Toward a psychology of positive youth development

This article analyzes the development of initiative as art exemplar of one of many learning experiences that should be studied as part of positive you th development. The capacity for initiative is essential for adults in our society and will become more important in the 21st century, yet adolescents have few opportunities to learn it. Their typical experiences during schoo lwork and unstructured leisure do not reflect conditions for learning initi ative. The context best suited to the development of initiative appears to be that of structured voluntary activities, such as sports, arts, and parti cipation in organizations, in which youths experience the rare combination of intrinsic motivation in combination with deep attention. An incomplete b ody of outcome research suggests that such activities are associated with p ositive development, brit the development processes involved are only begin ning to be understood. One promising approach has recorded language use and has found that adolescents participating in effective organizations acquir e a new operating language that appears to correspond to the development of initiative.