More than ever before, students need guidance and support from the adults in their lives. Here, author Jay D' Ambrosio suggests practical approaches for connecting with young people at the level of the heart through the utilization of myths, stories, movies, and songs. He contends that Story speaks to both students and adults on a spiritual dimension and will help adult readers better comprehend the condition of those challenges common to adolescence. Throughout each chapter, this book explores the wisdom necessary to face such trials that can be found in Homer's Odyssey and other great stories. Rethinking Adolescence includes: _

The teenage years. . . parents fear this stage, dreading it even while watching their adorable toddlers explore the world. When it arrives, they try to control their teenager, in turn causing their teenager to push back more intensely. It's a natural instinct on both sides: teenagers are changing in every way while trying to assert their independence, and parents are faced with the challenge of coming up with rules, expectations, and standards for behavior without a genuine understanding of what is happening. But the result of this pattern is a parent-child relationship defined by conflict and reactivity--a breeding ground for stress, anger, and anxiety, all of which reinforcing those same cultural stereotypes and worst fears. But it doesn't have to be this way. In this book, family therapist Darby Fox challenges parents to redefine the goals of adolescence by reorienting their focus from what they want their child to be to on who they want their child to be. Darby not only equips parents with the insight to understand the changes taking place in their child's brain and body and support their adolescent's bid for independence, but also offers an approach that allows parents to engage their adolescent in a relationship instead of struggling in an endless battle for control. The book is organized around a series of persistent myths about adolescence, each of which the author tears down with a combination of cutting edge neuroscience research, developmental psychology, and her own mix of clinical observations and experience raising four children. Darby offers a new model for the parent-child relationship, encouraging parents to let go of the attempt to control their teenager and focus instead on creating mutual respect, providing structure and nurture, and encouraging independence in their developing teenager. She walks through the keys to combining structure and nurture and teaches parents how to connect with their teen while holding them accountable for their behavior. If parents approach teen years with the same thoughtful preparation, sense of awe and wonder, and responsibility that they do the early childhood years, it can be an enjoyable and rewarding developmental stage that deepens, rather than damages, parent-child relationships.

What should we do with teenagers who commit crimes? In this book, two leading scholars in law and adolescent development argue that juvenile justice should be grounded in the best available psychological science, which shows that adolescence is a distinctive state of cognitive and emotional development. Although adolescents are not children, they are also not fully responsible adults.

The teenage years. . . parents fear this stage, dreading it even while watching their adorable toddlers explore the world. When it arrives, they try to control their teenager, in turn causing their teenager to push back more intensely. It's a natural instinct on both sides: teenagers are changing in every way while trying to assert their independence, and parents are faced with the challenge of coming up with rules, expectations, and standards for behavior without a genuine understanding of what is happening. But the result of this pattern is a parent-child relationship defined by conflict and reactivity--a breeding ground for stress, anger, and anxiety, all of which reinforcing those same cultural stereotypes and worst fears. But it doesn't have to be this way. In this book, family therapist Darby Fox challenges parents to redefine the goals of adolescence by reorienting their focus from what they want their child to be to on who they want their child to be. Darby not only equips parents with the insight to understand the changes taking place in their child's brain and body and support their adolescent's bid for independence, but also offers an approach that allows parents to engage their adolescent in a relationship instead of struggling in an endless battle for control. The book is organized around a series of persistent myths about adolescence, each of which the author tears down with a combination of cutting edge neuroscience research, developmental psychology, and her own mix of clinical observations and experience raising four children. Darby offers a new model for the parent-child relationship, encouraging parents to let go of the attempt to control their teenager and focus instead on creating mutual respect, providing structure and nurture, and encouraging independence in their developing teenager. She walks through the keys to combining structure and nurture and teaches parents how to connect with their teen while holding them accountable for their behavior. If parents approach teen years with the same thoughtful preparation, sense of awe and wonder, and responsibility that they do the early childhood years, it can be an enjoyable and rewarding developmental stage that deepens, rather than damages, parent-child relationships.

Relying on a sociocultural view of adolescence established by scholars in critical youth studies, the book focuses on classrooms from diverse contexts to explain adolescence as a construct and how this perspective of youth can encourage educators to reenvision literacy instruction and learning.

This is a unique and exciting book that challenges traditional conceptions of middle years provision. It should be read by policy-makers, educators and researchers alike.' Jackie Marsh, University of Sheffield Carrington's analysis of contemporary youth and the lives that they bring to school is significant. This stage of education is fundamental to understanding how we might engage learners, and her sensitive and insightful analysis makes a major contribution to our understandings about how these years resonate with their needs and interests.' Professor Nicola Yelland, Victoria University Despite two decades of research and reform, schools across the Western world still struggle to engage their students in the middle years. But does this mean there is a youth crisis? And what do technology and risk have to do with it? Victoria Carrington argues for the need to move beyond developmentally based models to see middle years pedagogy in historical, social, economic and political contexts. Setting research from Australia alongside international experience, she emphasises the importance of understanding the risk society, and young peoples' immersion in digital technologies and consumer culture. She shows how teachers and schools can use this understanding to work more effectively with early adolescents, and how policy-makers and education leaders could reshape the middle years reform agenda to improve professional practice and student outcomes.

Bringing together essays, research studies, etc., written over the past two decades, this book traces a history of political & intellectual debates on the left & in cultural studies, around central issues of education, labour & the youth question.