1.1 Positive Youth Development

5. Our lenses: progressing in building a positive future

PYD studies have added both to our understanding of processes, the scope of change, and developmental benefits that intervention studies can make on young people’s lives (Darling-Hammond, Flook, Cook-Harvey, Barron, & Osher, 2020; Wiium & Dimitrova, 2019). Some key points emerge, relevant for our project:

Need to focus on earlier ages  

Previous work has focused on positive changes in adolescence, but the exploration on how PYD approach is showing benefits among younger children (Leman, Smith, Petersen, et al., 2017; Lerner, 2017), namely primary school children.

Relevance of an integrative approach

Recent studies incorporate not only children and youth responses but also their identity and culture, as they emerge in numerous cultural contexts (Wiium & Dimitrova, 2019).  A challenge, within this broader perspective, is then to achieve a consolidation and integration of approaches to produce and drive growth in different contexts.

Attention to building the future  

Adults of the future are expected to increasingly rely on their own internal resources and social networks to enter the larger societal systems, including work contexts.  It is mandatory to act to support development of relevant attitudes and competencies during childhood, and during age range referring to primary education (Darling-Hammond, et al., 2020).