The Role of New Technologies to Foster Positive Youth Development

Abstract

This paper describes a developmental systems approach to applied developmental sciences (ADS) which provides a framework to design and evaluate technology-rich programs that promote positive development by emphasizing the strengths and assets of people, instead of focusing on diminishing or preventing risk-taking behaviors. Up to now, most of the psycho educational programs conceived within the ADS model have not focused on the role of new technologies in young people's lives. This absence is particularly striking given that, in today's world, new technologies play an important role in different areas of the lives of young people, such as education, entertainment, socialization and communication. This article presents the concept of Identity Construction Environments (ICE), an interdisciplinary model that proposes guidelines to design and study new technologies purposefully created to promote positive youth development (PYD). Two types of ICE have been developed: one focusing on stand-alone technologies for learning, such as the Zora virtual city; and the other focusing on an approach for developing technologically-rich learning contexts, such as the Project Inter-Actions robotics workshops. This paper presents both examples of ICE and describes how their design fosters the six components of PYD (6 C's). Initial findings from pilot studies conducted with very different populations of youth, such as young children, adolescents and chronically ill children, engaged in both types of ICE, are presented.Journal of Applied Developmental Science. Lawrence Erlbaum. Accepted for publication Vol. 11, No. 1 3 A theoretical frameworkA developmental systems approach to ADS provides a framework to design and evaluate programs and policies that promote positive development in young people by emphasizing their strengths and assets, instead of focusing on diminishing or preventing risk-taking behaviors.Most of the psycho educational programs conceived within the ADS model have not attended to the role of new technologies in young people's lives, or have limited their use for information delivery or retrieval. This omission is particularly striking given that, in today's world, new technologies play an important role in different domains of youngsters' lives, such as education, entertainment, socialization and communication. This article presents an interdisciplinary model supported by the beginning of an empirical research program to design and study new technologies to promote positive youth development (PYD). The purpose of the paper is to introduce to the ADS community a research program that constitutes an innovative approach to understand PYD in the context of new digital technologies used in complex real-world settings.The importance of this endeavor is underscored by the fact that children and teenagers are increasingly using computer-based applications for educational, entertainment and social activities. For example, from 1993 to 1999, the number of Americans connected to the Internet grew from 3 million t...

“I Just Want to Work Hard”

“…This process was facilitated by work products. As Umaschi Bers (2006) points out, “Interaction with the technological materials around them provides children with opportunity to design and make meaningful projects to share with a community” (p. 202). Examples of this include blogs, websites, online publications, and digital images.…”