Positive Youth Development & Spirituality ─ From Theory to Research

Bringing together a never-before-assembled network of biologists, psychologists, and sociologists, Positive Youth Development and Spirituality scientifically examines how spirituality and its cultivation may affect the positive development of adolescents.

Chapters provide groundbreaking new discussions of conceptual, theoretical, definitional, and methodological issues that need to be addressed when exploring the relationships between spirituality and development. Throughout the book, contributors recommend ways in which the research on the spirituality/positive youth development connection may be integral in building the larger field of spiritual development as a legitimate and active domain of developmental science. This volume, which is sure to be seen as a seminal contribution to a field in need of theoretical underpinnings, will be of interest to scholars and scientists in the fields of biology and the social and behavioral sciences.

Contributors include: Mona Abo-Zena, Jeffrey Jensen Arnnett, Peter L. Benson, Marina Umaschi Bers, Aerika Brittian, William Damon, Angela M. DeSilva, Jacquelynne S. Eccles, David Henry Feldman, Simon Gachter, Elena L. Grigorenko, Sonia S. Isaac, Lene Arnett Jensen, Carl N. Johnson, Linda Juang, Pamela Ebstyne King, Richard M. Lerner, Jennifer Menon, Na'ilah Sued Nasir, Guerda Nicolas, Toma’? Paus, Stephen C. Peck, Erin Phelps, Alan P. Poey, Robert W. Roeser, W. George Scarlett, Lonnie R. Sherrod, Gabriel S. Spiewak, Chris Starmer, Moin Syed, Janice L. Templeton, Heather L. Urry, and Richard Wilkinson.

Richard M. Lerner is the Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and the director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University.

Erin Phelps is research professor and deputy director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University.

Robert W. Roeser is an associate professor of psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology at Portland State University and the senior program coordinator for the Mind and Life Institute. He received his PhD from the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan (1996) and holds master’s degrees in religion and psychology, developmental psychology and clinical social work. In 2005 he was a United States Fulbright Scholar in India, and from 1999 to 2004 he was a William T. Grant Faculty Scholar.

Dr. Roeser‘s research focuses primarily on how schools, as central cultural contexts of human development, affect both academic and nonacademic aspects of “whole persons” across childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood.

He studies how variations in various features of middle and high school environments are associated not only with variations in patterns of achievement and educational attainments among U.S. adolescent students over time, but also in their motivation to learn and student identity commitments; their feelings of emotional well-being, stress and distress; and their behavioral conduct while in school. More recently, he has studied cultural identity development among urban adolescents during a period of rapid globalization in India; the emergence of a national identity among ethnically diverse youth in South Africa during the post-apartheid era; and the role of religion and spirituality in the positive development of immigrant youth in the United States. Although the primary focus of his research is on education and adolescent development in various nations, Dr. Roeser is also interested in teachers and how secondary school environments, as well as teacher education programs, can shape aspects of teachers’ professional identity development in ways that affect their success as teachers of adolescents.

Currently, Dr. Roeser has established the Culture and Contemplation in Education Laboratory (CaCiEL) at Portland State University to study how the introduction of developmentally and cultural appropriate contemplative practices (i.e., mindfulness meditation) into mainstream schools may prove to be a novel way of reducing stress, enhancing well-being, strengthening motivation and self-regulatory capacity, and cultivating clear and compassionate forms of awareness among educators, staff, and students alike.

The aim of all of this work is to advocate for and assist in the development of more culturally—and developmentally—informed, and more mindful, youth programs, teacher programs, school reforms, and governmental policies for children, youth, and their families.