouchers

Government-subsidized vouchers that can be used for private school tuition

Peer groups

Groups of individuals of approximately the same age

Perceived popularity

How much status or prestige an individual has

Sociometric popularity

How well-liked a individual is

Dyscalculia

Impaired ability in arithmetic

Dysgraphia

Impaired ability in handwriting

Dyslexia

Impaired ability in reading or spelling

Crowds

Large, loosely organized groups of young people, composed of several cliques and typically organized around a common shared activity

Secondary education

Middle schools, junior highs, and high schools

Shared environmental influences

Nongenetic influences that make individuals living in the same family similar to each other

Parental responsiveness

One of the two important dimensions of parenting; responsiveness refers to the degree to which the parent responds to the child's needs in an accepting, supportive manner

Parental demandingness

One of two important dimensions of parenting; demandingness refers to the degree to which the parent expects and insists on mature, responsible behavior from the child

Gangs

Organized peer groups of antisocial individuals

Indifferent parents

Parents who are characterized by low levels of both responsiveness and demandingness

Indulgent parents

Parents who are characterized by responsiveness but low demandingness, and who are mainly concerned with the child's happiness

Authoritarian parents

Parents who use punitive, absolute, and forceful discipline, and who place a premium on obedience and conformity

Authoritative parents

Parents who use warmth, firm control, and rational, issue-oriented discipline, in which emphasis is placed on the development of self-direction

Standards-based reform

Policies designed to improve achievement by holding schools and students to a predetermined set of standards measured by achievement tests

Charter schools

Public schools that have been given the autonomy to establish their own curricula and teaching practices

Reverse causation

Relationship in which the correlation between two things is due not to the first thing causing the second, but to the second causing the first

Spurious causation

Relationship in which the correlation between two things is due to the fact that each of them is correlated with some third factor

Understand the structure (organization) of schools and how the structure affects adolescent development

School and classroom size - As the idea of the comprehensive high school gained widespread acceptance, educators attempted to deliver a wider range of courses and services under a single roof. As a consequence, schools became larger and larger over the course of the 20th century - Larger Schools: While these schools may be able to offer more diverse curricula and provide greater material resources to their students, the toll that school size may take on student learning and engagement appears to exceed the benefits of being bigger. Evidence also suggests that there is more inequality in students' educational experiences in these schools, where students may be sorted into tracks of differing quality - Smaller Schools: Students are more likely to be active in a wider range of activities (helping them develop their skills and abilities, allowing them to work closely with others, and making them feel needed and important)/be placed in positions of leadership and responsibility, strengthening their school community and sense of involvement and obligation to it (even in academically marginalized students). Additionally, in these schools, it is more likely that students are exposed to the same curriculum - Class sizes: Variations within the typical range of classroom sizes (20-40) do not affect students' scholastic achievement once they have reached adolescence. An important exception to this finding involves situations that call for highly individualized instruction or tutoring, where smaller classes are more effective (i.e., in remedial classes) - Overcrowding: Most common in large, urban school districts with a high population of ethnic minority students. Achievement is lower in overcrowded schools because of stress on both students and teachers, the use of facilities for instruction that were not designed to serve as classrooms, and inadequate resources Different approaches to age grouping - Early in the 20th century, most school districts separated youngsters into an elementary school and a secondary school - However, many educators felt that the two-school system was unable to meet the special needs of young adolescents, whose intellectual and emotional maturity was greater than that expected in elementary school, but not yet at the level necessary for high school -> junior high school (which contained the 7th, 8th, and [sometimes] 9th grades) / middle school (a 3 or 4 year school housing the 7th and 8th grades with one or more younger grades [the more popular of the two options]) - Many school districts have moved away from housing young adolescents separately and are are returning to a two-school model, in light of studies showing that students demonstrate higher achievement and fewer behavior problems under this arrangement - Many studies find that students' academic motivation, school engagement, and school grades drop as they move from elementary into middle or junior high school (scores on standardized achievement tests don't decline during this time, though, suggesting that the drop in grafted may be more a reflection of changes in grading practices and student motivation than in students' knowledge) - In general, school transitions, whenever they occur, temporarily disrupt the academic performance, behavior, and self-image of adolescents; more frequent school changes are associated with lower achievement, as well as higher rates of emotional and behavioral problems (but, researchers do not agree whether the drop in academic motivation and achievement that occurs after elementary school is due to the school transition itself or to the nature of the difference between elementary school, on the one hand, and middle or junior high school, on the other) - Not only are junior high schools larger and less personal, but middle and junior high school teachers hold different beliefs about students than do elementary school teachers - Teachers in junior high schools are less likely to trust their students and more likely to emphasize discipline, which creates a mismatch between what students at this age desire and what their teachers provide - Teachers in junior high schools also tend to be more likely to believe that students' abilities are fixed and not easily modified through instruction - Although students' self-esteem drops during the transition into middle or high school, it increases during the early high school years, so changing schools in and of itself isn't the problem - Consistent with this, middle school students attending more personal, less departmentalized schools, or schools where they are more involved, do better than their peers in more rigid and more anonymous schools - Not surprisingly, changing schools is easier on students who move into small rather than large institutions - Students who have more academic and psychosocial problems before making a school transition cope less successfully with it & students scoring high in social competence before the transition into a new school become even more competent over the course of the change - Adolescents who have close friends before and during the transition adapt more successfully to the new school environment, although the benefits of staying with their friends accrue only to students who had been doing well previously - Studies of poor, inner-city youngsters, who are coping with problems associated with economic stress and neighborhood disadvantage, find especially significant negative effects of the school transition on these students' self-esteem, achievement, perceptions of the school environment, reports of social support, and participation in extracurricular activities - Generally speaking, boys, ethnic minority students, and students from poor families are more likely to become disengaged from school during early adolescence - Parental support and involvement are associated with better adolescent adjustment during school transitions Public versus private schools - Although some studies have found that students' test scores are higher in private schools, this appears to be due more to the characteristics of the students who attend them than to the private schools themselves - Students who attend private school also may be encouraged to take more advanced courses than students in public schools, which contributes to their superior performance on achievement tests - Homeschooling for adolescents with strong religious ties doesn't seem to be a problem as far as achievement is concerned. But compared to teens with similar backgrounds who attend traditional schools, homeschooled adolescents with weak religious ties are 3x more likely to be behind their expected grade level on achievement tests, and only 1/2 as likely to participate in extracurricular activities - Students' family background is a far more powerful influence on their achievement than is the quality of the schools they attend - Private schools typically assign more homework and are more orders and disciplined - Students who attend private schools are substantially less likely to report feeling unsafe, or being exposed to gangs, or witnessing fighting between ethnic groups

