Bloomsbury Academic Developmental Dynamics and Transitions in High School (Transitions in Childhood and Youth)

This book is about young people and their transitions throughout their first year of high school, deepening our understanding of how it is to be young and enter new institutional settings, and how to understand the developmental dynamics of youth life. It explores the everyday life of six young people as they enter high school and follows them closely as they encounter and try to make sense of the different standards, values, and demands that are built into the institutional setting of high school. The chapters explore the entanglements of personal motive orientation, interpersonal dynamics, institutional values and demands, as well as societal standards, and how subtle negotiations of who one is and ought to be are interwoven into the fabrics of everyday life. Hence the book explores variations on an institutional level – as different high school environments – along with variations on an interpersonal level, insisting on a person-environment reciprocity in the study of development. Using cultural-historical activity theory and ecological psychology derived from theorists including Bang, Barker & Wright, Gibson, Lewin, Hedegaard, Ilyenkov, Stetsenko, and Vygotsky, Sofie Pedersen argues that developmental dynamics among young people cannot be reduced to individual nor social processes alone but are connected to institutional conditions and to concrete places. By insisting on a wholeness approach to the understanding of youth development, Pedersen reveals the developmental dynamics that unfold in the everyday lives of young people, and sheds new light on youth life dynamics, including the challenges that young people face. Review This book is an excellent and original application of ecological psychology to developmental theory, dynamically describing from first-person perspective what institutional and interpersonal affordances surrounding high school students encourage and discourage them to do, and how they grow as they respond to them. --Tetsuya Kono, Professor, Rikkyo University, Department of Education, JapanIn this beautifully written and compelling analysis of six 15 and 16 year olds negotiating what matters for them over the first year of high school, Pedersen provides a novel dialectical-ecological perspective on the processes of becoming in adolescence. Her combining Vygotskian developmentalism with ecological psychology is a major contribution. --Anne Edwards, Professor Emerita, University of Oxford, UKSofie Pedersen daringly unsettles psychological research on youth development and transition, giving a fascinating account of the developmental dynamics of youth, based on her superb ethnographic fieldwork in Denmark. Her unwavering quest for theoretical rigour is impressive and deserves accolade. The book is vitally important in advancing sociocultural theory-led research on development and transitions. It will give researchers and practitioners involving youth valuable conceptual tools to understand the complexity of the person-environmental reciprocity and help young people fulfil their potential. --Kyoko Murakami, Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Education, University of Bath, UK About the Author Sofie Pedersen is Associate Professor of Psychology at Roskilde University, Denmark.