Youth development has traditionally been viewed as a parallel (and separate) track to education. Our educational reform discourse has erroneously focused on bifurcated debates over achievement vs. opportunity gaps, equity vs. excellence, academics vs. non-academics skills, college vs. career readiness; rather than focusing on all aspects of learning and development as complementary components to each other. A new report, from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research Foundations for Young Adult Success: A Developmental Framework, calls attention to the need to integrate the knowledge of youth development and education in order to help young people succeed as adults.
Youth development does not happen in isolation. Decades of research, from John Dewey, James Coleman, to Urie Bronfenbrenner, all suggest that context matters and that young people’s development is influenced and impacted by both internal and external environments. In particular, the obstacles young people face in following a successful path to adulthood vary greatly by contextual factors such as poverty and the resources available in their communities...