Related posts available under YN Working Conference April 2012
We’re lucky enough to have captured on video the Youth-Nex Working Conference —where six panels and 23 scholars congregated to further scientific understanding of how to promote effective youth development through the Positive Youth Development (PYD) lens.
Be a part of the discussion chaired by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn: “Learning from Prevention Science and Developmental-Intervention Approaches to Improve PYD Interventions and Evaluations.” We welcome your comments. Video.
In the light of the need to provide research and action that integrates PYD into what we already know, Dr. Tolan recently posited: Hamilton (1999) noted that the term PYD is used in at least three ways in the youth development literature: 1) As a phrase denoting the process (of mutually influential relations between the individual and the context, represented as individual <—> context relations) through which young people develop the ability to thrive; 2) As a philosophy or approach reflecting best practices in youth programming, based on youths’ strengths to promote thriving; and 3) As instances of youth development programs that can reduce likelihood of risk/problem behaviors (i.e., as programs integrating promotion and prevention).
However, as noted by Hamilton, and more recently by Lerner et al. (2011), these three facets of PYD remain incompletely integrated. Important gaps in conception, empirical databases, and substantive foci exist and limit attempts to link these presumably complimentary areas of PYD scholarship. There is a need to define key linkages, identify and address conceptual and empirical inconsistencies across the areas, and construct a more useful and comprehensive understanding of PYD—one that directs future scholarship.
Panelists: Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Nicholas Ialongo, Velma Murry, and Joanna Lee Williams.
The conference, “Enhancing the Positive Youth Development Perspective: A Developmental Intervention Science Framework,” was held on April 2-3, 2012, at Morven Farm.