Reframing Adolescent Research

For novice researchers especially. This is a valuable edited collection critiquing current practices in adolescent psychology, including acceptance of exaggerated claims from "cutting-edge" neuroscience, while in the doldrums elsewhere what the Editors call "a certain static ‘sameness’" (especially undertheorized overuse of questionnaires). Add lingering willingness to let Western data dictate global norms, and ignorance of, or resistance to, exploring other social sciences for insights into teenagers’ lives. Without discounting the potential of existing methods contributors present provocative yet feasible proposals for challenging and changing arguably unproductive or dangerous features of the status quo. Monica Payne, University of Waikato, NZ.

In this excellent collection, Leo B. Hendry and Marion Kloep together with a brilliant line of scholars, call for a revolution in adolescent research. To match the landscape of everyday risks and opportunities of young people across the world today, the book challenges historical and current directions in adolescent research and argues for a paradigm shift towards interdisciplinary and inter-cultural research. It is a must-read for all of us engaged in adolescent development and research. Anna Olofsson, Professor in Sociology and Director of the Risk and Crisis Research Centre, Mid Sweden University.

While many a senior researcher might give us an integrative and instructive overview of what has been achieved in the field and of accumulated knowledge, Leo Hendry and Marion Kloep decided to do something different. In this book they want to challenge the state of art of adolescent psychology and make us think and discuss where to go in the future. They do not come up with ready-made answers but aim at a debate and do not shy away from keeping it running up to their epilogue. Their reader thus adds questions and stimulating perspectives to what textbooks as well as other volumes on research on adolescence typically offer and is a valuable reading for scholars in the field and advanced students. Peter Noack, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Jena.

The field needs this book! Professors Hendry and Kloep, and the many leading scholars included in this volume, challenge us to reorient our science to focus on how development occurs, to embrace the complexity that comes with considering constructs in concert with others, to give prime attention to intraindividual processes and mechanisms in real time, to abandon descriptive stages and other concepts and methods that have outlived their utility, and to be truly cross-disciplinary. In short, they encourage and offer a needed paradigm shift. John Schulenberg, Professor of Developmental Psychology, University of Michigan, Former President of the Society for Research on Adolescence.

Encouraging researchers to be more adventurous, innovative and creative in tackling research and policy questions related to the lives of young people and their coming of age in a changing socio-historical context, this book calls for a paradigm shift – a move towards a dynamic, systemic framework and towards inter-cultural and inter-disciplinary research and collaboration. A feast of ideas is presented of how to enhance and support individual developmental transitions and transformations – and how to revolutionise adolescent research. Ingrid Schoon, Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at the Institute of Education, University College London.