Cliques

Small, tightly knit groups between 2 and 12 friends, generally of the same sex and age

Understand the impact of leisure activities on adolescent socialization and development.

Structured Leisure Activities - 2/3 of American high school students participate in one or more extracurricular activities - The most popular extracurricular activity in the US is athletics, in which about 1/2 of all adolescents participate - About 1/5 of adolescents are members of a school band, chorus, orchestra, or glee club - About 1/5 are members of clubs devoted to science, foreign languages, or certain careers - It is more prevalent among adolescents from more affluent families, among students who earn better grades, and among students from smaller schools and smaller, more rural communities, where school activities often play a relatively more central role in the lives of adults and adolescents alike - Improves students' performance in school, increases the odds of college enrollment, and reduces the likelihood of dropping out - Deters delinquency, drug use, and other types of risk taking - Enhances students' psychological well-being and social status - Protects adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods from exposure to violence by keeping them in safer settings after school - The one exception to this uniformly positive outcry is involvement in team sports, which is associated with many psychological benefits, such as better mental health, better sleep, and higher school achievement, but is also associated with increased alcohol use and delinquency - Extracurricular participation in high school is correlated with participation in college and with community involvement in adulthood (persisting benefits of extracurricular involvement [specifically among those who go to school in poor communities and among teenagers from immigrant families]) - The quality of relationships adolescents develop with the adults they encounter in extracurricular activities (who reinforce the value of school) is an especially important influence on the overall impact of the experience - Some of the positive effects of extracurricular participation also stem from the fact that these activities bring adolescents into contact with peers who influence them in beneficial ways Unstructured Leisure Activities - The combination of a lack of structure, socialized with peers, and the absence of adult supervision encourages delinquency and other problem behaviors (routine activity theory) - A prime time for unstructured and unsupervised leisure is during the afternoon on school days - after school has let out but before parents have returned home from work; delinquency is more common on weekday afternoons than at any other time - Compared to young people who are supervised after school, those who aren't feel more socially isolated and depressed, and are more likely to have social problems, use drugs and alcohol, be involved in antisocial behavior, and be sexually active at earlier ages - Self-care after school doesn't;t hold great benefits for youngsters and, under some conditions, may cause problems if adolescents' parents do not promote the development of responsible behavior when they are with their child - Experts advise parents to provide clear instructions about the child's after-school activities and whereabouts, ask the child to check in with an adult as soon as he or she gets home, and teach the child how to handle any emergencies that arise

Gifted students

Students who are unusually talented in some aspect of intellectual performance

Schools within schools

Subdivisions of the student body within large schools created to foster feelings of belongingness

Flow experience

The experience of high levels of both concentration and interest at the same time

Student engagement

The extent to which students are psychologically committed to learning and mastering the material rather than simply completing the assigned work

Positive youth development

The goal of programs designed to facilitate healthy psychosocial development and not simply to deter problematic development

Self-fulfilling prophecy

The idea that individuals' behavior is influenced by others' expectations for them

Differential susceptibility theory

The idea that the same genetic tendencies that make an individual especially susceptible to develop problems when exposed to adverse environmental influences also make him or her especially likely to thrive when exposed to positive environmental influences

Mainstreaming

The integration of adolescents who have educational handicaps into regular classrooms

Social capital

The interpersonal resources available to an adolescent or family

Nonshared environmental influences

The nongenetic influences in individuals' lives that make them different from people they live with

Baby boom

The period following World War II, during which the number of infants born was extremely large

Social promotion

The practice of promoting students from one grade to the next automatically, regardless of their school performance

Tracking

The practice of separating students into ability groups, so that they take classes with peers at the same skill level

Age grading

The process of grouping individuals within social institutions on the basis of age

Big fish-little pond effect

The reason that individuals who attend high school with high-achieving peers feel worse about themselves than comparably successful individuals with lower-achieving peers

Behavioral genetics

The scientific study of genetic influences on behavior

Molecular genetics

The scientific study of the structure and function of genes

Hostile attribution bias

The tendency to interpret ambiguous interactions with others as deliberately hostile

Critical thinking

Thinking that involves analyzing, evaluating, and interpreting information, rather than simply memorizing it

Iatrogenic effects

Unintended adverse consequences of a treatment or intervention