Enhancing the International Study of Positive Youth Development: Process, Specificity, and the Sample Case of Character Virtues

Abstract

This article focuses on the interplay of research and practice (research⇔practice integration) in advancing international efforts to understand and enhance positive youth development (PYD). We discuss 3 facets of PYD research and application that have cross-cutting relevance to theory, to the use of theory for designing principles of PYD programs, and to evaluating whether specific instances of youth development programs have features that promote PYD. Using dynamic, relational developmental-systems-based concepts, we discuss the process of development involved in PYD, the use of the specificity principle to frame research and practice and, as a sample case illustrating how PYD research and practice can be advanced through the use of the specificity principle, we focus on one facet of PYD, that is, positive character, or character virtues. We point to important future directions for further illuminating the specificity of PYD process through assessing the developmental neurobiology of PYD, and we emphasize the important contributions that PYD research and practice integration can make worldwide to enhancing youth contributions to equity, social justice, and democracy.

Integrating global and local best practices for youth development afterschool: Constructing the Kilimanjaro extracurriculars self-assessment

“…In Kilimanjaro, this emphasis took on particular local meaning in relation to the importance of schools as a space to build broader social cohesion, and the emphasis on intramural rather than interscholastic activities, but it was founded on similar underlying values. Finally, both international researchers and Kilimanjaro educators see activities as an important space for developing character traits and non-cognitive skills (Lerner et al, 2021). In Kilimanjaro this included a particularly strong emphasis on traits such as discipline and self-control, but the general idea that quality activity programs should contribute to character development seemed broadly shared.…”

The Development of Positive Attributes of Character: On the Embodiment of Specificity, Holism, and Self-System Processes

“…This issue of incomplete mapping of the attributes included in the positive character development system is further compromised by the fact that much of the existing research and program evaluation literature has neglected addressing the issue of which facets of positive character development are specific to individuals, times of testing, and places where assessments are made and which facets are generalizable to groups or are, in turn, nomothetic. As we have already noted, systematic tests of measurement invariance across time and place are still relatively rare in the study of positive character (Lerner et al, 2021a;Putnick & Bornstein, 2016); the few instances of invariance that have been reported involve a small number of attributes. We have also explained earlier that one use of a focus on the specificity of positive character development processes is to differentiate what is idiographic in these processes from what reflects group differential or nomothetic variation within the dynamic, relational developmental system (Bornstein, 2019).…”

“…We discuss moments of programmatic research that should be involved in this interrogation, and we point to the potential contribution of theory-predicated research about the embodied development of positive attributes of character to enhancing the presence of moral agency and social justice in the world. © 2021 S. Karger AG, Basel There is interest around the world in the development of positive instantiations of character (e.g., Lerner et al, 2017;Lerner et al, 2021a;Tirrell et al, 2019), sometimes termed character strengths (e.g., Peterson & Seligman, 2004) or character virtues (as in Aristotle, 350 BC/1999;cf. Clement & Bollinger, 2017;Templeton, 2012).…”

Positive Development Patterns in Left-Behind Adolescents: Do Resilience and Making Sense of Adversity Have Beneficial Effects?

“… 21 , 22 Moreover, the positive youth development theory’s specificity principle suggests group heterogeneity in positive youth development is inevitable due to individual-context interactions. 23 Thus, adopting a person-centered approach, this study combines deficit and strengths perspectives to explore distinct patterns of positive development among left-behind adolescents. This provides a more comprehensive picture of adolescents’ positive development.…”